Thread: Donald Justice
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Unread 11-26-2003, 10:18 PM
Steven Schroeder Steven Schroeder is offline
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Location: St. Louis, Missouri
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Quote:
Originally posted by VictoriaGaile:
The one line that would probably draw heavy workshop crit is the "Something is filling them, something", since it is both vague and repetitive: but in this poem, it works for me quite well.
And lots of well-known poems by established poets use the vague "something" quite effectively; from Elizabeth Bishop's "Sandpiper": "looking for something, something, something. / Poor bird, he is obsessed!"

Here's one of my favorite Justice poems, also often-anthologized:

On the Death of Friends in Childhood

We shall not ever meet them bearded in heaven
Nor sunning themselves among the bald of hell;
If anywhere, in the deserted schoolyard at twilight,
forming a ring, perhaps, or joining hands
In games whose very names we have forgotten.
Come memory, let us seek them there in the shadows.

(1960)


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Steve Schroeder
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