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  #11  
Unread 11-13-2020, 02:03 PM
Coleman Glenn Coleman Glenn is offline
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These are all so good - thanks for starting this thread, Max.

Does anyone here know Richard Wilbur’s last poem? I don’t. But the first two poems in his last book, Anterooms, have the feeling of last poems for me even though they were written years before his death. The first is “The House,” a beautiful elegy for his wife, with tinges of hope for a reunion. The second is “Measuring Worm,” a gem of a meditation on death and transformation. John Poch highlighted “Measuring Worm” in an excellent retrospective on Wilbur’s work shortly after Wilbur died.
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  #12  
Unread 11-13-2020, 02:39 PM
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Ann Drysdale Ann Drysdale is offline
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My friend Matthew Sweeney died in 2018, a year after receiving a diagnosis of motor neurone disease. During that year, he wrote this.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poe...-5b7339b084f68
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  #13  
Unread 11-13-2020, 02:50 PM
Cally Conan-Davies Cally Conan-Davies is offline
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Annie, I've never read that poem. It is absolutely amazing.

Coleman, this is the last poem Wilbur published in The New Yorker.

Sugar Maples, January

January 9, 2012


What years of weather did to branch and bough
No canopy of shadow covers now,

And these great trunks, when the wind’s rough and bleak,
Though little shaken, can be heard to creak.

It is not time, as yet, for rising sap
And hammered spiles. There’s nothing there to tap.

For now, the long blue shadows of these trees
Stretch out upon the snow, and are at ease.




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  #14  
Unread 11-13-2020, 02:57 PM
Aaron Novick Aaron Novick is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Orwn Acra View Post
Opus Posthumous dates "Of Mere Being" to 1955, the year of Steven's death, and is likely the last complete poem he wrote. It is also one of his best, a perfect distillation of the themes that so intrigued him.
I did not know this was so late in his ouevre—possibly my second favorite of his, after "Man Carrying Thing".

But I need to read my complete Stevens cover-to-cover still.
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  #15  
Unread 11-14-2020, 02:13 AM
Gregory Dowling Gregory Dowling is offline
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This is the last poem (and the title poem) in Anthony Hecht's last volume - and certainly has a valedictory tone:
The Darkness and the Light
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  #16  
Unread 11-15-2020, 09:50 AM
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Maryann Corbett Maryann Corbett is offline
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Thanks for this fine thread and these good poems! James Merrill's "Christmas Tree" is a late poem, though I don't know if it's a last one. It certainly has the feel of a leave-taking.

It's a real shame that in his Selected Poems (Borzoi, 2008) it doesn't appear in its proper Christmas-tree layout.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poe...ontentId=39363
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  #17  
Unread 11-15-2020, 11:07 AM
Andrew Frisardi Andrew Frisardi is offline
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Yeats finished "The Black Tower" just a few days before he died: "Old bones upon the mountain shake." Damn.

Near the end, he also wrote "Lapis Lazuli," "The Statues," "Long-Legged Fly," and "Notes for the Delphic Oracle."

Not bad for an old man in failing health.
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  #18  
Unread 11-15-2020, 12:10 PM
Aaron Novick Aaron Novick is offline
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Fernando Pessoa—because of course he did—gave Alberto Caiero a "last poem, and—because of course it is—it is fantastic (tr. Costa):
This is perhaps the last day of my life.
I saluted the sun, raising my right hand,
but I wasn't saluting it in order to say goodbye.
I was simply showing how pleased I was still to see it, nothing more.
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  #19  
Unread 11-16-2020, 05:10 PM
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Kevin Rainbow Kevin Rainbow is offline
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[Enter Statius' ghost]

Statius' ghost:
Don't forget my Achilleid! Death has been one of the most mortifying cases of writer's block I've ever experienced. But I'll get over it eventually and will finish writing Achilleid, which will be the best Latin epic in the world.
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  #20  
Unread 11-16-2020, 05:33 PM
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Kevin Rainbow Kevin Rainbow is offline
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River of Times by Derzhavin
https://brown.edu/Research/poetry-in.../01/27/russia/

No Coward Soul is Mine by Emily Brontё
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poe...d-soul-is-mine

Last Lines by Anne Brontё
https://acacia.pairsite.com/Acacia.V...ast.Lines.html
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