—Poems by Tom Goff, Carmichael, CA
—Public Domain Photos
SEVEN YVORS
(Christened after several 6-syllable Imagist poems composed by Yvor Winters, later a Stanford professor and mentor to Thom Gunn, Robert Pinsky, and J.V. Cunningham, among others. See Yvor Winters, Selected Poems, edited by Gunn, in The American Poets Project, Library of America.)
COVID-19
Minds, unfed. Feed them—heal.
Vicksburg, 1863
Live-in caves, gouged from bluffs.
Employment
Time to work. Work for whom?
Atmospheric
Cloud-spread. Door? No hinges.
Mandarins
Book fingers, juice-tainted.
Kisa
Loud cat calm, with me here.
On the Same
With loud cat, here, me, calm.
(Christened after several 6-syllable Imagist poems composed by Yvor Winters, later a Stanford professor and mentor to Thom Gunn, Robert Pinsky, and J.V. Cunningham, among others. See Yvor Winters, Selected Poems, edited by Gunn, in The American Poets Project, Library of America.)
COVID-19
Minds, unfed. Feed them—heal.
Vicksburg, 1863
Live-in caves, gouged from bluffs.
Employment
Time to work. Work for whom?
Atmospheric
Cloud-spread. Door? No hinges.
Mandarins
Book fingers, juice-tainted.
Kisa
Loud cat calm, with me here.
On the Same
With loud cat, here, me, calm.
YOUR BIRTHDAY, IN A TIME OF CONTAGION
“Shakespeare” endured such: Stephanie Hopkins Hughes
Tells us. We’re not the first to be confined
Strictly to home. What lenses, near, far views,
Will help sky-chart the good that has consigned
Us ever more close in our own company?
Is it for us, though our in-house life’s less brave,
More cautious, to think our love more fresh, more free?
How wrongly might I have dreaded intimacies
Forced more intimate, now that in real fact
You lend these domestic submarine quarters ease
And grace. Oh let me reciprocate your tact.
Yet if my embrace is danger, or a swift kiss,
Is what’s passed caught? From these lips take now this.
VERTIGO
(upon reading New Selected Poems by Thom Gunn)
Coolly the cool blonde leads
James Stewart outward.
Outward and outward
for whole city blocks.
Ring around Presidio,
on to Fort Point.
Outward, yet, as we’ll see,
inward, on-spiraling
dizzily. Tailing
liberties that lift one
yet end up quick free-fall,
as when love chases
end sexual.
Perchance mere blocks away,
Thom Gunn and Mike Kitay
discover each other,
sharing close quarters,
Gunn the more inward,
Kitay all outreach,
while Hitchcock and Novak
film Mission Dolores,
VistaVision camera soaked
in broad-day sunlight,
light misted on purpose,
masking blonde motives.
Seductive the tug,
from Kitay to Gunn,
whorling inward and inward,
delighting this poet-loner
insular, insular;
friendly no less.
Blocks away, camera lifts
view to blue-perfect sky:
Top of the Mark.
Indoors, tacit Novak
will soon come gray-suited,
hair-coiled again,
Stewart seduced
to Bernard Herrmann’s
most dizzying raptures.
Too sudden for dialogue,
her necklace leaps out at him,
turns on his detective side.
Scotty in hot pursuit
of this cool blonde woman
right there beside himself.
So too, for all Kitay’s
adoring and welcoming,
inwardly, Gunn throbs with
out-pulsating spirals,
out in the whirl again,
worldly pursuits.
Inward both coils tighten,
outward both spirals come
loosening, aspiring,
unleashing, acquiring.
Today’s LittleNip:
The land is numb.
It stands beneath the feet, and one may come
Walking securely, till the sea extends
Its limber margin, and precision ends.
—Yvor Winters
_________________________________
—Medusa, with thanks to Tom Goff today for his fine poetry and his introduction to Yvor and his Yvors!
Yvor Winters (1900-1968)
"The Sage of Palo Alto"
For more about Yvor Winters, go to
"The Sage of Palo Alto"
For more about Yvor Winters, go to
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