Barbara Guest

Photo by Matthew Septimus, courtesy of Harper's Magazine. It is dangerous to excel at two different things. You run the risk of being underappreciated in one or the other; think of Michelangelo as a poet, of Michael Jordan as a baseball player. This is a trap that Lewis Lapham has largely avoided. For the past half century, he has been getting pretty much equal esteem in a pair of distinct roles: editor and essayist.

At sunset from the top of the stair watching the castle mallets wrenched from their socket fell from ambush into flame flew into hiding; above the stoneware a latch like muscle hid the green; he stood waist high under the rapt ceiling and hanged the sparrow; where the kitchen had been a mirror of eggs served in a tumbler he saw the ring when a lancet pierced and threw it. In a basket and lowered it where sails enter the harbor over a parchment like dominoes; the petrel-like eyelash.

Since I’ve decided to revolutionize my life since ” decided ” revolutionize ” life ” How early it is! It is eight o’clock in the morning. Well, the pigeons were up earlier Did you eat all your egg? Now we shall go for a long walk. Now? There is too much winter. I am going to admire the snow on your coat. Time for hot soup, already? You have worked for three solid hours. I have written forty-eight, no forty-nine, no fifty-one poems. How many states are there? I cannot remember what is uniting America.