A new issue of Now Culture is loose, with a big emphasis on the short poem. Anyone who knows the recent me, knows I’m in a filthy love with the short poem.  And so is Dara Wier. Here, she considers Keats’ ‘This Living Hand” and the inimitable powers of the short lyric.  (click on the text of the poem to access the essay).

Short poems lend a seconds’ acknowledgment of our predicaments. They can be sniper-like in their direct action. I like that they aren’t working up to anything. I like that they employ no regimens of preparing the ground, or building up of logic or anecdote or image or sonic effects, they pretty much forego consolation and fearlessly approach archly flung truth. They lean hard on the notion of condensed (intensely so) remark.