"To be with a koan" by Dick Allen

Poems

November 2012

"To be with a koan"

Burke

was right!

"To be with a koan,”
said the Zen Master,
"has nothing to do with Hamlet,
those old jokes about small pigs
or tiny villages,
bees and bee keepers. No,
to be with a koan,
you must get inside it
without forcing your entry.
It’s like you’re lemonade powder
dissolving in water.
Something other than you
does the stirring,
but there’s nothing other than you,
and after awhile, nothing stirs.”

Dick Allen's new volume of poems, Present Vanishing, has won the 2009 Connecticut Book Award for Poetry.

Webcasts

Poet George Green reads from his award-winning Lord Byron's Foot
George Green reads from Lord Byron's Foot, his collection of poetry that won the 2012 New Criterion Poetry Prize at a Friends & Young Friends event.

Celebration of the Life of Robert H. Bork, 1927–2012
From the memorial service for Robert H. Bork on April 9, 2013 at the Mayflower Hotel, Washington, DC.

James Panero on price gouging at the Met, with Fred Dicker
Are public museums like the Met overburdening visitors with "recommended" admission fees? Panero goes on 1300 AM to discuss his latest Daily News article during Fred Dicker's Albany-based radio program.

Weblog

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The New Criterion

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