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Poems

April 2006

"A science fiction writer of the Fifties"

by Brad Leithauser

A new poem.

I. When the Smoke Rings Sail


Although it scarcely matters where he is,
He’s in Urbana, Illinois, tonight,
As he is on most nights; it’s where he lives.
Move to New York, they’re always telling him.
Or San Francisco, L.A., Washington
As if these places were appreciably
Nearer, somehow, to what he writes about.
Even his friends, they don’t grasp that all places
Are roughly the same distance when your subject
Is Time itself, the pure future …
Besides, he’s drawn to these Midwestern skies,
Clean and enormous, stars all the way down
To the horizon, where the very lowest
Float at eye-level and the illusion is
You’re walking to the stars.
                 ...

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Brad Leithauser


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This article originally appeared in The New Criterion, Volume 24 April 2006, on page 28

Copyright © 2009 The New Criterion | www.newcriterion.com

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