Finding the tintype by X.J. Kennedy

Poems

September 2006

Finding the tintype

Burke

was right!

Those boughs stay green from which began
Garlands of flesh: my Gran, who spread
Twelve babies in her double bed
As one might open a fan,

While constant in baptismal black,
Of every blessing, pound by pound,
In this bouncing Bible goatskin-bound,
My grandfather kept track.

They died in hopes of early rise.
In Scripture’s sheets their faces slept
Where Jacob’s pinned-down angel kept
Watch by their couch with steelcut eyes

Through ninety winters, buried deep
Till now. Their glances, crisp as sage,
Rise from their good book’s crumbling page,
Pressed fern fronds someone wished to keep.

X.J. Kennedy

Events

November 09 2009

YOUNG FRIENDS: Tour of an important contemporary art collection

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November 24 2009

OPEN EVENT: Laura Jacobs reading

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December 02 2009

Friends Event: The Swallow Anthology Reading

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Webcasts

New Criterion-Social Affairs Unit Conference: Part 4
"The Criminalization of Making Money" by Lionel Shriver, Recorded 9/25/09

New Criterion-Social Affairs Unit Conference: Part 3
"The State and the Threat to Democracy" by Jeremy Black and "The Paradox of the Intellectual and the Future of Capitalism" by Tim Congdon, Recorded on 9/25/2009

New Criterion-Social Affairs Unit Conference: Part 2
"Nice 'N' Easy: The Age of Micro Tyranny" by Mark Steyn, Recorded on 9/25/2009

Weblog

The death of attention

by Michael Weiss

Nov 07, 2009 02:26 PM

God Bless

by James Bowman

Nov 05, 2009 06:05 PM

The New Criterion

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