Untitled by Adam Kirsch - The New Criterion

Poems

April 2007

Untitled

Burke

was right!

The tin balls that the Planetarium
Designed to demonstrate the powers of ten
Range from the pebbly fraction of an atom
To a hot air balloon that means the sun,
Indicting cosmologically provincial
Habits they can’t help but reinforce
By tailoring their exponential spiral
To the perspective of an audience
Whose unraised power is thereby made to seem
The integer of all created things.
Where is the diorama that could shame
And reconcile a creature that belongs
In the dark bowel of the universe
Only as our insides accommodate
Weird flora whose unconscious processes
We never see and couldn’t live without?

Adam Kirsch's most recent book is Invasions: Poems (Ivan R. Dee).

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

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