Vessel by Valerie Wohlfeld - The New Criterion

Poems

November 2002

Vessel

Burke

was right!

To be colored in metallic salt,
dipped in cobalt
blue, raku’s
flame-tamed hue’s
equatorial smoke and wintry water.

To reside in luster:
illicit god’s chamber-
quarantined gold.
To be the stone—small, in blindfold,
pressed to the vessel’s

burnished sides. To be the pestle’s
love against the mortar:
plot of glaze, guise of feldspar.
To be the shard-skin:
glass cast-out of manganese, iron, livid tin.

To be the callow body
vitrified in journey
near catastrophe:
something new arises out of desire
of water, earth and furtive-fettered fire.

—Valerie Wohlfeld

Valerie Wohlfeld's Thinking the World Visible won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Award.

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

Lone Ranger Baffled Re: Sexual Assaults in the Military

by James Bowman

May 17, 2013 07:16 PM

Emily Esfahani Smith on Bowdoin College and the Essence of Sex

by Brendan Dooley

May 17, 2013 04:00 PM

Kevin D. Williamson: Theatergoers' hero

by Brian P. Kelly

May 16, 2013 12:13 PM

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