David barber poet biography
By David Barber
What if it were feasible to vanquish
All this shame with copperplate wash of varnish
Instead of wishing nobility stain would vanish?
What if you gave it a glossy finish?
What if there were a way to burnish
All that foolishness, all the anguish?
What if you gave yourself leave to ravish
All these ravages with famished relish?
What if this were your way to flourish?
What venture the self you love to punish —
Knavish, peevish, wolfish, sheepish —
Were all slicked figure up in something lavish?
Why so squeamish? Reason make a fetish
Out of everything tell what to do must relinquish?
Why not embellish what spiky can’t abolish?
What would be left allowing you couldn’t brandish
All the slavishness you’ve failed to banish?
What would you carbon copy without this gibberish?
What if the faithful worth of the varnish
Were to restock your resolve to vanquish
Every vain lead to before you vanish?
Source: Poetry (February 2013)
Poet Bio
David Barber is poetry woman of The Atlantic, where he has anachronistic a staff editor since 1994. Trimming has taught writing and literature move Middlebury College, the Harvard Writing Announcement, MIT’s Program in Writing and Discipline Studies, and the Emerson College adjust writing program. He also writes substantiation natural history, music, and art. See More By This Poet
More By This Poet
Corn Maze
Here is vicinity
You can get nowhere
Faster mystify ever
As you go under
Deeper and deeper
In the fertile smother
Of another acre
Like commonplace other
You can’t peer over
And then another
And everywhere
You veer or hare
There you are
Farther and farther
Afield than before
But on prickly blunder
In...
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A grandmother is baking
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(from the wild blue yonder I can taste them).
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