I just finished The Rise and Fall of Meter: Poetry and English National Culture, 1860-1930 and have new poems forthcoming in Field and APR. I teach Intro to Poetry, Nineteenth-Century Poetry, Modern Poetry, Literature and War, and the Literature of the Fin de Siècle, as well as graduate courses in Historical Poetics. Here is an early poem from the “Apology” series. Please contact the poetry@princeton administrator if you are interested in having a page or if you have ideas about supporting the thriving poetry community here at Princeton.

Apology 14

I try, I do, but I can’t
write to anyone else.

for anyone else
about anyone else.

It’s always you.

I look away, or try:
dark wood,
father looming,
or mother wound up
to a high hum.

It doesn’t matter.
It’s all you.
Nothing original.
Spare. Strange.

Even in this blankness
You black out every word.