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phillip crymble
@phillipcrymble.bsky.social
1.5K followers 150 following 1.6K posts
poet | phd | umichwriters alum | fiddlehead poetry editor | record collector | author of not even laughter | one-armed bandit | he/him
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phillipcrymble.bsky.social
An excerpt from Allen Ginsberg's "America" that reads: "America this is quite serious."
January 24, 2026 at 7:24 PM
phillipcrymble.bsky.social
A winter étude as it first appeared in Wide Boy (2007)
Phillip Crymble PLAINSONG Frost formed on the dormer in my study makes it hard to see -- the world outside a composition exercise, the subject in a winter theme. Roof-space windows lead us into reverie. The French don't have a word for dream -- delusion, wandering and error pleased them best. The mind gone slippery. I don't suppose it matters what comes next. Could be the Japanese, their way of making -- Basho's withered fields, the suddenness of thought. It's all so incomplete. I'm left alone and cannot see my neighbour, how she lives -- the frost grows old in me.
January 24, 2026 at 5:04 PM
phillipcrymble.bsky.social
Derek Walcott, born on this day in 1930
The classics can console. But not enough.
January 23, 2026 at 5:21 PM
phillipcrymble.bsky.social
Four stills from a movie you consider a masterpiece. No title. #FilmSky 🎥
January 23, 2026 at 12:03 AM
phillipcrymble.bsky.social
Jane Huffman, from the current issue of Poetry Magazine.
Vers Libre I want to describe my desire to loosen without any of the usual trappings of loosening. I cannot take off my coat. I cannot take down my hair; I like to wear it tight against the back of my neck in a claw, a small density of meaning. I can't unscrew, or screw, like I'm supposed to, supposition being a form of erotics, or so they say: a strewing, splaying out, overpaying for a pair of pantyhose that I can bleed straight into. Overplayed as an image as images get. The burden of the poem is to refrain: all abstinence, all sex.
January 22, 2026 at 8:11 PM
phillipcrymble.bsky.social
Tony Hoagland
the loneliness of what we did; the loneliness of what was done to us.
January 21, 2026 at 4:35 PM
phillipcrymble.bsky.social
Jill Osier
Play Two girls have snapped branches from the chestnut tree. Now they are blind. Now one-legged. Now they cannot bend their knees. They are so eager to be without.
January 21, 2026 at 1:03 AM
phillipcrymble.bsky.social
Gwendolyn Brooks
Martin Luther King Jr. A man went forth with gifts. He was a prose poem. He was a tragic grace. He was a warm music. He tried to heal the vivid volcanoes. His ashes are reading the world. His Dream still wishes to anoint the barricades of faith and of control. His word still burns the center of the sun, above the thousands and the hundred thousands. The word was Justice. It was spoken. So it shall be spoken. So it shall be done.
January 19, 2026 at 4:05 PM
phillipcrymble.bsky.social
Denise Levertov, from Candles in Babylon (1982)
Concurrence Each day's terror, almost a form of boredom--madmen at the wheel and stepping on the gas and the brakes no good-- and each day one, sometimes two, morning-glories, faultless, blue, blue sometimes flecked with magenta, each lit from within with the first sunlight.
January 18, 2026 at 6:30 PM
phillipcrymble.bsky.social
Alden Nowlan
Canadian January Night Ice storm: the hill a pyramid of black crystal down which the cars slide like phosphorescent beetles while I, walking backwards in obedience to the wind, am possessed of the fearful knowledge my compatriots share but almost never utter: this is a country where a man can die simply from being caught outside.
January 17, 2026 at 11:39 PM
phillipcrymble.bsky.social
Denise Levertov, from This Great Unknowing: Last Poems (1999)
ANCIENT STAIRWAY Footsteps like water hollow the broad curves of stone ascending, descending century by century. Who can say if the last to climb these stairs will be journeying downward or upward?
January 17, 2026 at 6:18 PM
phillipcrymble.bsky.social
Mary Oliver
Landscape in Winter Upon the snow that says nothing, that is endlessly brilliant, there is something heaped, dark and motionless. Then come the many wings, strong and bold. "Death has happened," shout the carrion crows. "And this is good for us."
January 16, 2026 at 6:35 PM
phillipcrymble.bsky.social
Rae Armantrout, from Ron Silliman's In the American Tree (1986)
VIEW Not the city lights. We want -the moon- The Moon none of our own doing!
January 16, 2026 at 4:15 PM
phillipcrymble.bsky.social
Linda Gregg
THE OTHER EXCITEMENT If I go back into memory it's not because I like it, but because that's where the hard things are. Nothing that gets excited. Almost ripe and the beauty of things in the middle distance. Going down the mountain.
January 15, 2026 at 8:47 PM
phillipcrymble.bsky.social
Asking for a friend.
Excerpt from Allen Ginsberg's "America" which reads "America is this correct?"
January 15, 2026 at 7:15 PM
phillipcrymble.bsky.social
Who would cut / her home to pieces and row away for that?

Maggie Smith, from Good Bones (2017)
YOU COULD NEVER TAKE A CAR TO GREENLAND, my daughter says. Unless the car could float. Unless by car you mean boat. Unless the ocean turned to ice and promised not to crack. Unless Greenland floated over here, having lifted its anchor. Unless we could row our country there. Our whole continent would have to come along, wouldn't it? Unless we cut ourselves free. What kind of saw could we use for that? What kind of oars could deliver one country to another? She asks, Why is Greenland called Greenland if it's not green? Why is Iceland called Iceland if it's greener than Greenland? Unless it's a trick, a lie: the name Greenland is an ad for Greenland. Who would go promised nothing but ice? Who would cut her home to pieces and row away for that?
January 14, 2026 at 4:08 PM
phillipcrymble.bsky.social
The white flowers strain upward / Into a pallid air of their references

Another uncollected John Ashbery poem
A Vase of Flowers The vase is white and would be a cylinder If a cylinder were wider at the top than at the bottom. The flowers are red, white and blue. All contact with the flowers is forbidden. The white flowers strain upward Into a pallid air of their references, Pushed slightly by the red and blue flowers. If you were going to be jealous of the flowers, Please forget it. They mean absolutely nothing to me. 1962 (written ca. 1959)
January 13, 2026 at 12:39 AM
phillipcrymble.bsky.social
John Ashbery
The Night Cry Not with my full strength O not yet with my full strength Kneeling down to be closer to the water At night He had been drawn from his home by the gray fields To the black water Whose far runnels sounded distinct In the dawn of the gray fields The night standing The principles he'd fought for The dog saving him All a dream Which had comforted him without meaning to 1961 (written ca. 1958)
January 11, 2026 at 3:10 PM
phillipcrymble.bsky.social
Charles Wright, from Littlefoot (2007)
I am the sign, I am the letter. I am the language that cannot be come to terms with. I will go to my resting place and will not be born again. I am what is scattered and cannot be gathered up. I am small, I am silence, I am what is not found.
January 10, 2026 at 4:02 PM
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Terrance Hayes
American Sonnet For My Past And Future Assassin When walking hope is a swagger When sleeping hope is a lullaby When breathing hope is oxygen When drunk hope is liquor When dirty hope is water When unfilled hope is a well When unwell hope is medicine When impatient hope is patience When lonely hope is company When poor hope is money When hungry hope is meat When hunted hope is a knife When angry hope is a blade When wounded hope is what heals me.
January 9, 2026 at 7:10 PM
phillipcrymble.bsky.social
A poem by John Kelly as it first appeared in Poetry Ireland Review.
POEM FOR DAVID BOWIE There was a man who used to cut the grass. He used a scythe - the snaking shaft of it – the sned - just right for swivel and for sweep. A blade so sharp, they said, it would cut wool floating down a stream. And tonight I dreamed that man again. Corrigan or Kerrigan – I forget his name – but he cut a swathe. He cleared a path. I saw the frogs, the twitching leveret, the grasshoppers in splashes. Then the sudden tilt in everything – and everything collapses.
January 8, 2026 at 2:59 PM
phillipcrymble.bsky.social
Robert Hayden
Snow Smooths and burdens, endangers, hardens. Erases, revises. Extemporizes Vistas of lunar solitude. Builds, embellishes a mood.
January 8, 2026 at 12:08 AM
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Some wholesome family fare from John Updike's A Child's Calendar (1965). Illustration by Nancy Ekholm Burkert.
January The days are short, The sun a spark Hung thin between The dark and dark. Fat snowy footsteps Track the floor. Milk bottles burst Outside the door. The river is A frozen place Held still beneath The trees of lace. The sky is low. The wind is gray. The radiator Purrs all day.
January 7, 2026 at 2:47 PM
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Carl Phillips
The Night, the Plan, the Stars Hard to tell if whoever hung those lanterns from bare branches meant to compensate, or console; maybe just decoration... The charge was to go sweetly anyways where sweetness had often made no difference. A lost art: predicting the future by listening to the sounds leaves make, each to the other, touching, not touching. It was required that they be unfallen. Hope made them brave, or look brave.
January 6, 2026 at 11:53 PM
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Noelle Kocot
A DREARY DAY IN JANUARY Get to work. The rows of beef jerky At the Wawa stare up at me accusingly. I have eaten them. I cry as the rain hits The placid ground, the secret identity Of which I do not know. You are wholly There. Sort of. Affliction cannot speak To non-affliction, though. What happened To your velocity, what happened to the Arctic lights? Scan a chromatic passageway To something else. Sabbath the sleet.
January 6, 2026 at 3:00 PM