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The Philosophy of New Jersey
(for Jill)
Actually the sky appears older than it is. It’s 63 or 64 at most, not 75. The part with the
cliff face and the yellow crane could be in its early 30s. It wasn’t Wallace Stevens who
said, “They have cut off my head, and picked out all the letters of the alphabet—all the
vowels and consonants—and brought them out through my ears; and then they want
me to write poetry! I can’t do it!” It was John Clare. Wallace Stevens said—something
like—the best poems are the ones you meant to write. That has a nice sound to it, but
it’s hard to see how he or anyone would know that. It would be hard, for example, to
accept the notion that there are ideas one meant to have. Poems underneath
every peeling sycamore and inside every file cabinet, along with ideas about poetry
and uncountable other ideas.
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Charles North‘s recent Everything and Other Poems was a N.Y. Times New and Noteworthy Book, What It Is Like headed NPR’s Best Poetry Books of 2011, and The Nearness of the Way You Look Tonight (2001) was a finalist for the inaugural Phi Beta Kappa Poetry Award. Other books include the innovative Complete Lineups and the essay collection States of the Art. With artist Trevor Winkfield North published the collaborations Elevenses and En Face, and with James Schuyler co-edited the poet/painter anthologies Broadway and Broadway2. [“The Philosophy of New Jersey,” from The Nearness of the Way You Look Tonight (Adventures in Poetry), is used by permission; © 2001 Charles North.]
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William Hilton, Portrait of John Clare (1793–1864). Oil on canvas, 1820.
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Author: Terence Winch
