Nathan Hawke

It's not just the fact that Nathan Hawke is a brilliant poet or that his wife is a glorious person, or that he is a beautiful, soft but well spoken man, or that he either really cares or does the best impression of caring I have ever seen a man do that makes me want to post some of his poetry. It's that his poetry moves me. I love the way he never types his name on his poetry. He always signs it with a pen--like he puts part of himself on the page. I believe he will one day be famous. If I'm ever rich and he's not famous yet, I'll just publish a book of his poetry.

I can't find the piece of his I wanted to post, so I'll just post parts of two other pieces I have gotten a hold of. I should point out that these are unauthorized and I could probably be sued for posting these. Maybe when they are published I will have a problem. Note that the underscores below should be spaces but this HTML converter doesn't seem to understand spaces--also I had to add a line break after "include:" in "Deerfield (5)." Enjoy.

From "Deerfield (5)" by Nathan Hawke

Uses for quack grass include:

diuretic for 'gravel' (kidney stones); worm expellent;

wash for______swollen limbs, etc. Spaces of still water

along the bank are mucky-brown, littered___with brown stones a few feet across

and smoothed, brown glass from a broken beer bottle.

Half clamshell shine up, gold______under surface. Psalm 63: I sing___in the

shadow of your wings.



From "Six Variations for Glen Gould" by Nathan Hawke

_____But let's not--


_____Traces of the original tenderness sould, or do--or my reading

or yours--well up inder hte imitation. In my reading you remember the asphalt

curves down into shadows--street in--at--front of the market, the man who

walks out of his house--across the tight yeard at--towards--the car with

all three collar buttons buttoned; sparrow's sparrow-flight wrapping

through fence spokes. You slow down, raise patterns in grass all

the way home until--reaching for the door--start

_____pounding again, but let off as I step inside glitering

_____in the dissonance.