William Michaelian

Poems, Notes, and Drawings

Tag Archive for ‘Elizabeth Barrett Browning’

Sandals and Puddles

A genuine fall rain, windless, steady, straight down. Sixty degrees. Feet and legs wet from walking at a leisurely pace through a large commercial parking lot. Sandals and puddles. Let us practice nonavoidance, and proclaim it our beliefless, faithless faith. On the front sidewalk, met with a wet, stubborn bee. Old Books. Brief prefatory note by Robert Wiedeman Barrett “Pen” Browning (here signed R.B.B.). The Letters of Robert Browning and […]

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Departure

As much as by touching, reading, and simply having them near, I think any poet would gain by the calm, deliberate practice of describing the scent of old books. To describe, in essence, what can’t be described, and yet must — this is his domain and his charge; to illuminate what is haunting, yet painfully familiar — this is why she was born; and then, when she dies, to haunt […]

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