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Monday, August 22, 2016

Washington Mews by Rowan Ricardo Phillips

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August 22, 2016
 

Washington Mews

 
Rowan Ricardo Phillips
illustration

About This Poem

 

“Much to my surprise, I have found myself as of late writing a cascade of Shakespearean sonnets. They tell a story. Suddenly and from what source I cannot tell you, I have fallen in love with the problem inherent within a sonnet’s concluding couplet; namely, how easily it can take the form of merely anticipated machinery. In the particular case of ‘Washington Mews,’ the concluding couplet is an altered fragment from Neruda’s ‘Poema XX.’ Pluto—the ex-planet, the ruler of the underworld—gets the final words here: note that instead of boasting he takes the liberty to recite. These thoughts came to me after I had written the poem, not during and certainly not before.”
—Rowan Ricardo Phillips

 

Rowan Ricardo Philips is the author of Heaven (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015). He teaches at Stony Brook University and the graduate programs of Columbia University and New York University. He lives in New York City.

 

Photo credit: Sue Kwon 

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Heaven

(Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015)

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"Trans-" by Rita Dove

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"mulberry fields" by Lucille Clifton

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Poem-a-Day

 

Launched during National Poetry Month in 2006, Poem-a-Day features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends.

 
 

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