Verlaine In The Lake

Michael Farrell

Verlaine is – illuminatingly – a sinking limb
It is too late to abandon Paris, for him
He has wings like the figure of a figure; he
cannot fly: can barely sigh / complainLook up Verlaine, the lake is not blue, it’s
useless to you! Write that dream
You are in an orchard: a bird hypnotized by
the colours of the fruit trees. Verlainefollowing an upstart lorikeet called Rimbaud
(rainbow, rhyme beau) who always
tries to shake him off. It’s all very Death in
Castlemaine, Scenes from Mildura. Isthe lake a lake, the bird a bird, or but a fake
shadow, a half-thing? Did the poet
go down too slowly to the spring, too late?
His face has gone orange in the blue

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Michael Farrell has published several books, including the recent I Love Poetry and A Lyrebird: Selected Poems. His scholarly work is Writing Australian Unsettlement: Modes of Poetic Invention 1796-1945. He edits Flash Cove.

Blackbox Manifold

Summer 2018

Sheffield
England

University of Sheffield

Editors
Alex Houen
Adam Piette

Blackbox Manifold is an online forum with a slant towards innovative poetry that has prose, narrative, or sequences in its sights. That said, we don’t hold allegiance to any one poetry school or group, and we’re happy to receive submissions from established and emerging poets alike. Our aim is to present new juxtapositions of voice while using the Web’s fluid solidity to cast around for as wide and varied a readership as possible. The journal is continuingly archived by the British Library in its Web Archive.

On occasion, a current topic or event will be the focus for an issue—in bringing together poems that warp current woofs our hope is that some news, at least, may be broken. Voices that record by trembling are always welcome. But to ensure that we don’t settle into familiar patterns, guest editors will also occasionally be invited to take charge of an issue and solicit new work. Calling on a range of poets for editorial advice is fundamental to our own collaborative approach.

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