View Cart \| Log In
Subscribe \| More Info

Advanced Search >

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kazim Ali

His first collection of poetry, The Far Mosque (Alice James Books, 2005), won the Alice James Books New England/New York Award...
More >

Want more poems?
Subscribe to our
Poem-A-Day emails.


	FURTHER READING


		More Like This
		On Poetry and Craft [excerpt] by Theodore Roethke

		All She Wrote by Harryette Mullen

		An Exhortation by Percy Bysshe Shelley

		Anybody Can Write a Poem by Bradley Paul

		Dawn by James Laughlin

		Epistle: Leaving by Kerrin McCadden

		In Portraits in Seasons by Danielle Pafunda

		In the old days a poet once said by Ko Un

		Inert Perfection by Edna St. Vincent Millay

		Language by W. S. Merwin

		Leo Said by Eileen Myles

		Night School by Micah Ballard

		Night Theater by Meena Alexander

		Poetry by Monica Ferrell

		Poetry by Alfred Kreymborg

		Poetry by Marianne Moore

		Poetry is by Emilio Villa

		Potentially Interesting & Secretly Devastating by Tina Brown Celona

		Q & A by Terence Winch

		Render, Render by Thomas Lux

		so you want to be a writer? by Charles Bukowski

		Te Deum by Charles Reznikoff

		The Bear by Galway Kinnell

		The Gift by Chard deNiord

		The Language of Love by Rodney Jones

		The Novel as Manuscript by Norman Dubie

		The Politics of Narrative: Why I Am A Poet by Lynn Emanuel

		To a Young Poet by Edna St. Vincent Millay

		What He Thought by Heather McHugh

		what it means to be avant-garde [excerpt] by David Antin

		While Writing by Noelle Kocot

Sponsor a Poet Page | Add to Notebook | Email to Friend | Print

Dear J.

by Kazim Ali

It should be a letter
To the man inside
I could not become

Dressed in yellow
And green, the colors of spring
So I could leave death

In its chamber veined
With deep ore
I’ve no more to tell you

Last winter I climbed
The mountains of Musoorie
To hear frozen peals of bell and wire

A silver thread of sound
Sky to navel
Draws me

like the black strip
in a flower’s throat
meant to guide you in

I lie now in the winter
open-petaled beneath Sirius
I cereus bloom

About this poem:

"I was asked by a friend, a poet, what I thought about poetry and to explain why I write poetry. This is the letter I wrote back to him."

Kazim Ali

Larger Type | Home | Help | Contact Us | Privacy Policy