Speaking of beautiful poems, remember this one by Stephanie Young? It was published on *Well Nourished Moon* on Thursday, June 12, 2003:

"POEM TITLED WITH LINE FROM DAVID HESS (That overdetermines things. I wanted to respond somehow to the social in poetry, O'Hara, Andrews, Snopes discussion. What happened, you'll see below. What happened? Even the poet is not sure. I keep thinking about Spicer - am I getting somewhere when the poem begins to say the opposite of what I mean or want the poem to mean?)

ANOTHER PICTURE OF SOCIAL CONDITIONS AS THEY APPEAR TO US NOW

I saunter out of bed:
substitution of an alphabet for the more confusing
moral claim, these thoughts
sent from one living person to another
or those more recently dead. HELLO
I AM HERE for that purpose.
Disturbance of sleep rhythms, overhead
I am bursting into flame.
Was it a planet we sought to increase
in friendliness and symphonic connection
or just a star
engaged in backbends from the standing position?
WHOM is orbiting WHOM
I said to myself
and struck out in that direction.
Straight for the definable axis.
Did the stars call out faintly, "Fuck you?"
Were their pants so tight
they found it difficult to move? What, in short,
caused them to explode...was that your face
raining or your face in the rain
through everybody's favorite distortion glass--
pane after pane but I honestly knew
it was you in a fog of meaning. Only
the slightest of embarrassment
when you leaned close
to brush star flakes from my lapel.
And may I have this opportunity?
To more coyly move
within the doors "of your heart," & go
unnoticed there
while the rest of the army burst in.
We are becoming visible
when the door swings shut
not as if hidden but toys
lost in a rhetoric of backdrops
icon of a bed
children of the world
running from another blazing mess...it is later now
& you suddenly become very sleepy.
We say don't you dare lay down....not in the snow...
that's close enough
even the government is played off one another
while we dine on these abundant shreds of tenderness.
Willfully simple, have pity on 8,000 connections
in the back of our head or represented by the billboard
and those who draw arrows
& those who draw them in
1:1, some
supernova"
posted by Stephanie 11:51 AM