On the absolute last day I can get away with posting this

A poem by Dylan Thomas.

Especially When the October Wind

Especially when the October wind
With frosty fingers punishes my hair,
Caught by the crabbing sun I walk on fire
And cast a shadow crab upon the land,
By the sea's side, hearing the noise of birds,
Hearing the raven cough in winter sticks,
My busy heart who shudders as she talks
Sheds the syllabic blood and drains her words.

Shut, too, in a tower of words, I mark
On the horizon walking like the trees
The wordy shapes of women, and the rows
Of the star-gestured children in the park.
Some let me make you of the vowelled beeches,
Some of the oaken voices, from the roots
Of many a thorny shire tell you notes,
Some let me make you of the water's speeches.

Behind a post of ferns the wagging clock
Tells me the hour's word, the neural meaning
Flies on the shafted disk, declaims the morning
And tells the windy weather in the cock.
Some let me make you of the meadow's signs;
The signal grass that tells me all I know
Breaks with the wormy winter through the eye.
Some let me tell you of the raven's sins.

Especially when the October wind
(Some let me make you of autumnal spells,
The spider-tongued, and the loud hill of Wales)
With fists of turnips punishes the land,
Some let me make of you the heartless words.
The heart is drained that, spelling in the scurry
Of chemic blood, warned of the coming fury.
By the sea's side hear the dark-vowelled birds.

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Why do I love this poem so much? For one thing, it sounds so good recited. The line about the "wordy shapes of women"--you start smiling as you say it and the smile comes through in your voice. Try to count how many times a letter ends one word and begins the next: "sea's side," "and drains," "Shut, too"--these combinations force you to slow down, to linger over each word as you speak. And all the alliterations make music as well.
It took me a long time to notice the rhyme scheme, since it's full of near-rhymes. It also took me a while to figure out that each line is ten syllables long.
This site goes into this poem into a bit more detail.

Actual In-Print Writing

A review I wrote of Stephen Catanzarite's book on Achtung Baby is now up at CityBeat.
I had to shorten it to get the word count to something reasonable. One cut broke my heart--I very much wanted to quote Inigo Montoya in the section describing how Catanzarite cites Yeats' "The Second Coming": "I do no' think it means what you think it means."