Alvin Pang

We have to highlight Alvin Pang's poem "Aubade" in TheWolf, issue 18, Aug. 2008. It has a great sinuous sense of forward movement, of time. This is rarely done well in modern verse, but here you can't wait to get to the end and see how it all turns out. It's ominous but alluring, just like Poe and other gothic literature. Real gothic often has a lovely element of nature in it, reminding us all that death is natural for all things. It is at once both anathema and mundane. We fear and resist it, but of course it rules over all. 

Most people focus on the resistance to death, but here it's part of a larger whole--modern poetry is often very puerile, without any refinement or thought. Here's an interview with Pang, he's written many books of poetry.

Here's an excerpt--but it has a great ending as well, really chilling, so don't miss that. I didn't want to excerpt just a bit of it, the whole progression is what's great. If you love the opening here read the rest:

    My love, I fear the silence of your hands. 
      Mahmoud Darwish

Overnight, my heart, the forest has grown cold
and every leaf shivers with the sure knowledge of its fall,
shivers yellow and maple-red and mauve, Summer remembered
in vermillion dying. When I walk the river now

it bears merely the lightest press of feet, my body swaying
to keep balance in the whetted breeze. I had to leave you
on the absent shore, a warm bloom nesting in the reeds,
an unfixed, iridescent eye. 

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