Author Archives: Dale Hobson

In the Rare Book Room

The Strand Bookstore in NYC is a bibliophile’s dream, staffed with eccentric experts on arcane subjects, populated by floor after floor of every title imaginable. At the very top is the rare book room, a temperature- and humidity- controlled environment … Continue reading

Posted in Poetry | Leave a comment

Digging into Metaphysics

To be taken seriously as a poet, sometimes you have to swim into deeper waters, reckon with the whichness of what and unscrew the inscrutable. Digging into Metaphysics What makes humans human–imageof God? Featherless biped? What?  Some say “the animal … Continue reading

Posted in Poetry | Leave a comment

Mousetraps

Another shiny new poem smelted from the rusty ore of old “Listening Post” prose. Mousetraps For years I had the dismal duty of adding tiny forlorn corpses to the household trash. One fall, during the first cold snap (the kickoffof rodent … Continue reading

Posted in Poetry | 1 Comment

October 15, 1969

Many folks from Potsdam went to DC for the big Vietnam  Moratorium March that day, but those who stayed behind marched here in Potsdam and read the names of the dead from a little stage set up  in front of (old) Snell … Continue reading

Posted in Poetry, The Other Village | Leave a comment

No Cure for Leonard Cohen

All kinds of music gets stuck in the top of my mind: pop tunes, carols, hymns, blues. I walk to their refrain for half a day, then pass on to something else. But some music wraps around the brain stem, … Continue reading

Posted in Poetry | Leave a comment

Library Daydream

A candid view into the fantasy life of a superannuated English major.  Library Daydream What if I had had a rock ‘n’ roll band instead… had some wild drummer boning apocalypsos,sun to a solar system of tubs, tubes, triangles,gongs, gourds … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Beautiful as Ever

In another poem I call ed memory “that other light by which we see the world.” This is never more the case than when we look upon those we love. Beautiful as Ever Along the river, I remember your long … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Rescuing the Buddha

Sometimes the poem writes itself, and sometimes it speaks for itself, too. So I won’t bother with any further explication. Rescuing the Buddha Twenty years ago, he sat enthroned on a marble plinthin a little clearing among the lilacs facing … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment

EarthSky News explains Genesis

EarthSky News explains Genesis In the beginning,after the Big Bang,stars in clustersformed invisibleto one another throughdense hydrogen gas.Space was opaque.And darkness was uponthe face of the deep. Starshine slowly ionizedthe gas, turning it clear.First one, then manyglimmers could be seen. … Continue reading

Posted in Poetry | 2 Comments

Sun on the Garden

After years of benign neglect, I’ve been spending time and money in the nurseries and garden tool departments of the hardware store. And I find that working in the garden feels satisfying solid in comparison to the airier pursuits of … Continue reading

Posted in Poetry | 1 Comment