Chitra Ganesh, How to Assemble a Flying Car (detail), 2018, linocut on tan BFK Rives. Courtesy of the artist & Durham Press.
Pantoum: But You Are Gone
i.m. RJH 1950 –1972
I thought for a long time
if I was very quiet
for a long time
I might recall your voice.
If I was very quiet
I might long for you so long
I might recall your voice
as if my ear could sift the wind.
I might long for you so long,
for words you had spoken,
as if my ear could sift the wind
for things you said,
for words you had spoken,
that if I searched my memory
for things you said,
I might find you again;
that if I searched my memory
for a long time,
I might find you again
I thought for a long time.
Richard Hoffman is the author of seven books, including the celebrated Half the House: a Memoir, recently published in a Twentieth-Anniversary Edition (New Rivers Press, 2015), and the memoir Love & Fury (Beacon Press, 2014). In addition to the collection Interference and Other Stories, he has published four volumes of poetry: Without Paradise; Gold Star Road, winner of the Barrow Street Pres Poetry Prize and the Sheila Motton Award from The New England Poetry Club; Emblem; and Noon until Night. His work, both prose and verse, has appeared regularly for the past forty years in such journals as AGNI, Barrow Street, Consequence, Harvard Review, The Hudson Review, The Literary Review, Poetry, Witness, and elsewhere. A former chair of PEN New England, he is senior writer in residence at Emerson College and adjunct assistant professor of creative writing at Columbia University. (updated 10/2018)