For the Last Romantic

My favorite labyrinth, the Seed Labyrinth by Sara Jones

There are some who believe poems are writ
from the sophisticated theories we invent
as if inspiration was the conscript
of a very specific determinant
that was made with formulas and instruments
so that the unexpected was from intent
and surprise was merely mismanagement
from a factory of ambiguousness.

Then reading your verse earlier today,
listening to the words and all they say,
I began to float on the music they made
from the melodies in every phrase
along the correspondence you arranged
with the chords inlaid and delicately played
and carried by a cadence sustained
by the beat of your heart upon the page.

Poems are not contrived from designs,
they are released from within, deep inside,
and the deeper one’s concentration dives
the higher one’s inspiration flies,
making brazen leaps to span the divides
in the endless potential of our lives
from the wonder of a child’s awakening mind
to the timeless kindness in a grandmother’s eyes.


Garrett Buhl Robinson
6/22/14

Literature and Life

Mt. Hood, over a sea of clouds

At a local bookstore, in your neighborhood,
nestled in the comforts of your familiar town
an author was visiting to sign the book
Literature and Life, for a modest crowd.
The night moved courteously as it should
but unexpectedly an uproar was aroused
as the people demanded with scowling spite,
“We see the phrases on the pages bound,
and the table of contents’ proper nouns.
We see the literature but where is the life?”

The author said, “These words are dead until they’re read.
You, the audience, are the life. May these
words awaken the wings of your mind
and lift your thoughts into heavenly skies.”

Garrett Buhl Robinson
6/18/19

The City of Inspiration

Sometimes I feel this
     mystifying town
is built more from the sky
     than from the ground.

For Marianne Moore

The New York Public Library

Ms. Moore, I have read your work from place to
place, hunkering over the pages to savor
the way your nimble feet tip toe across
the page with every step as light as it is sure.
The poems are a guiding line of lanterns
extending through passages of detailed grandeur
where the protean shapes that you portray
are a lively menagerie, not exhibiting
human qualities, but revealing virtues
essentially and effortlessly natural.
And now for the first time in my life
I am reading your poetry in Brooklyn
to find the greatest paradox you ever penned
is your numerous versions of perfection.

Garrett Buhl Robinson

June 9, 2014

Communing with the Ancients

Communing with the Ancients


Through a solitary stretch sketched
upon a parchment surface,

hatched from the brooding memories
of isolations and interactions,

meticulously formulated
into ponderously balanced phrases

carried about clasped to the breast,
surviving rebuke and neglect,

hollered from resounding mountains
and sipped with tender attention

through intimate statements
and broadening relations

while retaining rapturous meaning
through transcriptions and translations,

through the extending lengths of space and time
the reach of poets have touched my life.


Garrett Buhl Robinson
5/8/14

Mirth and Melodious Poetry

Photo by Jeremiah Hull

I have become such a fixture in front of the library a photographer decided to use me in one of his shoots.

The other day I had the pleasure to work with Jeremiah Hull and Lindsey. I can say that the warm, congenial spirit of Lindsey that is captured in the photos is without question a combination of the
sincerity of her brilliant character and the exceptional artistry of the photographer.

Check out Jeremiah's website for some truly beautiful photography. http://www.jeremiahhull.net/

Photo by Jeremiah Hull

Happy National Poetry Month, Time to Fill the Air with Music!

On First Looking into John Rawls’ A Theory of Justice

Reading John Rawls is like watching Spinoza

work.  The propositional statements opening

every paragraph distinctly outline a frame.

Then the ensuing declarations reveal the delicate

curve of the lens.   One would expect a coarseness

in the grind of gritty words, a gnashing of gears

in the machinery of technicalities, but the dust

clears with the soft breath of insightful inspiration

revealing a clarity in vision, not simply of the text,

but of the world. 

                                  I imagine Keats “First Looking,”

climbing steep slopes of verdant folios from within

Baruch’s humble chamber, diligently polishing

the mind into a never-ending understanding

resolving the focus of everyone’s spectacular life. 

Garrett Buhl  Robinson

4/2/14