In the Quick of Time: Poems

By Dru Dougherty

In his essay The Poetry of the Present, D. H. Lawrence states, The quivering nimble hour of the present, this is the quick of Time The quick of the universe is the pulsating, carnal self, mysterious and palpable.

In the Quick of Time echoes Lawrences placement of the writer in time, and the poems of this collection strive to catch the fullness of a self at once mysterious and palpable. These verses speak of tensions that reflect the planet we all inhabit while they revel in arts playful reordering of the found world. Irony and ellipsis abound in these pages, along with a passion for rhyme, alliteration, and imagery. In keeping with the selfs mutability, the collection offers a variety of poetic forms, some as classic as the sonnet and others as contemporary as graphic verse.

This collection of poetry engages the human struggle with time, explores the flux of identity, and considers various conflicts of our world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Archway Publishing
• Release date: May 2, 2016
• ISBN: 9781480827714

Dru Dougherty

Dru Dougherty was born and raised in Helena, Montana, in the aftermath of World War II. He attended Hamilton College and earned a PhD in Romance languages at Harvard University. For the next forty years, he taught modern Spanish literature at the University of California–Berkeley. He is the author of numerous scholarly books and articles, and currently lives in Berkeley, California.

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© 2016 Dru Dougherty.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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ISBN: 978-1-4808-2770-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4808-2771-4 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016902379

Archway Publishing rev. date: 04/22/2016

Contents

The Finer Edge of Ruin

I I’m growing fur

II Just about

III Whitman

IV Time to give up

V My words are not

VI Holdup

VII Blink of an eye

VIII Nude

IX Gray beard

X Seen from afar

XI Stubble trouble

XII Once a week

Cascades

XIII Alpine

XIV When thisorder

XV Disoriented

XVI Lucretius

XVII Honey

XVIII Stories

XIX It would be so nice

XX …on the high wire

XXI Randy

A Sonnet Cycle

XXII Departure

XXIII Memento mori

XXIV Chain Gang

XXV Solstice Birth

XXVI Pronouns

XXVII Coming of Age

XXVIII Arion Rescued from Pirates by a Dolphin

XXIX Proserpina’s Promise

XXX Still Alive

XXXI Paquita’s Jewel

XXXII The Language of Flowers

XXXIII Mammal Memory

XXXIV Ars Amatoria: Touch

XXXV Pollination

XXXVI Self-portrait

XXXVII Orb Web

XXXVIII Country Western

XXXIX St. George’s Agony

XL Under Attack

XLI Crystal Orb

XLII An Applied System of Forces that Tends to Strain or Deform a Body

State of War

XLIII AK-47

XLIV Sea’s up

XLV Witness

XLVI Action