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      December 6, 2024Song of the Black HoleWilliam Trowbridge

      radially extracted by NASA

      You can almost see Vincent Price, black-robed,
      hunched above the console of a jumbo organ
      in the bowels of his creaky haunted manse; or
      maybe a stadium of damned souls, strobed
      in lurid red and howling nettle-robed
      as they plummet into Pandemonium, pore
      and pith aflame. It’s no troubadour,
      undoubtedly, this vast atonal gob.
      As with the Roach Motel, we’d check in,
      but never out—us or anything, since
      it can swallow errant planets whole, and still,
      however much the mass, can’t eat its fill.
      Though it’s larger far than Jupiter or Mars,
      we can barely see it, thank our lucky stars.

      from #85 – Musicians

      William Trowbridge

      “I’ve spent most of my years as a poet writing free verse, though lately I find myself turning toward form. Unlike those who see formalist verse as dry and effete, I find it can generate power by means of barriers to play against—‘the net’ as Frost put it, by which he also meant boundary lines. If you pour gunpowder in a pile and light it, a mere flash occurs. But pack it tightly into a container, and you can get something more powerful. And, as opposed to the notion that form is restrictive, I agree with Richard Wilbur that it often liberates one from choosing the easy word in order to discover the better, surprising one. I haven’t moved into this part of town yet, but I stop there more and more.”

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