Big world when I was very young.
The shopping aisles a mile long …
Our lawn, though anything but wide,
Unfolding like the countryside …
The sky! So large and far away …
Exactly as it is today.

*****

Daniel Brown writes: “In his brilliant tome ‘The Poem’, Don Paterson says  “[I]f you ‘get a good idea for a poem’, I’d suggest you run a mile, as this generally isn’t the way poems make themselves known.” Advice worth attending to, though it’s also worth noting the little ‘out’ Paterson gives himself with that ‘generally’. I’m glad Robert Frost didn’t run from the powerfully suggestive idea–that “the people along the sand” are always looking out to sea, not back at the land–of his ‘Neither Out Far nor In Deep’; that W. S. Merwin didn’t run from the piercing premise–that “every year without knowing it” we pass the date of our death– of his ‘For the Anniversary of my Death’ . . . When the idea for “So Large” hit my hook, I felt like I had a big one on the line.”

“So Large” first appeared in The New Criterion under the title “A Giant.”

Daniel Brown’s poems have appeared in Poetry, Partisan Review, PN Review, Raritan, Parnassus, The New Criterion and other journals, as well as in a number of anthologies including Poetry 180 (ed. Billy Collins) and The Swallow Anthology of New American Poets (ed. David Yezzi). His work has been awarded a Pushcart prize, and his collection Taking the Occasion (Ivan R. Dee, 2008) won the New Criterion Poetry Prize. His latest collection is What More?  (Orchises Press, 2015). Brown’s criticism of poets and poetry has appeared in The Harvard Book Review, The New Criterion, PN Review, The Hopkins Review  and other journals, and the LSU Press has published his critical book, Subjects in Poetry. His Why Bach? and Bach, Beethoven, Bartok are audio-visual ebooks available at Amazon.com. His website is danielbrownpoet.com .

“‘Odd Formations’, England, The Peak District, Kinder Scout Hilltop” by WanderingtheWorld (www.ChrisFord.com) is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.