Every now and then, I delve into back issues of the Quarterly which are now available online for free. For whatever reason I was surfing through issue 54.2 this week. The issue’s them is “Discontents” which seems an appropriate 

It contains three poems that trace the tensions between nature and civilization and the discontent that might arise at that junction. As the “frog days of August” give way the start of another academic year (NDQ is proudly based on the campus of the University of North Dakota) and so much of the world struggles with heat, violent weather, and other troubling signs of a changing climate, these poems feel apt.

Enjoy:

“Esterhanz The Hermit, Sleeping” by J.B. Goodenough

“The Car at the Edge of the Woods” by Robert King.

“Paulina” by Jim Klein.

As a bonus, there’s a poem by David Citino titled “On Looking into Homer for the First Time Since Becoming a Father.”  Citino was still teaching at Ohio State when I was a student there in the 1990s, and I was in graduate school with his son, Nathan, who has become a distinguished historian of the Middle East. Reading this poem made we wonder whether David wrote it for his son.

54.2