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phillipcrymble.bsky.social
phillip crymble
@phillipcrymble.bsky.social
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poet | phd | umichwriters alum | fiddlehead poetry editor | record collector | author of not even laughter | one-armed bandit | he/him
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phillipcrymble.bsky.social
phillip crymble @phillipcrymble.bsky.social · 20d
A winter poem for my sweetheart as it appeared in The Stinging Fly.
Clementines The salad days of summer having come and gone, the kiwis, seedless grapes and garden berries you're so fond of are no longer. Now the house is dry. Our efforts to humidify the air seem almost hopeless. Careful every night to fill the tank with water, to de-calcify the heater coil--still we wake to find no difference. Winter oranges from Spain are what you always buy. Pluto made his wife stay in until the days grew mild--but you have gone today, to wander out of doors. And at your bedside, scattered citrus rinds, the cat, the scent of clementines. PHILLIP CRYMBLE
phillipcrymble.bsky.social
A reminder from Charles Olson, who was born on this day in 1910
These Days whatever you have to say, leave the roots on, let them dangle And the dirt just to make clear where they came from
December 27, 2025 at 7:18 PM
phillipcrymble.bsky.social
Happy Holidays from Joyce Carol Oates
LATE DECEMBER, NEW JERSEY Between the railroad tracks between the winter fields four patches of orange, evenly spaced, moving with shotguns in the crooks of their arms slow, methodical, hunters' Day-Glo hats, dickeys so comical in intention, bringing only, after all, death.
December 27, 2025 at 4:31 PM
phillipcrymble.bsky.social
Victoria Chang
The Wren The wren is first light, it looks like a small trumpet, singing its news here and there. It knows we suffer so it keeps dropping pamphlets, hoping one day we read them.
December 26, 2025 at 10:33 PM
phillipcrymble.bsky.social
Laura Jensen, from Bad Boats (1977)
The Crow Is Mischief The crow is mischief. He is the shadow of the sun as the owl is shadow of the moon-- wisdom and mischief, evening and dawn. He wakes you when you sleep near the water in a white bed. I saw the crow, a lone shadow high in an evergreen. This is his call of discovery--a piece of black bread. I pounded something with a stone. Sometimes I think it was my heart. Sometimes I think it was a stranger's heart, someone now I will never know.
December 26, 2025 at 4:03 PM
phillipcrymble.bsky.social
Joe Brainard, from I Remember Christmas (1973)
I remember fantasies of getting my mother a fan- tastic evening dress for Christmas.
December 25, 2025 at 6:43 PM
phillipcrymble.bsky.social
Jack Gilbert
Alone On Christmas Eve In Japan Not wanting to lose it all for poetry. Wanting to live the living. All this year looking on the graveyard below my apartment. Holding myself tenderly in this marred body. Wondering if the quiet I feel is that happiness wise people speak of, or the modulation that is the acquiescence to death beginning.
December 24, 2025 at 2:52 PM
Reposted by phillip crymble
fiddlehd.bsky.social
The Fiddlehead's office will be closed starting tomorrow until January 4th. We would like to thank all our contributors and readers for another amazing year!
A graphic reading Happy Holidays. Wishing you time to read and time to rest. Our office will be closed from December 24 to January 4 inclusive.
December 23, 2025 at 5:36 PM
phillipcrymble.bsky.social
Robert Bly, born on this day in 1926
My Father at Forty I loved him so much. I've said That before, so don't be surprised. It was a first love. Go ahead, open Your hand. Do scissors beat Paper? Does rock beat scissors? It's just love and can't be Explained. Probably it Happened early. You're looking At it. The way I found Of opening a poem I took From the way he walked into a field.
December 23, 2025 at 6:04 PM
phillipcrymble.bsky.social
A winter reverie.
THE STINGING FLY A Patch of Blue Jerry Goldsmith's title theme, its plaintive minor key arrangement, somehow welcoming the snow that falls outside our kitchen window. The rote activity of washing takes me miles away, and in that sweetest dream the music like a hand-embroidered counterpane—each note within the melody a cipher to be read and kept concealed. That we communicate at all is half mistake. I turn the thick LP, listen to the piano, all the silences it leaves— the hiss and crackle whispering of things so old they beggar history: a sound like fire in fields of wheat, the wind at sea. PHILLIP CRYMBLE
December 22, 2025 at 7:51 PM
phillipcrymble.bsky.social
Dana Gioia
Prayer at Winter Solstice Blessed is the road that keeps us homeless. Blessed is the mountain that blocks our way. Blessed are hunger and thirst, loneliness and all forms of desire. Blessed is the labor that exhausts us without end. Blessed are the night and the darkness that blinds us. Blessed is the cold that teaches us to feel. Blessed are the cat, the child, the cricket, and the crow. Blessed is the hawk devouring the hare. Blessed are the saint and the sinner who redeem each other. Blessed are the dead, calm in their perfection. Blessed is the pain that humbles us. Blessed is the distance that bars our joy. Blessed is this shortest day that makes us long for light. Blessed is the love that in losing we discover.
December 21, 2025 at 6:19 PM
phillipcrymble.bsky.social
a love that dares rip / open the chest to see what goes on singing.

Dean Young
Solstice What must be granted to the ineffable, what must be held gently in the mouth and carried a long way, what must be hidden must be found, must be shouted in the mind to wake the self that's never sure what is, what isn't, what's knocking in the grate as the fire falls in on itself and the room grows dark. As the fire falls and the room grows darker, still I'm unprepared. Not for trees sentinel and leafless, not puddles clarified to ice, the absolutions of fog in a starker world, a love that dares rip open the chest to see what goes on singing. What goes on singing to the junked cars by the river like lions resting after their kill, fields of sunflowers bowed as early stars ignite, the night made famous from children's books where the misunderstood wolf is sheltered and our heroes find a rocket in the woods and fix it.
December 21, 2025 at 4:50 PM
phillipcrymble.bsky.social
An old chestnut, on this, the darkest evening of the year.
STOPPING BY WOODS ON A SNOWY EVENING WHOSE woods these are I think I know. His house is in the village though; He will not see me stopping here To watch his woods fill up with snow. My little horse must think it queer To stop without a farmhouse near Between the woods and frozen lake The darkest evening of the year. He gives his harness bells a shake To ask if there is some mistake. The only other sound's the sweep Of easy wind and downy flake. The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep.
December 21, 2025 at 12:51 AM
phillipcrymble.bsky.social
Franz Wright
Winter Entries Love no one, work, and don't let the pack know you're wounded . . . Stupid, disappointed strategies. Hazel wind of dusk, I have lived so much. Friendless eeriness of the new street – The poem does not come, but its place is kept set.
December 20, 2025 at 2:52 PM
phillipcrymble.bsky.social
Marianne Boruch
Reading in Bed I'm reading you a poem as you fall asleep, smallest door inside to the almost, not quite cease to be, you and me, what someone wrote closing his eyes too, some woods exactly where no sound at all in the road or a leaf, this dream all along was here and here you come to: I was listening-- the best way to honor any poem, waking up to it, I think.
December 19, 2025 at 8:12 PM
phillipcrymble.bsky.social
Another miniature from Robert Bly's debut collection.
"TAKING THE HANDS" Taking the hands of someone you love, You see they are delicate cages . . . Tiny birds are singing In the secluded prairies And in the deep valleys of the hand.
December 19, 2025 at 12:26 AM
phillipcrymble.bsky.social
Michael Longley, having a bit of a laugh
PIETÀ How compassionate you appear Bending over your three-year-old And slipping your little finger Beneath his penis to lift The pee-arc away from his clothes. Did Mary do this for Jesus Among wood shavings and sawdust? How tenderly she must have touched.
December 18, 2025 at 2:47 PM
phillipcrymble.bsky.social
Prince Edward Island's finest poet? Maybe.

Mark Strand, from Darker (1970)
The One Song I prefer to sit all day like a sack in a chair and to lie all night like a stone in my bed. When food comes I open my mouth. When sleep comes I close my eyes. My body sings only one song; the wind turns gray in my arms. Flowers bloom. Flowers die. More is less. I long for more.
December 17, 2025 at 11:45 PM
Reposted by phillip crymble
gerardbeirne.bsky.social
Poem by Denis Johnson (via Narrative)
December 17, 2025 at 7:32 PM
phillipcrymble.bsky.social
Cecil Day Lewis
A Carol Oh hush thee, my baby, Thy cradle's in pawn: No blankets to cover thee Cold and forlorn. The stars in the bright sky Look down and are dumb At the heir of the ages Asleep in a slum. The hooters are blowing, No heed let him take; When baby is hungry 'Tis best not to wake. Thy mother is crying, Thy dad's on the dole: Two shillings a week is The price of a soul.
December 17, 2025 at 4:10 PM
phillipcrymble.bsky.social
Mark Strand, with the Hanukkah content we all need right now.
THE COMING OF LIGHT Even this late it happens: the coming of love, the coming of light. You wake and the candles are lit as if by themselves, stars gather, dreams pour into your pillows, sending up warm bouquets of air. Even this late the bones of the body shine and tomorrow's dust flares into breath.
December 16, 2025 at 8:18 PM
phillipcrymble.bsky.social
There is a privacy I love in this snowy night.

Robert Bly
DRIVING TO TOWN LATE TO MAIL A LETTER It is a cold and snowy night. The main street is deserted. The only things moving are swirls of snow. As I lift the mailbox door, I feel its cold iron. There is a privacy I love in this snowy night. Driving around, I will waste more time.
December 16, 2025 at 6:21 PM
phillipcrymble.bsky.social
oh Michael Stivic we love you get up
December 15, 2025 at 5:38 PM
phillipcrymble.bsky.social
James Schuyler
Advent Open my eyes on the welcome rosy shock of sunshine. Open the first little door of my Advent calendar: a darling hobby horse on wheels. Open the window a crack: and quickly close it against a knife-like draught. The day looks warmer than it is.
December 14, 2025 at 5:59 PM
phillipcrymble.bsky.social
Another winter poem featuring clementines, this one about Brian Eno and spending time with my son when he was little. Thanks to The New Quarterly where it first appeared.
Sparrowfall Your mother at the market with her sister, I'm left bleary-eyed to rustle up our breakfast - keep you occupied and minded while she haggles over poultry, skeins of sock wool, winter clementines. Like a pair of errant school boys playing truant we eat scrambled eggs and gherkins, horse around in our pajamas, pull the sheers aside to watch the year's first snow storm. Fern frost clouds the corners of the window, makes the world outside seem formless, somehow incomplete. A voice half-heard in fevered sleep, Brian Eno's fragile soundtrack for imaginary films repeats itself behind us like a signal wave transmitted from beyond the frozen planets - a wave that washes everything. For the first time in a long time I feel put at peace. The morning, like a waking dream, unfolds - oblique by strategy.
December 13, 2025 at 5:29 PM
phillipcrymble.bsky.social
Another wintry poem by Linda Pastan, this one decidedly darker.
Wind Chill The door of winter is frozen shut, and like the bodies of long extinct animals, cars lie abandoned wherever the cold road has taken them. How ceremonious snow is, with what quiet severity it turns even death to a formal arrangement. Alone at my window, I listen to the wind, to the small leaves clicking in their coffins of ice.
December 12, 2025 at 2:38 PM