I/Blaise Pascal“The silence of these infinite spaces frightens me:The dark dissolves to numbered points and emptiness.I’ve tried to write of it, but the imploding blank Swallows what words I speak, absorbs the light I seek.I prayed. I knelt, but the rings round the plafond shr

Like Pope Francis, Oliver’s poetry invites readers to let the distractions of our modern, constant motion, hyper-stimulated world fall away from time to time, to enter into that quiet place of contemplation and gratitude that waits in the world all around us.

 In this fine light the figurationsrise and dielike Attention and the senseand sensuous condition of paintand music God knows Degasknew the waltz of signs,the rhythms of cyan,the chant of the white lead, the Venetianred of The Rape,and the horses at Longchampswith their gorgeous rumpsposing for

“The bird lies still while the light goes on flying.”From “Unknown Age,” by W. S. Merwin Those with strapped-on wingsfor ages dreamt of flying like the birds and fell from cliffs broke limbs or died.But when I ask for the wind’s help getting beyond the mi

For Sister Rosemary Johnson, R.S.M.And a river went out of the place of pleasure to water paradise.—Gn 2:10Adam…could not have inferred from the fluidity and transparency of water that it would suffocate him….—Hume The botany that blessed Mendel’s pisum—Has

The editors of America are pleased to present the winner of the 2015 Foley Poetry Award.