{"id":10649,"date":"2013-01-18T10:25:32","date_gmt":"2013-01-18T15:25:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=10649"},"modified":"2013-01-18T10:25:32","modified_gmt":"2013-01-18T15:25:32","slug":"donald-justice-men-at-forty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=10649","title":{"rendered":"Donald Justice, Men at Forty"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone\" src=\"http:\/\/www.peterlevine.ws\/images\/Men_at_Forty.bmp\" alt=\"\" width=\"312\" height=\"487\" \/><\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t read to see myself reflected on the page. I read primarily to learn how someone else thinks and to analyze and appreciate the formal characteristics of a carefully constructed work. But if I were going to cite a poem that simply speaks to me and my condition, it would be this one, from <em>Poetry<\/em> magazine, 1966.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve written more detailed notes on two other poems about mortality written by middle-aged men: Gerard Manley Hopkins&#8217; &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=10138\">Spring and Fall<\/a>,&#8221; and Philip Larkin&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=8870\">&#8220;Aubade<\/a>.&#8221; They strike me as more complicated and richer than this work&#8211;although it&#8217;s worth noting the pattern created by the four-line stanzas, each of which introduces a central verb and a new setting:<\/p>\n<p>1. Closing doors in rooms<br \/>\n2. Feeling motion on staircases<br \/>\n3. Rediscovering a face in a mirror<br \/>\n4. Aging (implied)<br \/>\n5. Sounds filling space<\/p>\n<p>But what I admire is how Justice discovers wonder in the most terrifying intimations of middle age.<\/p>\n<p>(See also <a href=\"http:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=10293\">Donald Justice, &#8220;About My Poems.&#8221;<\/a>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I don&#8217;t read to see myself reflected on the page. I read primarily to learn how someone else thinks and to analyze and appreciate the formal characteristics of a carefully constructed work. But if I were going to cite a poem that simply speaks to me and my condition, it would be this one, from [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10649","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-notes-on-poems"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10649","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10649"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10649\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10658,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10649\/revisions\/10658"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}