A Man At Sea On Earth Undone By Disturbance When He Appears Most Anchored

Alan Felsenthal

Facts float onthe world we wanderclose-windedGoodness in my worst timesceases being factualGood to be good if good iswhat you think it meansif you believe you saileasily old in the soulBut my thoughts heedimages I keep fromfriends I’ve known for agesRecognition that being unknownhas been my own doingThe ship was mine to drivesignals taken or ignoredIgnoring is not enormitybut wakes a sentenceSay my mindwhere stowaways sleeprepeatedly without permissionis the captain’s cabinThe hull is built by the patterned waysI am trying to spy from the starboardside of my brain by leaving the port

Feature Date

Series

Selected By

Share This Poem

Print This Poem

Alan Felsenthal is the author of Lowly (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2017). His writing has appeared in BOMB, The Brooklyn Rail, Harper’s, The New York Review of Books, and The New York Times Magazine. He is the co-editor of A Dark Dreambox of Another Kind: The Poems of Alfred Starr Hamilton (The Song Cave, 2013) and the editor of Bookworm: Conversations with Michael Silverblatt (The Song Cave, 2023). He teaches poetry at NYU Tandon School of Engineering.

Alan Felsenthal’s tender second collection of poems, Hereafter, moves between the difficult work of mourning and the spirited nature of life. Both an elegy for a dear friend and a search for signs of renewal, these poems recover pastoral symbols of sorrow from cliché. Essential in their attempt at consolation, Felsenthal's requiems traverse landscapes—the ocean, the Earth, and the moon—using both humor and pathos to awaken the depths of feeling that follow loss.

"These profound yet accessible poems offer solace and insight to those navigating an unsettled existence." —Publishers Weekly

"There’s a dreamy and appealing naturalism to Alan Felsenthal’s elegy, Hereafter. The poems are electric and vivid, but the book never romanticizes suffering. Voices in these poems have a sadness to them, a melancholy that retains some almost mystical buoyancy." —Jesse Nathan, McSweeney's

Poetry Daily Depends on You

With your support, we make reading the best contemporary poetry a treasured daily experience. Consider a contribution today.