Deceiving

Sometimes

sophistication

looks like

naivete.

— Joan Acocella, "Critic's Notebook: Heaven on Earth"
(New Yorker, March 5, 2012)

Brooming branches

The wind arching
and bowing the trees

until it looked as if

they were trying
to sweep the ground.

— Alice Munro, short story "Leaving Maverley"
(New Yorker, 11-28-11)

Our Words

No one likes to be required
to answer a question
yes or no,
because things are never
that simple.
This is not because
individual words
are too weak;
it's because
they are too powerful.
They can mean
too many things.

So we add more words,
and embed our clauses
in more clauses,
in order to mute language,
modify it,
and reduce it
to the modesty
of our intentions.

—Louis Menand, essay/review on Ezra Pound
(in The New Yorker, June 9&16, 2008)

Look

Tengo's father turned
in his direction.
His expressionless eyes
made Tengo think
of two empty swallow's
nests hanging
from the eaves.

— Haruki Murakami
(translated by Jay Rubin, New Yorker fiction, 9-5-2011)

Conversation

His talk was like
a curtain of easy rain
between me and the trees,
the light and the shadows on the road.

— Alice Munro, "Lying Under the Apple Tree"
(memoir essay from The New Yorker, 2002)

Leftover

With the window covered
in plastic sheeting,
he felt as if he were
inside a plastic container,
like a leftover,
peering into the tallow
fog of the world.

— Lorrie Moore, "Debarking"
(New Yorker short story)

Facts

Even the poetry at The New Yorker gets fact-checked. From New York Observer.