HeyJaredOrdinary Plots: Meditations on Poems + Verse
Posting the occasional poem and the occasional meditation on that poem. Or, in other words: weekly essays on poetry and more.
- Indexed issues, last 90 days
- 12
- Latest publication
- Sep 27, 2026
- Audience
- Checking…
- Earliest in this view
- Jul 12, 2026
Latest issues
Tove Ditlevsen’s “My Best Time” (translated by Sophia Hersi Smith & Jennifer Russell) (opens the original)
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My Best TimeText within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedtranslated by Sophia Hersi Smith & Jennifer Russell The best time of my day is when I am alone, and my thoughts can grasp a fleeting memory— childhood's half-light falls through bare winter branches landing in a stripe of sun upon my writing desk. Here I find what is lost to the routine threat of things that need doing and things getting done— a stolen quiet settles across the room, before lunches must be made an
Sanna Wani’s “What I Thought Love Was” (opens the original)
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What I Thought Love WasText within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedis not what it is. The mountain and its valley. A game of endurance, a test of will. You get to an age where you tire of sport, no matter the thrill. Now, I look through time and cherish the quiet between us. I like to think of you waiting for me, the way a raven waits for sunrise. I do not trust what is loud or what cries. I know what will get me through the day is what will get me through this life.
Kyle Carrero Lopez’s “Performance Studies” (opens the original)
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Performance StudiesText within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedShe must be having a seizure, La Lupe's beau-to-be thinks as he sees her first sing live—frenzy in her drop earrings, frenzy in her shirt's flared sleeves, frenzy down its kite-cut frills. Her face betrays both strain and thrill as she yanks at her hair, her clothes, her cords, her batch of tools laid bare. There's nothing she won't do in a moment of play. She doffs and flings her shoes like leather bouque
Wendell Berry’s “I know that I have life...” (opens the original)
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“I know that I have life…”Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedI know that I have life only insofar as I have love. I have no love except it come from Thee. Help me, please, to carry this candle against the wind. from This Day: Sabbath Poems, 1979-2012 (Counterpoint, 2014)As some or many of you may be aware, Wendell Berry passed away earlier this week, and though I have written about his work a few times fo
Jennifer Grotz’s “Over and Above” (opens the original)
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Over and AboveText within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedBecause I didn’t want it to end, and because I was all alone again, because in those seasons attention was my only form of prayer, I attended the summer rain. When it pelted the lake like fingers across a keyless piano, I attended the fingertips’ perforations on the soft surface. Inside a theater of quiet the trees made, permeable, though, at least studded by bird song, I attended the mosquitos floating like ey
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