![\"james-richardson.jpg\"](\"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/11\/james-richardson.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\nLast bells of evening, toning bronze<\/i>
\nand bronze<\/i>, a hint of plaint.
\nEven if I hadn’t heard the shuttering board,
\nthe splash, the laughter, I’d have known
\nfrom the quaver of voices over water
\nthat this is the last house in summer,
\nand now is the double loeliness
\nof missing a party you don’t even want to be at.<\/p>\nThe T’ang poet sets out on a thousand-mile journey,
\nminor administrative post in prospect,
\nchronic war rattling around the mountains
\nthat might last all his life. And someone else
\nreturns from a journey no one knows he’s been on,
\nfeeling again the thick air of the valley—
\nthe children so tall—and whatever happens to love
\nthat hasn’t been used enough, has happened.
\nHe spreads before them, as excuse or evidence,
\nwhat he has gathered, mottoes of gods and sages,
\nspells, strange weathers and archaic praises,
\ncurrency unfamiliar in this land.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\nJame’s Richardson’s By the Numbers<\/i><\/a> was one of the shortlisted titles for this year’s National Book Award for poetry. It also includes “End of Summer<\/a>,” “In Shakespeare<\/a>,” and “Subject, Verb, Object<\/a>” (The New Yorker<\/i>), plus three poems originally published in Narrative<\/i><\/a> (free subscription required): “Echo,” “Bit Parts,” and “Are We Alone? or Physics You Can Do at Home.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Last bells of evening, toning bronze and bronze, a hint of plaint. Even if I hadn’t heard the shuttering board, the splash, the laughter, I’d have known from the quaver of voices over water that this is the last house in summer, and now is the double loeliness of missing a party you don’t even […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/891"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=891"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/891\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}