An Alphabet

These rhymes of Henry's, A to Z, praise and sting, whistle and lullabye, and most wonderfully, make me smile.--Billie ChernicoffI began this sequence of alphabet poems in the summer of 2019 and completed it a year later. The sequence took shape around experiments with layered rhyme I have been making in recent years as well as around a formal rule or principle that I chose somewhat arbitrarily. This was that each of the poems would begin on the phoneme of the letter to which it was assigned, and would end either with that phoneme or with its rhyme. Some of the poems are in strict meter, but the technique of layering rhyme allowed me to vary the measure in unusual ways. In general, the early poems in the sequence are lighter and shorter than the later ones. Perhaps I simply warmed to my theme.--Henry WeinfieldAN ALPHABET, yes, but also something of a grammar, exhibiting the rules of lyric poetry at its best, as both craft and art. Everything one expects from Weinfield's verse is here: the formal perfection, the ingenious wit, the tenderness, the elegance, the deep intelligence, and (of course) the very real beauty.--David Bentley HartPoetry.