by Robin Chapman

The Inspector of Snowstorms

Retiring, I look for a new occupation, want
to appoint myself, like Thoreau, an inspector
of weather, but there’s so much else to do—
bicycle trails to walk or ride, garlic mustard
to pull, the crane count to make in the marsh,
the prairie to burn and sow; or, slower still,
the woods to walk about, ears tuning in
the stations of wood duck and vireo, oriole
and crow, or the eye finding the prisms
of morning beaded on wild geranium leaves,
light brushed by the mouse ears of oak
overhead, each day new in the marsh, each evening
visiting a friend like Emerson or Alcott,
each night the heart wandering through words
like the eye through the spinning stars of summer,
or the winter veils of never-the-same snowflakes
weighting the stripped trees and underbrush.

-originally appeared in Nimrod. From On Retirement: 75 Poems, edited by Robin Chapman & Judith Strasser (University of Iowa Press, 2007).

American Life in Poetry: Column 117 BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

The subdivision; it's all around us. Here Nancy Botkin of Indiana presents a telling picture of life in such a neighborhood, the parents downstairs in their stultifying dailiness, the children enjoying their youth under the eaves before the passing years force them to join the adults.

Geometry

All the roofs sloped at the same angle.
The distance between the houses was the same.
There were so many feet from each front door
to the curb. My father mowed the lawn
straight up and down and then diagonally.
And then he lined up beer bottles on the kitchen table.

We knew them only in summer when the air
passed through the screens. The neighbor girls
talked to us across the great divide: attic window
to attic window. We started with our names.
Our whispers wobbled along a tightrope,
and below was the rest of our lives.
American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright (c) 2006 by Nancy Botkin. Reprinted from "Poetry East," Spring, 2006, by permission of the author, whose full-length book of poems, "Parts That Were Once Whole," is available from Mayapple Press, 2007. Introduction copyright (c) 2006 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

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American Life in Poetry: Column 116

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

It's the oldest kind of story: somebody ventures deep into the woods and comes back with a tale. Here Roy Jacobstein returns to America to relate his experience on a safari to the place believed by archaeologists to be the original site of human life. And against this ancient backdrop he closes with a suggestion of the brevity of our lives.

Safari, Rift Valley

Minutes ago those quick cleft hoofs
lifted the dik-dik's speckled frame.
Now the cheetah dips her delicate head
to the still-pulsating guts. Our Rover's
so close we need no zoom to fix the green
shot of her eyes, the matted red mess
of her face. You come here, recall a father
hale in his ordinary life, not his last bed,
not the long tasteless slide of tapioca.
This is the Great Rift, where it all began,
here where the warthogs amd hartebeest
feed in the scrub, giraffes splay to drink,
and our rank diesel exhaust darkens the air
for only a few moments before vanishing.
American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska- Lincoln. Poem copyright (c) 2006 by Roy Jacobstein, whose most recent book is "A Form of Optimism," University Press of New England, 2006. Reprinted by permission of the author. Introduction copyright (c) 2006 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts. ******************************

by Janet Taliaferro

TODAY

my grandchildren, quarrelling in the bedroom
made me remember how much
I hated him.

Three years older, he got to do everything
I wanted to do.

He thought of me as spoiled and pampered
and I thought of him as privileged in that special way
a first born can be.

He was an expert tease, careful to ply his trade
out of sight or hearing of our parents
and sometimes teasing
pushed at the edges
of abuse.

I cried
and earned that superior contempt
reserved for younger siblings.

I raged
and the punishment I felt he deserved
came down on me like red fire.

I competed
but victories came only in their due time
like the driver’s license I coveted.

Life’s eraser dimmed the lines
transformed the hate
into a bond I miss.

Today
I am one day older than he will ever be.

-originally appeared in Northern Virginia Review

American Life in Poetry: Column 115

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
Each of the senses has a way of evoking time and place. In this bittersweet poem by Jeffrey Harrison of Massachusetts, birdsong offers reassurance as the speaker copes with loss.

Visitation

Walking past the open window, she is surprised
by the song of the white-throated sparrow
and stops to listen. She has been thinking of
the dead ones she loves--her father who lived
over a century, and her oldest son, suddenly gone
at forty-seven--and she can't help thinking
she has called them back, that they are calling her
in the voices of these birds passing through Ohio
on their spring migration. . . because, after years
of summers in upstate New York, the white-throat
has become something like the family bird.
Her father used to stop whatever he was doing
and point out its clear, whistling song. She hears it
again: "Poor Sam Peabody Peabody Peabody."
She tries not to think, "Poor Andy," but she
has already thought it, and now she is weeping.
But then she hears another, so clear, it's as if
the bird were in the room with her, or in her head,
telling her that everything will be all right.
She cannot see them from her second-story window--
they are hidden in the new leaves of the old maple,
or behind the white blossoms of the dogwood--
but she stands and listens, knowing they will stay
for only a few days before moving on.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright (c) 2006 by Jeffrey Harrison. Reprinted from "Incomplete Knowledge", Four Way Books, 2006, with permission of the publisher. All rights reserved. Introduction copyright (c) 2006 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

American Life in Poetry: Column 114

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

Poetry can be thought of as an act of persuasion: a poem attempts to bring about some kind of change in its reader, perhaps no more than a moment of clarity amidst the disorder of everyday life. And successful poems not only make use of the meanings and sounds of words, as well as the images those words conjure up, but may also take advantage of the arrangement of type on a page. Notice how this little poem by Mississippi poet Robert West makes the very best use of the empty space around it to help convey the nature of its subject.

Echo

A lone
voice

in the
right

empty space
makes

its own
best

company.


American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright (c) 2005 by Robert West. Reprinted from "Best Company," Blink Chapbooks, Chapel Hill, NC, 2005, with permission of the author. Introduction copyright (c) 2006 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts. ******************************