American Life in Poetry: Column 236

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

Cecilia Woloch teaches in California, and when she’s not with her students she’s off to the Carpathian Mountains of Poland, to help with the farm work. But somehow she resisted her wanderlust just long enough to make this telling snapshot of her father at work.

The Pick

I watched him swinging the pick in the sun,
breaking the concrete steps into chunks of rock,
and the rocks into dust,
and the dust into earth again.
I must have sat for a very long time on the split rail fence,
just watching him.
My father’s body glistened with sweat,
his arms flew like dark wings over his head.
He was turning the backyard into terraces,
breaking the hill into two flat plains.
I took for granted the power of him,
though it frightened me, too.
I watched as he swung the pick into the air
and brought it down hard
and changed the shape of the world,
and changed the shape of the world again.

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. Reprinted from When She Named Fire, ed., Andrea Hollander Budy, Autumn House Press, 2009, by permission of Cecilia Woloch and the publisher. The poem first appeared in Sacrifice by Cecilia Woloch, Tebot Bach, 1997. Introduction copyright © 2009 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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by Christine Rhein

Orange Days

In the cobalt bowl, oranges gleam: still life

in my kitchen where life is never still.

Even on this quiet afternoon, house to myself,

duties tug at my sleeve, but I sit here scribbling

about indifferent oranges, blue glass neither nest

nor cage. Truth comes down to attitude.

And today I resent keeping the fruit bowl filled,

the time spent choosing in the store, judging

each piece against some noble ideal. So what

if oranges are sweet and good for you?

I’m tired of repeated segments, of partitioning

myself, of being good.

Neruda asked, How do the oranges divide up

sunlight in the orange tree?

Oranges grow round without seeking

admiration, fretting over purpose,

the verb to be their heft, their ample language,

while my alphabet—O for Orange—

leads from one meaning to another,

like orange rind turned to candy.

Like MFK Fisher roasting tangerine crescents

atop a radiator, the scent filling her room

as she waited for the delicate crunch, rush

of juice, words to describe her pleasure:

subtle and voluptuous and quite inexplicable…

-originally appeared in The MacGuffin

American Life in Poetry: Column 235

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

I tell my writing students that their most important task is to pay attention to what’s going on around them. God is in the details, as we say. Here David Bottoms, the Poet Laureate of Georgia, tells us a great deal about his father by showing us just one of his hands.


My Father’s Left Hand

Sometimes my old man’s hand flutters over his knee, flaps
in crazy circles, and falls back to his leg.

Sometimes it leans for an hour on that bony ledge.

And sometimes when my old man tries to speak, his hand waggles
in the air, chasing a word, then perches again

on the bar of his walker or the arm of a chair.

Sometimes when evening closes down his window and rain
blackens into ice on the sill, it trembles like a sparrow in a storm.

Then full dark falls, and it trembles less, and less, until it’s still.

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 ©2008 by David Bottoms, whose most recent book of poems is Waltzing Through the Endtime, Copper Canyon Press, 2004. Poem reprinted from Alaska Quarterly Review, Vol. 25, No. 3 & 4, Fall & Winter 2008, by permission of David Bottoms and the publisher. Introduction copyright ©2009 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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by Shoshauna Shy

THE ACCENT

It moves my blood like butter moves

In a Catoosa County skillet

Taking me downriver on

The detours of his A's,

His R's and D's as cushioning

As a swallow of Bay Rum, his humming

Soft as suede I want to smooth

Between my hands.

Let my tongue scoop the hollows

Where his tossed-out T's have fallen,

Wander the ravines where his G's sit

Forgotten, press the palate, lick the gap

Where Dixie goes a-whistling, taste

The place where these sounds come from --

Let me taste where they were born.

- Honorable Mention in Milwaukee Public Library's "Love

Letters Lost & Found Contest," published on a broadside

American Life in Poetry: Column 233

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

Diane Glancy is one of our country's Native American poets, and I recently judged her latest book, Asylum in the Grasslands, the winner of a regional competition. Here is a good example of her clear and steady writing.


Indian Summer

There’s a farm auction up the road.
Wind has its bid in for the leaves.
Already bugs flurry the headlights
between cornfields at night.
If this world were permanent,
I could dance full as the squaw dress
on the clothesline.
I would not see winter
in the square of white yard-light on the wall.
But something tugs at me.
The world is at a loss and I am part of it
migrating daily.
Everything is up for grabs
like a box of farm tools broken open.
I hear the spirits often in the garden
and along the shore of corn.
I know this place is not mine.
I hear them up the road again.
This world is a horizon, an open sea.
Behind the house, the white iceberg of the barn.

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. Copyright ©2007 by Diane Glancy, whose novel The Reason For Crows, is forthcoming from State University of New York Press, 2009. Poem reprinted from Asylum in the Grasslands, University of Arizona Press, 2007, by permission of Diane Glancy. Introduction copyright ©2009 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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