American Life in Poetry: Column 177

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
Kristen Tracy is a poet from San Francisco who here
captures a moment at a zoo. It's the falling rain, don't
you think, that makes the experience of observing the
animals seem so perfectly truthful and vivid? 


Rain at the Zoo

A giraffe presented its head to me, tilting it
sideways, reaching out its long gray tongue.
I gave it my wheat cracker while small drops
of rain pounded us both. Lightning cracked open
the sky. Zebras zipped across the field.
It was springtime in Michigan. I watched
the giraffe shuffle itself backwards, toward
the herd, its bone- and rust-colored fur beading
with water. The entire mix of animals stood
away from the trees. A lone emu shook
its round body hard and squawked. It ran
along the fence line, jerking open its wings.
Perhaps it was trying to shake away the burden
of water or indulging an urge to fly. I can't know.
I have no idea what about their lives these animals
love or abhor. They are captured or born here for us,
and we come. It's true. This is my favorite field.


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)  Kristen Tracy, whose most recent
teen novel is "Crimes of the Sarahs," Simon & Schuster,
2008. Poem reprinted from AGNI online, 9/2007, by permission
of Kristen Tracy. Introduction copyright (c) 2008 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 174 BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
I'd guess you've all seen a toddler hold something over the edge of a high-chair and then let it drop, just for the fun of it. Here's a lovely picture of a small child learning the laws of physics. The poet, Joelle Biele, lives in Maryland.

To Katharine: At Fourteen Months

All morning, you've studied the laws
of spoons, the rules of books, the dynamics
of the occasional plate, observed the principles
governing objects in motion and objects
at rest. To see if it will fall, and if it does,
how far, if it will rage like a lost penny
or ring like a Chinese gong--because
it doesn't have to--you lean from your chair
and hold your cup over the floor.
It curves in your hand, it weighs in your palm,
it arches like a wave, it is a dipper
full of stars, and you're the wind timing
the pull of the moon, you're the water
measuring the distance from which we fall.


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) 2007 by Joelle Biele, whose most recent book of poetry is "White Summer," Southern Illinois University Press, 2002. Poem reprinted from "West Branch," Fall/Winter, 2007, by permission of Joelle Biele. Introduction copyright (c) 2008 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 172
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

I don't often talk about poetic forms in this  column, thinking that most
of my readers aren't  interested in how the clock works and would rather 
be given the time. But the following poem by  Veronica Patterson
of Colorado has a subtitle  referring to a form, the senryu, and I thought 
it might be helpful to mention that the senryu  is a Japanese form similar
to haiku but dealing  with people rather than nature. There; enough said. 
Now you can forget the form and enjoy the poem,  which is a beautiful
sketch of a marriage.

Marry Me  
      a senryu sequence

when I come late to bed
I move your leg flung over my side-- 
that warm gate
nights you're not here 
I inch toward the middle
of this boat, balancing
when I turn over in sleep
you turn, I turn, you turn,
I turn, you  
some nights you tug the edge 
of my pillow under your cheek, 
look in my dream
pulling the white sheet
over your bare shoulder 
I marry you 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. Poem copyright (c) 2000 by 
Veronica Patterson, whose most recent book of poetry 
is "This Is the Strange Part," Pudding House  
Publications, 2002. Poem reprinted from "Swan, 
What Shores?" New York University Press, 2000,  
by permission of Veronica Patterson and New York 
University Press. Introduction copyright (c) 2008 
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 171

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
Sometimes I think that people are at their happiest when they're engaged in activities close to the work of the earliest humans: telling stories around a fire, taking care of children, hunting, making clothes. Here an Iowan, Ann Struthers, speaks of one of those original tasks, digging in the dirt.

Planting the Sand Cherry

Today I planted the sand cherry with red leaves–
and hope that I can go on digging in this yard,
pruning the grape vine, twisting the silver lace
on its trellis, the one that bloomed
just before the frost flowered over all the garden.
Next spring I will plant more zinnias, marigolds,
straw flowers, pearly everlasting, and bleeding heart.
I plant that for you, old love, old friend,
and lilacs for remembering. The lily-of-the-valley
with cream-colored bells, bent over slightly, bowing
to the inevitable, flowers for a few days, a week.
Now its broad blade leaves are streaked with brown
and the stem dried to a pale hair.
In place of the silent bells, red berries
like rose hips blaze close to the ground.
It is important for me to be down on my knees,
my fingers sifting the black earth,
making those things grow which will grow.
Sometimes I save a weed if its leaves
are spread fern-like, hand-like,
or if it grows with a certain impertinence.
I let the goldenrod stay and the wild asters.
I save the violets in spring. People who kill violets
will do anything.

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) 2004 by Ann Struthers, whose most recent book of poetry is "What You Try To Tame," The Coe Review Press, 2004. Poem reprinted from "Stoneboat & Other Poems," by Ann Struthers, Iowa Poets Series, The Pterodactyl Press, 1988, by permission of the writer. Introduction copyright (c) 2008 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 Eve Robillard

Lesson, With Questions 

You (in your very good English)
are explaining to me 
how Matisse did not
paint things—he painted 
the relationship between them.
You point out
to me 
the geranium in its pot 
the goldfish in its bowl 
(your hands quick now, light—as if you 
were holding your own invisible brush) 
and the way apples on a table
mirror the woman's breasts then 
I say to you (in my very bad 
French) I like this one, I like
how the woman stands at the window
the book lying open that way 
the sky so wide
so impossibly blue.

-from when gertrude married alice.   
Parallel Press, 2004

American Life in Poetry: Column 168

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
So often, reading a poem can in itself feel  like a thing
overheard. Here, Mary-Sherman Willis  of Virginia describes
the feeling of being stilled  by conversation, in this case barely
audible  and nearly indecipherable.

The Laughter of Women

From over the wall I could hear the laughter of women
in a foreign tongue, in the sun-rinsed air of the city.
They sat (so I thought) perfumed in their hats and their silks,

in chairs on the grass amid flowers glowing and swaying.
One spoke and the others rang like bells, oh so witty,
like bells till the sound filled up the garden and lifted

like bubbles spilling over the bricks that enclosed them,
their happiness holding them, even if just for the moment.
Although I did not understand a word they were saying,

their sound surrounded me, fell on my shoulders and hair,
and burst on my cheeks like kisses, and continued to fall,
holding me there where I stood on the sidewalk listening.

As I could not move, I had to hear them grow silent,
and adjust myself to the clouds and the cooling air.
The mumble of thunder rumbled out of the wall
and the smacking of drops as the rain fell everywhere.

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) 2007
by Mary-Sherman Willis. Reprinted from
"The Hudson Review," Vol. LX, no. 3, (Autumn 2007),
by permission of Mary-Sherman Willis. Introduction
copyright (c) 2008 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 Michael Smith

Nests

Three green plastic baskets,
the kind stuffed with strawberries and
covering tables at farmer's markets,
hang from a ponderosa's head-high boughs,
their bottoms lined with
randomly shaped strips of
violet cloth and
wads of surgical cotton.

I think children had faith
searching birds would
ferret out their location like
the robins that found a vee in
my backyard poplar before
knitting a cradle of twigs and
suspect materials indiscernible
from my perch on the ground,
or the hummingbird that wove
her nursery from
amber twine, cinnamon grass, black
thread, mint-green dental floss,
white tufts of rabbit fur, blue sponge and
red felt. A wild wind drove
it down from the yellowing maple
shedding on the driveway before my
cupped hands carried it to a bookcase shelf,
the shards of white shell surviving
the journey wedged between the fibers of
the apricot-size hollow.

Keen to fragilities,
like those of the surprise egg laid by
a friend's conure at the bottom of
a cage of steel,
and children's dreams,
I place a sparrow's discarded feather in
each of the swaying baskets and
walk away.

-originally appeared in Nimrod