Category Archives: poem

from pupil to widening pupil

and the wolf man looks in my direction and
we share a conversation through our eyes
the way it is when you have oceans to cross
before morning the way light takes its sweet time
from pupil to widening pupil and i know you’re
with her but the possibilities linger like so many
silent proclamations of could it be that love comes
in so many ways? could it be that we in another time
would have been queen and king of this rotten
bar this rotten dirt patch that clings to our rooted feet……

"Eight Ball" by Claudi Emerson [American Life in Poetry]

Hi friends! Below is another interesting feature from the American Life in Poetry column, hosted by Ted Kooser. As I always, I highly encourage you to sign up~ it’s a happy bit of email in your day!
 
American Life in Poetry: Column 359

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE

At a time when a relationship is falling apart, sometimes the news of its failure doesn’t come out of a mouth but from gestures. Claudia Emerson, who lives in Virginia, here captures a telling moment.

Eight Ball

It was fifty cents a game
             beneath exhausted ceiling fans,
the smoke’s old spiral. Hooded lights
             burned distant, dull. I was tired, but you
insisted on one more, so I chalked
             the cue—the bored blue—broke, scratched.
It was always possible
             for you to run the table, leave me
nothing. But I recall the easy
             shot you missed, and then the way
we both studied, circling—keeping
             what you had left me between us.

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 ©2005 by Claudia Emerson, whose most recent book of poetry is Figure Studies, Louisiana State University Press, 2008. Poem reprinted from Late Wife, Louisiana State University Press, 2005, by permission of Claudia Emerson and the publisher.  Introduction copyright © 2012 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.

and outside the planes

and in a sky powdered blue
it appears a child has fingerpainted
a relief of lines breathed into life
by those traveling
like the eyes still blue of a doll baby
looking for those leaving and
those coming screaming back to
the arms of their lovers
waiting outside looking up and up
lines powered white like lips smacking
sugary and sure, guilty
like a child caught painting on the walls.

in the details [Emerson and his circles]

[the patterns of fur, just around the nose
or the way the one blue brick brushes up towards the heavens
while one tall parsley plant pushes strong through the blinds]

reading, on yellowed pages, how Emerson believes in circles

yet it seems to us, young, impatient, only one line
we’re forced to follow straight
like accountants in green visors squinting
patiently close
while the numbers so dutifully march.

we’ll realize sometime, later, that lines never end,
and some, if they start over again, mean Emerson
may have known better all along.

American Life in Poetry: I Was Never Able To Pray by Edward Hirsch

Hi Friends! Once again Ted Kooser has picked the perfect poem to start the week. Enjoy!!! [And, if you like what you read, I highly recommend signing up for his weekly email!]

American Life in Poetry: Column 357
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

The title of this beautiful poem by Edward Hirsch contradicts the poem, which is indeed a prayer. Hirsch lives in New York and is president of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, one of our country’s most distinguished cultural endowments.

I Was Never Able To Pray

Wheel me down to the shore
where the lighthouse was abandoned
and the moon tolls in the rafters.

Let me hear the wind paging through the trees
and see the stars flaring out, one by one,
like the forgotten faces of the dead.

I was never able to pray,
but let me inscribe my name
in the book of waves

and then stare into the dome
of a sky that never ends
and see my voice sail into the night.

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 ©2010 by Edward Hirsch, whose most recent book of poetry is “The Living Fire: New and Selected Poems,” Alfred A. Knopf, 2010. Reprinted from the “Northwest Review,” Vol. 48, No. 2, 2010, by permission of Edward Hirsch and the publisher. Introduction copyright ©2012 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 ©2006 The Poetry Foundation
Contact: alp@poetryfoundation.org
This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.