Thursday, April 30, 2009

my kalamazoo heart swells three sizes



Diane Seuss is the recipient of the 2009 Juniper Prize for Poetry. Her manuscript, Wolf Lake, White Gown Blown Open, will be published in 2010 by the University of Massachusetts Press.

My heart is all aflutter. Di was my poetry professor, advisor, mentor, biggest encourager, etc., during my undergrad years at Kalamazoo College, and still plays a valued role as mentor/encourager to this day. She was hugely influential on me as a quiet, hesitant writer, and was the first to really instill in me that poetry matters. It excites me to know that, wherever I am, her poems continue to excite the poets around me, and I'm moved by the way our paths keep crossing.

Here is a Diane Seuss poem for you to love:

prayer that goes: dear god

then it goes: buttercups.
then it goes: marsh marigolds
with waxy petals that time
he sailed the little boat
with a message stuck
in a film canister glued
to the deck. then it leaps
to watercress salad that time.
then it says i gotta bring this
diction down and not rely
so much on italics. down
so low it sounds country
western. dear god
it goes, and some steel guitar,
reverse the flow of water
and send that little boat
home. it goes:
my son
my son
which is how god answered
why hast thou forsaken
me. then it says
cattails. it says those
cattails that one day
and his hair, the curl
and swirl of it.

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

the radiant bubble that she was



Alas!
Have all the barbers lived in vain
That not one curl in nature has survived?
Why, without pity on these studious ghosts,
Do you come dripping in your hair from sleep?

-from "Le Monocle De Mon Oncle," Wallace Stevens

Spring is starting to creep in. I feel like leapfrogging and humming loudly and carving my initials in everyone's trees, all at the same time.