My newest poet-crush is Mary Biddinger. I say this often, but it's always a great day when you discover an amazing new poet. Support poets! Buy Poetry!
Also, check out her blog: Wordcage.
This is one of my favorite poems from this book. I had a really hard time choosing just one poem to post because they're all superb. This is my favorite because I love the imagery:
Girl In Chair
By Mary
Biddinger
The
streets sew themselves
a
beaded mat you can buy
every
night. Catfish in bed
with
the rushes. Everything
sleeping
deep together.
Needlepoint
is half blood
most of
the time. You miss
once,
twice, by the window.
How
else to stitch flowers,
or the
red mailbox waiting
for a
postman’s blue vest.
All a
game of in and out.
Blood
waiting to dump
its
oxygen, the mosquito
and
waxwing, storm fronts
quaking
above as moths.
A
seam-ripper hacks
the
work in seconds, string
cut to
a quarter. Your love
is the
one sunk, midnight
in the
Monongahela. How
did you
not wake when
the
river broke like a pane?
A page
slits your fingertip
but you
keep turning. Now
the
cicadas start their fall
from
tree to lawn. Cherry
blossoms
ride the gutters.
Lightning
on the air, men
chasing
their hats home.
From: “Prairie Fever” by Mary Biddinger, pages 53,
54
(The Monongahela is a river on the Allegheny Plateau in north-central West Virginia and southwestern Pennsylvania.)
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"Saint Monica" by Mary Biddinger
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and her newest book, coming soon: "O, Holy Insurgency"
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"Poetry is life distilled." ~Gwendolyn Brooks
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Happy Thanksgiving!
For each new morning with its light,
For rest and shelter of the night,
For health and food, for love and friends,
For everything Thy goodness sends.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson
For rest and shelter of the night,
For health and food, for love and friends,
For everything Thy goodness sends.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson
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3 comments:
I'm alllll about being a poetry slut - having a crush on as many poets as possible at once :)
Last year it was Bukowski and ee cummings that I was obsessed with... this year I think Emily Dickinson and Buddy Wakefield are winning.
Poetry was meant to be loved enthusiastically :)
Thank you! Sending cheer from Akron.
I do so love your tastes in poetry.
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