[New-Poetry] Max Garland

[Anny Ballardini]

An excellent poem
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: David Graham 
  To: NewPoetry & Views 
  Sent: Thursday, May 04, 2006 5:38 PM
  Subject: [New-Poetry] Max Garland


  On Tuesday night I heard Max Garland read from his new collection--a long awaited new book, from my perspective.  I recommend it, and him as a reader, highly.




  Day So Bright

  Was-lost-but-now-I’m-found is the shade
  of orange in the oaks today. Was-frost
  but-now-I’m-wind is how they move.

  It makes you want to plant an acorn
  or something. Carve a gourd.
  Trace the veins of a leaf out to the far
  reaches of space. Fork some timothy.
  Fescue?

  It’s a day so bright you can’t help
  but wish you were downright Amish,
  like let’s build a barn, quick and high,
  haymaker swings of the hammers
  like blue birdcalls over the stubbled fields.

  Let there be pies, and brush-thick beards,
  and bonnets over the politics.
  Let the world blink like a stranded grain.
  The day be sufficient. The feed corn
  rise to the brim of the crib.
  The coal of sunset.

  Let the heart be held still by the work of the day
  retracing its route through the muscles
  and the night come down
  like hair undone
  in the star-like static of the cold.



  --Max Garland.  Hunger Wide as Heaven  Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 2006.


  ==========================================

  David Graham

  grahamd at ripon.edu

  Home Page:

  http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html

  Poetry Library:

  http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html

  ==========================================



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