[New-Poetry] Fw: American Life in Poetry: Column 145

[Anny Ballardini]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: <ALP at poetryfoundation.org>
Subject: American Life in Poetry: Column 145


>
> BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
>
 Rynn Williams
>
> Insomnia
>
> I try tearing paper into tiny, perfect squares--
> they cut my fingers. Warm milk, perhaps,
> stirred counter-clockwise in a cast iron pan--
> but even then there's burning at the edges,
> angry foam-hiss. I've been told
> to put trumpet flowers under my pillow,
> I do: stamen up, the old crone said.
> But the pollen stains, and there are bees,
> I swear, in those long yellow chambers, echoing,
> the way the house does, mocking, with its longevity--
> each rib creaking and bending where I'm likely to break--
>
> I try floating out along the long O of lone,
> to where it flattens to loss, and just stay there
> disconnecting the dots of my night sky
> as one would take apart a house made of sticks,
> carefully, last addition to first,
> like sheep leaping backward into their pens.
>
>
> 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 Rynn Williams, whose most 
> recent book of poetry is "Adonis Garage," University of Nebraska Press, 
> 2005. Poem reprinted from "Columbia Poetry Review," no. 20, Spring 2007, 
> by permission of Rynn Williams. Introduction copyright (c) 2007 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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>