Samuel Green

for Phyllis Ennes, 1928-2013
If her father were here
with those hands that knew
how to coax stories
from wood, we’d ask him
to carve her in cedar
as Raven Stealing the Sun,
which he could then saw
into sections the size
of a greengrocer’s thumb,
then fit them back together
with intricate joins, cunning
latches, so those who loved her
might take her apart,
each of us bearing the art
in a curve of wing, a small motif
of feather, a clear & clever
eye, a portion of beak,
until all that’s left
is the brilliant berry of light
she brought us—
if her father hadn’t gone
into darkness before her,
if she hadn’t already
given herself away
one thoughtful offering
at a time.
from the book DISTURBING THE LIGHT / Carnegie Mellon University Press
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From the beginning of our married life, Sally and I expected to share losses: family, friends, neighbors. After more than 51 years, we agree it is the most difficult part of aging. This poem was written for a beloved friend’s memorial. Her father was a woodcarver who published a book on how to carve totem poles; our friend was an avid reader of indigenous mythology, so the references seemed appropriate.

Samuel Green on "Talisman"
Cover of Kevin Prufer's book, The Art of Fiction
"Kevin Prufer’s The Art of Fiction"

"If the best storytellers invent realities to establish a kind of veracity that witness and memory alone cannot manage, their very inventions become facts themselves, entities as tangible as orchids, Tupperware, and contaminated water. The best poems in The Art of Fiction are phenomenal in both senses of that word."

via THE BROOKLYN RAIL
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Cover of Jee Leong Koh's book, Snow at 5 PM
What Sparks Poetry:
Vivek Narayanan on Jee Leong Koh's Snow at 5 PM

"Koh's work in some moments can seem disarmingly simple, even if always rigorous in its language, lighting on the ordinary, but as you delve further it reveals a rich intelligence, omnivorous and cosmopolitan in its influences, balancing its interests in high and low, the cerebral and the bodily, the experimental and the straight, narrative and ellipsis."
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