Note to the Reader
Copper Canyon Press encourages you to calibrate your settings by using the line of characters below, which optimizes the line length and character size:
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing,
Please take the time to adjust the size of the text on your viewer so that the line of characters above appears on one line, if possible.
When this text appears on one line on your device, the resulting settings will most accurately reproduce the layout of the text on the page and the line length intended by the author. Viewing the title at a higher than optimal text size or on a device too small to accommodate the lines in the text will cause the reading experience to be altered considerably; single lines of some poems will be displayed as multiple lines of text. If this occurs, the turn of the line will be marked with a shallow indent.
Thank you. We hope you enjoy these poems.
This e-book edition was created through a special grant provided by the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation. Copper Canyon Press would like to thank Constellation Digital Services for their partnership in making this e-book possible.
For Trisha, Eliza, and Sophia Beloveds All
Contents
4 It’s not magic; it isn’t a trick
7 The poem is written on the body
12 I want to go back
13 How easy to give up hope
14 There’s nothing occult going on
15 Can a river flow beside itself ?
16 When Sappho wrote
17 How radiant and pale
18 Salt on the roads melts
19 The river has a single song
20 The world comes into the poem
21 Smart or dumb? Who cares?
22 Those who wake
23 If death, then grief, right?
24 Suppose you could evoke
25 Those dreams in which a phantom
26 Everything dies. Nothing dies.
27 Silence
28 The beloved has gone away
29 Some of the poems are clear
30 Tears and laughter
31 Reading and writing poems
32 Lighten up, lighten up
33 Too many mysteries
Part Two
1 To feel, to feel, to feel
2 Sometimes happy, sometimes sad
3 Or is it loss ahead
4 Concentrating on those motions
5 To lose the loved one
6 Even the saddest poems have journeyed
7 Nothing more beautiful than the body
8 Someone else called out
9 Why should the grave be final?
10 Listening to Bach’s solo suites
11 Now the snow is falling
12 It’s winter and I think of spring
13 I never planned to die
14 When my kids look for me I hope
15 How small the eyes of hate
16 How large the eyes of love
17 Scratched with a stick in snow
18 To become the tree
19 Could it all be said in a single poem
20 Who can measure the gratitude
21
