Post by shayepoet on May 31, 2008 22:32:48 GMT 2
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Greatest Hits 1978-2000
Diane Kendig
Sample poems:
Ghazals on Lake Erie in March
Yellow waves hunker to payn’s gray ice,
dead fish lie like pewter.
The iguana, platypus, and spiny anteater’s
Lovely ugliness of endurance.
Like the animals who have survived,
Its frozen form preserves past epochs.
Broken and mis-set, a thick-seamed femur
Hideous and strong, bears more weight.
My eye separates what seems solid:
Layers of gray from layers of white.
The gulls, nasty clowns, wrestle
The seascape, lose, move into town.
The wind roughhouses the reeds cemented
Into the cove, breaks their necks.
Not the largest hand can shatter
The door to this water.
Alms for Lorca
Reading how they shot you on a hill before dawn
could disclose anything, I recall your poem,
“If I die, leave the balcony open,”
and I want you to be left with that vista:
children eating oranges, reapers cutting wheat.
So nearsighted, you wrote your hometown
into ballads and jondos even from Harlem
even from Madrid, wanted to watch it forever,
even when echoes of blood foreshadowed
your return and shuttered your windows.
What agony to see your Granada become
one dark prison cell, I can only imagine
from the thick blank cataract of paper
you left on the table in that last room,
and, sickened, I turn again to your work,
bright denial of death, and I want
to go on leaning out windows and doorways
and bring you oranges and wheat.
And I want to leave everyone’s balcony open.
About the author:
Diane Kendig's poetry and nonfiction have appeared in
such journals as Colere, Ekphrasis, Minnesota Review, Mid-America,
U.S. 1 and Slant, as well as the anthologies Broken Land: Poems of
Brooklyn and Those Winter Sundays: Female Academics and their
Working-Class Parents. A recipient of two Ohio Arts Council grants in
Poetry, a Fulbright lectureship in translation, and a Yaddo
Fellowship, she currently lives in Lynn, Massachusetts.
Website: dianekendig.com/
Ohio Arts Council: tinyurl.com/3tc5or
ISBN: 1-930755-54-6, $8.95
[glow=teal,2,300]BUY HERE, BUY NOW:[/glow]
Pudding House: www.puddinghouse.com/
Greatest Hits 1978-2000
Diane Kendig
Sample poems:
Ghazals on Lake Erie in March
Yellow waves hunker to payn’s gray ice,
dead fish lie like pewter.
The iguana, platypus, and spiny anteater’s
Lovely ugliness of endurance.
Like the animals who have survived,
Its frozen form preserves past epochs.
Broken and mis-set, a thick-seamed femur
Hideous and strong, bears more weight.
My eye separates what seems solid:
Layers of gray from layers of white.
The gulls, nasty clowns, wrestle
The seascape, lose, move into town.
The wind roughhouses the reeds cemented
Into the cove, breaks their necks.
Not the largest hand can shatter
The door to this water.
Alms for Lorca
“Give him alms, woman. For nothing in life
can equal the agony of being blind in Granada.”
--from a Spanish folk tale
Reading how they shot you on a hill before dawn
could disclose anything, I recall your poem,
“If I die, leave the balcony open,”
and I want you to be left with that vista:
children eating oranges, reapers cutting wheat.
So nearsighted, you wrote your hometown
into ballads and jondos even from Harlem
even from Madrid, wanted to watch it forever,
even when echoes of blood foreshadowed
your return and shuttered your windows.
What agony to see your Granada become
one dark prison cell, I can only imagine
from the thick blank cataract of paper
you left on the table in that last room,
and, sickened, I turn again to your work,
bright denial of death, and I want
to go on leaning out windows and doorways
and bring you oranges and wheat.
And I want to leave everyone’s balcony open.
A Tunnel of Flute Song, 1980, ©Diane Kendig
About the author:
Diane Kendig's poetry and nonfiction have appeared in
such journals as Colere, Ekphrasis, Minnesota Review, Mid-America,
U.S. 1 and Slant, as well as the anthologies Broken Land: Poems of
Brooklyn and Those Winter Sundays: Female Academics and their
Working-Class Parents. A recipient of two Ohio Arts Council grants in
Poetry, a Fulbright lectureship in translation, and a Yaddo
Fellowship, she currently lives in Lynn, Massachusetts.
Website: dianekendig.com/
Ohio Arts Council: tinyurl.com/3tc5or
ISBN: 1-930755-54-6, $8.95
[glow=teal,2,300]BUY HERE, BUY NOW:[/glow]
Pudding House: www.puddinghouse.com/