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Public Poetry, Kevin Walzer's meditations on poetry, publishing, business, and other creative pursuits
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Kevin Walzer, a poet, poetry publisher, husband, and father.
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Tue, 09 Jan 2007
Book of the Day: A Woman Milking by Marcia Slatkin
Speaking as one who has spent all of his life in suburbs and cities, I found the poems of farming life in Marcia Slatkin's A Woman Milking fascinating. Bristling with vivid details about the daily life of a farmer, these are poems of hard physical labor, suffused with a deep sense of spiritual connection. I learned much from them, both in terms of the work of farming and the deeper sense of farming as a spiritual vocation.
The power of Slatkin's poems is seen in "Labor":
Labor
It starts: a splash
stains your udder.
I see jutting neon teats.
Your grunts plead.
I stroke your nose
and offer feed
as a man's hand
invades the space
where hooves and head
are late. He tugs
your half-born, wet,
from your womb.
Neck bells
bash your teats
as you turn
to lick its feet.
One last twist
and the stall is a morgue,
your bleat a scream.
Young bones snapped,
your blood and sap
splash to the straw.
Next day,
your milk is rich.
my fingers ache
with the taking.
I buy ducks as company,
and their twittering distracts you.
But often,
you sniff the straw, lick
the walls, paw the ground
for all that's hidden, lost,
that was yours.
The sense of loss in this poem is palapable, and powerfully rendered.