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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, 19 Jun 2007
Book of the Day: This Many Miles from Desire by Lee Herrick
Lee Herrick's This Many Miles from Desire narrates, in a non-linear way, the author's experience as an adopted child and the journey such an experience requires: between cultures, between the past and the present,from uncertainty to rootedness. Herrick's lyrics effectively convey the inner life of such travels.
Consider this poem:
Adoption Music
I am learning to play the taiko, to feel
how leaves reappear in the trees with such ease.
One monk says this will teach me to hear
the variations of my name:
how my lover sighs it,
how a teacher grinded it out like a curse,
how your mother says it, drowning in a lake
before she leaves you. How it means somewhere
between mothers, not quite the rose
but not quite the roots. Like the woman
who finds you says, Lee, like a discovery--
one more child found in the world's history
of found children. How she said it like the echo
of one plucked e string, a clear pang of delight.
This is a complex poem, striking (literally) a chord in the reader's heart, evoking "the world's history/of found children." Herrick's technique here is simple, fluid, and powerful.