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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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Fri, 07 Dec 2007
Book of the Day: Psyche's Weathers by Cynthia Atkins
Cynthia Atkins' Psyche's Weathers is a strong collection, with lyric depth and philosophical sophistication. Atkins finds rich metaphors for human experience in the seasons.
Consider the intimate tracings Atkins makes between snowfall and the small details of human life:
Sacred Season
Somewhere at the furthermost tip
of this city, there is music alternating
in the falsetto jowls of wind. Teeth marks
into infinity, all the sawed wood
will be wheeled in for winter.
There is nothing more explicit than this:
a threshold of trees disrobed, a narrative
of light in a window, a paradisal of ice
like hung chandeliers. Transitions
are hardest for us. Detained by weather,
flux of indecision, resistance to change--
We are dug in for the night,
to dip bread in a crock of bouillon,
to age, to dismiss all the things
that enter our lives only peripherally noticed.
The fiery stars replicate
our fingertips, human failing
to let the errant intrusions
slip through them--as now, outside
after an interval of silence, the almost
inaudible sound of someone shoveling
the first snow from their walk.
The quiet music of these lines reward the attention they softly invite.