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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, 12 Feb 2008
Book of the Day: The Night Marsh by Penny Harter
Penny Harter's The Night Marsh is a book of discoveries. Harter's poems closely inspect the surface of the world, and delve beneath that surface as well, and the result is always a surprise.
Consider this poem:
Archaeology
She is always unearthing something--
here, a rotting bone a dog buried,
there, a headless doll with
stuffing leaking from its chest.
She digs in this field each night,
sniffing the dirt, savoring the strata
as she claws her way down
through soil and clay.
Perhaps the grinning skulls
of her cursed father, mother,
will turn up, blind as bulbs
waiting to sprout into her palms.
She carries resurrection in her hands,
her fingers splayed to sift the earth,
searching for some fragment of a skull
that answers to her name.
There is almost a physical, tactile sense of searching in this poem. Not only is "Archeaology" a compelling poem of seeking, it is characteristic of Harter's method.