April 27, 2012April 28, 2012 by Luisa A. Igloria

What heart heard of, ghost guessed:

This entry is part 26 of 55 in the series Morning Porch Poems: Spring 2012

and wind cleared the tops of trees, and passed;

the sun’s brave tribute dropped beyond the ridge.
On TV, the British laureate talked about the role

of poetry: how solitary events might meet the public
ones, disrupting the quiet of the page. The other

poet spoke of growing up in a town built from
the clanging of car parts, machinery— by the hands

of working men; and of his father’s love of Russian
novels, the ones filled with orchards and train

stations, characters fraught with the drama of too
much thinking and drink; love, desire, both, all

of the above. What is the essence of poetry?
asked the TV host. I didn’t catch their answers,

from trying to remember the scenes that led
the woman in the direction of the approaching

train, from trying to think of what the season
might have been; whether yellow leaves were

pasted to damp ground, or if she wore a coat
with a collar, because the morning was cold.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Series Navigation← Ghazal: Some ways to liveA single falling note above →

OTHER POSTS IN THE SERIES

Luisa A. Igloria

Poet Luisa A. Igloria (website) is Co-Winner of the 2019 Crab Orchard Open Competition in Poetry for Maps for Migrants and Ghosts (Southern Illinois University Press, September 2020). She was appointed Poet Laureate of the Commonwealth of Virginia for 2020-22, and in 2021 received 1 of 23 Poet Laureate Fellowships from the Academy of American Poets and the Mellon Foundation. She is the winner of the 2015 Resurgence Prize (UK), the world’s first major award for ecopoetry, selected by former UK poet laureate Sir Andrew Motion, Alice Oswald, and Jo Shapcott. She is the author of What is Left of Wings, I Ask (2018 Center for the Book Arts Letterpress Chapbook Prize, selected by former US Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey); Bright as Mirrors Left in the Grass (Kudzu House Press eChapbook selection for Spring 2015), Ode to the Heart Smaller than a Pencil Eraser (Utah State University Press, 2014 May Swenson Prize), Night Willow (Phoenicia Publishing, 2014), The Saints of Streets (University of Santo Tomas Publishing House, 2013), Juan Luna’s Revolver (2009 Ernest Sandeen Prize, University of Notre Dame Press), and nine other books. She is a member of the core faculty of the MFA Creative Writing Program at Old Dominion University which she directed from 2009-2015; she also teaches classes at The Muse Writers’ Center in Norfolk. In 2018, she was the inaugural Glasgow Distinguished Writer in Residence at Washington and Lee University. When she isn’t writing, reading, or teaching, she cooks with her family, knits, hand-binds books, and listens to tango music.

www.luisaigloria.com

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