Quarantine
Austen Leah Rose
Chopin on the stereo. A bag of flour on the kitchen counter.
The lamp emits a thin tremble
of light. We are stirring olive oil with onions

in a steel pan and I am thinking of my Oma in 1938
on the telephone with the Swiss embassy, her daughter in a hospital bed
with diphtheria while the war went on, then sailing

across the ocean to America with a piece of rye bread
in her wool pocket. I am thinking about foresight, how it means
arriving at the moment before the moment

arrives. I am thinking of walking through a forest, how the spaces
between trees widen like telescopes. Once
my father and I rode up a chairlift in the middle of a blizzard,

then skied down toward a city we believed in but could not see.
I am thinking of the white cloud of the present.
I am thinking of a time before newspapers or windows

or the idea of heaven. I am thinking of magnetic fields, the raw material
of mountains. I stand up. I take the hand of the person I love.
Is it true that only time can tell? I ask but don't wait for an answer.

He has entered the room like a stray cat sheltering from a storm.
We will sit at a wood table encased in a circle
of light, saying the names of flowers that we know, and repeating them.
from the book ONCE, THIS FOREST BELONGED TO A STORM / University of Massachusetts Press  
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I wrote this poem during the early months of the pandemic while I was at home imagining other unprecedented historical moments, other worlds interrupted. It got me thinking about how terrifying the present is in general. How shapeless, and chaotic. How uncomfortable it is to sit with our unknowing, how strong the desire for narrative, and yet how vital to do as Rilke advised and “live our questions.”

Austen Leah Rose on "Quarantine"
Color logo of the Academy of American Poets, Whcih Awards the Wallace Stevens Award
Naomi Shihab Nye Wins the 2024 Wallace Stevens Award

“In a stunning spectrum of works published in a period beginning nearly fifty years ago, Naomi Shihab Nye has borne witness to the complexities of cultural difference that connect us as human beings, evidencing a firm commitment to the poet as bearer of light and hope,” Academy Chancellor Afaa Michael Weaver said in a press release." The Wallace Stevens Award recognizes “outstanding and proven mastery in the art of poetry," and brings each winner $100,000.

via LITHUB
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Cover image of Aaron McCollough's new book, Salms
What Sparks Poetry: Aaron McCollough on "Not at Duino"

"I am increasingly persuaded that American Christianity’s embrace of Donald Trump is simply the latest expression of a terrific counter-scandal, effectively another, much more gradual transvaluation of values, whereby the dominant American secular and religious visions have aligned themselves with a cult of progress, the technocratic human image for which power can only mean domination, exploitation, and mastery. The key joke of this era is the one where the man puts a gun to his head, and when his wife starts laughing says to her, 'What’s so funny? You’re next!'"
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