What Does a Poem Mean?


 

January is upon us and with it the start of several weeks of bone-rattling cold and snow-cancelled classes erroneously dubbed “Spring Semester.” For me, it heralds the beginning of a poetry class I teach at the University of Virginia, whose goal, to paraphrase the title of Edward Hirsch’s wonderful book, is to teach students how to read a poem and hope they’ll fall in love with poetry. This is a required course, so I can’t count on any initial enthusiasm on the students’ part. Instead, I expect to encounter resistance, suspicion, indifference, and even downright … Continue reading What Does a Poem Mean?

Conveyance by Julia Kudravetz

country landscape
 

Conveyance   Between the bones of the plat and the sale of our land, so much needs to be done to make the title clean. The deed marked what everyone knew then—the creek to the quarters to the graveyard; they agreed with a handshake and the natural boundaries quilled in red. No one recalls, so imagine those lives in metes and bounds. On the bank they pulled fresh water, broke ice in winter, carried evening hymns over the field to the arms of the great oak. And now we see encroachments, bramble, the soft roads … Continue reading Conveyance by Julia Kudravetz

Then I Returned to the House of the Slow Letting Go by Irene Wellman

dried flower
 

Then I Returned to the House of the Slow Letting Go   I went out into the evening, walked alone with my clippers to dead-head the marigolds the peonies, no longer spinning planets, and the now brown-leafed rhododendrons. I picked up my watering can to slake a thirsty fern, pulled yellow aromatic leaves off the pink geraniums, surprised a brown thrasher in the grass, bent to weed a circle of flowers. The house stood filled with the presence Of the dying man. It was his garden he’d brought back from wildness, tended with the dry … Continue reading Then I Returned to the House of the Slow Letting Go by Irene Wellman