Claudia Emerson

Claudia Emerson
The University of Mary Washington
(my alma mater)

Isn't that a great smile? I was prompted to share a poem by Pulitzer-prizewinner Claudia Emerson today by my older daughter, who was reading Late Wife and said, "Listen to her description of a turtle!" ("All is defense: the mud-covered shell, the ragged blade of the mouth, /the head thicker than your clenched fist.") I am sad to say that Ms. Emerson died last year at the age of 57.

Great Depression Story
by Claudia Emerson

Sometimes the season changed in the telling,
sometimes the state, but it was always during

the Depression, and he was alone in the boxcar,
the train stalled beneath a sky wider

than any he'd seen so far, the fields of grass
wider than the sky. He'd been curious

to see if things were as bad somewhere else
as they were at home. They were—and worse,

he said, places with no trees, no water.
He hadn't eaten all day, all week, his hunger

hard-fixed, doubled, gleaming as the rails. A lone
house broke the sharp horizon, the train dreaming

beneath him, so he climbed down, walked out,
the grass parting at his knees. The windows

were open, curtainless, and the screendoor,
unlatched, moved to open, too, when he knocked.

read the rest here

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Two more:

Spring Ice Storm
Animal Funerals, 1964

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Mary Lee at A Year of Reading has the Poetry Friday round-up. We are on the road today, but I look forward to catching up with the round-up over the weekend.