In honor of the 20th anniversary of National Poetry Month, we asked Entropy writers to share with us one of the first poems they ever read that got them excited about what poetry could do or changed the way that they thought about poetry, and one of their own poems that they are particularly proud of, still resonates with them, or an early poem.
INFLUENTIAL POEM:
This is the first poem I read that made me really excited about poetry. I read Theodore Roethke’s “The Waking” during my first year of grad school when I was already writing poetry, but I hadn’t yet been moved and haunted by a poem like I was by this one.
The Waking
By Theodore Roethke
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.
We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.
Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me; so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.
This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.
A POEM FROM THE AUTHOR:
What Grows Inside of Us Will Barely Be Preserved
[you] let this surplus become fossil
petrified : identified
record of tremor whispers
you’ve never seen the surface
from underneath before
cliffs wash out along a western shore
a whole organism preserved
hard parts / partial remains in a nearly unchanged condition
indicating how quickly we are buried
ocean falls into me. breathing is labored [at least there is still air]
each time a tempest gathers the sea’s song assembles
[everyone] is careless with the body
until they are dusting off an/other
your discarded cave is the only evidence we have. exodus imprinted where something has dissolved and still, cavity
*
Body, so sea-water full-bloated. I need a puncture. I need a professional. I hold the stain of [you] in me. [Everyone] has said it of us. We are that tiny bit more electrified. That there is still a light in us. Something passing between. I say we let the world shape us. You say why not make this for ourselves. Turning so deeply into myself. Turning in motion, but maybe, turning in becoming. My consciousness will never fully belong to me as long as [there is still air] between the particles we both inhabit. [At least] they are coming closer.
*
blue oval
quiet [air]
dab of cerulean
Unleashed bleed, I am still wringing my hands trying to control the great spill of [you]
*
How your ferrous core collects the fragments of the dissolved. [You] might hold something of my former lover, and so become the one I love now. How diluted are we. How magnetic. How many bulls could I have loved. Now and in a departed state. Another deadlock with faith, yet I am saying thank [you] ten times under.
*
[you]: Andromeda, closest but still a fractal tessellation
[everyone]: Has said the twelfth house holds my surrender
A black hole looks like a blood cell: [at least there is still air]
[Previously published at Tinderbox Poetry]
