Jeff B. is asking bloggers to post their own favorite work. This poem is my favorite.
The poem came to me one afternoon as I took a walk through Iowa City. I suddenly heard myself softly pronouncing the first few lines. I was startled. I rushed home, and wrote the poem in less than twenty minutes. I showed it to Mark Levine a week later. He commented that it was very different from anything else that I'd shown him. He suggested two small revisions. I agreed with him, and I haven't tinkered with this poem since.
I love the way this poem unfurls. It's seamless. I love the tension between the beauty of the images and the terror the title conjures forth. And that ending! The ending is gorgeous--if I do say so myself.
About Me
- Eduardo C. Corral
- Eduardo C. Corral is a CantoMundo fellow. He holds degrees from ASU and the Iowa Writers' Workshop. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Beloit Poetry Journal, jubilat, New England Review, Ploughshares, Poetry, and Post Road. His work has been honored with a "Discovery"/The Nation award and residencies from The MacDowell Colony and Yaddo. He has served as the Olive B. O'Connor Fellow in Creative Writing at Colgate University and as the Philip Roth Resident in Creative Writing at Bucknell University. He's the interview editor for Boxcar Poetry Review. He won the 2011 Yale Series of Younger Poets competition.
2 comments:
I went to read this and the second I was done, I thought loudly, SWISH! Which I haven't said in years but is the sound of a basketball going through the hoop without any awkward touching of the net...also, thanks for the info on Cyndi's new album; I can't wait, either. I embrace my deadbeat brother-in-law solely because he was one of the choirboys singing "True Colors" in the background of that Kodak commercial years back...
Good one!
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