Poem-A-Day: A blurry photograph by Martha Ronk

A blurry photograph by Martha Ronk     The tree azalea overwhelms the evening with its scent, defining everything and the endless fields.   Walking away, suddenly, it slices off and is gone.   The visible object blurs open in front of you, the outline of a branch folds back into itself, then clarifies--just as    you turn away--   and the glass hardens into glass   as you go about taking care of things abstractedly one thing shelved after another, as if they were already in the past,   needing nothing from you until, smashing itself on the tile floor,   the present cracks open the aftermath of itself.       Copyright © 2013 by Martha Ronk. Used with permission of the author.   About This Poem "The poem is part of a series of poems on photography and seeing; here I try to address several experiences that manifest as highly defined and also as blurry or abstract: scents, visible images, the present moment.  I had dropped a glass on the kitchen floor; the azalea came from Vermont last August; a friend made a photogram of a blurry glass jar. I always wonder how these things gather themselves together and insist."    --Martha Ronk Most Recent Book by Ronk Partially Kept (Nightboat Books, 2012)           July 9, 2013 Martha Ronk is the author of several collections of poetry. Her most recent is Partially Kept (Nightboat Books, 2012). She teaches literature at Occidental College and lives in Los Angeles. Related Poems The Things by Donald Hall Blue Hanuman by Joan Larkin Before You Came by Faiz Ahmed Faiz Poem-A-Day Launched during National Poetry Month in 2006, Poem-A-Day features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends. Browse the Poem-A-Day Archive.       Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.

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