Vantage by Alan Shapiro

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend April 21, 2014   Vantage   Alan Shapiro

From where I watch, there are no highest leaves, no leaves that don’t have over them more leaves impeding what they open up and out for, darkening downward as they feed on green diminishments, as if dark, if it still can darken, could be itself the light the darker leaves beneath are hungry for. From where I watch even the shade hungers And is hungered after—all along the chain past bark, root, leaf, ghost speck of leaf, microbial scrapings, and beyond them, flakes chipped off of flakes off of a now- no-longer anything sucked dry, unsifted and unsiftable into so fine a green even the dark shines through. What’s hunger but a hole to fill, gravity of a self- consuming self-proliferating blind and densely tangled maze of this from that, from this, somewhere inside of which a cry for mercy isn’t heard, or is, and the jaws shut, and the very dirt becomes the dirt of it.            Copyright © 2014 by Alan Shapiro. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   “‘Vantage’ is a poem about leaves jockeying with each other for whatever light there is in a rather dense understory. The poem within the poem, so to speak, is about the hunger of all living things to perpetuate themselves, at every level, at any cost.” —Alan Shapiro   Alan Shapiro’s most recent collection of poems is Reel to Reel (University of Chicago Press, 2014). He is a professor of English and creative writing at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Most Recent Book by Shapiro   Reel to Reel (University of Chicago Press, 2014) "Trees" by Joyce Kilmer "How From Politeness to the Trees" by Cecily Parks "Not Dead" by Robert Graves Poem-a-Day   Launched during National Poetry Month in 2006, Poem-a-Day features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends. 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   You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038