During the Montenegrin Poetry Reading by Tess Gallagher

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend January 16, 2015   During the Montenegrin Poetry Reading   Tess Gallagher

Mira, like a white goddess, is translating so my left ear is a cave near Kotor where the sea lashes and rakes the iron darkness inside the black mountains. Young and old, the poets are letting us know this sweltering night, under a bridge near a river outside Karver Bookstore at the beginning of July, belongs to them. They clear away debris   about politicians and personal suffering, these gladiators of desire and doubt, whose candor has roiled me like a child shaking stolen beer to foam the genie of the moment out of its bottle. The poets’ truth-wrought poems dragging it out of me, that confession—that I didn’t have children probably because in some clear corner I knew I would have left them to join these poets half a world away who, in their language that is able to break stones, have broken me open like a melon. Instead of children, I leave my small dog, quivering as I touched her on the nose, to let her know it’s me, the one who is always leaving her, yes I’m going, and for her I have no language with which to reassure her I’m coming   back, no—what’s the use to pretend I’m a good mistress to her, she who would never leave me, she who looks for me everywhere I am not, until I return. I should feel guilty but the Montenegrin poets have taken false guilt off the table. I’ve been swallowed by a cosmic sneer, with an entire country behind it where each day it occurs to them how many are still missing in that recent past of war and havoc. Nothing to do but shut the gate behind me and not look back where my scent even now is fading from the grass. Nostalgia for myself won’t be tolerated here. I’m just a beast who, if my dog were a person, would give me a pat on the head and say something stupid like: Good dog.            Copyright © 2015 by Tess Gallagher. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   “I’ve made several trips to Montenegro to hear poets from that war torn region at festivals organized by Varja Djukic who named her bookstore after Raymond Carver. By my third trip the writers were beginning to speak to me in whispers of the Srebrenica massacre, how according to their feeling ‘the West stood by letting it happen.’ Their poems were such truth-telling lightning bolts. I often felt shamed that I had so little to offer their suffering and witnessing—but to just be with them has meant everything to me.” —Tess Gallagher   Tess Gallagher is the author of Midnight Lantern: New & Selected Poems (Graywolf Press, 2011). She splits her time between the west of Ireland and Washington state. Most Recent Book by Gallagher   Midnight Lantern: New & Selected Poems (Graywolf Press, 2011) "After Reading Lao Tzu" by Amy Newlove Schroeder "Passerby, These are Words" by Yves Bonnefoy "Poetry" by Monica Ferrell 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