Ponderable by Lyn Hejinian

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend March 31, 2015   Ponderable   Lyn Hejinian

The pine branches reach—the rain! the sun! the edge of the moving air!               three goats! Girls on razor scooters turn the corner and scoot Autonomy actually shows, it shines amidst the stars of decision I sacrifice hearing to writing, I return to the back of the train Surrounded by nothing but tattered island nasturtia, the shoveler is                     prepared to exclaim, “Grief exterior, grief prison” Beastly pine cones are falling from the sky Down in the middle, and a soft wall, the midnight breeze billows Check the role, the rock, the rule! From cardboard pressed to ginger, water spilled on a list, salt sprinkled               over… Why so many references to dogs, purple, and bananas? Then the carnival—it came up afterwards like a vermillion buttress to                  say of itself “it appears” Wren in a ragged bee line, flora sleeping live Yuki, Felicia, and Maxwell have between them $13.75, and they are              hungry as they enter the small café, where they see a display of              pies and decide to spend all their money on pie there and then—              how much pie will each get to eat if each pie costs $5.25? Invincible is my myopia, great is my waist, choral are my ideas, wingéd              are my eyebrows, deep is my obscurity—who am I?            © 2015 Lyn Hejinian. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   “‘Ponderable’ is an elegy from my collection titled The Unfollowing, forthcoming from Omnidawn in 2016. Noticing that it is a poem of fourteen lines, readers might speculate that it is a sonnet, but a proper sonnet is structured to facilitate logical thinking and that is precisely what is precluded when one is confronted by death: there is no coming to terms with it.” —Lyn Hejinian   Lyn Hejinian is the author of The Book of a Thousand Eyes (Omnidawn Publishing, 2012). She teaches at the University of California, Berkeley, and lives in Berkeley. Most Recent Book by Hejinian   The Book of a Thousand Eyes (Omnidawn Publishing, 2012) "Wide Sigh" by Melissa Broder "The dandelions in the moment and then" by CJ Evans "Poof!" by Mark Irwin Poem-a-Day   Launched during National Poetry Month in 2006, Poem-a-Day features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends.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