Plex by Lisa Robertson

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend February 9, 2017   Plex   Lisa Robertson

for Sara and Roy   The shore of the lake is gradual and drawn With rivers threading into land Then suddenly it's all land Now the land is dark And you can't distinguish it from the water And the hot orange sun Turns everything dark purple Like a painting by Joan Mitchell   It is unknowable It is knowable It is a sum of these It is not without birds and animals He is very elegant and kind Her intellectual complexion It is a beautiful word The flank of their poem goes to the lake To enter sweet new time Trees express the sky energetically So do they With all the rarity of tenderness Like the place where the base of the vase touches earth To speak into time deeply All the animals lie down together This is what they prefer It is explicitly their preference New roses happen Their Latin pleats Together they harbor the intimate excess of philosophy Which loves gardens   Now admire their breadth Every flower is inverted And what the flower produces Is unknown You call this beauty As a way to express care Now call it wildrose   Wildrose is resourceful Its geophysiology is vast It threw runners To make landbridge It threw pollen With voracious joy   Underground network of wildrose Linking all the political lovers And infinite breathing flesh In each temporality experienced Is resurgent insurrection The form of life of wildrose Is experiment in relationship Also named Plex   Earth the tousled rosebed! From which the brocaded and tarnishing yardgoods unfurl Some of the bronze threads blackening So that the ornate pattern is obscured Like dusk in a borderless tableau It glows from beneath Now time ripples from beneath Now they enter dusk's happiness Rosebed is the lovepoem   Belly and horizon! Wildrose suckers freely from underground stems and roots Forming dense colonies that run wild This wedding names everyone wildrose.            Copyright © 2017 Lisa Robertson. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   "'Plex' is an epithalamium written to help celebrate the summer wedding of Sara Marcus and Roy Scranton. Sara says: 'At the mic on the town common, we traded stanzas. We read the final lines in unison. We named everyone wildrose. Everyone bloomed. We stomped the wide old plank floors in the town hall; I did a cartwheel at some point; we circled and spiraled and lifted; we made an ecstatic caesura that lasted all weekend.'" —Lisa Robertson   Lisa Robertson is a Canadian poet who lives in France. Her most recent book of poems is 3 Summers (Coach House Books, 2016). Poetry by Robertson   3 Summers (Coach House Books, 2016) "A Red, Red Rose" by Robert Burns "Asphodel, That Greeny Flower [excerpt]" by William Carlos Williams "from Poem in the Shape of a Rose" by Stephen Sartarelli 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. If you enjoy Poem-a-Day, please consider making a donation to help make it possible. 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