“This Place" by Jennifer Firestone

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend May 3, 2017   This Place   Jennifer Firestone

This place previously in a vision      Wet pen drawn at the line   A place religiously tied     religiously religiously   A person, place or thing Bring thy pebble or thy flowers or thy inscription Bring bring bringeth your love Dear ones bringeth your love Ashes to trees The trees!            Copyright © 2017 Jennifer Firestone. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   "Part ghostly dream, part reality, 'This Place' conjures the cemetery. I was thinking about whether nature is enhanced by (or alienated from) the constructed space of a burial site. I was looking at 'cemetery trees' and considering whether they belong to the cemetery, or whether the cemetery belongs to them. I was noting the dimensions and limits of a grave plot, the paperwork necessary to bury a loved one, the rites that are evoked in memorialization. The poem speaks to the despair of wanting to hold space for a life despite the failure of being able to truly do so. 'This Place' is from a larger work titled Gates & Fields." —Jennifer Firestone   Jennifer Firestone is the author of Gates & Fields, forthcoming this month from Belladonna*. She teaches at The New School's Eugene Lang College and lives in Brooklyn, New York. Poetry by Firestone   Gates & Fields (Belladonna*, 2017) "Kristin's Dream in November" by Bernadette Mayer "A Walk through the Cemetery" by Gary Soto "February 29" by Jane Hirshfield Poem-a-Day   Launched during National Poetry Month in 2006, Poem-a-Day features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends.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

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