"Dog Tag" by Jane Hirshfield

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend March 29, 2018   Dog Tag   Jane Hirshfield

At last understanding that everything my friend had been saying for the thirty-three months since he knew were words of the dog tag, words of, whatever else,  the milled and stamped-into metal of what stays behind. Blackcap Mountain. Blue scorpion venom. Persimmon pudding. He spoke them. He could not say love enough times. It clinked against itself, it clinked against its little chain.                Copyright © 2018 Jane Hirshfield. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   "What is there to say of mortality? My friend died of glioblastoma, three years after his diagnosis. Forty years ago, we spent three months in a blue tent pitched by a stream below Blackcap Mountain in the Sierra Nevada. Blue scorpion venom: he and his wife traveled to Cuba during his illness, twice, to bring this treatment home; a few times I administered the drops into his nostrils. Persimmon pudding: near the end, when the time for trying restricted eating as treatment was over, I made one, with persimmons from another friend's tree. My friend ate it happily. As meanwhile all of us who loved him took in gratefully, greedily, his words, his dearness, his unshakeable love of this world, and of us." —Jane Hirshfield   Jane Hirshfield is the author of eight poetry collections, most recently The Beauty (Alfred A. Knopf, 2015), long-listed for the National Book Award. Hirshfield served as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 2012 to 2017. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. Poetry by Hirshfield   The Beauty (Alfred A. Knopf, 2015) "Roman Poem Number Thirteen" by June Jordan "Bliss and Grief" by Marie Ponsot "From a Park Bench" by Patricia Hooper March Guest Editor: Meghan O'Rourke   Thanks to Meghan O'Rourke, author of Sun in Days (W. W. Norton, 2017), who curated Poem-a-Day this month. Read more about O'Rourke and our other guest editors for the year. Help Support Poem-a-Day   If you value Poem-a-Day, please consider a monthly donation or one-time gift to help make it possible. Poem-a-Day is the only digital series publishing new, previously unpublished work by today's poets each weekday morning. The free series, which also features a curated selection of classic poems on weekends, reaches 450,000+ readers daily. Thank you! 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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