"Madonna del Parto" by Forrest Gander

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend August 8, 2018   Madonna del Parto   Forrest Gander

And then smelling it, feeling it before the sound even reaches him, he kneels at cliff's edge and for the first time, turns his head toward the now visible falls that gush over a quarter- mile of uplifted sheet- granite across the valley and he pauses, lowering his eyes for a moment, unable to withstand the tranquility—vast, unencumbered, terrifying, and primal. That naked river enthroned upon the massif altar, bowed cypresses congregating on both sides of sun-gleaming rock, a rip in the fabric of the ongoing forest from which rises— as he tries to stand, tottering, half- paralyzed—a shifting rainbow volatilized by ceaseless explosion.                Copyright © 2018 Forrest Gander. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   "The Madonna del Parto, a fresco painted by Piero della Francesca, depicts the pregnant Virgin Mary—her blue gown split open suggestively. My late wife, the poet C. D. Wright, and I saw it together in Monterchi, Italy. Grieving her loss and spending time alone in wilderness areas, I had a vision of the green forest split open by a waterfall—the sound of the distant falls converted into fountains of color as sunlight reflected from wet spray." —Forrest Gander   Forrest Gander's new poetry collection, Be With, is forthcoming from New Directions this month. He is the A.K. Seaver Professor Emeritus of Literary Arts and Comparative Literature at Brown University. He lives in Petaluma, California. Poetry by Gander   Be With (New Directions, 2018) "A Gate" by Donna Masini "Imaginary Waterfall" by C. D. Wright "Did You See the Sky" by Rachel Jamison Webster August Guest Editor: Evie Shockley   Thanks to Evie Shockley, author of semiautomatic (Wesleyan University Press, 2017), who curated Poem-a-Day this month. Read more about Shockley and our 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 Poem-a-Day is the only digital series publishing new, previously unpublished work by today's poets each weekday morning.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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