"Nunataq" by Joan Naviyuk Kane

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend Support Poem-a-Day December 26, 2019   Nunataq   Joan Naviyuk Kane

In a strait, some things are useful. Others, true, she turns to ash. Thrust, thus— her head thick with arrogance, infection and futility. It could be how a young wife went, strewn with net-veined willow and mountain aven— trespass, and wreckage. She could write about the year she turned to heat and haze, to laze: immurmurat-, imauraaqtuŋa. Of cannula and silver nitrate. Of petiolus and achene, about to begin again. Of greens as they green. Of a man aged, eskered. Of a confined gleam— to hereby dissolve and hold for naught the soil / gravel / silt groaning as the tools of our penultimate glacier, a glacier I might pronounce like grief. One does wish for words to thaw in the mouth, but find instead a tongue, welt. Erosional or depositional, raised & visible, rift into language & grit—            Copyright © 2019 by Joan Naviyuk Kane. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on December 26, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets. About this Poem   "This poem works with the geographical feature of a nunatak (a "lonely peak" or unique protuberance of land) as a metaphor for how something/one with complex features and surfaces might perennate through seemingly obliterative and inevitable forces (climate crises, cancer, colonialism, or divorce, for instance). I started the poem this spring after hiking on nunatat in southcentral Alaska, and finished it this summer after a trip through Resurrection bay on a vessel coincidentally named Nunatak with the writer and translator Jennifer Croft, whose friendship and work continues to inspire and sustain me and my children." —Joan Naviyuk Kane   Joan Naviyuk Kane is the author of seven collections of poetry and prose, most recently Another Bright Departure (CutBank, 2019). She is the Hilles Bush Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Poetry by Kane   Another Bright Departure  (CutBank, 2019) "Story About a Glacier" by Rodney Gomez "Double View of the Adirondacks as Reflected Over Lake Champlain from Waterfront Park" by Major Jackson "At the Zen Mountain Monastery" by Rachel Wetzsteon December Guest Editor: Paisley Rekdal   Thanks to Paisley Rekdal, author of Nightingale (Copper Canyon Press, 2019), who curated Poem-a-Day for this month's weekdays. Read a Q&A with Rekdal about her curatorial approach this month and find out more about our guest editors for the year. 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   Unsubscribe here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038