King Lear by Lisa Sewell

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend May 21, 2014   King Lear   Lisa Sewell

For the father who wakes and wakes himself, eyes full of himself and for the one, who when the sun descends slips into the stormy smite flat the rotundity o’ the world. Done in with conspiracy and murder in his sleep (his eye-tooth finally unfixed and tucked into a cheek for safekeeping) he dreams of a three-armed garment unable to wonder or comprehend how he has come to this blurred ridge and broken— I try to fix in my mind, his shining eyes the terrors he shut his lips against and his early morning utterly lucid accusation: “I never would have believed,” he said to me “that you would be among them.”              Copyright @ 2014 by Lisa Sewell. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   “‘King Lear’ is part of a sequence of poems that explore the intersection of reading and the construction of identity. Many of the different relationships in King Lear have resonated for me at different points in my life and by the time I wrote this poem, I had already written two other poems with this title. During the last days of his life, my father, mad with what the hospice nurse called ‘sundowner syndrome,’ made me understand the play again in a completely unexpected and heartbreaking way.” —Lisa Sewell   Lisa Sewell is the author of two books of poems, Name Withheld (Four Way Books, 2006) and The Way Out (Alice James Books, 1998). She lives in Philadelphia and teaches at Villanova University. Most Recent Book by Sewell   Name Withheld (Four Way Books, 2006) “Shakespeare's Horse” by Joseph Harrison “Descriptions of Heaven and Hell” by Mark Jarman “To Her Father with Some Verses” by Anne Bradstreet Poem-a-Day   Launched during National Poetry Month in 2006, Poem-a-Day features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends. 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