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Thursday, January 1, 2015

Never Ever by Brenda Shaughnessy

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January 1, 2015
 

Never Ever

 
Brenda Shaughnessy

About This Poem

 

“My three-year-old daughter likes saying ‘never ever!’ and for the first time I really thought about this funny construction: so there’s an ‘ever’ after the finality of ‘never?’ There’s more time to be found? I like words that contain their own opposites, like ‘ever’ and ‘cleave.’ Certain concepts, like ‘change,’ can also challenge themselves, or at least add a pinch of doubt.  ‘Change’ can mean substitution rather than transformation (same person into another outfit or same amount, just quarters now instead of bills) or ‘the more things change the more they stay the same.’ But over time, right before my eyes, there are irreversible changes that have never occurred before—where it seems possible to grow, not just rearrange, to break patterns, not just replace. My kid outgrows a mispronunciation (she used to call them ‘opposips’) or we enter a new year; it may not be news but it is a new chance. We can’t go back to the old. But will we make this new year worthy of its promise of true change or will we just go around in circles?” 
Brenda Shaughnessy

 

Brenda Shaughnessy is the author of Our Andromeda (Copper Canyon Press, 2012.) She teaches at Rutgers University—Newark in New Jersey.

Most Recent Book by Shaughnessy

 

Our Andromeda

(Copper Canyon Press, 2012)

"New years’ morning" by Carl Adamshick

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"Letter to GC" by Dana Levin

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"At the Very Beginning" by Katie Peterson

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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Launched during National Poetry Month in 2006, Poem-a-Day features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends.

 
 

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