LIBRARY NOTES
Marie Ponsot
The Spoken Word
Tuesday, April 17, 2007 at 6:30 PM
Members' Room; $10 per person
The Spoken Word
Streaming Audio Length: 35:13 minutes
Antepenultimate
His work describes for us
eons of cycles of sun, drought,
earthquake, ice, calm,
& what they have done for us.
He earns his living learning
history & likelihood
by reading trees, sliced dead ones.
Me too but
with live ones, some of them
aged & hollowing, for instance
this pear tree
its elbow extending
one tall young branch
good for a decade or so
leafed out & flexibly
offering for ripening
its always ante-
penultimate pear.
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Asked why poetry matters, Marie Ponsot replies, "There's a primitive need for language that works as an instrument of discovery and relief, that can make rich the cold places of our inner worlds with the memorable tunes and dreams poems hold for us."
Marie Ponsot is the author of numerous poetry collections including
True Minds (1957),
Admit Impediment (1981),
The Green Dark (1988),
The Bird Catcher (1998), winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, and
Springing (2002). In the time between her first and second collections, she taught composition and raised seven children, both major sources for her poetry. Poet and critic William Logan observed that she "finds more drama in spending a day at the beach, or telling a story to some sleepy youngsters, than most poets could in the fall of Troy."
Ms. Ponsot has also taught at New York University and
Columbia University and given master classes at the 92nd Street Y. Other honors include a creative writing grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Delmore Schwartz Memorial Prize, and the Shaughnessy Medal of the Modern Language Association.
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