A NEW POET
Finding a new poet
is like finding a new wildflower
out in the woods. You don't see
its name in the flower books, and
nobody you tell believes
in its odd color or the way
its leaves grow in splayed rows
down the whole length of the page. In fact
the very page smells of spilled
red wine and the mustiness of the sea
on a foggy day - the odor of truth
and of lying.
And the words are so familiar,
so strangely new, words
you almost wrote yourself, if only
in your dreams there had been a pencil
or a pen or even a paintbrush,
if only there had been a flower.
— Linda Pastan
from Heroes In Disguise, 1991
W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York, NY
It is only when we are aware of the earth
and of the earth as poetry
that we truly live.
~ Henry Beston
Poet's Corner
