Reprise
What Sparks Poetry is a serialized feature in which we invite poets to explore experiences and ideas that spark new poems.
In the occasional series, Reprise, we republish some of the most loved essays from What Sparks Poetry’s archives.
“Explore What Sparks Poetry” is made possible with funding from The Virginia Commission for the Arts.
What I found in the violin-echo of my own beating heart, was grief, a grief not only for my friends who had not made it out alive, but a grief for this world in which we are none of us good.
Catch Up on Issues of What Sparks Poetry
Each of us enters Johnson’s book through that singular, seemingly never settled and always unsettling noun, holding a small flat object labeled Inheritance. A thing made and possessed by another, and now — is it really yours? A thing given, but was it freely chosen?
Make him come back, she said,
her voice like something brought up intact
from the cold center of a lake.
her voice like something brought up intact
from the cold center of a lake.
In order to understand that all living beings are alike, no matter how dissimilar we may seem, we must transform our relationship with nature and assume a new stance; we must situate ourselves neither above nor below the other creatures on Earth, but beside them.
