Farolita

Mei-mei Berssenbrugge

Take a strip of white paper, turnthe top of the strip in your right hand soit faces the floor, then glue the ends togetherIf you go along on the outside, it seemsI am not connected to you. I’m tryingto think now if it has to be white paperCan it show some light through?

What Sparks Poetry: Read how this poem inspired Karen An-hwei Lee to begin writing poetry

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January 6, 2020

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What Sparks Poetry

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Kelly Writers House staff

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Mei-mei Berssenbrugge was born in Beijing and grew up in Massachusetts. She is the author of twelve books of poetry, most recently I Love Artists: New and Selected Poems and A Lit Cloud, a collaboration with artist Kiki Smith. She lives in New York City and northern New Mexico.

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"A single long, exquisitely crafted metaphysical poem about the enigmas of love, silence, the physical world, and human error, about the paradoxical spaces between them, about the ways light speaks to shadow. Most of all, it is about how the creative imagination breathes and thrives.... The effect is dazzling."
—Brent Morris, American Poetry Association Newsletter

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