Despair desires despair; desireDespairs of desiring. Despair despairsOf ever again desiring to desireDespair, while desire desiresA form: a garden in the orthodoxNarrative, flowering ex nihiloFrom April to October in the RomanDe la Rose, the Belle Epoque.But what would happen if desireAbandoned desire, desiringIn lieu of desire despair, an elegyThat would suffice to burnThe garden down? It was desireDespair desired until desireFell into despair, built a replicaOf the garden it had only justYesterday burned: a copy of a copyNow lost, complete with fakeFlowers. Not a fire, but gold leaf.
Feature Date
- July 10, 2023
Series
- What Sparks Poetry
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“Nature is Art” from APRIL: by Sara Nicholson.
Published by The Song Cave on April 15, 2023.
Copyright © 2023 by Sara Nicholson.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.
A Third Collection of Poems from the Visionary Imagination of Sara Nicholson.
Deadpan, heartfelt, and everything in between, Sara Nicholson is a reluctant mystic who can both make us laugh and point us toward magical truths within a single poem. Her third collection of poems, APRIL, is filled with the perverse and the sacred, whether the subject is art, love, or sex, whether it's ancient or contemporary. Nicholson's interests are timeless, and by the end of April, the reader may be convinced that they've brushed up against a somewhat strange and singular poet who is inventing a new way of seeing specifically for them.
"Intimate and expansive, with dazzling wit and music throughout, Nicholson's poems fit the stars, the sun, the trees, and their sap in the same frame."
—Michael Andor Brodeur, The Boston Globe
"Nicholson wields the authority of archival rhythms and the forceful syntax of a logician, but she constantly attaches these certainties to a wildness of premise and a brevity of figure: instead of self, ruled utterance; instead of help, poetry."
—Geoffrey G. O'Brien, Public Books
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