Possess
Just when the rain opened up, justnow when I heard it like radio staticgetting louder on the roof I thoughtof how the confusions will be allI may remember of my life, a few moments of bewildermentin which I knew what being wildmeant, mounting to the volta, the bolt oflightning and of how I found my father’snavy yearbook among his best thingsin the closet and opening it to a pageat random I saw he had circled in redthe word possess and wondered did hethink it was misspelled, or did he wantme to know his mind was takenat the end and his body and it was not himsaying and doing and doing and sayingthings. Or did he mean it as commandto possess myself as I have not cometo do or did he mean something elseI do not understand yet, the red circlein an oval around the egg of light andthe word all soft bones inside.
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- March 5, 2024
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“Possess” from ICE: by David Keplinger.
Published by Milkweed Editions on August 08, 2023.
Copyright © 2023 by David Keplinger.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.
David Keplinger is the author of eight books of poetry, most recently Ice (Milkweed Editions, 2023) and Another City (Milkweed Editions, 2018), which was awarded the UNT Rilke Prize. His translations include German poet Jan Wagner’s The Art of Topiary (Milkweed, 2017), and Danish poet Carsten René Nielsen’s Forty-One Objects (Bitter Oleander, 2019), which was a finalist for the National Translation Award.
"From Dante to Blake to Emily Dickinson, the poems in Keplinger's latest book summon literary history (and geological history too) in an effort to understand modern life."
—New York Times Book Review
“Keplinger’s Ice travels across time and space, both evoking the history of life on earth and focusing on personal losses, [. . .] There is an arresting intimacy to the icy breadth of this collection, a sense of something unvisited before."
—Rebecca Morgan Frank, Literary Hub
“Reading Ice is like crossing a threshold into timelessness as we navigate the intersections of history, science, literature, and spirituality. Keplinger’s masterful craft connects past and presence while deftly underlining the relationship between loss and astonishment. It’s like the poet says when looking at two horses who seem to be embracing each other in a field: 'I want to love/the world like this'. Keplinger has written a timely, noteworthy collection. A must read.”
—Leo Simonovis, EcoTheo Collective
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