psalm 100
the landhummingspikes and cornrows it singsblackbirds and berrylines it singsdarkness and thrushpulls its mouthround the smallest pebbleperforms itself in lathing and glass make a good noise all the lands and us, make us make a good noise
Feature Date
- November 5, 2022
Series
- Editor's Choice
Selected By
- Brian Teare
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“psalm 100” from PSALMBOOK: by Laura Walker.
Published by Apogee Press on October 14, 2022.
Copyright © 2022 by Laura Walker.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.
Laura Walker is the author of six books of poetry: psalmbook (Apogee Press, 2022), story (Apogee Press, 2016), Follow-Haswed (Apogee Press, 2012), bird book (Shearsman Books, 2011), rimertown/ an atlas (UC Press, 2008), and swarm lure (Battery Press, 2004). Her chapbook bird book was published by Albion Books in 2010, and another chapbook, genesis, is forthcoming from above/ground press. Laura grew up in rural North Carolina and now lives in Berkeley, California, where she has taught poetry at San Francisco State University, UC Berkeley Extension, the MFA program at University of San Francisco, and in the Berkeley public schools. After publishing three books with Apogee, she was honored to join the press as a co-editor in 2022. More information available at laura-walker.com.
"In her luminous new collection psalmbook, Laura Walker animates the mystery of existence by returning poetry to its ancient source of prayer. Conversing with the old psalms, freed from religious tradition, she restores our primal intimacy with the universe and the inscrutable other, here addressed as ‘you.’ Everything named is born out of deep silence—from ‘a braided moon’ to ‘a cold truck’ and ‘tidal blanket’—as though Walker conjured it from the beginning of time, which she has. psalmbook is a work of extraordinary vision, reimagining from early invocations, a new more integrated way of being."
—Denise Newman
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