Jeff Friedman is the author of four collections of poetry; Black Threads is his newest work. In it he explores the meeting ground of ancient stories he learned in childhood and his own family's history. His poems and translations have appeared in many literary magazines, including American Poetry Review, Poetry, New England Review, Poetry East, Literary Imagination and The New Republic. We'll talk with him about his work and the ways a place unconsciously establishes itself as the basis for meaningful poetry.
Jeff Friedman's Poems:
Notes from the Emperor
Two Salesmen
Hymn to Your Tongue
Later in the show, we'll hear from a group of Maine teenagers who write and perform skits, poems, and letters based on their life experiences. Many of them face a pretty daunting world, and they use their art as a way of dealing with it. This piece comes to us from producer Catie Talarski through the Public Radio Exchange. You can listen to it again and write a review of it by clicking here.
On the Banks of the Mascoma
by Jeff Friedman
from Taking Down the Angel, Carnegie Mellon University Press
The water pitched and plunged,
a foamy white swirling to
a froth on the dark rocks
drubbed smooth. You pulled
your hand from mine and went
to sit on a grassy ledge.
Let's not talk, you said
and put your slender fingers to your lips.
I watched a crow burst into flight
and drank bourbon from the bottle
I carried in a paper bag.
The blue of the sky slurred
and a burning gold light
slashed the roiling river.
I wanted to press my ear
to your womb to understand what emptiness
kicked inside you. It was not
for us to hold a child in our arms
or to make the world our little room.
I lay down in the grass for only a moment
but when I woke, shivering, you were gone—
gone from the grass and the purple
wildflowers that dotted the bank,
gone from the slow-moving air,
gone from my hands and arms,
from the touch of my body. From the ledge
I saw the red sign of Kleen Dry Clean
and the cars swerving on 120
toward Longacres and Dulac's Hardware.
I tried to remember all that we had
wanted to become when we imagined a future
as painless as sleep. Over and over
the river splashed against the rocks.
The longer I stared at them,
the smoother they became
and soon even they disappeared.
