Tzara
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- Aug 2, 2005
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Linda Gregg (1942-2019)
Ms. Gregg won, among other honors, the PEN/Voelcker Award for poetry and several Pushcart Prizes. She taught at a variety of colleges and universities, including the University of Iowa, UC Berkeley, and Princeton. Here are two of her poems:
Ms. Gregg won, among other honors, the PEN/Voelcker Award for poetry and several Pushcart Prizes. She taught at a variety of colleges and universities, including the University of Iowa, UC Berkeley, and Princeton. Here are two of her poems:
Winter Love
I would like to decorate this silence,
but my house grows only cleaner
and more plain. The glass chimes I hung
over the register ring a little
when the heat goes on.
I waited too long to drink my tea.
It was not hot. It was only warm.
Source: Chosen by the Lion (Graywolf Press, 1999)
Night Music
She sits on the mountain that is her home
and the landscapes slide away. One goes down
and then up to the monastery. One drops away
to a winnowing ring and a farmhouse where a girl
and her mother are hanging the laundry.
There’s a tiny port in the distance where
the shore reaches the water. She is numb
and clear because of the grieving in that world.
She thinks of the bandits and soldiers who
return to the places they have destroyed.
Who plant trees and build walls and play music
in the village square evening after evening,
believing the mothers of the boys they killed
and the women they raped will eventually come
out of the white houses in their black dresses
to sit with their children and the old.
Will listen to the music with unreadable eyes.
Source: All of It Singing (Graywolf Press, 2008)
I would like to decorate this silence,
but my house grows only cleaner
and more plain. The glass chimes I hung
over the register ring a little
when the heat goes on.
I waited too long to drink my tea.
It was not hot. It was only warm.
Source: Chosen by the Lion (Graywolf Press, 1999)
Night Music
She sits on the mountain that is her home
and the landscapes slide away. One goes down
and then up to the monastery. One drops away
to a winnowing ring and a farmhouse where a girl
and her mother are hanging the laundry.
There’s a tiny port in the distance where
the shore reaches the water. She is numb
and clear because of the grieving in that world.
She thinks of the bandits and soldiers who
return to the places they have destroyed.
Who plant trees and build walls and play music
in the village square evening after evening,
believing the mothers of the boys they killed
and the women they raped will eventually come
out of the white houses in their black dresses
to sit with their children and the old.
Will listen to the music with unreadable eyes.
Source: All of It Singing (Graywolf Press, 2008)
. I am mostly familiar with the Easter Everywhere album, which a friend owned and played a lot. I always have loved 
