I was not bothered by the stitching under your eye until we reached the plateau and you fell in the heather where a barbed wire fence covered a seam in the sky, stitching the clods of earth and the clouds together as if it would take no more than a turn of the wind […]
Watching the fertile but flat and watery landscape passing – I thought of how we had laughed bewildered as teenagers returning from a night of wine with Christians – at how they could smile at us but know us damned forever – in a river of fire with pagans forever mute to God – and […]
Petra White talks about the genesis of her poem "Woman and Dog."
Petra White talks about the role of place in her poetry.
Petra White offers some advice to young writers.
On the toughness of the physical soul Feeling around in the human, as if inside a sack, soul fends for itself, fends off, prunes, cultivates, eliminates, makes itself up, says ‘is this right?’ (and tries to be reasonably consistent) tending itself, lurches like Sisyphus into forwardness, backwardness, urges itself to form a […]
Before writing, before toys, I used to draw stars. Mami sat knitting me a sweater, advising from time to time how to make an angle. Politics on TV scratched at the screen. Babi listened carefully, his body stiff, upright. But I kept drawing, trying to perfect the stars. I saw a gold star […]
on a photograph of George and Mary Oppen They have survived one another. The earth holds them the way it holds children: gladly and curiously affected. His silver head piles its years on her lap. His body seems borrowed, already an absence. Her right hand maps his temples, his forehead. What […]