Thursday, August 2, 2012

The One!


Here is a little passage from a book of essays, I've Heard the Vultures Singing – Field Notes on Poetry, Illness, and Nature by Lucia Perillo (above).

Poets are said to be an insular tribe who exchange their gifts mostly with one another, the readers of poetry being poets themselves. (Though I did go to a yard sale last year where a woman recognized me from the picture on my book. "You must be a poet," I said, and she answered no, she just happened to read poetry. "So you are the One! The One nonpoet reader of poetry in the land!" I shouted. But from the way she rolled her eyes I could tell it was a familiar joke.)

Lucia Perillo's poem called The Garbo Cloth appeared here in 2009. When I went back just now and looked at it again, I liked it all the more.