Saturday, April 3, 2010

"I Was the Jukebox"

New from W.W. Norton: I Was the Jukebox: Poems by Sandra Beasley.

About the book, from the publisher:

The winner of the 2009 Barnard Women Poets Prize—“fresh, crisp, and muscular.”

“These poems are fresh, crisp, and muscular. They are decisive and fearless. Every object, icon, or historical moment has a soul with a voice. In these poems these soulful ones elbow their way to the surface of the page, smartly into the contemporary now.”—Joy Harjo, prize citation

from “The Piano Speaks”
For an hour I forgot my fat self,
my neurotic innards, my addiction to alignment.
For an hour I forgot my fear of rain.
For an hour I was a salamander
shimmying through the kelp in search of shore,
and under his fingers the notes slid loose
from my belly in a long jellyrope of eggs
that took root in the mud.
Learn more about Sandra Beasley and her work at her website and her blog, Chicks Dig Poetry.

Writers Read: Sandra Beasley.