Sandra Beasley tagged me with this meme:
“Here are five poetry collections you may not have read but certainly must. (Note: The collections, for whatever reason, should be a bit off the beaten path. And need not have caused the earth to open and swallow you whole.)”
This is my second choice out of the five.
Supernatural Love by Gjertrud Schnackenberg
Here are the first several stanzas of the title poem:
My father at the dictionary-stand
Touches the page to fully understand
The lamplit answer, tilting in his hand
His slowly scanning magnifying lens,
A blurry, glistening circle he suspends
Above the word “Carnation.” Then he bends
So near his eyes are magnified and blurred,
One finger on the miniature word,
As if he touched a single key and heard
A distant, plucked, infinitesimal string,
“The obligation due to every thing
That’s smaller than the universe.” I bring
My sewing meedle close enough that I
Can watch my father through the needle’s eye,
As through a lens ground for a butterfly…
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Schnackenberg is such a fine writer. Good choice. I’ve always been partial to A Gilded Lapse of Time. Thanks for the post.
Ah! Supernatural Love is an absolute favorite poem of mine!