Window Left Open: Poems - Softcover

Grotz, Jennifer

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1555977308 ISBN 13: 9781555977306

Publisher: Graywolf Press, 2016

Synopsis

The poppies are wild, they are only beautiful and tall
so long as you do not cut them,
they are like the feral cat who purrs and rubs against your leg
but will scratch you if you touch back.
Love is letting the world be half-tamed.
--from "Poppies"

In this lush, intricately crafted collection, Jennifer Grotz explores how we can become strange to ourselves through escape, isolation, desire--and by leaving the window open. These poems are full of the sensory pleasures of the natural world and a slowed-down concept of time as Grotz records the wonders of travel, a sojourn at a French monastery, and the translation of thoughts into words, words into another language, language into this remarkable poetry. Window Left Open is a beautiful and resounding book, one that traces simultaneously the intimacy and the vastness of the world.

About this title

About the Author

Jennifer Grotz is the award-winning author of two previous poetry collections, The Needle and Cusp. Her poetry has appeared in The New Republic, The New Yorker, and Best American Poetry. She teaches at the University of Rochester.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Window Left Open

Poems

By Jennifer Grotz

GRAYWOLF PRESS

Copyright © 2016 Jennifer Grotz
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-55597-730-6

Contents

one, 
The Forest, 5, 
Locked, 6, 
The Snow Apples, 7, 
Snow, 8, 
Snowflakes, 11, 
On the Library Steps, 12, 
The Whole World Is Gone, 13, 
Denial, 14, 
Listening, 16, 
Hangover in Paris, 18, 
Watchmaker, 19, 
Self-Portrait on the Street of an Unnamed Foreign City, 20, 
Edinburgh Meditation, 22, 
The Broom, 26, 
two, 
The Mountain, 29, 
Scorpion, 31, 
Dragonfly and Wasp, 33, 
They Come the Way Flowers Do, 35, 
The Fog, 36, 
Apricots, 38, 
Sundials, 39, 
A Poem about a Peacock, 40, 
Cherries, 42, 
The Piano on Top of the Alps, 44, 
Window Left Open, 45, 
Poppies, 46, 

CHAPTER 1

    The Forest


    During the day I have watched them stand around and chew the yellow grass,
    the longsuffering cows. Sometimes steam comes from their nostrils.
    I have also visited them at night, seen an entire herd standing
    in the rain, as unreacting as the trees behind them
    when the jitter of flashlight warned of my approach.

    Those were the cows in the field by the forest, and those
    were the days when going outside felt like going inside.
    There was the sound of a woodpecker pecking, and that was a kind of
    knocking. And the sound of the pine trees creaking, and that was
    a kind of door. And so you could enter the forest,
    and although each moment you trespassed further
    became more tense, it only lasted until you could no longer see the road.

    Then you would be inside, on a kind of unending
    staircase of roots worn silver like the soldered iron
    that holds stained glass together. From a distance, it would be
    mountains, but up close, under the arrows, spears, and ropes of trees,
    it was a forest floor, palatial leaf-meal mosaics on the ground.
    There was a little carpet of stream so clogged with leaves

    it had stopped being a stream. And such a surfeit of silence,
    it had become a kind of sound
    to which, for a while, you could pay attention. Though
    it's inaccurate, I want to say it was like staring at a light.
    All you could do was sense it; then you had to recover,
    by which I mean to wait for everything to grow dim again.
    Then the mind was the only flashlight,
    a little bobbing beam that would illuminate
    randomly and too little.


    Locked

    And yes it is necessary to admit
    walking in the forest
    the heart is a lock

    it has inviolable chambers
    like the woods fallen trees
    that block

    access to the river
    snowdrops surp

Edition details

• Publisher: Graywolf Press
• Publication date: 2016
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1555977308
• ISBN 13: 9781555977306
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 72