- As if all physical display…*
As if all physical display were not thatmiracle of intent on that mosaic,our bone tile at the end of the body's firing
the glaze crackling long after that we take as music. the swing low of timetables.
Coltrane can be heardin the silence at the endof one recording to say
help like that. that take of stand to wait for a hand while more hands (practicing) on something
rather than a guess(as of buses & trainsat which people also standing look up
though at differently a mosaic)
an art of it a masteryapproachmakes it not a wait to be completed somewhere
but rather here already touched up
in practice made up all over the place [End Page 640]
Ed Roberson is Distinguished Artist in Residence at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. He is author of eight books of poetry: The New Wing of the Labyrinth (Singing Horse Press, 2009), City Eclogue (Atelos, 2006), Atmosphere Conditions (Sun & Moon Press, 2000; winner of the 2000 National Poetry Award), Just In / Word of Navigational Challenges: New and Selected Poems (Talisman House, 1998), Voices Cast Out to Talk Us In (University of Iowa Press, 1995; winner of the 1994 Iowa Poetry Prize), Lucid Interval as Integral Music (University of Iowa Press, 1995; winner of the Iowa Poetry Prize), Etai-Eken (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1975), and When Thy King Is a Boy (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1970). In 2008, he received the Shelley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America.
Footnotes
* "As if all physical display…" will be published in Ed Roberson's forthcoming volume of poetry, To See the Earth Before the End of the World (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan UP, 2010). Printed with permission from Wesleyan University Press.