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   from the issue of September 15, 2005

     
 
American Life in Poetry

 BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE

In this poem by New York poet Martin Walls, a common insect is described and made vivid for us through a number of fresh and engaging comparisons. Thus an ordinary insect becomes something remarkable and memorable.


Cicadas at the End of Summer

Whine as though a pine tree is bowing a broken violin,

As though a bandsaw cleaves a thousand thin sheets of titanium;

They chime like freight wheels on a Norfolk Southern slowing into town.

But all you ever see is the silence.

Husks, glued to the underside of maple leaves.

With their nineteen fifties Bakelite lines they'd do

just as well hanging from the ceiling of a space museum

What cicadas leave behind is a kind of crystallized memory;

The stubborn detail of, the shape around a life turned

The color of forgotten things: a cold broth of tea and milk

in the bottom of a mug.

Or skin on an old tin of varnish you have to lift with lineman's pliers.

A fly paper that hung thirty years in Bird Cooper's pantry

in Brighton.



Reprinted from "Small Human Detail in Care of National Trust," New Issues Press, Western Michigan University, 2000, by permission of the author. Poem copyright (c) by Martin Walls, a 2005 Wytter Bynner Fellow of the Library of Congress. His latest collection "Commonwealth" is available from March Street Press. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the UNL Department of English. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.


GO TO: ISSUE OF SEPTEMBER 15

ARTS HEADLINES FOR SEPTEMBER 15

Carson's name officially added to Department of Theatre Arts
American Life in Poetry
Baby Needs Shoes to open Lied's Free at 6
Filmmaker to appear at Ross
Hillestad opens two new exhibitions
Lentz Visit
Lied hosts benefit concert Sept. 18
'Rock for Relief' is Sept. 15
Ross among 11 to show Latinbeat film festival
Theatrix presents The Shadow Box
Weaver Exhibition at Sheldon

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