Brenda Shaughnessy

Brenda Shaughnessy is the author of five poetry collections, including The Octopus Museum (2019, Knopf); So Much Synth (2016, Copper Canyon Press); Our Andromeda (2012), which was a finalist for the Kingsley Tufts Award, The International Griffin Prize, and the PEN Open Book Award. Her work has appeared in Best American Poetry, Harpers, The New York Times, The New Yorker, O Magazine, Paris Review, Poetry Magazine, and elsewhere. Recent collaborative projects include writing a libretto for a Mass commissioned by Trinity Church Wall Street for composer Paola Prestini, and a poem-essay for the exhibition catalog for Toba Khedoori’s solo retrospective show at LACMA. A 2013 Guggenheim Foundation Fellow, she is Associate Professor of English and Creative Writing at Rutgers University-Newark. She lives in Verona NJ with her family. Source

The Poets Are Dying

It seems impossible

they seemed immortal.

Where are they going

if not to their next poems?

Poems that, like lives, make do

and make that doing do more—-

holding a joly like a newborn,

a volta turning toward a god-load

of grief dumped from some heaven

where words rain down

and the poet is soaked. Cold

to the bone, we’ve become. Thick-

headed, death-bedded, heartsick.

Poets. Flowers picked, candles wicked,

forgiving everyone they tricked.

Published:

2019

Length:

Shorty

Literary Movements:

Contemporary

Anthology Years:

2022

Themes:

Ars Poetica