The RetroLounge Daily Poem Thread (Mon 5/19/2008)

[RetroLounge]

Anniversary

Didn’t I stand there once,
white-knuckled, gripping the just-lit taper,
swearing I’d never go back?
And hadn’t you kissed the rain from my mouth?
And weren’t we gentle and awed and afraid,
knowing we’d stepped from the room of desire
into the further room of love?
And wasn’t it sacred, the sweetness
we licked from each other’s hands?
And were we not lovely, then, were we not
as lovely as thunder, and damp grass, and flame?

Cecilia Woloch

************************



CECILIA WOLOCH was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and grew up there and in rural Kentucky, one of seven children of a homemaker and an airplane mechanic. She received her MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University L.A. in 1999.

Her books of poems are Sacrifice (Cahuenga Press, 1997), a BookSense 76 selection in 2001; Tsigan: The Gypsy Poem (Cahuenga Press, 2002); and Late (BOA Editions, 2003) for which she was named Georgia Author of the Year in Poetry in 2004. A chapbook manuscript, "Narcissus," was chosen winner of the Tupelo Press Snowbound Competition and will be published in 2007.

She is the founding director of Summer Poetry in Idyllwild and of The Paris Poetry Workshop, and is currently a lecturer in the creative writing program at the University of Southern California as well as a member of the core faculty of the low-residency MFA Program in Professional Writing at Western Connecticut State University.


***********************

:hi:

RL

[lizziegrace]

1. ....

:hug:

My 25th anniversary would have been this Wednesday...

x(

[RetroLounge]

:hug:

RL

[khashka]

2. Beautiful!

I'd never heard of her before, but I want to see more of her work. Thanks, RL.

Khash.

[RetroLounge]

7. I love the fact that the entire poem is Questions...

:hi:

RL

[xchrom]

3. ...

And were we not lovely, then, were we not
as lovely as thunder, and damp grass, and flame?

[Haole Girl]

4. Beautiful and thought-provoking

...as lovely as thunder, and damp grass, and flame?

What a perfect last line for a poem about love.

[RetroLounge]

6. What a perfect last line for a poem about love.

yes, perfect last line.

:hi:

RL

[CaliforniaPeggy]

5. My dear Retro...

Oh, perfect...

I love it!

I have no words for how much I love this one...

Thank you!

:hi: