So Graven

By Josephine Miles 1911–1985 Josephine Miles

Simplicity so graven hurts the sense.

The monumental and the simple break

And the great tablets shatter down in deed.

Every year the quick particular jig

Of unresolved event moves in the mind,

And there's the trick simplicity has to win.

Josephine Miles, “So Graven” from Collected Poems. Copyright � 1983 by Josephine Miles. Reprinted with the permission of the University of Illinois Press.

Source: Collected Poems 1930-83 (1983)

Biography

Lifelong California resident Josephine Miles distinguished herself as an educator, spending her entire academic career at the University of California, Berkeley, where she was the first woman to be tenured in the English department. She is remembered as the editor of anthologies and critical texts, as an author of books on poetic style and language, and as an award-winning poet who produced over a dozen books of poems. Her . . .

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