The Senses Barely or The Necessities of Life

By Rosmarie Waldrop b. 1935 Rosmarie Waldrop

for Sophie Hawkes

I (Weapons)

doubled corners

of the situation

the words duped by this dialectic

know

the pose of “brushing against”

insistence

on detail

severe eyelashes

the weapons must

be kept in order

(take the

game

of courtesy

of charm)

her knees crossed

over the manner of

his undressing her

a chord

(deceptively resonant)

a strength of image

but scanty provisions interrupt

her concerns for doors

into sleep

focuses

the story can be carried in two hands

finale:

I have turned on

with shifting strands

of light

Rosmarie Waldrop, "Like Holderlin" from Another Language: Selected Poems. Copyright © 1997 by Rosmarie Waldrop. Reprinted by permission of Rosmarie Waldrop.

Source: Another Language: Selected Poems (Talisman House Publishers, 1997)

Biography

Poet, translator, and editor Rosmarie Waldrop has been a forceful presence in American and international poetry for over forty years. Born in Germany in 1935, Waldrop studied literature and musicology at the University of Würzburg and the University of Freiburg before immigrating to the United States in the late 1950s. She received a PhD from the University of Michigan in 1966. While at the University of Michigan, Waldrop . . .

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