The Round World

By Rosmarie Waldrop b. 1935 Rosmarie Waldrop

nature’s inside, says Cézanne and

frightening

I do not like the fleshy

echo

even so, it is

after this close proof

vision is made

of matter

another mirror

it’s possible

the eye knows

even where there should have been a lake

this optic an illusion

look

at the cat, his changing

shapes

a habit

light

color

composition

the subject more than meets the

situation, always

looking

at our own eye

Rosmarie Waldrop, "The Round World" 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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