Poetry Magazine
Foreword
I was conceived in the cruelest month
in whatever spring California could muster.
A little rain—with some more likely.
And the buckeyes were they yet on the ground?
Damn my father’s smooth stone eyes,
other prevailing enticements and what Eliot called
the female stench. Damn the oaks,
their histrionics, struggling in the fog.
Spiderwebs lay in the grass, misted
and looking like misspent galaxies.
I cry into and out of this moment.
Pound told Eliot: strike this and this.
What was weak got dropped, and the poem
stood stronger without it.
Source: Poetry (October 2009).
Biography
A.V. Christie is the author of Nine Skies (University of Illinois Press, 1997), which won the National Poetry Series, and The Housing (Ashland Poetry Press, 2004), winner of the McGovern Prize.
Poem Categorization
SUBJECT Living, Birth & Birthdays, Relationships, Love, Men & Women, Family & Ancestors, Arts & Sciences, Poetry & Poets
Poetic Terms Free Verse
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Poem of the Day: Atmosphere
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