Ellen Bryant Voigt’s eighth volume of poetry, Headwaters, was published in 2013. “Rubato” appeared in Messenger: New and Selected Poems 1976-2006, which was a finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. She has also published The Flexible Lyric, a collection of essays on craft, and The Art of Syntax: Rhythm of Thought, Rhythm of Song, and teaches in the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers.
Poetry
Winter 2007
Rubato
1. For the action: hammers of walnut—nussbaum, "nut tree"; the pinblock, hard-grained beech; the keyframe, oak; the keybed, pine; the knuckles, rosewood. In the belly, to ripen the tone, maple, […]
Poetry
Winter 2005
Harvesting the Cows
Stringy, skittery, thistle-burred, rib-etched, they’re like a pack of wolves lacking a sheep but also lacking the speed, the teeth, the wits— they’re heifers culled from the herd, not worth […]
Nonfiction
Summer 2004
On and off the Grid: Syntax, Part II
This essay continues the examination of syntax in English-language poetry, begun in “Rhythm of Thought, Rhythm of Sung,” published in this magazine, Volume XXV4 No. 1, Winter 2003. “Vocal” […]
Nonfiction
Winter 2003
Syntax: Rhythm of Thought, Rhythm of Song
The best time to visit doting literate parents and their first child is between years one and two. They won’t ask you to change the diaper, and you’ll see confirmed […]
Poetry
Winter 2002
Apple Tree
No choice for the apple tree. And after the surgeon's chainsaw, from one stubbon root two plumes of tree now leaf and even blossom, sky's cool blue between them, whereas […]
Nonfiction
Summer/Fall 1999
The Flexible Lyric
These days, when genre seems a relic of simpler times, one would hardly blink at Polonius’ oxymoronic blurb— “pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, tragical-historical, tragical-comical-historical-pastoral.” This flurry of terms, for instance, concludes a […]
Book Reviews
Summer 1987
Poetry and Gender
The belief that true poetry is genderless–which is a disguised form of believing that true poetry is masculine–means that we have not learned to see women poets generically, to recognize […]