Melissa Kwasny is the author of four books of poetry, most recently The Nine Senses (Milkweed Editions, 2011). Her prose collection, Earth Recitals: Essays on Image and Vision, was recently published by Lynx House Press (2013). She lives in western Montana.
Poetry
Fall 2013
Letter to the Soul
After a series of photographs of Kazuo Ohno taken by Eikoh Hosoe, Hokkaido, Japan, 1994. 1. I watch the butoh dancer fall, layer by layer through the worlds, until […]
Poetry
Winter 2011
Talk to the Golden Birches
Peppered with mold and myrrh, clawed like cloud-strips, they grow in the copse on the hill. The first one I found, lying on its side, the next half-covered with moss. […]
Poetry
Winter 2011
The Butterfly Conservatory
The colored lights they are always stringing. The placemats they set. How I stay past an initial shyness at my own delight. A Large White dies, bodiless, a papyrus with […]
Poetry
Winter 2011
Talk to the Water Dipper
I hear it fall and then its shuffling in the unburned paper of the last fire. Do you have a story about a chimney and a bird? Because here I […]
Poetry
Spring 2009
The Lights of Earth
After Gina Berriault We have felt them land, fragile, ornate as Venetian glass. Arm in arm, how they broke between the rains. Into a small pond with mallards. A passel […]
Poetry
Spring 2009
At the Shore
Clouds, all hovering. Yesterday, like a gull’s wing. Soft as the tiniest bird eating thistle. Today, slick as a coot. Hissing like asphalt. Cleared of incense. One could write a […]
Poetry
Spring 2009
Winter Bouquet
After Morris Graves Winter bouquet (yellow carnations). Winter still life (pomegranate drawn with the figures of a dream). The tiniest fleck of rock the wind tears off. I think of […]
Poetry
Spring 2009
Woman inside a Tree
After a film by Shirin Neshat In the Iranian movie, the woman who stands inside the tree doesn’t wake. Like the butterfly, she is dreaming the world, or she is […]
Melissa Kwasny
Melissa Kwasny is the author of four books of poetry, most recently The Nine Senses (Milkweed Editions, 2011). Her prose collection, Earth Recitals: Essays on Image and Vision, was recently […]