This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, April 18, 2011 -This month's poem should help usher in spring with all it's tentative and transitory beauty. "Birthday" also casts a sensual yet unflinching eye on our short lives, placing its spring kingdom here on earth.
Birthday
A current strokes the pear tree and a fall
of petals feathers the asphalt
and confettis my hair. The afternoon
is full of exuberant ruin,
of beauty dissolved in the pushing forth
of small hard fruit. In the old story
a sparrow crosses the mead hall, then flies
out the other window: that's life,
a frantic flight across a crackling room
where the clan feasts, harps gleam and the storm
is carefully forgotten. From dark freeze
to freezing dark. But in between
this gorgeous kingdom. The transitory.
--from A Sunday in God-Years, University of Arkansas Press, 2009
Michelle Boisseau's newest book of books of poems, "A Sunday in God-Years" (University of Arkansas Press, 2009), was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. She has received two awards from The Poetry Society of America and a fellowship from the NEA in 1989, and in 2010. She is professor of English at the University of Missouri-Kansas City where she is also an editor of BkMk Press.
Boisseau will read from her poetry at 7:30 p.m. April 18 at Duff's restaurant, 392 N. Euclid ($5).
To learn more about River Styx, click here. Richard Newman, River Styx editor for 15 years, is the author of two full-length poetry collections, "Borrowed Towns" and "Domestic Fugues." He also co-directs the River Styx at Duff's reading series.