Everyone sees, feels, responds to the poetry of the world every day. In a sunrise over rooftops, a dogwood in bloom, a child’s bike leaning against a fence, a pair of tennis shoes hanging by their laces from a telephone wire, a moth’s wings spread on the screen door, the sound of a train in the distance, the smell of fresh bread. Everyone falls in love with the world daily and we have no words for what spellbinds us. Poems need to be made to recognize that sense of wordless awe.
~ Dorianne Laux, 5 Questions with Dorianne Laux (Mass Poetry, April 2018)
Notes:
- My favorite Laux poem:
How many losses does it take to stop a heart,
to lay waste to the vocabularies of desire?
Each one came rushing through the rooms he left.
Mouths open. Words flown up into the trees.— Dorianne Laux, closing lines to “Last Words,” in Smoke (BOA Editions, Ltd., 2000)
- Laux Fun Fact: Laux worked as a sanatorium cook, a gas station manager, and a maid before receiving a B.A. in English from Mills College in 1988 and went on to her distinguished career.
- Poem Source: Lines We Live By. Portrait and Interview of Laux: Divedapper (2014)
