#springing

Today, former New Yorker poetry editor and Elizabeth Bishop scholar Alice Quinn (also the editor of our 2020 anthology of pandemic poetry) offers her pick from the Knopf backlist: a poem by Marie Ponsot (1919-2019). Alice writes: “Elements of Ponsot’s classic style–her purity of diction, her fierce and tender feeling–are abundantly on view in this poem evoking her mother, her childhood, and the journey of her spirit. A word in the poem is key, too, in an interview she gave describing the artistic discipline she established in her life of immense parental responsibility, raising seven children on her own after divorce, years in which she also taught at Queens College: ‘I wrote ten minutes a day. I did it as if it were Commandment No. 1. . . . Anyone can write a line of poetry. Try. That’s my word: try.’ ”

As Is

Objects new to this place, I receive you. It was I who sent for each of you. The house of my mother is empty. I have emptied it of all her things. The house of my mother is sold with All its trees and their usual tall music. I have sold it to the stranger, The architect with three young children.

Things of the house of my mother, You are many. My house is Poor compared to yours and hers. My poor house welcomes you. Come to rest here. Be at home. Please Do not be frantic do not Fly whistling up out of your places. You, floor- and wall-coverings, be Faithful in flatness; lie still; Try. By light or by dark There is no going back. You, crystal bowls, electrical appliances, Velvet chair and walnut chair, You know your uses; I wish you well. My mother instructed me in your behalf. I have made room for you. Most of you Knew me as a child; you can tell We need not be afraid of each other.

And you, old hopes of the house of my mother, Farewell.

More on this book and author:

Learn more about Springing and other books by Marie Ponsot.

Learn about Together In a Sudden Strangeness: America’s Poets Respond to the Panemic, edited by Alice Quinn.

Visit our Tumblr to peruse poems, audio recordings, and broadsides in the Knopf poem-a-day series.

There was a definite theme to our obstacle course attendance