~ ONE ART’s Top 10 Most-Read Poets of February 2025 ~
Tag: Joyce Sutphen
Two Poems by Joyce Sutphen
Polar Vortex
That’s when we hear the names of places
never mentioned on the 10 O’clock News:
Tower, Embarrass, Warroad, and Baudette.
Suddenly they are legendary; one after
another they report their astonishing
numbers: -45, -56, -60! How low can
they go? It’s a Polar Vortex! Happens
every twenty or thirty years up here in
the North, and for a few days, it’s all
we talk about. Where were we the last time
the temperature dropped to a gazillion below
zero? Will the Governor close down
the whole state? Will the car start?
Next day, when we hear the schools
and airports are closed, we start to relax.
Nothing is going to happen for a while,
and there’s nothing we love more than that.
*
On Wednesday
When we woke, we heard
the sound of rain—constant rain—
a whisper along the edges of
the roof, a steady threading
through in the air.
We leaned on pillows
and remembered
the night before the night before.
We planned (even though we knew
such things must come as naturally
as leaves to a tree). Then you got
the pangram in one, and the wordle
in two. You beat the bot, but
when the skies cleared, it was just
another day, filled with worries,
little gray donkeys packed and
ready, carrying enough supplies
to last us into winter and beyond.
*
Joyce Sutphen grew up on a farm in Stearns County, Minnesota. Her first book of poetry, Straight Out of View, won the Barnard New Women’s Poets Prize Press,1995). Her second book of poems, Coming Back to the Body (Holy Cow! Press, 2000), was a finalist for a Minnesota Book Award, and her third book, Naming the Stars (Holy Cow! Press, 2004), won the Minnesota Book Award in Poetry. Her recent books are Carrying Water to the Field: New and Selected Poems (University of Nebraska Press, 2019), This Long Winter (Carnegie Mellon Press 2021), and That Other Life (2023). She served as the Minnesota Poet Laureate from 2011 to 2021, succeeding Robert Bly, and she is professor emerita of literature and creative writing at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota.
Two Poems by Joyce Sutphen
Counting My Losses
First I lost a little sleep, lost some
papers, lost the sunglasses
you gave me that were like the ones
I lost in London. That was my deal—
losing mittens, losing keys.
Then I lost interest in theories
and conundrums; I would begin
the latest article on Lacan and find
myself drifting, without whatever
it was that used to make me care.
Along the way I lost my dreams,
my hat, and the sails to the little
boat I kept in the harbor.
I lost my handwriting—which some
said was beautiful but few could read—
and then I began to lose my balance.
I lost my voice and my smile,
lost my place in the line,
in the book I was reading, lost my fear
at the airplane’s open door.
*
Down in the Word
When we turned the corner, we were coming
into words, sprouting syllables the way
branches turn to leaf, and one of us was
humming an old song, something cool, jazzy—
the kind of song that helped us through the last
few years. This is how we began: pulling
chairs up to the table, letting the day
fall away, hearing night come slowly on,
watching words (worlds!) slide down the margins, space
between the stanzas, our breath drawn in lines
of ink, our fingers tapping paragraphs
to the sound of long riffs, tempo set by
the drum that is this room, that is this page
where you listen, playing it over now.
*
Joyce Sutphen grew up on a farm in Stearns County, Minnesota. Her first book of poetry, Straight Out of View, won the Barnard New Women’s Poets Prize Press,1995). Her second book of poems, Coming Back to the Body (Holy Cow! Press, 2000), was a finalist for a Minnesota Book Award, and her third book, Naming the Stars (Holy Cow! Press, 2004), won the Minnesota Book Award in Poetry. Her recent books are Carrying Water to the Field: New and Selected Poems (University of Nebraska Press, 2019), This Long Winter (Carnegie Mellon Press 2021), and That Other Life (2023). She served as the Minnesota Poet Laureate from 2011 to 2021, succeeding Robert Bly, and she is professor emerita of literature and creative writing at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota.
The Basic Plot by Joyce Sutphen
The Basic Plot
I keep forgetting that history
isn’t like the stories I love,
that the man on the scaffold
won’t be reprieved just as
the executioner slips the
black sack over his head—
that Guinevere, tied to the
stake, won’t be rescued by
Lancelot on a white horse,
as the crowd presses in
with all its fiery torches.
And I forget that in real life
things happen that are so
shocking and wrong that—
if I were watching it on
TV—would make me switch
the channel to something more
pleasant. I keep forgetting
that I am not a miracle, that
I have no superpower, and that
all of this has happened before,
and no one has ever survived.
*
Joyce Sutphen is the author of That Other Life (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2023); Modern Love & Other Myths (Red Dragonfly Press, 2015); After Words (Red Dragonfly Press, 2013); and First Words (Red Dragonfly Press, 2010). She teaches at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota, and lives in Chaska, Minnesota.