Some Say the Lark

Jennifer Chang

• Publisher: Alice James Books
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781938584718
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: American Poetry
• Index: Literature

" Some Say the Lark is a piercing meditation, rooted in loss and longing, and manifest in dazzling leaps of the imagination—the familiar world rendered strange." —Natasha Trethewey

Chang’s poems narrate grief and loss, and intertwines them with hope for a fresh start in the midst of new beginnings. With topics such as frustration with our social and natural world, these poems openly question the self and place and how private experiences like motherhood and sorrow necessitate a deeper engagement with public life and history.

From "The Winter's Wife":

I want wild roots to prosper
an invention of blooms, each unknown
to every wise gardener. If I could be
a color. If I could be a question
of tender regard. I know crabgrass
and thistle. I know one algorithm:
it has nothing to do with repetition
or rhythm. It is the route from number
to number (less to more, more
to less), a map drawn by proof
not faith. Unlike twilight, I do not
conclude with darkness. I conclude.

Jennifer Chang is the author of The History of Anonymity, which was a finalist for the Glasgow/Shenandoah Prize for Emerging Writers and listed by Hyphen Magazine as a Top Five Book of Poetry for 2008. Her poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Best American Poetry 2012, The Nation, Poetry, A Public Space, and elsewhere. She is an assistant professor of English and Creative Writing at George Washington University and lives in Washington, DC with her family.

1

A HORSE NAMED NEVER

At the stables, each stall was labeled with a name.

Biscuit stood aloof—I faced always, invariably, his clockwork tail.

Crab knew the salt lick too well.

Trapezoid mastered stillness: a midnight mare, she was sternest and

tallest, her chest stretched against the edges of her stall.

I was not afraid of Never, the chestnut gelding, so rode his iron

haunches as far as Panther Gap.

Never and I lived in Virginia then.

We could neither flee nor be kept.

Seldom did I reach the little mountain without him, the easy crests

making valleys of indifferent grasses.

What was that low sound I heard, alone with Never?

A lone horse, a lodestar, a habit of fear.

We think of a horse less as the history of one man and his sorrows than as the

history of a whole evil time.

I fed him odd lettuce, abundant bitterness.

Who wore the bit and harness, who was the ready steed.

Or: I think there be six Nevers in the field.

He took the carrot, words by my own reckoning, an account of creeks

and oyster catchers.

I named my account “Notes on the State of Virginia.”

It was bred for show and not to race.

Never, I cried, Never.

Were I more horse than rider, I would better understand the beast I am.

Our hoof-house rested at the foot of the mountain, on which rested

another house more brazen than statuary.

Let it be known: I first mistook gelding for gilding.

I am the fool that has faith in Never.

Somewhere, a gold door burdened with apology refuses all mint from

the yard.

THE WINTER’S WIFE

It will be years before I understand

failure. The sun’s last rage

in the winter trees. My yard

is a failure of field. It is small

and poorly tended. Years before

this hard kernel of worry

rises to a truer height, I can learn

to make shade with my palms,

but I cannot learn to unmoor my want.

I want wild roots to prosper

an invention of blooms, each unknown

to every wise gardener. If I could be

a color. If I could be a question

of tender regard. I know crabgrass

and thistle. I know one algorithm:

it has nothing to do with repetition

or rhythm. It is the route from number

to number (less to more, more

to less), a map drawn by proof,

not faith. Unlike twilight, I do not

conclude with darkness. I conclude.

THERE ARE TOO MANY OTHER BIRDS TO WRITE ABOUT

at the grave of Edith Lewis, longtime

companion to Willa Cather

Loyal stone,

I never knew you. In the city, I was a Nebraska.

I also had an ending. I swept the sky

one lousy hurt after another, dying to become

a newer field. My guts vast, impossible.

This is not autobiography. I have no memories.

I found you sleeping past the twentieth century,

where desire begins at curiosity and the balladeers

are kiting checks for unwritten songs. O, America,

you once sang, why? You trained it from New York

to Santa Fe, your love never quite measuring 3,000 miles,

and that’s marriage, and that’s death. O, America.

I’ll never go far enough—wanting one man, then

another, believing every state bird

is the cardinal. For the cardinals wake me every morning

with one stuttering ...