To the Wren

Collected & New Poems

Jane Mead

• Publisher: Alice James Books
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781948579018
• eBook ISBN: 9781948579575
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: American Poetry
• Index: Literature

"Mead... wrote clean, spare, often elegiac lines"— The New York Times

This massive collection houses Mead’s life’s work: seven books spanning twenty-seven years. Follow chronologically through decades and become captivated by heartfelt muses on loss, madness, danger, grief, isolation, and self-identity. Her poems explore spaces we often try to ignore and finds a comfortable middleground. Mead candidly and openly weaves together pain and joy until it meshes into glimpses of humanity.

HOUSE OF POURED-OUT WATERS

For Parry and for Whit —

For my mother

Do the bones cast out their fire?

—Theodore Roethke, “The Lost Son”

1

TO BREAK THE SPELL IS TO INVITE CHAOS INTO THE UNIVERSE

It would be easier

if I did not exist—

but I did. It would be

easier if there were

nothing left, but there is—

mementos weeded down to

how to miss the out-juttings

below the cliff, ocean

behind all the doors and windows.

Ocean,—and the watery sky.

On the cliff-face the swallow

is making her home of mud and feathers.

Out of mud and feathers

she makes a home.

Earth or music?

The music as the earth: just so:

The horizon beyond the horizon—.

THE FUTURE

As a child, who you were

was located in the future—

right? Now where is

your existence. In

there were dogs—

then we buried them?

Berries, so we put them

in jars? There were

guns, so we fired them

at one another, or didn’t—.

Just as the scene was predicted?

Just as the act was forewritten?

RATHER

Rather, we must begin

way before here. To believe

is not so easy. Paragraph

after paragraph of rain

was the right thing.

There are children standing

like numb pigeons

in every paragraph—

just watching us.

See, they were not bees at all.

Instead—we are responsible for them.

We said, sunlit passages

we can’t describe, we said,

blackout. We said,

put out the fiasco.

They said, we are the fiasco.

We never said children once.

They stood in the heavy downpour,

paragraph after paragraph,

their true mittens hanging from their sleeves—

little red embassies.

AND ALL THESE THINGS ARE SO

If the trees are alive

and I am alive,

if the trees are blazing,

and the seagull—flying

between the grass and sun—

makes a shadow,

if the sky startles me,

if my soul is listening, waiting

for something to fly

from the bony cage of my hands—

then how can it be,

how can it be, that when I raise them

and make the motions of blossoming

they are empty?

LACK, THE OWL

Look early, look late.

Look up to fate—

magnify the moment.

Get the gist of it—

magnify the gist of it.—

Where the owl complains.

The owl in the night, complaining.

Who said he speaks to you?

Who said he speaks into night?

Who said he complains.

Define an act of betrayal?

Define an act of faith.

Magnify the moment.

Too much like a wing?

Too much like a shadow?

Too much like fate.—

Exercise the owl sound.

Repel doubt.

Too early. Too late.

THE WORLD

remaining central, there is

some knowledge we do not

debate: a child is born

to his body the day he is

born, for example, or

the sky’s felt time

seems like mourning:

the grasshoppers are anonymous

to the anonymous, the birds

are always at attendance.

There comes a moment

when you see as the crow sees:

the body as slaughterhouse,

as beggar—in the long grass, kneeling.

BUT WHAT IF, AS IS

often the case, it takes

months, years even, for that

specific tree to finish

falling, and furthermore

all during that t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• A Truck Marked Flammable (1991)
• The Lord and the General Din of the World (1996)
• House of Poured-Out Waters (2001)
• The Usable Field (2008)
• Money Money Money | Water Water Water (2014)
• World of Made and Unmade (2016)
• New Poems (2019)
• Notes & Acknowledgements
• Index of Titles
• Index of First Lines
• About the Author