Dark. Sweet.

New & Selected Poems

Linda Hogan

• Publisher: Coffee House Press
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781566893510
• eBook ISBN: 9781566893527
• Topic: Literatura
• Subtopic: Poesía

Dark. Sweet. offers readers the sweep of LindaHogan's work—environmental and spiritual concerns, her Chickasaw heritage—in spare, elemental, visionary language.

From "Those Who Thunder":

Those who thunder
have dark hair
and red throw rugs.
They burn paper in bathroom sinks.
Their voices refuse to suffer
and their silences know the way
straight to the heart;
it's bus route number eight.

Linda Hogan is the recipient of the 2007 Mountains and Plains Booksellers Spirit of the West Literary Achievement Award. She is also a recipient of the 2016 PEN New England Henry David Thoreau Prize. Her poetry has received an American Book Award, Colorado Book Award, and a National Book Critics Circle nomination.

Dark. Sweet.

(NEW POEMS)

1. The Unseen

The Unseen

If you think I am going to write about someone’s god,

that’s a mistake. I am sitting by wild strawberries

not yet blooming. An emerald-green frog believes it can’t be seen

under the leaf. The insects it wants sing, also unseen,

and mourning doves in the distance

think I am not here with a silent song,

not even to interrupt morning’s eye wide open.

In the very near water, even with open eyes

I missed the leap. Fish, I didn’t see you, either.

The reeds grow and I am missing that, as well,

and the animal that just broke a fallen twig.

On the large stone is a petroglyph

of a mountain goat. It is covered with lichen

and barely visible like the moth that appears to be stone,

in its refuge.

I see so little and know so little.

Perhaps that is a kind of wisdom,

but, if nothing else, at the very least

I am not alone in the world

of the unseen.

Bringers of Happiness

This dawn the lightning-struck tree grew new green leaves

as if overnight was an awakening.

How nourishing, how alive for us,

the intimacy of our days and nights.

Also, how frail it had gathered

the ecstatic beauty and strength

that had not lived for many years.

We have to believe in earth miracles.

Even the honey in trees beyond here.

The wisdom traditions will tell you all

it is there like the infinite truth of your soul, and it is.

I’ve had to start new lives

whether on earth, in body

or bones of other dimensions,

even new bonds with the spirit world

and I know the scar, like on the tree,

and how it mends,

some unknown bringers of happiness

filling the space between the broken,

filling the missing,

the emptiness.

To Be Held

To be held

by the light

was what I wanted,

to be a tree drinking the rain,

no longer parched in this hot land,

roots in a tunnel growing,

but also to shelter the inborn leaves

and the green slide of mineral

down the immense distances

into infinite comfort

and the land here, only clay

that still contains and consumes

the thirsty need

the way a tree always does shelter the unborn life

waiting for the healing

after the storm

which has been our life.

Maps

I have always lived in towns

not on maps.

Search, it is the only way

I have found these places myself.

The nea...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedications
• Contents
• from Calling Myself Home (1978)
• from Eclipse (1983)
• from Seeing through the Sun (1985)
• from Savings (1988)
• from The Book of Medicines (1993)
• from Rounding the Human Corners (2008)
• Indios (2012)
• Dark. Sweet. (New Poems)
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author