Magnetic North: Poems

By Linda Gregerson

This stunning collection from the award-winning poet Linda Gregerson examines the intersections of history, science, and art.
Touching on subjects as diverse as a breakthrough discovery in cell biology and the films of Ingmar Bergman, the anatomy of a possum and the Nazi occupation of Poland, Gregerson seeks to distill “the shape of the question,” the tenuous connection between knowing and suffering, between the brightness of the body and the shadows of the mind. “Choose any angle you like,” she writes, “the world is split in two.” Longtime readers of Gregerson’s poetry will be fascinated by her departure from the supple tercets in which she has worked for nearly twenty years: Magnetic North is a bold anthology of formal experiments. It is also a heartening act of sustained attention from one of our most mindful American poets.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Nov 6, 2008
• ISBN: 9780547754307

Book preview

A MARINER BOOK

Houghton Mifflin Company

Boston • New York

First Mariner Books edition 2008

Copyright © 2007 by Linda Gregerson

All rights reserved

For information about permission to reproduce selections from

this book, write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Company,

215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.

www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Gregerson, Linda.

Magnetic north / Linda Gregerson.

p. cm.

ISBN-13: 978-0-618-71870-2

ISBN-10: 0-618-71870-2

I. Title.

PS3557.R425M34 2007

811'.54—dc22 2006035476

ISBN: 978-0-547-08576-0 (pbk.)

Printed in the United States of America

Book design by Robert Overholtzer

EB-L 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Grateful acknowledgment to the editors of the following publications,

in which these poems first appeared: Atlantic Monthly: Bright Shadow.

Kenyon Review: Bicameral, "The Burning of Madrid as Seen from

the Terrace of My House, Prodigal, Over Easy." Laurel Review:

"De Magnete. New England Review: Dido in Darkness, The

Turning, The Chapel Doom" Ploughshares: Make-Falcon. Poetry:

Father Mercy, Mother Tongue, "My Father Comes Back from the

Grave, Sweet, Spring Snow." Slate: At the Window. Smartish

Place: Another Diana. TriQuarterly: Elegant, No Lion, No Moon.

Elegant was commissioned by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation

and published in Wild Reckoning: An Anthology Provoked by Rachel

Carson's "Silent Spring, "ed. John Burnside and Maurice Riordan.

London: Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, 2004. Make-Falcon was

adapted by Susan Botti as a composition for voices, harps, piano, and

percussion and was performed as a work-in-progress at the American

Academy in Rome on May 27, 2006. Bicameral and Elegant were

reprinted in American Alphabets: Twenty-five Contemporary Poets, ed.

David Walker. Oberlin, Ohio: Oberlin College Press, 2006, 168–84.

To the University of Michigan's Institute for the Humanities, and

to John Rich, warm gratitude for a fellowship that enabled me to

work for a blessed year on the present volume.

These poems (and their author) have benefited immeasurably from

the friendship of three impeccable and generous readers: David Baker,

Michael Collier, and Rosanna Warren. Bountiful thanks to them

and, always, to Steven.

For my mother,

Karen Mildred Gregerson

Contents

[>] Sweet

[>] Bicameral

[>] Spring Snow

[>] Make-Falcon

[>] Bright Shadow

[>] The Burning of Madrid as Seen from the Terrace of My House

[>] Father Mercy, Mother Tongue

[>] At the Window

[>] The Chapel Doom

[>] The Turning

[>] De Magnete

[>] Another Diana

[>] No Lion, No Moon

[>] My Father Comes Back from the Grave

[>] Over Easy

[>] Prodigal

[>] Dido in Darkness

[>] Elegant