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Classic and Contemporary Poetry
CHAMBER THICKET, by SHARON OLDS Poem Explanation Poet Analysis Poet's Biography First Line: As we sat at the feet of the string quartet | |||
As we sat at the feet of the string quartet, in their living room, on a winter night, through the hardwood floor spurts and gulps and tips and shudders came up, and the candle-scent air was thick-alive with pearwood, ebony, spruce, poplar, and horse howled, and cat skreeled, and then, when the Grosse Fugue was around us, under us, over us, in us, I felt I was hearing the genes of my birth-family, pulled, keening and grieving and scathing, along each other, scraping and craving, I felt myself held in that woods of hating longing, and I knew and knew myself, and my parents, and their parents, there -- and then, at a distance, I sensed, as if it were thirty years ago, a being, far off yet, oblique-approaching, straying toward, and then not toward, and then toward this place, like a wandering dreaming herdsman, my husband. And I almost wanted to warn him away, to call out to him to go back whence he came, into some calmer life, but his beauty was too moving to me, and I wanted too much to not be alone, in the covert, any more, and so I prayed him come to me, I bid him hasten, and good welcome. Copyright (c) 2001 by The Modern Poetry Association. This poem appears in the August 2001 issue of Poetry Magazine. http://www.poetrymagazine.org | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...COSMOPOLITE by GEORGIA DOUGLAS JOHNSON THE GARDEN BY MOONLIGHT by AMY LOWELL OWEN SEAMAN; ESTABLISHES ENTENE CORDIALE IN MANNER GUY WETMORE CARRYL by LOUIS UNTERMEYER SHIPS THAT PASS IN THE NIGHT by PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR THE LATTER DAY by THOMAS HASTINGS THE MESSAGE, FR. THE FAIR MAID OF THE EXCHANGE by THOMAS HEYWOOD SONNET: ON FAME (1) by JOHN KEATS SOUND THE LOUD TIMBREL; MIRIAM'S SONG by THOMAS MOORE TO QUILCA; A COUNTRY HOUSE IN NO GOOD REPAIR by JONATHAN SWIFT |
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