Iowa Writes

MARY JANE WHITE
Good Riddance to Those Years


For James Wright

Eighty, eighty-two, when you and Hugo died,
And Kinnell leaned in and read
From each of you—
And then from Patrick Kavenaugh—
Two poems, I remember, and
Can—give me a moment—find:
                           
One, In Memory of My Mother, so I
Do not think of you lying in the wet clay;
And O, commemorate me where there is water
Which also recalls you in so stilly
Greeny at the heart of summer, and even faintly
In the form of address: Brother,

And in the description that follows
As a brief disparagement of prose:
A swan goes by head low with many apologies.

About Iowa Writes

Since 2006, Iowa Writes has featured the work of Iowa-identified writers (whether they have Iowa roots or live here now) and work published by Iowa journals and publishers on The Daily Palette. Iowa Writes features poetry, fiction, or nonfiction twice a week on the Palette.

In November of 2008, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) designated Iowa City, Iowa, the world's third City of Literature, making the community part of the UNESCO Creative Cities Network.

Iowa City has joined Edinburgh, Scotland and Melbourne, Australia as UNESCO Cities of Literature.

Find out more about submitting by contacting iowa-writes@uiowa.edu


MARY JANE WHITE

Mary Jane White has practiced law in Northeast Iowa for 27 years. She is also a 1977 graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop and the recipient of a 1979 National Endowment for the Arts grant, and a 1985 National Endowment for the Arts translation grant to translate the Russian poet Marina Tsvetaeva (1892-1941). Her translation of Tsvetaeva's elegy for Rilke is forthcoming in 2007 from Adastra Press.

This page was first displayed
on February 28, 2007

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