A. Anupama
Our dogwood tree has already set its fists for next spring’s blossoms. I don’t want to believe that autumn is so near. But I try to convince myself of the truth with a painting. I wanted to copy the beautiful tree in the center of this folio page, which was painted in Herat in the…
If suns grew in a field together, would they get along? If stars fell into fields, would we memorialize them? If the crescent moon mowed the field, what kind of hay would that make? Poems are made of heat, light, consciousness. On a hot day in August like this, maybe poems get lost. Maybe in…
I’m figuring out how to play “Blackbird” on guitar. It makes me feel like a cicada— sounding a bit awful, but feeling happy to spend time in musical daylight, sound spheres. Of course, this song is about night and the light it contains. Outside my window, fireflies move in wide arcs in the rough breezes…
My older daughter is a real entomophobe, and she protested by loud wailings my choice of subject for yesterday’s painting. I had said “dragonfly” and so I agreed that it did sound scary. Is “damselfly” more charming? They are, in fact, two different types of creatures in the order Odonata. But maybe they occupy a…
I like to think of literature and the creative writing process itself as a type of habitat for emotions. We can reserve a space of quiet, practice the discipline of gardeners, and protect our observational vantage points from those who might disturb the sanctuary. But does anyone know where an emotion comes from or where…
A little bit of poetry is often much better than a lot of it. I think this is because of the space it leaves for your own silence and inner eye to work. We exchange with one another one long and secret gaze of grief, neither idle nor reckless.From the poem titled “Shahrazad” in Saffron…
I pulled over while driving home to take this photo of sunflowers yesterday morning. A moment like that gives joy because one pauses for beauty. Just now, as I sit here in my porch-office, a couple of fawns charged ahead of their mother into the back garden’s open glen between maple trees. Now they have…
Happily, beautiful weather as the New York City Poetry Festival celebrates its 10th anniversary this weekend. Even my kids wanted to check it out… My favorite discovery today was the singer Ganavya Doraiswamy, who performed alongside headlining poet Kaveh Akbar. Her music walks gracefully between Carnatic and Western music, as in this YouTube video I…
My son’s supervisor at his summer internship in New Jersey is Indian, and suddenly my son says to me that he’d like to read more about India. His aim, I suppose, is to have more to talk about at work. But, being the ever-annoying poet-mom, I replied, “you can always know more about India, but…
Now everybody is a poet. After this year-and-a-half of pandemic suffering, social activism, and climate catastrophe, who among us hasn’t reflected very, very extensively on death, justice, and the nature of life itself? That’s exactly what makes people into poets. Of course, there’s also our predisposition to staring off into space, along with a strict,…
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