Last modified: October 5, 2020
Kate Keeney| October 6, 2020| Editor Picks, Poetry
There is so much green in the summer.
It is like a book with green pages.
And on the pages a script of green writing.
The words at first are difficult to make out.
But then you see.
The writing says:
In the summer the trees have green eyes.
In the summer the violins are green.
It’s incredibly impressive that a poem manages to use ‘green’ in two-thirds of its lines without a single one feeling stale. The brevity of the poem helps with this, as does the way the language is sparse enough to allow these different uses to shine. Each ‘green’ feels separate from the last, a new hue created by the language around it. The poem almost feels like a form, like the repetition should be part of a larger construction, but instead you end up being consistently surprised by the next piece of the poem. As Fulop says, “The words at first are difficult to make out. / But then you see.”
Bill Wolak, “The Last Promise” phoebe 48.1
Last modified: October 5, 2020