Poem-a-Day - "Short Talk on Pain" by Anne Carson

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August 25, 2023 

Short Talk on Pain

Anne Carson

Lawns  and  fields  and  hills  and  wide  old   velvet
sleeves, green things.  They stretch, fold, roll away,
unfurl  and  calm the  eye.  Look  lush  in paintings.
Battles are fought on greens.  Or  you could spread
a meal  and  sup.  How  secretly  they  lie,  floors  of
distant forests.  Next  comes  the grave,  in  many a
poem about green. But this is not a poem. This is a
billboard for frozen green peas.  Frozen green peas
are good for pain.

Copyright © 2023 by Anne Carson. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on August 25, 2023, by the Academy of American Poets. 

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“This box is for a statement about the Poem.
Surely a poem is what remains unboxed.
And although the first sentence above may sound merely procedural,
yet you see its necessity for appreciating the second sentence.
On the untidy border between those two
lies everything you want the Day to give you.
I hope it does.”
—Anne Carson

Anne Carson
Anne Carson is the author of several poetry collections, including Wrong Norma (New Directions, 2023). She currently lives in Iceland.

Wrong Norma
Wrong Norma
(New Directions, 2023)

from “Goodbye” by Chelsey Minnis
read more
“Hospital: strange lights” by Jean Valentine
read more

Thanks to Divya Victor, author of Curb (Nightboat Books, 2021), who curated Poem-a-Day for this month’s weekdays. Read or listen to a Q&A about Victor’s curatorial approach and find out more about our guest editors for the year.
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