Poem of the Week | June 15, 2015
Eric Pankey: "Speculation on Suffering"
This week we’re delighted to feature a new poem by Eric Pankey. Pankey is the author of ten collections of poetry. His next collection Crow-Work is forthcoming from Milkweed Editions. He is currently the Heritage Chair in Writing at George Mason University, where he teaches in the BFA and MFA Programs.
Author’s note:
This poem is part of a series of lyric poems, all eighteen lines, six tercets long, whose titles begin “Speculation on. . .” , for instance, “Speculation on the History of Drawing,” “Speculation on Invisibility,” and “Speculation on the Absent God.” Their work is, I think, the normal work of lyric poems: to speculate for a moment on a moment, to confront questions, but not necessarily to answer them through the medium of language. These poems will be gathered in a book, Augury, forthcoming in 2017 from Milkweed Editions, in which speculation and auguring—the attempt at coming to knowledge and/or understanding—are the method and subject of the poems.
Speculation on Suffering
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