Poem of the Week | December 21, 2015

This week we’re delighted to offer a new poem by Chard deNiord. Chard deNiord is the new Poet Laureate of Vermont. The author of five books of poetry, including Interstate (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2015), The Double Truth (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2011) and Night Mowing (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005), he teaches English and Creative Writing at Providence College. His book of essays and interviews with seven senior American poets (Galway Kinnell, Donald Hall. Maxine Kumin, Jack Gilbert, Ruth Stone, Lucille Clifton, Robert Bly) titled Sad Friends, Drowned Lovers, Stapled Songs, Conversations and Reflections on 20th Century American Poets was published by Marick Press in 2012. He lives in Westminster West, Vermont with his wife Liz.
 
Author’s note

I don’t have an explanation for this poem as I think it speaks clearly enough on its own as a love poem with apocalyptic intimations. I wrote the first draft of it on a few paper napkins at a bar near my terminal during a layover at LAX. It took several years to complete, however, since I didn’t initially realize the diachronic implications of my inspiration. My first intention was simply to write a love poem in the present tense, but I soon realized as I started to revise the poem just how wise the poet of the Song of Solomon had been in his use of absence in the series of love calls that resound throughout that poem. Emily Dickinson captures the power of this same ironic lyricism in her line, “It was the Distance—/ Was savory.” I didn’t complete the poem until after the terror attacks in Paris last month. My penultimate ending included only American states as the territory over which the speaker flies and communes with his beloved. With each revision, I came to see how increasingly international, allusive, and historical the poem needed to be in its contemporary setting.