Outside The Lines,

A literary Column

By Marcia Diane

We move then from last month’s repeat study of the Mouth To Mouth anthology to an entirely new anthology of international poetry: A Book Of Luminous Things. This anthology was compiled by Nobel laureate Czeslaw Milosz. Here he has brought together over 300 of the finest poems written through the ages.

I pick this poem, Creslaw notes of the author:

I consider Linda Gregg one of the best American poets, and I value the neatness of design in her poems, as well as the energy of each line. Perhaps I am a bit biased, because Gregg comes from California and used to come to my classes at the University of California at Berkeley.”

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Adult

I’ve come back to the country where I was happy

changed. Passion puts no terrible stain on me now.

I wonder what will take the place of desire.

I could be the ghost of my own life returning

to places I lived best. Walking here and there,

nodding when I see something I cared for deeply.

Now I’m in my house listening to the owls calling

and wondering if slowly I will take on flesh again.

Linda Gregg 1942-

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Her work has received enormous critical praise for its soaring lyrical depictions of grief and loss, and the strange strengths and beauty she mines from them. Joseph Brodsky once stated that “the blinding intensity of Ms. Gregg’s lines stains the reader’s psyche the way lightning or heartbreak do.”

W.S. Merwin confessed: “I have loved Linda Gregg’s poems since I first read them. They are original in the way that really matters: they speak clearly of their source. They convey at once the pain of individual loss, a steady and utterly personal radiance.”

So indulge yourselves, read some more poetry and won’t you join us in our very own international on-line writers group at: m.diane.writeon@gmail.com