Benjamin Landry

-for Sara

“[...T]he Christians who were driven into the American Desart, which is now called New
England, have to their sorrow seen Azazel dwelling and raging there in very Tragical
Instances.”

—Cotton Mather. “The History of New-England.”
Magnalia Christi Americana.
i

Say we have not seen rain
in so many months.

Deep in the woods,
there is a tire half sunk in weeds

with enough spring melt in the well
to fill the hemlocks with mosquito-drone.


ii

I was correcting papers on the back porch
and simultaneously turning over

the folly of naming an unborn child. A fox,
meanwhile, crept out to preen on Discovery Rock.

Maybe he was actually lame in one forepaw.
Maybe he was playing for sympathy.


iii

When we came in from the terrible wilds
of not knowing each other,

you told me to keep my voice down
and laughed at my clumsiness.

Then, you reached to help me
with the clasp.
from the book MERCIES IN THE AMERICAN DESERT / LSU Press
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The poem "Mercies in the American Desart" is a keystone to the larger collection (Mercies in the American Desert) in that it concerns those private moments of grace that sustain us through the ferocious social and ecological deserts of our own collective making.

Benjamin Landry on "Mercies in the American Desart"
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Never Refuse a Poem: An Interview with Ellen Bass

"Usually I’m so involved with the making of the poem, trying to describe, trying to be open to what I might discover, that I’m not thinking about what people might find out about me down the line. And I try not to give into the fear of revealing myself to myself." 

via TERRAIN
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What Sparks Poetry:
Vivek Narayanan on Jee Leong Koh's Snow at 5 PM

"Koh's work in some moments can seem disarmingly simple, even if always rigorous in its language, lighting on the ordinary, but as you delve further it reveals a rich intelligence, omnivorous and cosmopolitan in its influences, balancing its interests in high and low, the cerebral and the bodily, the experimental and the straight, narrative and ellipsis."
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