Rose McLarney
The way the cat walked,
stalking—Each step

an extraction of himself,
from the grass, unmoved.

How long I watched,
how I loved

to watch, and how I tried
to make him a little home.

But what is wanted wants
to leg it elsewhere, no matter.

When he was happy,
he was hunting.

He was hunting
the exception to his silence—

that is what he wished to eat.
He would slaughter

his way back to solitude.
from the book FORAGE / Penguin Books
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"For all my watching, I couldn’t describe a cat’s movements sufficiently. So I pared this poem down to the bones of a Siamese, and borrowed diction—“leg it”—more stylish than my own, from a human I once admired so much it seemed best to keep my distance. (Note: It turns out that time passes and some things, like this cat, come through it to figure in later, warmer poems.)"

Rose McLarney on "Pet" 
Color illustration of a seated Henri Cole
Enduring Desires: Henri Cole and Eduardo C. Corral
 
"Reading Cole and Corral side by side, you find, everywhere, poems about the periodicity of desire, its alternating flights and crashes, in both private and political spaces. The body, given away to lovers, is reclaimed, though transformed into a subject for speculation, appraisal—and, finally, for poetry."
 
viaTHE NEW YORKER
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Cover of Cole Swensen's forthcoming book, Art in Time
What Sparks Poetry:
Cole Swensen on "Agnes Varda: Here There & Then Now"


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