Poems from Miriam Sagan

Poet Miriam Sagan

Miriam Sagan was born in NYC, raised in New Jersey, educated in Boston, liberated in San Francisco, and has lived more than half her life in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She is the author of 30 published books, including the novel Black Rainbow (Sherman Asher, 2015) and Geographic: A Memoir of Time and Space (Casa de Snapdragon). which won the 2016 Arizona/New Mexico Book Award in Poetry. She founded and headed the creative writing program at Santa Fe Community College until her retirement in 2016.  Her awards include the Santa Fe Mayor’s award for Excellence in the Arts, the Poetry Gratitude Award from New Mexico Literary Arts, and a Lannan Foundation residency in Marfa, Texas.

How To Find Henry David Thoreau

1. Wake up at 5 am. Take a small plane to a larger plane.

2. Arrive in Boston, a city you have too many feelings about.

3. See your body asleep in a motel bed, as if from a great distance.

4. Get on google maps.

5. Watch Lexington Street turn to Moody turn to Common.

6. Get lost at Hanscom Airforce Base and feel humiliated when the soldier you ask for directions glares at you.

7. Overshoot.

8. Ask the turbaned owner of the convenience store for directions and go back.

9. Bear left on to Old Bedford Road.

10. Turn right on to Virginia Road.

11. Sit at a green desk on a mustard colored floor.

12. Eat a peanut butter sandwich, because what would Thoreau eat?

13. Write haiku, by hand.

14. Get slightly bored because it is raining.

15. Realize you could have stayed home and read WALDEN.

16. Admire bright green lichen on tree trunks and the piles of oak leaves this raw November afternoon.

17. Realize every day is a fine day for Henry David Thoreau.

***

On Elizabeth Bishop

I bought, second-hand, not wanting to waste

The Complete Poems

of Elizabeth Bishop

in paperback

that someone named Emily

had already marked up

in green ink

for English 310—Section 1.

Her handwriting, firm and round

makes puerile comments

“Mirror to the soul?” and asks

“But who is he really?”

something we’ll never know,

are not supposed to know,

about hermit, gentleman, or boy

who populate these poems—

an animus, poet’s

masculine self

suffering

yet not lying wan

like a century of pale

Pre-Raphaelite girls

floated tubercular

in bathtubs

full of flowers

for the painter’s brush

to smirch.

I don’t think Emily

has chosen these poems herself,

they seem assigned, and she

although obviously a careful student,

is baffled.

Her comments further obscure:

“The negotiation between what is real

and what is real”

Then underlined.

I know she has gone on to other things.

The copyright is more than thirty years old.

Emily, if she is even still alive

has children, grand-children maybe, and I’m guessing

is on a second husband

and has forgotten all about

the inexpensive book

she sold back

or gave to Goodwill

or the library sale.

I doubt she misses it

while I, sitting in bed

am reading it bit by bit

hope not to drop

one stitch.