Page 2 of 2 <

Poet's Choice

Discussion Policy

Comments that include profanity or personal attacks or other inappropriate comments or material will be removed from the site. Additionally, entries that are unsigned or contain "signatures" by someone other than the actual author will be removed. Finally, we will take steps to block users who violate any of our posting standards, terms of use or privacy policies or any other policies governing this site. Please review the full rules governing commentaries and discussions. You are fully responsible for the content that you post.

I'd like to end with one of the tender love lyrics he assembled during his late marriage to poet Joe-Anne McLaughlin Carruth:

Forty-Five

When I was forty-five I lay for hours

beside a pool, the green hazy

springtime water, and watched

the salamanders coupling, how they drifted lazily,

their little hands floating before them,

aimlessly in and out of the shadows, fifteen

or twenty of them, and suddenly two

would dart together and clasp

one another belly to belly

the way we do, tender and vigorous, and then

would let go and drift away

at peace, lazily

in the green pool that was their world

and for a while was mine.

Carruth was ours for a while, and the green world was greener for his words.

"Regarding Ch ainsaws" is from "Collected Shorter Poems, 1946-1991" (Copper Canyon, 1992). "F orty-Five" is from "Scrambled Eggs and Whiskey: Poems, 1991-1995" (Copper Canyon, 1996). Reprinted with permission of Copper Canyon Press.

Mary Karr has published four books of poems, most recently "Sinners Welcome."

< 2

Find More Reviews and Features in Books

A pandemic waiting in the wings

Alan Sipress's superb and sobering "The Fatal Strain" details the shadowy progression of a virulent avian flu now moving across Asia.

The captive imagination

In "A Good Fall," Ha Jin turns a new prism on the question of freedom, showing that life in a foreign culture may be the most isolating situation.