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Poet's Choice

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It is the normal excellence, of long accomplishment.

In a landscape of more contemporary suffering, "A Brief for the Defense," Gilbert still insists on hope:

. . . We must have

the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless

furnace of this world. To make injustice the only

measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.

If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down,

we should give thanks that the end had magnitude.

" The Abnormal Is Not Courage" is from "Monolithos: Poems 1962 and 1982" (Knopf, 1982). "A Brief for the Defense" is from "Refusing Heaven" (Knopf, 2005).

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

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