Grace Bauer’s newest book of poems is Nowhere All At Once, just out from Stephen F. Austin State University Press (February, 2014). Her previous books include Retreats & Recognitions, Beholding Eye, and The Women At The Well, as well as four chapbooks ( Café Culture, Field Guide to the Ineffable: Poems on Marcel Duchamp, Where You’ve Seen Her, and The House Where I’ve Never Lived). She is also co-editor, with Julie Kane, of the anthology, Umpteen Ways of Looking at a Possum: Critical & Creative Responses to Everette Maddox. Her poems, essays, and stories have appeared in numerous anthologies and journals. She teaches in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.---------
Field
I say, and you see
wheat or corn or
maybe an unkempt swath
of grasses, but then
I say baseball, and you
see diamond, which might
make someone else
see ring, which might
lead someone else to see
an empty tub or unwashed
collars or maybe hear
a phone— my God!
who could be calling
at this hour?
Against Proof
If a tree falls
in the forest, does it
make a noise?
Ask the deer
who leaps through
the underbrush
for answers.
Ask the birds
who check-mate
their alarm
across the sky.
As for language—
does it speak
for itself?
Where’s word
sans mouth?
Mouth sans mind?
What we call
silence might well
precede and survive
what we call us.
Enough already.
Too much. Back
to that forest.
Soil seed shoot
bud branch leaf.
Add wind.
Add ponder.