Jan Beatty
Jan Beatty Poems
I went looking for the body.
The apple, tree, the river.
Gliding voice, curve of arm,
...
The thing I'll never write is the green leaf
with its rubbery-hard veins, I'll never
write the structure exposed, instead
...
My friend Lou
used to walk up to strangers
and tip them—no, really—
he'd cruise the South Side,
...
Banff, Alberta
The mother elk and 2 babies are sniffing
the metal handle of the bear-proof trash bin.
I remember the instructions for city people:
...
The torso facing east, the head nearly west,
as if she couldn't take in the sight of her
own skin and its failings, its parts spilling
...
After Roselia Foundling Asylum and Maternity Hospital,
corner of Cliff and Manilla
This is the house I was born in.
Look at it. Asylum.
...
An eater, or swallowhole, is a reach of stream or a tidal area given to violent currents and waves that often upset and/or suck under boats and kayaks and the like as they are attempting passage.
— William Kittredge
The eater, my birthmother, was speaking:
...
You want to know what work is?
I'll tell you what work is:
Work is work.
You get up. You get on the bus.
...
Jan Beatty Biography
Jan Beatty is an American poet.Born in 1952 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, she received her Bachelor of Arts from the West Virginia University and her Master of Fine Arts from the University of Pittsburgh. She currently resides in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with her husband, musician Don Hollowood. Her most recent poetry collection is The Switching/Yard (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2013), and her poems have appeared in literary journals and magazines including Quarterly West, Gulf Coast, Indiana Review, and Court Green, and in anthologies published by Oxford University Press, University of Illinois Press, and University of Iowa Press. Her honors include fellowships from the Ucross Foundation, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, and Yaddo. She was awarded the Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry from the Tulsa Arts and Humanities Council in 1990, and the $15,000 Creative Achievement Award in Literature from the Heinz Foundation. Her first book, Mad River, won the Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize of the University of Pittsburgh Press in 1994. Some of Beatty's poetry, considered sexually explicit, led to problems with a scheduled reading at Joseph-Beth Booksellers in April 2008. Beatty currently heads the writing program at Carlow University, where she also directs the Madwomen in the Attic Writing Workshop. She has also taught creative writing at the University of Pittsburgh. Along with Ellen Wadey, Beatty hosts and produces Prosody, a weekly radio program featuring the work of national writers.)
The Best Poem Of Jan Beatty
Report From The Skinhouse
I went looking for the body.
The apple, tree, the river.
Gliding voice, curve of arm,
pearly blue uterus.
Muscled calf, the neptune green
eye, blood with the same
taste as mine.
Why do I write my report this way?
An adopted child needs to find a face.
What does a real mother's body look like?
River, chalkline, bloody cave?
I am replica of nothing.
birthmother, conjurer, boneshaker, witch,
let me smell your skin just once,
I'll give you your bloody daughter.
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