Joyce Sutphen

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Rating: 4.33

Joyce Sutphen Poems

The second half of my life will be black
to the white rind of the old and fading moon.
The second half of my life will be water
over the cracked floor of these desert years.
...

This present tragedy will eventually
turn into myth, and in the mist
of that later telling the bell tolling
now will be a symbol, or, at least,
...

Body is something you need in order to stay
on this planet and you only get one.
And no matter which one you get, it will not
be satisfactory. It will not be beautiful
...

What am I to you now that you are no
longer what you used to be to me?
Who are we to each other now that
there is no us, now that what we once
...

I feel older, younger, both
at once. Every time I win,
I lose. Every time I count,
I forget and must begin again.
...

Talking, we begin to find the way into
our hearts, we who knew no words,
words being a rare commodity
...

Tilt your head slightly to one side and lift
your eyebrows expectantly. Ask questions.
Delve into the subject at hand or let
things come randomly. Don't expect answers.
...

The image that haunts me is not beautiful.
I do not think it will open into a field
of wildflowers; I doubt that it will take
wing suddenly, startling us into admiration.
...

Suddenly, I stopped thinking about Love,
after so many years of only that,
after thinking that nothing else mattered.
...

I'll know the names of all of the birds
and flowers, and not only that, I'll
tell you the name of the piano player
I'm hearing right now on the kitchen
...

11.

My mind is shuffling its deck tonight,
slipping one card over another,
letting them all fall together at the corners;
the random hand of memory
...

I have forgotten the words,
and therefore I shall not conceive
of a mysterious salvation, I shall
not become a tall lily and bloom
...

It is mid-October. The trees are in
their autumnal glory (red, yellow-green,
orange) outside the classroom where students
take the mid-term, sniffling softly as if
...

My father's farm is an apple blossomer.
He keeps his hills in dandelion carpet
and weaves a lane of lilacs between the rose
...

I will have been walking away:
no matter what direction I intended,
at that moment, I will have been walking
...

I like it when they get together
and talk in voices that sound
like apple trees and grape vines,
...

It wasn't like that. Don't imagine
my father in a feed cap, chewing
a stem of alfalfa, spitting occasionally.
...

It was homemade and primitive,
like pulling a tooth with a string
and a slamming door, like taking out
an appendix by kerosene light
...

Joyce Sutphen Biography

Joyce Sutphen (born 1949) is an American poet, currently serving as Minnesota's Poet Laureate. She is the state's second laureate, appointed by Governor Mark Dayton in August, 2011. Sutphen also serves as a professor of English at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota. Sutphen was raised in Saint Joseph, Minnesota and currently resides in the city of Chaska. She holds degrees from the University of Minnesota including her Ph.D. in Renaissance Drama. Her first book of poetry, Straight Out of View (Beacon Press, 1995), won the Barnard New Women's Poets Prize. Her second, Coming Back to the Body (Holy Cow! Press, 2000), was a finalist for a Minnesota Book Award, and her third, Naming the Stars (2004), also from Holy Cow! Press, won the Minnesota Book Award in Poetry. In 2005, Red Dragonfly Press published a fine press edition of Fourteen Sonnets. Her poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Poetry, The Gettysburg Review, Water~Stone, Hayden's Ferry, Shenandoah, Luna.)

The Best Poem Of Joyce Sutphen

Crossroads

The second half of my life will be black
to the white rind of the old and fading moon.
The second half of my life will be water
over the cracked floor of these desert years.
I will land on my feet this time,
knowing at least two languages and who
my friends are. I will dress for the
occasion, and my hair shall be
whatever color I please.
Everyone will go on celebrating the old
birthday, counting the years as usual,
but I will count myself new from this
inception, this imprint of my own desire.

The second half of my life will be swift,
past leaning fenceposts, a gravel shoulder,
asphalt tickets, the beckon of open road.
The second half of my life will be wide-eyed,
fingers shifting through fine sands,
arms loose at my sides, wandering feet.
There will be new dreams every night,
and the drapes will never be closed.
I will toss my string of keys into a deep
well and old letters into the grate.

The second half of my life will be ice
breaking up on the river, rain
soaking the fields, a hand
held out, a fire,
and smoke going
upward, always up.

Joyce Sutphen Comments

ari anna arena 25 January 2007

Greetings! ) don't know if you ever check in here, but I just discovered your poetry! Eloquent and stunningly lovely. Best wishes, adri anna

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