Ned Balbo

Ned Balbo Poems

Ned Balbo Biography

Born on Long Island, Ned Balbo earned an BA from Vassar College, an MA from Johns Hopkins, and an MFA from the University of Iowa. He has published three books of poetry: Galileo's Banquet (1998), which shared the Towson University Prize for Literature; Lives of the Sleepers (2005), awarded the Ernest Sandeen Prize; and The Trials of Edgar Poe and Other Poems (2010), selected for the Donald Justice Prize and the Poets' Prize. A co-winner of the Willis Barnstone Translation Prize, he lives in Baltimore with his wife, poet-essayist Jane Satterfield.)

The Best Poem Of Ned Balbo

Fire Victim

Once, boarding the train to New York City,
The aisle crowded and all seats filled, I glimpsed
An open space—more pushing, stuck in place—
And then saw why: a man, face peeled away,
Sewn back in haste, skin grafts that smeared like wax
Spattered and frozen, one eye flesh-filled, smooth,
One cold eye toward the window. Cramped, shoved hard,
I, too, passed up the seat, the place, and fought on
Through to the next car, and the next, but now
I wonder why the fire that could have killed him
Spared him, burns scarred over; if a life
Is what he calls this space through which he moves,
Dark space we dared not enter, and what fire
Burns in him when he sees us move away.

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