![\"elizabeth-spires.jpg\"](\"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/04\/elizabeth-spires.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\nIf, one morning, after many hints and premonitions,
\nyou wake to a seasonless season, a grey garden
\nwhere nothing lives or dies because nothing
\nchanges, and the only action left is inaction,
\nmake a place for yourself among these fallen leaves.
\nImagine a tree, once high and mighty, now felled
\nby catastrophe. How something is slowly breaking it down
\nuntil it crumbles at the merest touch, its form collapsing
\ninward. Its only hope, if hope is wise, to come back
\nas a speechless blade of grass, or one of those flowers
\nwith bowed heads, a snowdrop pushing up through snow.
\nTime is a construct. You must not think about time.
\nLie very still and do not mind the cold or count
\nthe nights. You will know you are part of the scenery
\nwhen green shoots push up around your heart,
\nand small chattering birds make you their careless perch,
\nand even the insects have something to say
\nabout your situation as they hum and whisper,
\npart of the earth, the earth, the earth,<\/i>
\nand this grey garden comes back to life again.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\nThe Wave-Maker<\/i><\/a>, published in the summer of 2008, is the sixth collection of Elizabeth Spires’s poems. It also includes “The Snowy Day<\/a>,” “Translation of My Life<\/a>,” and “Moment Vanishing<\/a>” (all of which Garrison Keillor read on his public radio show The Writers’ Almanac<\/i>), and the delightfully compact “Bloated Haiku<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Older poems include “Grass<\/a>” (from Beltway<\/i>), “In heaven it is always autumn<\/a>” (from The New Criterion<\/i>), and Waving Goodbye<\/a>” (from the Poetry Foundation website). Nine years ago, in an interview with Ploughshares<\/i><\/a>, Spires reflected on where she was at in her writing career:<\/p>\n
\n“I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s some sort of phoenix-like redefinition for me… so much as a new stage or chapter that grows out of whatever was there before; there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s no part of a life that springs out of nothing. I am still just writing poems about what is directly in front of me that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s all-engrossing, trying to write really directly. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve never been prolific; for me poems are like major events. Even if they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re about something small—that something may seem small to other people, but it doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t feel small to me.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Spires’ most recent poems were published earlier this year in I Heard God Talking to Me<\/i><\/a>, where they are juxtaposed with photographs of the sculptures of William Edmondson<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
If, one morning, after many hints and premonitions, you wake to a seasonless season, a grey garden where nothing lives or dies because nothing changes, and the only action left is inaction, make a place for yourself among these fallen leaves. Imagine a tree, once high and mighty, now felled by catastrophe. How something is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=196"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}