Hello Friends —
Can you believe it? All mine for only $4.50 today: a 1985 first edition of Marilyn Hacker‘s Assumptions, yellowed at the edges just enough to earn your respect for its age, but otherwise prestine, unmarked. It’s the kind of book that makes a point of letting you know with what care it was made — the pages thick and textured, the note about the typography (Garamond) as long as the poet’s biography on the final page. To make it even more special, the “advance praise” note on the back cover is from Adrienne Rich (who you’ll be hearing from later this month).
So, in celebration of this newest addition to my poetry shelves, a poem-a-day from that book that encourages you to unbind your lips, unwind your tongue, and read aloud:
Rune of the Finland Woman
“You are so wise,” the reindeer said, “you can
bind the winds of the world in a single strand.”
— H.C. Andersen, “The Snow Queen”
She could bind the world’s winds in a single strand.
She could find the world’s words in a singing wind.
She could lend a weird will to a mottled hand.
She could wind a willed word from a muddled mind.
She could wend the wild woods on a saddled hind.
She could sound a wellspring with a rowan wand.
She could bind the wolf’s wounds in a swaddling band.
She could bind a banned book in a silken skin.
She could spend a world war on invaded land.
She could pound the dry roots to a kind of bread.
She could feed a road gang on invented food.
She could find the spare parts of the severed dead.
She could find the stone limbs in a waste of sand.
She could stand the pit cold with a withered lung.
She could handle bad puns in the slang she learned.
She could dandle foundlings in their mother tongue.
She could plait a child’s hair with a fishbone comb.
She could tend a coal fire in the Arctic wind.
She could mend an engine with a sewing pin.
She could warm the dark feet of a dying man.
She could drink the stone soup from a doubtful well.
She could breathe the green stink of a trench latrine.
She could drink a queen’s share of important wine.
She could think a few things she would never tell.
She could learn the hand code of the deaf and blind.
She could earn the iron keys of the frozen queen.
She could wander uphill with a drunken friend.
She could bind the world’s winds in a single strand.
“Rune of the Finland Woman” by Marilyn Hacker was also featured for Poem-a-Day April 11, 2009.