Connie Voisine Book of Poems a Finalist for LA Times Book Award

Congratulations to our friend Connie Voisine. Her book of poems Rare High Meadow of Which I Might Dream (University of Chicago Press) has been chosen as a finalist for the prestigious Los Angeles Times Book Award. Connie lives up the road from us in Las Cruces, NM, with her husband, writer Rus Bradburd and their lovely daughter Alma. Connie teaches in the Creative Writing Department at NMSU. She's a wonderful colleague and citizen in our world of letters in this piece of the desert along the border. She's full of curiosity about language and poetry and diverse poetics. Her poetry, of course, is remarkable. The award announcements are Friday night with lots of pomp and ceremony. Our fingers are crossed. We hope she will be popping the champagne corks in celebration of her book and her award.

(CINCO PUNTOS, REPRESENTED BY JOHN BYRD, WILL BE THERE: BOOTH #347 ON TOP OF THE STAIRCASE, instead of at the bottom, THIS TIME.)

Below is a poem I cut and pasted off the University of Chicago Press website. Being technically inept, I can't figure out how to put in all the line indents via blogger. Forgive me, Connie. To see the poem properly scattered across the screen, go here.

The Bird is Her Reason

There are some bodies that emerge
into desire as a god
rises from the sea, emotion and
memory hang like dripping clothes—this
want is like
entering that heated red

on the mouth of a Delacroix lion,
stalwart, always that red
which makes
my teeth ache and my skin feel
a hand that has never touched me,
the tree groaning outside becomes
a man who knocks on my bedroom window,
edge of red on gold fur,
the horse, the wild
flip of its head, the rake of claws
across its back, the unfocussed,
swallowed eye.