Kathleen Graber
Visiting Poet
Taking its title from Heraclitus’s famous fragment—“You cannot step into the same river twice”—Kathleen Graber’s new collection interweaves philosophy, personal narrative, and the flotsam of contemporary life to explore ideas linked to impermanence, change, language, and community. Poet Linda Gregerson has described Graber as “one of the finest poets working in America today; no one can surpass her for musicianship or moral penetration,” and Tracy K. Smith has praised Graber’s lyric philosophy as “supreme consolation” in this troubled era. In addition to The River Twice (Princeton University Press, 2019), Graber is also the author of The Eternal City (2010), chosen for the Princeton Series of Contemporary Poets and a finalist for the National Book Award, and Correspondence (2006), winner of the Saturnalia Books Poetry Prize. She teaches creative writing and literature at Virginia Commonwealth University.
Select Poems
America, I know I could do better by you,
though I stoop conscientiously three times a day
to pick up my dog's waste from the grass
with black biodegradable bags. And lest you suspect
that this is more pretension than allegiance, know
my dog was the one at the shelter no one else
would take. He is fat & lazy & I could do better
by him as well, though I do not know if a long walk
in the park in ninety-seven-degree heat is a good idea.
Please cue a presidential sound bite to reassure me
all hearts are more resilient than I think. I confess
it would have been a moral error to have embraced him
if I did not have the means to keep him fed. But
I am writing tonight because there is something wrong
with your peaches. The ones from the supermarket
are so soft & cheap—half the cost of the ones
sold at the local farm—but the flesh near the pit
is so bitter & green. It is a fruit like the mind
we are making together: both overripe & immature.
Trust me, I still have the simple tastes you gave me:
I am delighted by the common robins & cardinals,
the way they set the trees at dusk aflame. Thank you
for Tuesday's reliable trash collection. If you are
constellated somehow, a little bit inside
each of your people, I am sorry that there is more
& more of you lately I do not understand.
Sometimes I want simply to sit alone a long time
in silence. America, you must want this too.
— From THE RIVER TWICE (Princeton University Press, 2019)
America, I have a friend for whom everything went south
after the death of her cat. It seems melodramatic
& hyperbolic to say so, though sometimes
even the melodramatic & hyperbolic are true. Another truth:
She saw it coming, but there was nothing she could do.
First, she adopted two feral kittens someone had found
in a garage, & when that didn't work, she phoned
the local shelter & took in five more. Like the everything
that unfolded thereafter, the opening act was slower
& more complicated than I am making it now. Today,
I drove a long way to the airport in order to fly directly
into a blizzard & back. Someone in a control tower
somewhere should have known this was a bad idea—
something we all wake up early in order to discover
we don't actually have to do. But there was no red alert
from the airline in the inbox above the forwarded story
of a tortoiseshell cat in Florida which had found its way
two hundred miles home. America, because we would like
to know where we are going & what we will find,
scientists have released animals inside planetariums
& tied magnets to the heads of turtles in order to prove
that it is possible to set them off course. They have
surgically removed most of the anatomy from living
homing pigeons & still, we are stick with the words
instinct & gut. Also sometimes amazing aptitude.
Holly was reduced to skin & bones & raw footpads.
Domestic cats rarely pass through the Everglades alive.
Do not be ashamed. Who doesn't have a hungry wilderness
inside? On the plane, I saw between a Jehovah's Witness
& a student of cognitive psychology on his way to a job
at a memory lab. She read aloud her favorite passages
about love & judgement. She said, The Lord gave us a change
to be gardeners and look what we've done. America,
we know seabirds only fly on starry nights & the dung beetle
pushes its golden ball in a perfectly straight line, using
the Milky Way as its guide. Sometimes I try to forget
where I am. Who would not feel frightened on a burning
planet? In a radioactive sea? It's not faith or loyalty. Only face.
We are small & afield. Give me your hand in the dark.
— From THE RIVER TWICE (Princeton University Press, 2019)
America, I would like to get closer to you, but
you are the unconscious patient. One hundred interns
bicker this morning above your bed. Yesterday,
I read for no reason an essay written a decade ago
on game theory & economics. Apparently, the problem
with accurate predictions is that sometimes people
simply don't make the rational choice. Illness & sleep
are weary metaphors. The poor, who are now homeless—
displaced by a storm—rest their heads tonight
in luxury beachfront hotel rooms. All I want,
one woman says, is my old kitchen where I could cook
a hot meal for my kids. Soon a young man will walk
into a classroom of six-year-olds & empty his gun.
The problem with life is that everyone who dies
really dies. In Belgium, twin brothers petition
to be euthanized. Born deaf, they are losing their vision.
Trained as shoemakers, they have spent every day
side by side. Another sibling says they have battled
pain all of their lives. They say they cannot imagine
being able to know one another by touch.
When my brother was failing, his wife roamed the ward
wild-eyed and inconsolable. It's not what it seems,
she whispered when she thought no one could hear.
His cells are regenerating. Tomorrow he'll open
his eyes and be fine. The day he died a surgeon
offered to install a system of shunts that would not
have saved him. They would, however, have drained
the fluid collecting around his heart. My brother
had left papers that said I should be the decider.
America, sometimes all options are poor options.
He died because anything more could happen.
This is all I remember. I have no idea what I said.
— From THE RIVER TWICE (Princeton University Press, 2019)