Mantis 19 (Spring 2021)
"A figure in which secret things confide"
Richie Hofmann
This is the first poem I submitted for workshop with Eavan Boland, in January of 2018. It was nearly four times as long--while the poets discussed the poem, Eavan borrowed someone’s pen to slash nearly everything, leaving this behind: a poem inside the poem.
Nature
My students’ faces are bright, their hair unwashed.
They are reading Wallace Stevens
for the first time and recording their observations
by hand in notebooks. It’s hard to see how we’re living
at the end of nature. Just a few days ago,
I walked down the path
beside a doe. I was Snow White. I almost put my hand
on her back. (I write this down.) My students’ eyes
squint in the sun; their stomachs churn acids over fruit,
bread, and bacon; their tongues will touch
the front teeth of the beloved.
RICHIE HOFMANN is a Jones Lecturer at Stanford University.