The Crane Wife
Saehee Cho updates the meaning of lovebird
NEW WORDS FROM EMERGING VOICES
by Jeremy Schmidt
So far as a sofa is soft
skin no matter how distant
is sway. So long as near-silk and
reduction run over it, neck-
baking nights are clear sky.
So near yet so sharp sits that
unblue despite all sifted
assurances. So if the simplest
In the summer of 2018, Jeremy was reading stuff full of phrases that sound pretty dated or formal today. Words like “nape” and “leafy glade” caught his eye.
situation is this where everything is
spilling over in every direction
look to the violet bedding
down at our feet. That unnameable tree.
So there, the bark torn away
from anything less than an anthem
to rope in these spaces, the want
of unsayings when you sense so to
speak that summer’s most coveted
That formality started seeping into Jeremy’s own sentences. In mostly unconvincing but occasionally pretty ways. He responded by searching for something to balance it out.
color is me. So help us to gather
each leafy instant while letting
some fair number fall as so
much of such holding pales
to acceptance which you can’t
just let happen. So be it.
The casualness of “so” (“so what,” “so then,” etc.) seemed to do the trick, and the rhythms here emerged from the resulting interplay.
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I have no idea what’s going on in this poem but it’s awesome. So be it!