Sunday, September 11, 2011

There is money in poetry.

That caught your attention, didn't it?

And it's only a small exaggeration. There is money, in poetry, fiction or creative nonfiction, for one lucky undergraduate who is selected as this year's Virginia Butts Sturm Creative Writing Scholarship recipient. So if you're an English major with a creative writing concentration, think about how great it'll feel to hit it big and tell your parents that being a writer does pay! Deadline: Wednesday, September 28.

And if you're a poet, grad or undergrad, don't miss the deadline---Monday, September 19---to apply for this year's Sturm residency with poet Carol Frost. She's pretty terrific. And here's a poem to prove it.



All Summer Long
The dogs eat hoof slivers and lie under the porch.
A strand of human hair hangs strangely from a fruit tree
like a cry in the throat. The sky is clay for the child who is past
being tired, who wanders in waist-deep
grasses. Gnats rise in a vapor,
in a long mounting whine around her forehead and ears.

The sun is an indistinct moon. Frail sticks
of grass poke her ankles,
and a wet froth of spiders touches her legs
like wet fingers. The musk and smell
of air are as hot as the savory
terrible exhales from a tired horse.

The parents are sleeping all afternoon,
and no one explains the long uneasy afternoons.
She hears their combined breathing and swallowing
salivas, and sees their sides rising and falling
like the sides of horses in the hot pasture.

At evening a breeze dries and crumbles
the sky and the clouds float like undershirts
and cotton dresses on a clothesline. Horses
rock to their feet and race or graze.
Parents open their shutters and call
the lonely, happy child home.
The child who hates silences talks and talks
of cicadas and the manes of horses.

“All Summer Long” by Carol Frost from Love and Scorn: New and Collected Poems. © 2000 by Carol Frost. Published by TriQuarterly/Northwestern University Press. All rights reserved.

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