American Life in Poetry #2: Jonathan Greene

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE

Many of us have felt helpless when we've tried to assist friends who are dealing with the deaths of loved ones. Here the Kentucky poet and publisher, Jonathan Greene, conveys that feeling of inadequacy in a single sentence. The brevity of the poem reflects the measured and halting speech of people attempting to offer words of condolence:


At the Grave

As Death often
sidelines us

it is good
to contribute

even if so little
as to shovel

some earth
into earth.


Copyright 2003 by Jonathan Greene. Reprinted by permission of the author. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln.




Also at Virtual Grub Street by/about Ted Kooser:

• American Gothic (a review of Delights and Shadows by Ted Kooser. Copper Canyon Press, 2004);
• Ted Kooser and the American Life in Poetry column;
• American Life in Poetry #1: David Allan Evans;
• American Life in Poetry #3: Marnie Walsh;
• American Life in Poetry #4: Ruth Stone;
• American Life in Poetry #5: David Baker;
• American Life in Poetry #6: Barton Sutter;
• American Life in Poetry #7: Leonard Nathan;
• American Life in Poetry #8: Karma Larsen;
• American Life in Poetry #9: James Doyle;
• American Life in Poetry #10: Marge Piercy;
• American Life in Poetry #11: David Wagoner;
• American Life in Poetry #12: Andrei Guruianu;
• American Life in Poetry #13: Kevin Griffith;
• American Life in Poetry #14: Georgiana Cohen;
• American Life in Poetry #15: Janet McCann;
• American Life in Poetry #16: Lisel Mueller;
• American Life in Poetry #17: Wendell Berry;
• American Life in Poetry #18: Dan Gerber;
• American Life in Poetry #19: Shirley Buettner;
• American Life in Poetry #20: Jane Hirshfield;
• American Life in Poetry #21: Karin Gottshall;
• American Life in Poetry #22: Jean L. Connor;
• American Life in Poetry #23: E. G. Burrows;
• American Life in Poetry #24: Martin Walls;
• American Life in Poetry #25: Rodney Torreson;
• American Life in Poetry #26: Claudia Emerson
• American Life in Poetry #27: Angela Shaw.