Poetry of Roger Mitchell > Woodland Pattern Book Center

Woodland
Pattern™

Book Center

Roger Mitchell

Roger Mitchell is the author of eight books of poetry and a work of non-fiction. His most recent book, Delicate Bait, was chosen by Charles Simic for the Akron Prize and published in late 2003. He

spent most of his working life in southern Indiana where he directed the Creative Writing Program at Indiana University and for a time held the Ruth Lilly Chair of Poetry. Other recognition for his writing includes the Midland Poetry Award for his first book, the John Ben Snow Award for Clear Pond, his work of non-fiction, two fellowships each from the Indiana Arts Commission and the National Endowment for the Arts, the River Styx International Poetry Award, and others. Recently he spent a month as an Artist in Residence in the Everglades National Park. He is a 2005 Fellow in Poetry from the New York Foundation for the Arts. He and his wife, the fiction writer, Dorian Gossy, live in Jay, New York.

Beneath A Cloud

Roger Mitchell

So much of it is or seems (who knows the difference?)
transplanted, uprooted, dangling, frittered.
I like invisible, though visible
has its properties, proprieties, its strange
amazements. I’m equal to the bees, let’s say,
transparent, bespattered, rearranged, though not
without being first arranged. How or by what,
I don’t ask. Gathered, scattered, secret. Here
for a moment. In terrible, terrifying,
ordinary distance from matter and things,
from reasons I can’t see the reason for.
Lucid and fluid. I look out the window.
Do things in stages, leave them unfinished,
believing that nothing ever becomes
completely. Is always coming about, around.
Sometimes remembered. Remembered again,
but fragmentarily, or by someone else.
Ancient, delirious, wise, unable.
Shouted across a field. Fallow, hollow,
hallowed. Done in the dark, all of it. At dawn,
on a Tuesday or Friday. All of it
always arriving. Convinced, confused. Knowing
and unknowing. A cloud beneath a cloud.
A sky bringing all of itself along.

Home ~ About Us ~ Membership ~ Bookstore ~ Gallery Info ~ Archives ~ Workshops ~ Links ~ Niedecker