"It is clear that Sharma’s thick use of language explores the craft of poetry and what it does to the crafter, the poet. . . . Think of each poem as a wish, a possibility, or another way that could have been."—Janice Sapigao, Jacket2

"Sharma asks pressing questions about what is contained in the poetic ‘I,’ exploring where it transgresses and where it capitulates to expectation. Proceeding with a lyric, analytical, and oblique relationship to personal narrative, the poems enact the graceful ambivalence of Sharma’s statement that 'to find a salvageable concept/ in the word experience,/ we must embrace how it’s milky, how it’s unformed always.'"—Publishers Weekly 

"Subtle and sharp as the needle capturing the starts and shifts of an imagination attentive to beauty and struggle, Sharma’s poems are never gloomy and always gleam."—The Volta,

"Staying alive and moving to its rhythms is a fine definition of Sharma’s poetry. I finished her book feeling lucky to be reading in an age when the technology is in place and Prageeta Sharma deft enough with it to produce this volume of truly charming, truly interesting poems."—Verse Magazine

 

Prageeta Sharma is the author of the poetry collections Grief Sequence (Wave Books, 2019), Undergloom (Fence Books, 2013), Infamous Landscapes (Fence Books, 2007), The Opening Question (Fence Books, 2004), which won the 2004 Fence Modern Poets Prize, and Bliss to Fill (Subpress, 2000). She is the founder of the conference Thinking Its Presence: Race, Creative Writing, Literary Studies and Art. A recipient of the 2010 Howard Foundation Award, she has taught at the University of Montana and now teaches at Pomona College.

Contents

 

ON SECLUSION AND LOOKING OUT

COMPLICATED SPIRITUAL GRIEF, PART 1

COMPLICATED SPIRITUAL GRIEF, PART 2

A HUMAN WITH FEELINGS

UNDER CLOUDS

SEVENTIES LITE & FOURTEEN JOYS & FOURTEEN FURIES

NOVEMBER 23, 2014

SEQUENCES

SEQUENCE 1

SEQUENCE 2

SEQUENCE 5

SEQUENCE 6

SEQUENCE 7

SEQUENCES WITH TITLES

PETTY SEQUENCES

BETWEEN SIGHS

MY POEM FOR MY STEPDAUGHTER

MY POEM ABOUT LAST SOUNDS

RETURNING TO OUR CREATION MYTH

MY POEM ABOUT FALSE FRIENDS

SETS OF THINGS

I LOOK AT YOUR HANDWRITING

MY SENSORIAL PROSE POEM

MOURNING

MY NATURE POEM

MY POEM ABOUT NEW FRIENDSHIP

GLACIER NATIONAL PARK

GLACIER NATIONAL PARK & THE ELEGY

DREAMING WITHOUT KNOWING

MY POEM IN A POETRY HOLE WITH YOU

I COME SO TOGETHER WHERE YOU ARE

ABIDE

YOU LACK FALSEHOOD

MARCH WIND

YOUR HARD SURFACE LAYER

HERMETIC

SEATTLE SUN

THE FUNNY OPPOSITE

POETRY OBITUARY & NOTES

THE MOON HAS SET: POETRY OBITUARY

LESS MUSIC: NOTES ON POEMS

 

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS