Nomina

Karen Volkman's first book, Crash's Law, was a National Poetry Series selection, published by W.W. Norton in 1996. Her second book, Spar, received the Iowa Poetry Prize and the 2002 James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets. Her poems have appeared in numerous anthologies, including The Best American Poetry, The Pushcart Prize Anthology, and The Norton Introduction to Poetry.

From "Brown is the flat"

Brown is the flat gestation of a maze,

grass-grown remembrance of a second look

the field holds open like a nascent book

in which the wind has written, Sudden strays,

sudden numbers beat--the roots of days

branched intangibles a stupor took

and slept and stroked and scattered in a shook

haze of wakenings, refracting rays

outleaping their seasons, daughters of a glance

ago--ahead, a retrograde advance.