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Column 220

Night in Day

Intro by Ted Kooser
06.17.2009

One of the priv­i­leges of being U.S. Poet Lau­re­ate was to choose two poets each year to receive a $10,000 fel­low­ship, fund­ed by the Wit­ter Byn­ner Foun­da­tion. Joseph Stroud, who lives in Cal­i­for­nia, was one of my choic­es. This poem is rep­re­sen­ta­tive of his clear-eyed, imag­i­na­tive poetry.

Night in Day

The night never wants to end, to give itself over   
to light. So it traps itself in things: obsidian, crows.   
Even on summer solstice, the day of light’s great   
triumph, where fields of sunflowers guzzle in the sun—   
we break open the watermelon and spit out   
black seeds, bits of night glistening on the grass.

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Disclaimer

We do not accept unsolicited submissions

We do not accept unsolicited submissions. American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2009 by Joseph Stroud, and reprinted from his recent book of poems, “Of This World: New and Selected Poems 1966-2006,” Copper Canyon Press, 2009, by permission of the author and publisher. Introduction copyright © 2024 by The Poetry Foundation.