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Column 227

Green-Striped Melons

Intro by Ted Kooser
07.26.2009

Jane Hir­sh­field, a Cal­i­forn­ian and one of my favorite poets, writes beau­ti­ful image-cen­tered poems of clar­i­ty and con­ci­sion, which some­times con­clude with a sud­den and sur­pris­ing deep­en­ing. Here’s just one example. 

Green-Striped Melons

They lie
under stars in a field.
They lie under rain in a field.
Under sun.
 
Some people
are like this as well—
like a painting
hidden beneath another painting.
 
An unexpected weight
the sign of their ripeness.

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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 ©2008 by Jane Hirshfield, whose most recent book of poems is After, Harper Collins, 2006. Poem reprinted from Alaska Quarterly, Vol. 25, nos. 3 & 4, Fall & Winter, 2008, by permission of Jane Hirshfield and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2024 by The Poetry Foundation.