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Column 293

The Exam

Intro by Ted Kooser
10.31.2010

It’s a rare occa­sion when I find dozens of poems by just one poet that I’d like to share with you, but Joyce Sut­phen, who lives in Min­neso­ta, is some­one who writes that well, with that kind of appeal. Here is just one exam­ple. How many of us have mar­veled at how well our par­ents have suc­ceed­ed at a long marriage?

The Exam

It is mid-October. The trees are in
their autumnal glory (red, yellow-green,

orange) outside the classroom where students
take the mid-term, sniffling softly as if

identifying lines from Blake or Keats
was such sweet sorrow, summoned up in words

they never saw before. I am thinking
of my parents, of the six decades they’ve

been together, of the thirty thousand
meals they’ve eaten in the kitchen, of the

more than twenty thousand nights they’ve slept
under the same roof. I am wondering

who could have fashioned the test that would have
predicted this success? Who could have known?

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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 ©2010 by Joyce Sutphen, whose most recent book of poetry is First Words, Red Dragonfly Press, 2010. Poem reprinted by permission of Joyce Sutphen. Introduction copyright © 2024 by The Poetry Foundation.