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Column 620

L.A. River

Intro by Ted Kooser
02.05.2017

All too often poets shun sim­ple, direct, and earthy words like tea” in favor of oth­ers that sound more sophis­ti­cat­ed, like Earl Grey or Lap­sang Sou­chong. But fan­cy words put expe­ri­ence at a greater dis­tance. Here’s a delight­ful poem by Jack Coop­er, who lives in Los Ange­les, and it depends for part of its effect on words like goofy” and wad­dle.” Our expe­ri­ence of the poem is all the more real” thanks to those words. Jack Coop­er’s most recent book of poet­ry is Across My Silence (World Audi­ence Pub­lish­ers, 2007). 

L.A. River

I like how the mallard ducklings
goofy and weak
waddle up the cement incline
then slide into this runoff
of lawn sprinklers and car washes
and how the great blue heron
seems to be teleported here
from the Jurassic
to look for extinct species of fish
but mostly I like the way
the little birds
fly in and out of the barbed wire
with only a smear of water
to keep them singing.

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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© 2016 by Jack Cooper, “L.A. River,” from Rattle, (No. 52, Summer 2016). Poem reprinted by permission of Jack Cooper and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2024 by The Poetry Foundation.

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