Newsletter sign up

Be the first to know when new American Life in Poetry columns are live.

Column 651

The Guardians

Intro by Ted Kooser
09.10.2017

Jill Bialosky is a New York­er, an edi­tor at W. W. Nor­ton, and a daugh­ter griev­ing the loss of loved ones. It’s unusu­al for us to print two poems by one poet, in sequence, but this one and the one I select­ed for next week go very well togeth­er. They’re from her new book The Play­ers, from Knopf. 

The Guardians

All day we packed boxes.
We read birth and death certificates.
The yellowed telegrams that announced
our births, the cards of congratulations
and condolences, the deeds and debts,
love letters, valentines with a heart
ripped out, the obituaries.
We opened the divorce decree,
a terrible document of division and subtraction.
We leafed through scrapbooks:
corsages, matchbooks, programs to the ballet,
racetrack, theatre—joy and frivolity
parceled in one volume—
painstakingly arranged, preserved
and pasted with crusted glue.
We sat in the room in which the beloved
had departed. We remembered her yellow hair
and her mind free of paradox.
We sat together side by side
on the empty floor and did not speak.
There were no words
between us other than the essence
of the words from the correspondences,
our inheritance—plain speak,
bereft of poetry.

Share this column

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 ©2015 by Jill Bialosky, “The Guardians,” from The Players, (Alfred A. Knopf, 2015). Poem reprinted by permission of Jill Bialosky and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2024 by The Poetry Foundation.