Hardwoods by Nancy K. Pearson

I was drawn in by the language of this complex and layered poem by Nancy K. Pearson. The images are capable of suggesting a range of feeling and mood, from holding on, longing and loss, to change and ominous disaster. Very fine writing – note the unique juxtaposition of images and ideas, the unexpected appearance of a line by Shakespeare placed near the emotional center of the poem, and the wonderful last line.

– Barry Hellman
Cape Cod Poetry Group

Hardwoods

Every year I forget the hardwoods.

Which trees are which,
Which ones idle for awhile,
Which ones burn with fever by September.

Sweet tree, unpacking your blue red leaves.
Sweet tree, gathering ink.

Why lifts she up her arms in sequence thus?
Sweet tree, you heighten me

falling. Sweet tree, you cannot sustain me
fallen. Like the bee’s plunge

into the hair
inside the ear
of the flower.

Oh honey bee,
I miss you, for one thing,

complaining all summer.
The trees get so quiet with their ruin.

*Why lifts she up her arms in sequence thus? Titus to Lavinia after her rape (act 1, scene 4), in Shakespeare’s The Lamentable Tragedy of Titus Andronicus.

This poem was first published in The Alaska Quarterly Review, 2014.

Nancy K. Pearson is the author of the poetry collections, The Whole By Contemplation Of a Single Bone (“Poets Out Loud Prize,” Fordham University Press, 2016) and Two Minutes of Light (Perugia Press, 2008), which won the L.L. Winship/PEN New England Award.

Two Minutes of Light was also named a “Must Read Book” at the 2009 Annual Massachusetts Book Awards and was a finalist for The Lambda Literary Award. Nancy’s awards include two-seven month writing fellowships at The Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, two Inprint Fellowships, and many others.

Her poems appear in journals, magazines and anthologies such as the Iowa Review,The Oxford American Magazine  (forthcoming) and The Alaska Review, Ghost Fishing: An Eco-Justice Poetry Anthology. Ed. Melissa Tuckey (University of Georgia Press, 2016) and Ordinary Genius, A Guide for The Poet Within by Kim Addonizio (Norton, 2009).

Nancy received her MFA in poetry from George Mason University and her MFA in nonfiction from the University of Houston. She currently teaches at 24 Pearl Street, The Fine Arts Work Center’s online creative writing program and at Frederick Community College.

Native to Chattanooga, TN, she now lives in Maryland with her wife, Elizabeth Winston.

Nancy was a Featured Poet at the Cape Cod Poetry Group’s July, 2014 Evening of Poetry & Music at the Truro Meeting House.

Poet’s Comment:

My first draft of “Hardwoods” was written while I was living in Wellfleet, MA with my partner, Elizabeth. We had an old oak tree that held onto its brown leaves until May. Our others trees turned red and yellow and dropped their leaves by early autumn.

Winter is long on Cape Cod. At the time, I was also reading Titus (again) and wanted to give Lavinia a voice reflected in an image (which is impossible).

I was particularly interested in the scene where Titus gives voice to his daughter when he begins to understand her and says, “Hark, Marcus, what she says: I can interpret all her martyred signs.” Lavinia later writes names in the sand; Titus is the only one who understands she’s revealing the names of her rapists.

Trying to put all of this in one short poem about leaves proved troublesome. I added the bee a few years later, which seemed to end my obsession with Titus (in this poem, anyway). Of course, the poem begins and ends with the speaker’s longing.

— Nancy K. Pearson