Crocus

WhetherAligned with the mechanismwhereby the spirit is borne aloftthrough song comes againthe question: whether. And not soothedso much as opened by the boysoprano’s Sanctus, what movesin the mind as the throat constrictsin sympathy, one note peeledfrom the last, fine as paper slippedfrom a garlic bulb, veined,translucent, is whether—as ifwound through the spiralingamplitude, purpled, fretted,one voice suspendedin concentration of prayer or terrorwills itself above faltering,more perfect since time mustsoon break it. And made it.Whether and by whatever impossiblearrangement of stars, harmonies,correspondences through whichthe music finds the spirit and likea blade slits and releases,circulates the questionthrough the phrase, the delicateengine—as if it matters: the songrises, everything goes with it.The poems in Crocus take as their starting points the interior universes created by myth, art, andmemory, and through the exploration of these terrains create new ways of understanding the ordinary.

Crocus is not leadenly preoccupied with things; rather, its desire is to open again and again to the world., British writer Virginia Woolf wrote about the pleasures of having a room of one's own. Here, Vermont poet Karin Gottshall shows us her own sort of private place.

KARIN GOTTSHALL was recently writer-in-residence at Interlochen Arts Academy. Her poems have appeared in The Gettysburg Review, The Virginia Quarterly Review, The Southern Review, and in many other publications. She lives in Middlebury, Vermont.