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Epistemology
Mostly I’d like to feel a little less, know a little more.
Knots are on the top of my list of what I want to know.
Who was it who taught me to burn the end of the cord
to keep it from fraying?
Not the man who called my life a debacle,
a word whose sound I love.
In a debacle things are unleashed.
Roots of words are like knots I think when I read the dictionary.
I read other books, sure. Recently I learned how trees communicate,
the way they send sugar through their roots to the trees that are ailing.
They don’t use words, but they can be said to love.
They might lean in one direction to leave a little extra light for another tree.
And I admire the way they grow right through fences, nothing
stops them, it’s called inosculation: to unite by openings, to connect
or join so as to become or make continuous, from osculare,
to provide with a mouth, from osculum, little mouth.
Sometimes when I’m alone I go outside with my big little mouth
and speak to the trees as if I were a birch among birches.
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Catherine Barnett is the author of three books of poetry, Human Hours (2018 Believer Book Award); The Game of Boxes (2012 Academy of American Poets James Laughlin Award for Best Second Book); and Into Perfect Spheres Such Holes Are Pierced (Beatrice Hawley Award from Alice James Books). Her work has appeared in Best American Poetry, Harper's, Kenyon Review, The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, Poetry, and The Washington Post. A Guggenheim fellow, she received a 2022 Arts and Letters Award in Literature, which honors exceptional accomplishment in any genre. She is a member of the core faculty in the NYU MFA Program in Creative Writing and a Distinguished Lecturer at Hunter College. She lives in New York City, where she also works as an independent editor.
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Susan Campbell, Windy Night, 2021, Fine art archival print
Catherine Barnett, one of our finest contemporary poets. A thrill to read this thoughtful, original, unpredictable poem. Trees actually do that?! Thank you, Catherine.
Posted by: Emily Fragos | April 24, 2022 at 10:16 AM
A thinking-feeling poem. I share your love of trees.
to know and feel with them...
especially here in nyc but everywhere
thanks for this poem.
Posted by: Barbara Henning | April 24, 2022 at 10:34 AM
What an intelligent, thrilling poem, on its strong course like a river in spring. I love that it shifts gears and yet stays focussed brilliantly on the beam the whole time. Terence I'm glad you showed us this. I first heard Catherine Barnett read about ten years ago and then again more recently--she's one of the best. And now back to rereading her poem!
Posted by: Don Berger | April 24, 2022 at 10:44 AM
Don: Thanks for that comment.
Posted by: Terence Winch | April 24, 2022 at 10:52 AM
Besides the poem itself, what astounds me is this fact about trees: I just found it out a month or so ago. This one
Expresses beautifully the awesomeness of it all.
Posted by: Clarinda | April 24, 2022 at 12:15 PM
Catherine Barnett is an outstansding poet, and this is a good example of her craft. I, too, love "debacle," as an interesting, somewhat hard-to-pronounce word. And to think that there's a restaurant that calls itself "Debacle"!
Posted by: David Lehman | April 24, 2022 at 01:12 PM
How connected is every living thing. The energy moving us all toward.
Susan Campbell’s painting finds me in the wind.
Many thanks for these things.
Posted by: Jody Payne | April 24, 2022 at 02:35 PM
Better to be a birch among birches than a debacle among debacle. Better to be blowing in the wind than tangled up in blue knots.
Posted by: Geoffrey Himes | April 24, 2022 at 02:48 PM
I love trees and discovering the meaning of unfamiliar words. Great poem and wonderful depiction of trees 🌲
Posted by: Eileen Reich | April 24, 2022 at 04:28 PM
Lovely
Posted by: Eileen Estes | April 24, 2022 at 04:34 PM
I thought that words are the knots and you have to unknot them to get at the roots. Also, I thought of trees as growing taller so they can get more sunlight and leave the other trees in the shade. Perhaps some things are true and their contraries are also true, and that's why we have epistemology.
Posted by: Peter Kearney | April 24, 2022 at 06:17 PM
Ah and the Gordian knot was dedicated to Zeus. Surely this poem is worthy of devotion to the gods.
Posted by: Grace Cavalieri | April 24, 2022 at 06:57 PM
Love Susan Campbell's Windy Night trees and how their energy surges into this terrific poem. Hats off! all around!
Posted by: Maureen | April 24, 2022 at 07:33 PM
Great poem, great painting. Wonderful light touch writing about roots of trees and roots of words
Posted by: Chris Mason | April 25, 2022 at 09:12 AM
I like this poem for its jazz-like riffing, one idea/thought seeding the next. Freedom in the improvisation.
Posted by: Greg Masters | April 25, 2022 at 09:26 AM
The new findings about how trees communicate and even defend and nurture each other offer tremendous scope for poetry. Thanks for diving in!
Posted by: Robert Engelman | May 27, 2022 at 11:22 AM