Issue 4.3
Fall 2024
Elizabeth
Robinson
Reflection
I had the miraculous opportunity to wander around in New Zealand for the month of May. While there I felt the force of place, and of presence. My friend, the poet Lisa Samuels, who lives in Auckland, reminded me that New Zealand has given a river and a mountain legal status as “non-human persons.” (She prefers “non-human beings.”) This was resonant for me in terms of what I had felt in my encounters there with rocks, birds, black sand, ferns, the air.
Koru
Green time tangling,
going away to come back and all
at once, slowly, as the tension in
the center breaks. Curl open and
reverence, reneging, no, reversing—
an eye, a contraction
loosening, forgetful
grace. And turning, curl,
not spiral, tensing. See and
see greenly and see
how to break what is
continuous. To be
implausible. Singing mistakenly
every time the voice in the saying
says it will speak.
Elizabeth Robinson lives near San Pablo Bay in Pinole, California. Her most recent books are Excursive (Roof Books), Thirst & Surfeit (Threadsuns), and, with Susanne Dyckman, Rendered Paradise (Apogee Press). Recent poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Luigi Ten Co, Spirit Duplicator, New American Writing, and other journals.
Elizabeth's Book Recommendations
The Holy Forest by Robin Blaser
The Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet, edited by Anna Tsing, Heather Swanson, Elaine Gan, and Niels Bubandt
Hereafter, by Alan Felsenthal
Gertrude Stein’s writing about the continuous present and the prolonged present.