Page 18 - Dark Matter:Women Witnessing Issue2
P. 18
iron dark lattice work
they saw and became.
In their eyes
there is silence,
red ash and stormclouds.
The quiet surprise of space
carrying the familiar shape of what it held.
This moment the world continues.
In undertaking such a reconsideration, I believe, we are going to discover that a “literature of fragile
ongoing” has been long in formation, generally unrecognized as such but now available to us as
inspiration for the further inventions-‐-‐both literary and practical-‐-‐that we must urgently attempt.
Jan Clausen’s most recent poetry title, Veiled Spill: A Sequence, has
just been issued by GenPop Books. Her publications include five
earlier volumes of poetry; the memoir Apples and Oranges: My
Journey Through Sexual Identity (Houghton Mifflin); and the novels
Sinking, Stealing and The Prosperine Papers (Crossing Press [U.S.]
and The Women’s Press, Ltd. [U.K.]). Her short fiction and poems
have appeared widely in journals and anthologies such as AGNI,
Another Chicago Magazine, Bloom, Drunken Boat, Fence, Hanging
Loose, Hotel Amerika, H.O.W. Journal, Kenyon Review, the Library of
America volume Poems from the Women’s Movement, Obsession:
Sestinas for the 21st Century, Ploughshares, and Tarpaulin Sky. Book reviews and literary journalism
appear in Boston Review, Ms., The Nation, Poets and Writers, and The Women’s Review of Books. From
1989 to 2010, Clausen taught writing at Eugene Lang College, the New School (New York City). The
recipient of fellowships from the NEA and the New York Foundation for the Arts, she currently teaches
in the Goddard College MFA in Writing Program and at New York University.
Photo credit: Joanna Eldredge Morrissey
