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Poets on Couches: Natalie Shapero

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Poets on Couches

In this series of videograms, poets read and discuss the poems getting them through these strange times—broadcasting straight from their couches to yours. These readings bring intimacy into our spaces of isolation, both through the affinity of poetry and through the warmth of being able to speak to each other across the distances.

Crash
by Kay Ryan
Issue no. 151 (Summer 1999)
 

 

Slip is one
law of crash
among dozens.

There is also
shift—
moving a
granite lozenge
to the left
a little,
sending down
a cliff.

Also toggles:
the idle flip
that trips
the rails
trains travel.

No act
or refusal
to act, no
special grip
or triple lock
or brake stops

crash: crash
quickens
on resistance
like a legal system
out of Dickens.

 

Natalie Shapero is the author of the poetry collections Hard Child and No Object. She teaches at Tufts University.