Good morning. It's Tuesday, March 31, and today's message comes from the poet Kary Wayson.
Instead of reading you a poem of her own, Kary asked if she could read you her favorite Wallace Stevens poem.
"I suppose it just so happens to be my favorite poem lately," she explained, after shooting this video in her quarantine in Queen Anne. "I'm reminded of it nightly when I encounter those crazy rabbits all over the grass in my front yard when I return from my nightly quarantine constitutional."
The poem is called "A Rabbit as King of the Ghosts." You might want to click that link to follow along to the words on the Poetry Foundation's website.
However, you do not want to miss what happens in the video between 1:00 and 1:10.
Kary's poems have been published widely, including in Best American Poetry 2007 and the 2010 Pushcart Prize anthology.
American Husband, her first book, received the Journal Award in 2009 from Ohio State University Press.
Her second book, The Slip, which won the Burnside Review Poetry Prize, was published last month. Read the title poem in it here.
Rich Smith wrote in a glowing review in The Stranger:
Both [of Kary's] books share some subjects: the paradox of the self (we're singular, yet we contain multitudes), the lover(s), the mother, the father, aborted beginnings of all kinds, and the way we never stop loving people we've loved. She's particularly interested in how impossible it is to reconcile that last subject with the language we have for love. Words themselves, with their many outs, allow us so many ways to evade commitments.
"These poems make me laugh out loud and blink back sudden tears," Suzanne Buffam said.
"These poems show us how to breathe," Ilya Kaminsky said.
What a joy, being read to. If you have a favorite poem, maybe read it aloud to someone on Facetime today. If you don't have a favorite poem, maybe find someone who does, and have them read theirs aloud to you.
You can follow Kary on Instagram or Twitter.
Thank you so much for reading to us, Kary.
And thanks for making us laugh, Brian.
Here's hoping this Tuesday is better than last Tuesday, everyone.
You are being good about social distancing, and it's working.
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Also in this series:
