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GERALD STERN - WINTER 2008 FEATURE  

The Cortland Review

FEATURE
Gerald Stern
Five poems by Gerald Stern.


POETRY
Christopher Buckley
Michael Burkard
Jeff Friedman
Ross Gay
Jack Gilbert This marks an author's first online publication
Linda Gregg
Jane Hirshfield
Tony Hoagland
Joan Larkin
Dorianne Laux
Jan Heller Levi
Anne Marie Macari
Ed Ochester
Alicia Ostriker
Kathleen Peirce This marks an author's first online publication
Peter Richards
Ira Sadoff
Jean Valentine
Arthur Vogelsang This marks an author's first online publication
Judith Vollmer
Anne Waldman
Peter Waldor
Michael Waters This marks an author's first online publication
 
Essay
"The Final Vocabulary of Gerald Stern" by David Rigsbee.

Book Review
"Save the Last Dance" by Gerald Stern—Book Review, by David Rigsbee.

Jane Hirshfield

Jane Hirshfield's sixth, most recent book of poetry, After (HarperCollins, 2006) was named a "best book of 2006" by The Washington Post, The San Francisco Chronicle, and England's Financial Times. She is also the author of a book of essays, Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry (HarperCollins, 1997) and editor/translator of three now-classic collections of poetry by women from earlier times. Her poems appear in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, Poetry, The American Poetry Review, Orion, The Times Literary Supplement, and elsewhere.
 


The Egg Had Frozen, an Accident.
        I Thought of My Life
   


The egg had frozen, an accident.
I thought of my life.
I heated the butter anyhow.
The shell peeled easily,
inside it looked
both translucent and boiled.
I moved it around in the pan.
It melted, the whites
first clearing to liquid,
then turning solid
and white like good laundry.
The yolk kept its yolk shape.
Not fried, not scrambled,
in the end it was cooked.
With pepper and salt, I ate it.
My life that resembled it ate it.
It tasted like any other wrecked thing,
eggish and tender, a banquet.

 

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