Richard Jackson's Home Page


		Richard Jackson is UC Foundation Professor of English at UT-Chattanooga and the autohor of four books of poems, most recently Heartwall (Umass, Juniper Prize Winner, 2000) Alive All Day (Clevland State Prize winner, 1992), two books of criticism, most recently Dismantling Time in Contemperorary Poetry (Alabama Agee Prize Winner, 1989), and two anthologies, Double Vision: Four Slovene Poets (1994) and The Fire Under the Moon (1999). His Half Lives: Poems based on Petrach, will appear from Invisible Cities Press in 2001. Heart's Bridge, a limited edition of the Petrarch poems, appeared from Aureole press in 1999. His chapbooks of translations include The Woman in the Land: Cesare Pavese's Last Poems (2000), Love's Veils: Imitations from Italian Poets (1999), and The Half Life of Dreams (1998), all from Black Dirt Press, Elgin, IL. He is a winner of Fulbright, NEA and NEH fellowships, as well as four Pushcart Prizes, Crazy Horse and Prairie Schooner Prizes. Recent poems appear in Best American Poems 1997, Approaching Literature (St. Martin's Press) and Literature (Prentice-Hall). He has received several teaching awards at both UTC and Vermont College where he teaches in their MFA program. In May of 2000 he was awarded the Order of Freedom Award from the president of Slovenia for his editing and humanitarian contributions in Slovenia and the Balkans. He edits Poetry Miscellany, mala revija and PM's eastern European Chapbook series, and directs the Meacham Writer's Workshop and East European Exchange. Poetry Miscellany Homepage Poetry Miscellany Mala Review Meacham Writers Conference PM Chapbooks PM Publications Books Eastern European Poetry Exchange Class Information For further information contact Richard Jackson.
		SONATA for Terri Before I could arrive at this moment when the earth wakes inside you, when the night is still tangled in your hair, before I could see how the moonlight melts on your breasts as you lay beside me, before you opened the hands of your soul, at this moment that is so sudden, so unexpected, I can only imagine how the softness of your voice must be enough to stop the insects for miles, and I begin to understand how the way you open your eyes to the morning must be enough to change orbits of planets, so it must have been necessary for me, if Ive really arrived at this moment alive, to have lived a life where only my shadow planted the garden, only my shadow walked through the market, fingered the keys nervously, drove the car too fast, and it must be the same shadow that curls up in the corner of the room or is hung in the closet collecting moths, and it must have taken centuries of bones turning to light, of rivers changing course, of battles won or lost, of a farmer planting one crop or another that failed or not, one atom hitting another atom by chance, and through all this a single string of time survived volcanoes, lightning strikes, car wrecks, floods, invasions to lead to this moment abandoned randomly to us, this singular moment that is part of time¹s litter or maybe its architecture, because now in this moment which is so wondrous the way it lies beside you, I either do not exist or the past has never existed, either my breath is the breath of stars or I do not breathe as I turn to you, as you breathe my name, my heart, as the net of stars dissolves above us, as you wrap yourself around me like honeysuckle, the moon turning pale because it is so drained by our love, so that before this moment, before you lay beneath me, you must have disguised yourself the way the killdeer you pointed out diverts intruders to save what it loves, pretending a broken wing, giving itself over finally to whatever forces, whatever love, whatever touch, whatever suffering it needs just to say I am here, I am always here, stroking the wings of your soul.
		I. THE APOLOGY Whoever hears in these scattered rhymes the raw sighs my heart devoured when I was younger, or sees the soul's tattered phrases hanging there unclaimed, don't scold this art written by my other self, filled with confusion, not lies, and forgive even this varied style I use now, that flies as darkly as the crow, that scans the secret life of the mole, that covers itself in Hope's blankets, that has always told Love's truth, that now asks for pardon before its words run dry. I know how rumor grew like a moth from a cocoon, how some of you laughed when Shame stood at my door for years, how Regret tracked me with her silent screams - but also how each tree bears some fruit, how the moon and the stars, the wind, the whole earth are images whose doors open other worlds, if they only endure like the half-life of dreams.