Thursday, May 3, 2012, at 7:00 pm, poets Ewa Chrusciel and Mary Ruefle will continue the fifth season of the Collected Poets Series. Mocha Maya’s Coffee House, 47 Bridge St, Shelburne Falls, MA. ($2-5 suggested donation)

Ewa Chrusciel

Ewa Chrusciel writes both in Polish and English. In 2003 Studium published her first book in Polish. Her second book in Polish, Sopilki, came out in December 2009. She has won the 2009 international book contest for her book in English, Strata, which was published with Emergency Press in March 2011 in the United States. Her second book in English, Contraband of Hoopoe, is forthcoming from Omnidawn Publishing in September 2014. Her poems have been featured in Jubilat, Boston Review, Colorado Review, Spoon River Review, Aufgabe among others. Her translations of poetry appeared in numerous journals and two anthologies of Polish poetry in English translations: Carnivorous Boy, Carnivorous Bird and Six Polish Poets. She is a Professor of Humanities at Colby-Sawyer College.

Mary Ruefle

Mary Ruefle is the author of the forthcoming book, Madness, Rack, and Honey: Collected Lectures (Wave Books, 2012), and most recently, Selected Poems (Wave Books, 2010). She has published ten books of poetry, a book of prose (The Most of It, Wave Books, 2008), and a comic book, Go Home and Go to Bed, (Pilot Books/Orange Table Comics, 2007); she is also an erasure artist, whose treatments of nineteenth century texts have been exhibited in museums and galleries, and published in A Little White Shadow (Wave Books, 2006). Ruefle is the recipient of numerous honors, including the William Carlos Williams award, an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Guggenheim fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, and a Whiting Award. She lives in Bennington, Vermont, and teaches in the MFA program at Vermont College.

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Ewa Chrusciel

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Fashion a tale of walfisch; wolves turned into water-
kites. Astral liquids in measured strains. Confident
chiasmus             envelopes           in              dream—
stations         which is to             say     let   it    be  a  stone
that put forth its foliage to the Sea; shoots
and thistles; wild grapes wild grapes and gooseberries
take away its hedge           give it to grazing
and thorns and briers
cloud which puts forth
its foliage to the Sea
and turns into a bone

it will be a cornerstone
as far as the river
which is to say       wieloryb     or      balena
of radiance – ika moana  —    each of                lights
,       light,   rather            a spherical being;    a huge bulimic
duende
& knots               and you know              each
to its own peacocky  rain & bow

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BALLAD / Mary Ruefle

When the heel came off my shoe
I knew I was condemned to die.
I came into this world laughing
like one who had wept enough.
Hung in the 18th century
under a vague sun
for a pavane crime,
this morning I put my feet
on the floor and all that.
One by one thoughts came into me
and I left them there.
One by one they cried
please don’t murder me,
I am your offspring!
Which is what I said to the passerby
when the heel came off my shoe
and I knew I was condemned to die.