Congratulations to our March poet of the Month. Her poem "The Game Event" submitted for our tiny poetry prompt was selected by our judges because of its playful attitude with the metaphor of building both relationships and language.
DIANE GLANCY is professor emerita at Macalester College. Currently she teaches in the MFA low-residency program at Carlow University. Her 2019 books are It Was Over There by That Place, The Atlas Review Chapbook Series, and The Book of Bearings, Wipf & Stock. In 2020, Turtle Point Press published Island of the Innocent, a Consideration of the Book of Job. Among her awards are two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, an American Book Award, a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Oklahoma Center for the Book, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writers Circle of the Americas. Glancy lives in Shawnee Mission, Kansas and Gainesville, Texas. The rest is on her website: www.dianeglancy.com.
Please enjoy her poem. I know we did. It will appear in our collection of 2020 poetry winners called Night Forest to be released March of 2021.
The Game Event
I wrote the stage for you. The floor. The curtains. I wrote for you a set. Table and chairs. An ottoman. The windows of the house were open. You moved your swift hand. Shutters blew across the yard. The wind transported cows and horses half a mile. The barn as if a gum eraser passed over it. I wrote for you transitions. The church was left half standing. The steeple hanged like a broken mast. Boards were found a mile to the north. In the churchyard the dead stayed in their storm shelters. What wild band-music of weather. What game event. The blowing away of everything. The clearing of the deck. I left a book of literary techniques for you— Segment. Fragment. Truncate. Decollate. I gave you stage directions. The characters moved from one end to the other. I described the theme for you. I gave you plot. You glued one star back onto the sky. The quarter moon was left tilted. I gave you the subtext. From that you could deduct the text. Water is hardest to handle on stage. It is the highest form of art.