The Foreword to the new book “The Wisdom of Our Ancestors: Conservative Humanism and the Western Tradition.”
Three Poems by Catharine Savage Brosman
These poems appear in the Winter 2020 issue of Modern Age. To subscribe now, go here.
Broken Landscape
—Wyoming
Around me, even slopes crack suddenly,
their green in ruptured ski runs; rocky breaks
appear, then heal. So did the plains agree
to rise, or mountains fall apart? It takes
a modern mind to read earth’s history.
Aspen Grove
—Colorado
The others hiked ahead; the grove’s now mine,
its lighting tinseled, cool. The forest floor
is blue with lupine, harebell, columbine.
Green music runs, abstractly; cirrus score
the sky. Do I imagine the design?
White Water
—Along the Arkansas
Rough canyon, rougher waters, forced apart
by shoals and fallen boulders, in a field
of moiling, eddying—the maelstrom heart
of doubt—until, downstream, commotions yield
to pools, serene, the apogee of art.
Catharine Savage Brosman is professor emerita of French at Tulane University and honorary research professor at the University of Sheffield. Her creative work comprises several collections of verse, of which An Aesthetic Education and Other Stories is the most recent.
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