out of wooden frames, grounds
stretching in all directions.
And then follows the thought that none of it
can prevent death from strolling
right through the door (no matter how
it’s barred) and then leaving with
what it came for. Heaven must be
smiling on your deathbed as your soul
seeps upward, vaporizing.
Perhaps it’s better to die behind
one’s own back. Those who know
are never available. Yet each death feels
so exceptional, as if, simply due to the odds,
some people ought to be spared.
Is there truly time for so many tragedies?
Death has earned the key to every city. For who else
tends to all of the sick? Who else takes
in the old? Who else wants us all?
Not even our mothers. In fact,
only death always keeps its promise.
Notes
“Sometimes We Sleep Well in the Midst of Terrible Grief” takes its title from a line in “Submission to Death” from James L. White’s The Salt Ecstasies.
“On His Bed and No Longer Among the Living”: The italicized passages and title are taken from W. G. Sebald’s books The Rings of Saturn and Austerlitz.
“Narcissus and Me”: The italicized passages are my versions, with serious liberties taken, of passages from the “Echo and Narcissus” section of Ovid’s Metamorphoses.
“The Darkness Echoing” takes its title and its shape from “Personal Helicon” by Seamus Heaney.
Acknowledgments
5 A.M.: “Father,” “Anger”;
At Length: “Layoff”;
The Awl: “To an Editor Who Said I Repeat Myself and Tell Too Much,” “Variations on the Moment of Apprehending the Extent of One’s Responsibilities”;
Boston Review: “The Prince of Rivers”;
Catch Up: “Narcissus and Me”;
Colorado Review: “On His Bed and No Longer Among the Living,” “My Mom, d. 1994,” “Late Poem”;
The Laurel Review: “Beginnings for an Essay in Spite of Itself”;
The Literary Review: “Grief: A Celebration”;
Maine: “Jazz”;
The Nation: “Get Out”;
The New Yorker: “Money Time”;
Pleiades: “The Darkness Echoing,” “It Came from the Primordial Ooze.”
Thank you to Stephen Burt, Rob Casper, Erika Kawalik, Dennis Nurske, Parul Sehgal, Peter Conners and all at BOA, Stephanie G’Shwind, Monica de la Torre for pointing me to the paintings of Jorge Queiroz, and to Jorge Queiroz and the Sikkema Jenkins & Co. gallery for generously granting permission to use the stunning painting on the cover of this book. Thanks, too, to Dana Levin, D. A. Powell, all at PW, and my family.
Thank you to the Corporation of Yaddo and the MacDowell Colony for residencies during which much of this book was written.
About the Author
Craig Morgan Teicher is also the author of Brenda Is in the Room and Other Poems, chosen by Paul Hoover for the 2007 Colorado Prize for Poetry, and Cradle Book, named a notable book by the Story Prize committee. His poems have appeared in the New Yorker, the Nation, the Paris Review, the Best American Poetry, and many other publications. He works at Publishers Weekly and serves as an editor for the Literary Review. His writing about books, authors, and technology is published widely, and he has served on the board of the National Book Critics Circle. He lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his wife and children.
BOA EDITIONS, LTD. AMERICAN POETS CONTINUUM SERIES
No. 1 The Fuhrer Bunker: A Cycle of Poems in Progress
W. D. Snodgrass
No. 2 She
M. L. Rosenthal
No. 3 Living With Distance
Ralph J. Mills, Jr.
No. 4 Not Just Any Death
Michael Waters
No. 5 That Was Then: New and Selected Poems
Isabella Gardner
No. 6 Things That Happen Where There Aren’t Any People
William Stafford
No. 7 The Bridge of Change: Poems 1974–1980
John Logan
No. 8 Signatures
Joseph Stroud
No. 9 People Live Here: Selected Poems 1949–1983
Louis Simpson
No. 10 Yin
Carolyn Kizer
No. 11 Duhamel: Ideas of Order in Little Canada
Bill Tremblay
No. 12 Seeing It Was So
Anthony Piccione
No. 13 Hyam Plutzik:
The Collected Poems
No. 14 Good Woman: Poems and a Memoir 1969–1980
Lucille Clifton
No. 15 Next: New Poems
Lucille Clifton
No. 16 Roxa: Voices of the Culver Family
William B. Patrick
No. 17 John Logan: The Collected Poems
No. 18 Isabella Gardner: The Collected Poems
No. 19 The Sunken Lightship
Peter Makuck
No. 20 The City in Which I Love You
Li-Young Lee
No. 21 Quilting: Poems 1987–1990
Lucille Clifton
No. 22 John Logan: The Collected Fiction
No. 23 Shenandoah and Other Verse Plays
Delmore Schwartz
No. 24 Nobody Lives on Arthur Godfrey Boulevard
Gerald Costanzo
No. 25 The Book of Names: New and Selected Poems
Barton Sutter
No. 26 Each in His Season
W. D. Snodgrass
No. 27 Wordworks: Poems Selected and New
Richard Kostelanetz
No. 28 What We Carry
Dorianne Laux
No. 29 Red Suitcase
Naomi Shihab Nye
No. 30 Song
Brigit Pegeen Kelly
No. 31 The Fuehrer Bunker: The Complete Cycle
W. D. Snodgrass
No. 32 For the Kingdom
Anthony Piccione
No. 33 The Quicken Tree
Bill Knott
No. 34 These Upraised Hands
William B. Patrick
No. 35 Crazy Horse in Stillness
William Heyen
No. 36 Quick, Now, Always
Mark Irwin
No. 37 I Have Tasted the Apple
Mary Crow
No. 38 The Terrible Stories
Lucille Clifton
No. 39 The Heat of Arrivals
Ray Gonzalez
No. 40 Jimmy & Rita
Kim Addonizio
No. 41 Green Ash, Red Maple, Black Gum
Michael Waters
No. 42 Against Distance
Peter Makuck
No. 43 The Night Path
Laurie Kutchins
No. 44 Radiography
Bruce Bond
No. 45 At My Ease: Uncollected Poems of the Fifties and Sixties
David Ignatow
No. 46 Trillium
Richard Foerster
No. 47 Fuel
Naomi Shihab Nye
No. 48 Gratitude
Sam Hamill
No. 49 Diana, Charles, & the Queen
William Heyen
No. 50 Plus Shipping
Bob Hicok
No. 51 Cabato Sentora
Ray Gonzalez
No. 52 We Didn’t Come Here for This
William B. Patrick
No. 53 The Vandals
Alan Michael Parker
No. 54 To Get Here
Wendy Mnookin
No. 55 Living Is What I Wanted: Last Poems
David Ignatow
No. 56 Dusty Angel
Michael Blumenthal
No. 57 The Tiger Iris
Joan Swift
No. 58 White City
Mark Irwin
No. 59 Laugh at the End of the World: Collected Comic Poems 1969–1999
Bill Knott
No. 60 Bl
essing the Boats: New and Selected Poems: 1988–2000
Lucille Clifton
No. 61 Tell Me
Kim Addonizio
No. 62 Smoke
Dorianne Laux
No. 63 Parthenopi: New and Selected Poems
Michael Waters
No. 64 Rancho Notorious
Richard Garcia
No. 65 Jam
Joe-Anne McLaughlin
No. 66 A. Poulin, Jr. Selected Poems
Edited, with an Introduction by Michael Waters
No. 67 Small Gods of Grief
Laure-Anne Bosselaar
No. 68 Book of My Nights
Li-Young Lee
No. 69 Tulip Farms and Leper Colonies
Charles Harper Webb
No. 70 Double Going
Richard Foerster
No. 71 What He Took
Wendy Mnookin
No. 72 The Hawk Temple at Tierra Grande
Ray Gonzalez
No. 73 Mules of Love
Ellen Bass
No. 74 The Guests at the Gate
Anthony Piccione
No. 75 Dumb Luck
Sam Hamill
No. 76 Love Song with Motor Vehicles
Alan Michael Parker
No. 77 Life Watch
Willis Barnstone
No. 78 The Owner of the House: New Collected Poems 1940–2001
Louis Simpson
No. 79 Is
Wayne Dodd
No. 80 Late
Cecilia Woloch
No. 81 Precipitates
Debra Kang Dean
No. 82 The Orchard
Brigit Pegeen Kelly
No. 83 Bright Hunger
Mark Irwin
No. 84 Desire Lines: New and Selected Poems
Lola Haskins
No. 85 Curious Conduct
Jeanne Marie Beaumont
No. 86 Mercy
Lucille Clifton
No. 87 Model Homes
Wayne Koestenbaum
No. 88 Farewell to the Starlight in Whiskey
Barton Sutter
No. 89 Angels for the Burning
David Mura
No. 90 The Rooster’s Wife
Russell Edson
No. 91 American Children
Jim Simmerman
No. 92 Postcards from the Interior
Wyn Cooper
No. 93 You & Yours
Naomi Shihab Nye
No. 94 Consideration of the Guitar: New and Selected Poems 1986–2005
Ray Gonzalez
No. 95 Off-Season in the Promised Land
Peter Makuck
No. 96 The Hoopoe’s Crown
Jacqueline Osherow
No. 97 Not for Specialists: New and Selected Poems
W. D. Snodgrass
No. 98 Splendor
Steve Kronen
No. 99 Woman Crossing a Field
Deena Linett
No. 100 The Burning of Troy
Richard Foerster
No. 101 Darling Vulgarity
Michael Waters
No. 102 The Persistence of Objects
Richard Garcia
No. 103 Slope of the Child Everlasting
Laurie Kutchins
No. 104 Broken Hallelujahs
Sean Thomas Dougherty
No. 105 Peeping Tom’s Cabin: Comic Verse 1928–2008
X. J. Kennedy
No. 106 Disclamor
G.C. Waldrep
No. 107 Encouragement for a Man Falling to His Death
Christopher Kennedy
No. 108 Sleeping with Houdini
Nin Andrews
No. 109 Nomina
Karen Volkman
No. 110 The Fortieth Day
Kazim Ali
No. 111 Elephants & Butterflies
Alan Michael Parker
No. 112 Voices
Lucille Clifton
No. 113 The Moon Makes Its Own Plea
Wendy Mnookin
No. 114 The Heaven-Sent Leaf
Katy Lederer
No. 115 Struggling Times
Louis Simpson
No. 116 And
Michael Blumenthal
No. 117 Carpathia
Cecilia Woloch
No. 118 Seasons of Lotus, Seasons of Bone
Matthew Shenoda
No. 119 Sharp Stars
Sharon Bryan
No. 120 Cool Auditor
Ray Gonzalez
No. 121 Long Lens: New and Selected Poems
Peter Makuck
No. 122 Chaos Is the New Calm
Wyn Cooper
No. 123 Diwata
Barbara Jane Reyes
No. 124 Burning of the Three Fires
Jeanne Marie Beaumont
No. 125 Sasha Sings the Laundry on the Line
Sean Thomas Dougherty
No. 126 Your Father on the Train of Ghosts
G.C. Waldrep and John Gallaher
No. 127 Ennui Prophet
Christopher Kennedy
No. 128 Transfer
Naomi Shihab Nye
No. 129 Gospel Night
Michael Waters
No. 130 The Hands of Strangers: Poems from the Nursing Home
Janice N. Harrington
No. 131 Kingdom Animalia
Aracelis Girmay
No. 132 True Faith
Ira Sadoff
No. 133 The Reindeer Camps and Other Poems
Barton Sutter
No. 134 The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton 1965–2010
No. 135 To Keep Love Blurry
Craig Morgan Teicher
Colophon
To Keep Love Blurry, poems by Craig Morgan Teicher,
is set in Adobe Garamond, a digital font designed in 1989
by Robert Slimbach (1956–) based on the French Renaissance roman
types of Claude Garamond (ca. 1480–1561) and the italics of
Robert Granjon (1513–1589).
The publication of this book is made possible, in part,
by the special support of the following individuals:
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To Keep Love Blurry Page 6
