Memory
& Narcissus in the Gray Afternoon
by Jan
Weissmiller
This is Michael Carey for Voices from the Prairie a weekly sampling from the rich soil of Iowa’s literary tradition. Today’s writer is Jan Weissmiller who can be found most days in Iowa City helping to manage that great literary bookstore Prairie Lights. She not only sells others poetry books and introduces other writers on the radio program Live from Prairie Lights but she is also a great writer herself. Her poems are often short, subtle and painterly. With a few deft strokes she can paint vivid and beautiful images that resonates on many levels of meaning. Because they are short I will read two, one concerning the making of snow angels and the other about the plant Narcissus. Secretly though, they are both love poems. Listen and let the light of her tender art fill you.
Memory
then, we lay down in the
snow,
beyond words and moved our arms
betraying their shape with our own forms.
Because you stood and pulled me up,
mine is the clearer of the two.
Narcissus in the
Gray Afternoon
Outside: hepatica, sweet william,
violet.
And yes, perhaps these are less delicate;
trumpeting heads on magnificent stems,
bending this morning’s orange juice jar
around themselves.
O eerie, eerie and ethereal!
I look to you through them, look through to tell you
I would never have guessed
this light could exist in our room.
"Memory" and "Narcissus in the Gray Afternoon" by Jan Weissmiller. Both are from her book In Divided Light by Loess Hills Books. "Narcissus in the Gray Afternoon" was first published in River Styx.
For Voices from the Prairie and Humanities Iowa, this is Michael Carey hoping you continue to hear the music blooming all around you.
Biography
Jan Weissmiller received an M.F.A. from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop in 1984. She lives in Iowa City with her husband, the painter John Dilg, and has worked for many years at Prairie Lights Bookstore there. Her first book of poetry In Divided Light was published in 1999 by Loess Hill Books.