What Our Contributors Are Reading This Fall

Lucie Brock-Broido and Henri Cole

Recently, I visited New York City to attend a tribute for Lucie Brock-Broido, a poet who, like many of the finest, died too young. So I reread Lucie’s last book, , which was her best. One of the functions of poetry, and of the poet, is to heal us from the damages of experience; I think Lucie’s poems are often about healing from the damages we inflict upon the earth and its inhabitants. Animal rights was one of Lucie’s passions. As far back as ancient times, animals have been used to represent and critique our human behavior. I think Lucie was part animal. Certainly, she was feral. She believed that in a prior life she had been a lynx, a small lynx. And in was her Bible, and Lucie refreshed the English language with her radiantly original poems. This summer, I visited her grave at Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts several times, and a thick coat of grass already sparkles over her. I find it almost unbearable to absorb her loss. Sometimes, to keep her alive, I repeat a list of words with her name embedded in them: halnation, edate, fern, peld. I loved her poems and cannot believe there will be no more. —