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KATY LEDERER The Heaven-Sent Leaf This is a John Kenneth Galbraith quote that pretty sums up the process of writing almost all of the poems in The Heaven-Sent Leaf: “The notion that wants do not become less urgent the more amply the individual is supplied is broadly repugnant to common sense. It is something to be believed only by those who wish to believe. Yet the conventional wisdom must be tackled on its own terrain. Intemporal comparisons of an individual’s state of mind do rest on technically vulnerable ground. Who can say for sure that the deprivation which afflicts him with hunger is more painful than the deprivation which afflicts him with envy of his neighbor’s new car? In the time that has passed since he was poor, his soul may have become subject to a new and deeper searing.”
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MATTHEW ZAPRUDER Kingdom Come I wrote this poem as part of a collaboration I did in spring of 2008 with the painter Chris Uphues. Chris and I met at a bar after a reading I had given, and he told me he was a painter. I had a feeling he would be good. He sent me photos of ten paintings via email and I was blown away by his work, so I took his titles and wrote ten corresponding poems.
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DANA GOODYEAR Quail This poem arose from a coincidence: the phonetic and visual (but not, as far as I can tell, etymological) sameness between the word for a small dun-colored game bird and the verb, often used in reference to the heart, that means to wither or falter or give way to decline. It occurred to me several years ago, when a friend took me hunting in south Texas.
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