What Lasts: A Poetry Sampler 

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What lasts? We were inspired to look for answers after reading Bill Brown’s poem that poses that question. “Moments stay with us,” Brown writes, and like many of the poems featured here, Brown’s poem is full of specific lasting moments, what Brown names as “what the soul ate.” Some of the poets featured here consider more tangible things than memory: streams, stars, night sounds, dog graves (“we recognize those dark mounds, / the bag of lime, sometimes still leaning against the shed”); other poems consider more tangible feelings: regret, loneliness, grief. Perhaps you’ll be inspired to capture your own thoughts about longevity and permanence. What did your soul eat today?

~Marianne Worthington, poetry editor


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Bill Brown
            What Lasts

Carol Grametbauer
            Once, in July

D. A. Gray
            Lime

Connie Jordan Green
            The Color of Comfort

Pamela Gibbs Hirschler
            When It's Late

Sonja Johanson
            This Was the Hops Field
               Wondering at Himself

Matt Prater
            We Do Not Say The Candle Is Put Out

Jessica D. Thompson
            Sitting with the Dead


  ©Jackie White Rogers; used with permission 

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