Linda Gregg

Linda Gregg's poems do everything poems should do, even doing what Frost said a poem should do, "begin in delight and end in wisdom." They're little sunrises and sunsets of language constructed for those who know they can't live without poetry, approachable and direct enough to speak to those who don't yet know thay can't live without poetry. 

Arriving Again and Again Without Noticing

I remember all the different kinds of years.

angry, or brokenhearted, or afraid.

I remember feeling like that

walking up the mountain along the dirt path

to my broken house on the island.

And long years of waiting in Massachusetts.

The winter walking and hot summer walking.

I finally fell in love with all of it:

dirt, night, rock and far views.

It's strange that my heart is as full

now as my desire was then.

--Linda Gregg, from In the Middle Distance, Graywolf Press, 2006.

I hadn't looked at the book in years, I can't remember where it came from, or how it got into my hands. I can't remember reading Gregg's poems before, though I must have, the book was in a stack of other books.