Willow Room, Green Door: New and Selected Poems

by Deborah Keenan

Overview

The author of Good Heart presents “lyric poetry that sings, enchants, debunks and then reconstructs the truths and mysteries of our lives” (Jim Moore, author of Prognosis).

Winner of the Minnesota Book Award for Poetry

Included in the Book Sense Picks Poetry Top Ten

Written over the course of three decades, this extraordinary collection of new and selected poems presents a body of work from Deborah Keenan that is expressive variously of love and rage, vulnerability and authority, distraction and focus, and, perhaps above all, a sharply empathetic sense of observation. Keenan’s work balances holding on to what is dear with letting go of what she cannot change.

With refreshing curiosity, these poems capture rich layers of life in trial and bliss alike, enabling us to see what a number of her contemporaries have recognized for some time: Deborah Keenan is one of our great poets.

“My god, these are beautiful poems. I feel as if a great soul is speaking in these poems, after long thought and meditation and inward dialogue.” —Charles Baxter, author of The Feast of Love

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781571318541
Publisher:	Milkweed Editions
Publication date:	10/05/2021
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	224
Sales rank:	751,990
File size:	489 KB

About the Author

Deborah Keenan is the author of six collections of poetry and has been published in over fifty literary magazines and anthologies. A regular contributor to Water~Stone Review, founder of the Laurel Poetry Collective, teacher and mentor at the Loft Literary Center, Keenan has always made an effort to connect with the community and bring art into the lives of those who may otherwise have been without. A Professor at the Graduate School at Hamline University where Keenan has been honored with the Hamline University award for professor of the year three times. This year (2006-2007) Keenan will be holding the Edelstein-Keller chair, a position reserved to help bring distinguished Minnesotan authors to the University of Minnesota. Keenan is a mother of four children and lives with her husband, head of Urban Programs for Habitat for Humanity International, in St. Paul.

Table of Contents

Willow Room, Green Door
I
The Beauty of the Painting     3
The Exactness of the Imitation     4
The Appropriateness of the Depiction     5
Verlag Dabritz, Long Ago in Munich, Now in the Poem     6
The Game In Progress     8
Still Life with Scapegoat//Safe in the Family     9
II
The Complete and Undisturbed Lion Skeleton     12
Guessed "True" Answer Was "Bridge"     13
III
Maybe He's Grateful but Get Out of His Way     15
Kandinsky in the Hermitage     16
November 1, 2004     17
Passage from Isaiah     18
Traveling in the Realms of Gold     19
Research on the Color Red     20
It's a Book about Summer, So Cottonwoods and the Rivers Are Key     21
Angel Island and Its Meaning and Value     23
The Black Angel and Henri Coulette     25
V
Woman on Laurel Street Reports That Her Neighbor Has Stolen Nine Pairs of Her Shoes and Left a Pile of Honey and Flour by Her Car     27
Woman on Botticelli Street Reports the Phrase "The End Is Near" Written in Wax on Her Driveway     29
March 7, 2005     30
Stained Glass and What It Could Mean     31
VI
Hockney's Joyful Blue and Purple Road     32
She Thought, I Am Walking Around My Country     34
Botticelli Street and Its Implications     35
VII
Describe the Difference between Depict and Evoke     37
Nature Not Culture     38
And So It Was I Entered the Broken World     39
Tree of Life Made by an Outsider Artist     41
A Tree Is Not a Human Thing     42
VIII
Locked in Winter, Summer Lies     43
IX
Cutter's Way: The White Horse and Lisa Eichhorn Are Clear     47
The Children's Moon in the Poem about Summer     48
XI
It's a Poem about Summer and Summer Is Over     51
Willow Room     54
Green Door     56
Household Wounds
The Drive     61
The Recluse     63
Pursuit     65
The Man Who Knew about Winter     67
This Afternoon     70
Extended Metaphors     72
The Sorceress     75
The Woman Who Knew about Winter     79
What Will Last     82
The Mother     84
The Father     86
Household Wounds     88
Mending     91
After     93
What It Is     95
The Subject     97
A Poem about White Flowers     100
July Twenty-Seventh, Nineteen Seventy-Nine     102
How I Will Know When the War Is Over     104
One Angel Then
Angel Fish New Life     109
Living with Angels     111
Space Angels     117
The Eyes to See Angels     120
The Only Window That Counts
What My Daughter Asked about the Angel in the Tree     125
Formal Presentations of Love     126
Declaration of February     128
Divorce     130
Grief     133
Belonging to God     134
Folds of White Dress/Shaft of Light     136
Be Good     138
Good Dreams or Milk     140
What He Liked He Had a Lot Of     142
The Trees     144
The Amateur     145
Admission     147
Greenland Mummy     149
Happiness
Small History     155
Alone     161
Architecture     163
The Fathers Walking Away from Houses     165
When the Dead Come to Visit in Dreams     167
Fox     169
Living     171
Burning      173
Loving Motels     176
Rogue Wave     179
Why They Belong Together     182
Comfort     184
What It Was Like Today     185
Lilacs and Hail     188
Night Walk     190
Amnesia Plague     193
How I Walk     195
Cordelia: One Portrait at a Time     199
Good Heart
What It Was Like Today: Given Over     203
Travel     204
After D.H. Lawrence     206
What It Was Like Today: Not Taking Their Place     208
The Painting of the Amaryllis     209
Aerial View of Caribou/Slow Moves in the Black-and-White Movie     211
I Knew Her Once     212
In Emerald     214
The Wind     216
Hope     217
Good Heart     222
When Men Poets You Admire and Respect Can Only Answer Sappho When Asked in Public Are There Any Women Poets They Admire     226
What It Was Like Today: Facing East     227
The Last Lion     228
His Red Chair     230
The Exchange     231
Signing My Name in the Book of the Dead     232
Gone     235
REM Channels Leonard Cohen      237
Common     239
Time and Love     241
The Park     243
Kingdoms
If You Say Luck You Can't Say God     249
Portrait of Soon     251
Two Sisters     253
The Boy I Quit For     254
July//The Right Hand Was a Medusa     256
August//No Rain     257
Blue Heron     259
The Four Goldfinches and One Scarlet Tanager     260
Small Panacea and Lucky for Us     262
Nine Mile Creek//What Was Written There     264
The Baby     265
Index of Titles and First Lines     267
Acknowledgments     277