Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $9.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Eternal Sentences
    Eternal Sentences
    Eternal Sentences
    Ebook80 pages1 hour

    Eternal Sentences

    By Michael McGriff

    5/5

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Winner, 2021 Miller Williams Poetry Prize

    Michael McGriff’s Eternal Sentences bears witness to the world of gravel roads, working-class families, and geographic isolation in poems that illuminate both common occurrence and the territories of the surreal. Here, in rendering every line as a single sentence, McGriff depicts a world seen through fragments, quick leaps, and wild associations. Haunted as much by place and people as by the possibilities of image-making itself, Eternal Sentences is a song for the hidden depots of rural America.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherUniversity of Arkansas Press
    Release dateMar 5, 2021
    ISBN9781610757416
    Eternal Sentences

    Related to Eternal Sentences

    Related ebooks

    Poetry For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      from BLACK PASTORAL

      Nov 1, 2023

      somewheres, some lifetimes ago I have run so far, so long.There is nowhere I haven’t beenBut here, in this field, a bodyLength from the ragged brinkThat gives way to forest.I collapsed here, the thin, hard slipOf me whittled at both ends.I want badly

      4 min read

    • Article

      Fifteen Poets on Revision

      Feb 27, 2018

      After 17 drafts over two weeks, Elizabeth Bishop’s poem “One Art” was completed on November 4, 1975. The poem began as notes, and evolved into a villanelle. She changed the title. She deleted words. She reached for possible rhymes. Brett Candlish Mil

      4 min read

    • Article

      Two Poems

      Jan 1, 2022

      cook lobster. They’re loyal sea rubies and deservebetter than a pinch of lemon and herbed butter. But I’ll shower hot enough to brighten you, makezinnias of your shoulders and steal the towels when it’s over, your water-tattooed back a garden before

      3 min read

    • Article

      Bless Your Soup

      Jan 1, 2022

      I am doing the work of healing.As in:I cry to early-2000s Paula DeAnda.I wash the towels from our apartment.I find your resume onlineand critique it harshly for a ghost audience. I come up with new names for emotions, likeDISLODGED FITTED SHEET orDAM

      1 min read

    • Article

      Two Poems

      Jan 1, 2022

      Two Poems
      2 min read

    • Article

      Three Poems

      Nov 1, 2020

      1 The doctor makes a curving incision in the left topback of my skull andlifts the cap— “What areaam I here to work on?” But Ijust want to wish his son a Happy Birthday—It had been my aim, the reason I’dwalked right into this Doctor dream—In the morn

      11 min read

    • Article

      Toward A Unified Theory

      Jan 1, 2022

      Condemned to live inside the weatherof our moods What are you doing? Filling this bucket with waterand dumping it into the water They can’t excavate the amphitheater further because it extends backbeneath the houses We close their eyes not for thembu

      2 min read

    • Article

      Two Poems

      Jan 1, 2022

      Maybe every choice is in some way false,like whether to wonder or worry,or feel alive or alone in Clevelandor Memphis or any standard double queentrying to unwrap a tiny hotel soap.There’s always another one waitingin the dish like a stale communion

      2 min read

    • Article

      Four Poems

      Jul 1, 2023

      Sometimes I feel like I’m writing the scorefor a film that doesn’t yet exist, but everything that will happenin the film will happen to me. Is this what they call plot? This dailypicking up of the same things— glasses, coffee cup, pen, book, keys—and

      2 min read

    • Article

      Poe’s Secrets

      Oct 1, 2020

      Poe’s Secrets
      2 min read

    • Article

      TheTime Is Now

      Feb 15, 2023

      Suggested Reading: Letters to a Writer of Color (Random House, March 2023) edited by Deepa Anappara and Taymour Soomro Encouraging readers to reevaluate the codes and conventions that shape assumptions about how fiction should be written, and for who

      2 min read

    • Article

      On Giving Up: Its Uses And Benefits In The Writing Life

      Jul 1, 2022

      It reminds me of a moment I used to have in college. I’d put off my term papers every single time till the last minute. So I’d be up at 3 or 4 in the morning working on some damn thesis totally confused, completely exhausted, and I’d have this glorio

      14 min read

    • Article

      Three Poems

      Mar 1, 2022

      leisure for the youth / housing for everyone homeless / fresh fruit in the trees & kitchens of every American / a belly full & living / land back—truly & in its truest form / reparations for all the land & promise Black America has been stripped of s

      2 min read

    • Article

      Diaspora Sonnets

      Sep 1, 2022

      The old men drink their spritzers and gossipunder awnings. Red hued and blustery, like two roosters on the side of a road.Skyward they crane their necks and laugh, sometimes they wonder about kings and future kingsand how the muscles peer from their

      2 min read

    • Article

      Think What a Poem Might Do: A Conversation with Jill Bialosky and Matthew Zapruder

      Aug 17, 2017

      What, if anything, do you think poetry can do for us in these difficult times? The post Think What a Poem Might Do: A Conversation with Jill Bialosky and Matthew Zapruder appeared first on The Millions.

      10 min read

    • Article

      All I Know

      Jul 1, 2022

      The Statue of Liberty was packed in crates of lentilsand there is a species of catfish with scalesso tough that piranhas can’t chew throughto red softness. I’m thinking of what is vital,today. The willow tree in my dreams that swaysand a little girl

      2 min read

    • Article

      Submission Calendar

      Feb 16, 2022

      Submission Calendar
      2 min read

    • Article

      Falling Out of Love with Lyric Poetry

      Feb 6, 2024

      Bang out hundreds of pages of rhyming couplets about something other than your identity or your perceptions, and you, too, will likely fall out of love with lyric poetry. The post Falling Out of Love with Lyric Poetry appeared first on The Millions.

      4 min read

    • Article

      Hilltop

      Dec 7, 2021

      Returning to the very same place,let it be a hilltopwith a view of the night city where once you used to be,when your “whole life”still lay ahead of you,when everything was before. Returning—when it’s already after:irrevocably, decisively.What a stra

      1 min read

    • Article

      What Living In A House Is Like

      May 1, 2022

      Standing in each stanza—no, I’m sorry—room. Standing in each room waslike standing in a tester stroke of wall paint. All these blobs of colors in rows and columns, the size of thumbs.Together—a portrait of potential. But blues leaped to yellow leaped

      1 min read

    • Article

      An Anti-Racist Poetry Reading List

      Jun 8, 2020

      These recent poetry collections offer poignant narratives and snapshots of racial injustice in America. The post An Anti-Racist Poetry Reading List appeared first on The Millions.

      1 min read

    • Article

      Something About John Coltrane

      Sep 1, 2021

      Something about a tree in shallow sleepListening for what it wants to remember: The note of a seed, its neck sliding throughDirt and its confusion—nothing cleansed Of struggle. The weight lost after death,A confrontation of death. John Coltrane Even

      5 min read

    • Article

      Three Poems

      Mar 1, 2022

      i look like someonehealing from an accidentbecause i am someonehealing from an accidentthe book of actsscales falling from saul’s eyesremembering my capacityfor stillnesshow long can i sitwithout looking awaythe fear of god escapingi desperately need

      3 min read

    • Article

      Two Poems

      Jul 1, 2023

      nothing so lonely as the hospitalbed. nothing so lonely as beinglonely in the hospital bed. nothingso jargoned as the body sproutingbrush tuber cannula or rue. nothingso pure as the abstracted by which Imean exploded body, the body thatholds its skin

      1 min read

    • Article

      Revising One Sentence

      Jun 15, 2019

      Revising One Sentence
      7 min read

    • Article

      My Past And Future Assassin

      Jun 13, 2018

      My Past And Future Assassin
      16 min read

    • Article

      Three Poems

      Jul 1, 2020

      She was a security guard and even though her uniform was black I could seeIt was covered in blood, the marble floor was covered in blood, it wasSlowly pooling out from the space where HER HAND used to beOh my god, I said, then I started to say, YOUR

      3 min read

    • Article

      Reconsidering Pablo Neruda in Light of ‘The Poet’s Calling’

      Jun 4, 2018

      When Pablo Neruda was expelled from France in 1952, he wrote this to his beloved countrymen in Chile: “The future of humanity may be endangered in the hands of a few evil men, but it does not belong to them. The future of man is ours, because we are

      4 min read

    • Article

      Ars Poetica

      Sep 1, 2018

      1. A poem is something that can’t otherwise be said addressed to someone who can’t otherwise hear it. By this definition, poetry is deeply impractical and deeply necessary. There aren’t good words for most things we need to express, and lots of the p

      16 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Eternal Sentences

    5/5

    1 rating0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Eternal Sentences - Michael McGriff

      Miller Williams Poetry Series

      EDITED BY BILLY COLLINS

      ETERNAL SENTENCES

      MICHAEL McGRIFF

      The University of Arkansas Press

      Fayetteville

      2021

      Copyright © 2021 by The University of Arkansas Press. All rights reserved. No part of this book should be used or reproduced in any manner without prior permission in writing from the University of Arkansas Press or as expressly permitted by law.

      ISBN: 978-1-68226-162-0

      eISBN: 978-1-61075-741-6

      Manufactured in the United States of America

      25  24  23  22  21      5  4  3  2  1

      Designed by Liz Lester

      The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials Z39.48-1984.

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Names: McGriff, Michael, 1976– author.

      Title: Eternal sentences / Michael McGriff.

      Description: Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2021. | Series: Miller Williams poetry series | Summary: Eternal Sentences, winner of the 2021 Miller Williams Poetry Prize, bears witness to the unseen worlds of gravel roads, working-class families, and geographic isolation—Provided by publisher.

      Identifiers: LCCN 2020042490 (print) | LCCN 2020042491 (ebook) | ISBN 9781682261620 (paperback) | ISBN 9781610757416 (ebook)

      Subjects: LCGFT: Poetry.

      Classification: LCC PS3613.C4973 E84 2021 (print) | LCC PS3613.C4973 (ebook) | DDC 811/.6—dc23

      LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020042490

      LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020042491

      Funded in part by

      for Dorianne Laux & Joseph Millar

      I adjust the time

      so as to pass through my life

      —Bei Dao

      CONTENTS

      Series Editor’s Preface

      Acknowledgments

      Eternal Sentences

      Solstice

      Waiting for the Heat to Break into Rain

      1995

      South Fork of Coos River

      Elk in the Field

      1987

      Cousin

      Dead Crow’s Monologue

      Mikey’s in Jail

      Sleeping beside the Alsea

      August Poem for Bei Dao

      Food Stamps

      What Gets Seen

      Campaign Promises

      Lunch Break in the Cab of My Truck

      Concession Speech

      Upriver Memory and Pinochle

      The Last Poem about the Moon

      Whale

      On the Grande Ronde

      The Evening

      Tonight I Am

      Eminent Domain

      County Clerk’s Office

      Driving by Johanson’s

      Presidio

      Westport Ferry

      1986

      Aging

      Side Work

      Ontological Tire Shop

      Idiot Tax

      Trading Places with the Moon

      Neighbors

      In the Hayloft Looking East

      A Job Up North

      Election Year

      Five Translations of Morning Light

      It’s the First Day of Burn Season

      Antonio Porchia

      Inventing the Cyclops

      Calm Seas

      A Visitation

      Self-Portrait in October Light

      Elegy for A. C. with Water and Anwar

      De Profundis

      1999

      Ambush

      No Bond, No

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1