Metamorphosis

One day you wake up and you have a new face.
What's this? you say
in the harsh kosher manner
of your mother-in-law in a high-class restaurant.

ALthough your hair is Titian red
and not blue rinse like hers,
she always sent whatever it was back-
No matter how many times you look in the mirror
you can't make it go away.

So this is it.
All those women
you thanked God you didn't look like
have surfaced from caves in your cells
where they have been waiting for years
to gather you into their coven.

And now you remember her bitterness;
too much salt, burned edges;
it was never good enough.

- Ruth Stone (from her 1997 book Simplicity)

For more from WNYC's Poet in Residence, click here.

Poetry Links

William Matthews LINKS
from Poets.org

Mingus at the Half Note is in a WIlliams' Collection, Time & Money: New Poems (1995)

Read an interview with Matthews from the Atlantic Monthly
It was the last interview conducted with him before his sudden death (of a heart attack,) on November 12, 1997, the day after his fifty-fifth birthday, at his home in New York City.

The Alun Lewis Page
For information on Alun Lewis
War Poetry
Alun Lewis' War Poems
Alfred A Knopf on Philip Levine
Information on many of Levine's books
Galway Kinnell Reads Walt Whitman
Kinnell reads Whitman's "To The States" and comments on it
Philip Levine on the Internet Poetry Archive.
Read Levine's poetry and listen to Levine read his poetry
The Leonard Lopate Show: Poetry Magazine
Hear Mr. Lopate talk about the 100 million-dollar donation from Ruth Lilly to Poetry Magazine
The Next Big Thing: Poetry Lives
Alice Quinn, poetry editor for the New Yorker and executive director of the Poetry Society of America, sorts through some entries to the Poetry in Motion Contest
e-poets Network Book of Voices
a list of poets and poems from the Chicago area-- you can listen to poets read their work
The Poetry Project
is at St. Mark's Church in-the-Bowery, since 1966
Bartleby.com
A collection of books online, including a bounty of verse
An Audible Anthology
A collection of poems printed in the Atlantic Montly to read or listen to
Gumball Poetry
It's a zine, it's a website, it's a gumball machine that dispenses poetry!

A selection of Philip Levine's books

A New Selected Poems
Available for purchase at Amazon.com

The Simple Truth
Available for purchase at Amazon.com

The Mercy
Available for purchase at Amazon.com

What Work Is: Poems
Available for purchase at Amazon.com