Elizabeth Spires (born in 1952 in Lancaster, Ohio) is the author of six collections of poetry: Globe, Swan’s Island, Annonciade, Worldling, Now the Green Blade Rises, and The Wave-Maker. She has also written six books for children, including The Mouse of Amherst and I Heard God Talking to Me: William Edmondson and His Stone Carvings. Her poems and reviews have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Poetry, American Poetry Review, The New York Times, and Paris Review. She lives in Baltimore, Maryland and is a professor of English at Goucher College where she co-directs the Kratz Center for Creative Writing. Spires has been the recipient of the Amy Lowell Traveling Poetry Scholarship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Witter Bynner Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2011-12 she was a Cullman Fellow at the New York Public Library.
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WorldlingPoemsFrom"Truro"
I found a white stone on the beach
inlaid with a blue-green road I could not follow.
All night I’d slept in fits and starts,
my only memory the in-out, in-out, of the tide.
And then morning. And then a walk,
the white stone beckoning, glinting in the sun.
I felt its calm power as I held it
and wished a wish I cannot tell.
It fit in my hand like a hand gently
holding my hand through a sleepless night.
A stone so like, so unlike,
all the others it could only be mine.
The worldess white stone of my life!
Worldling:Poems -
WorldlingPoemsFrom"The Robed Heart"
They come in white livery bringing the sun,
the Robed Heart astride her white mount,
crowds lining the royal road in anticipation.
Ahead, the castle flying the new colors,
a queen’s great labors come to an end.
A shout, and the cord is cut,
the crown placed upon my head.
And I am, Mother, I am!
Worldling:Poems -
WorldlingPoemsFrom"Mansion Beach"
I count the rays of the jellyfish:
twelve in this one, like a clock to tell time by,
thirteen in the next, time gone awry.
A great wind brought them in, left them here
to die, indifferent time measured my whirling moon
and sun, by tides in perpetual fall and rise.
Englobed, transparent, they litter the beach,
creatureless creatures deprived of speech
who spawn more like themselves before they die.
I peer into each and see a faceless
red center, red spokes like a star.
They are, and are not, like what we are.
Worldling:Poems
“Spires' poetry isn't influenced by Western metaphysics as much as it is by Eastern spirituality, especially Zen Buddhism . . . Indeed, The Wave-Maker feels like one is gazing into a pebble garden, a meditative attempt to overcome human consciousness, to free oneself from the myopia of adult anxieties . . . In contemplating the cosmic significance of the very small, Spires' journey seems less a quest for meaning, which she strives for, than a search for inner peace, which she suggests she can never posses.” —Charleston City Paper
“[Spires's] elegiac poems are the epitome of grace: polished, elegant, and timeless. Adept at form, she uses rhymes tenderly, almost longingly, as though she wishes she lived in a world where such balanced beauty wasn't so rare. Shades of Frost, reflections of Dickinson, even imitations of Poe place Spires in a solidly American tradition.” —Booklist [on Now the Green Blade Rises]
“With not one wrong move, not one word off-key or trivial, this collection of poems makes us experience intimate, yet not necessarily personal, contact with the poet who lets us at times see the struggle behind the refined sensibility . . . Spires asks the big questions with such competence and polish that we admire her sweating, our metaphysical gladiator, guarantor of our considerable pleasure.” —Nancy Nahra, The Philadelphia Inquirer [on Wordling]
Selected Works
