Linda Gregg
Linda Gregg authored seven books of poetry, including Too Bright to See (1981); Alma (1985); The Sacraments of Desire (1992); Chosen by the Lion (1995); Things and Flesh (1999), which was a finalist for the Kingsley Tufts Award for Poetry; In the Middle Distance (2006); and All of It Singing: New and Selected Poems (2011), which received the Jackson Poetry Prize from Poets & Writers, the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize from the Academy of American Poets, the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America, and the American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation. Gregg was the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Her awards include the Sara Teasdale Award, the Jerome J. Shestack Poetry Prize, numerous Pushcart Prizes, a Whiting Award in Poetry, and the PEN/Voelcker Award in Poetry for achievement across her career. Gregg taught at the University of Iowa, the University of California, Berkeley, and Princeton University. She lived in New York until she passed away in 2019.
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Too Bright to See / AlmaPoemsFrom"The Woman Who Looks For Her Lost Sister She Says"
She walks all the time in the Heart Ward.
She makes no sound. She is always alone.
If she is looking in the toilet stall and you come in
she leaves. She calls you Dear.
I was thinking of giving her my flowers.
Just now she came over and said,
‘You don’t have to be writing all the time Dear.’
I said, ‘Do you have any flowers?’
She said, ‘No Dear.’
I said, ‘Do you want any flowers?’
She said, ‘No, no flowers, Dear.’
I said, ‘Don’t you want any flowers at all?’
‘No,’ she said, ‘it’s too late for flowers Dear.’
Too Bright to See / Alma:Poems -
Too Bright to See / AlmaPoemsFrom"At the Shore"
Naked women are being dragged
down the sandstone shelving
on their backs, very slowly.
With ropes tied to each foot separately
so the legs close and spread open
as they are moved.
When they cry out or shout down
at the men sitting in the lifeguard chairs
looking at them through the gun sights,
the sounds, no matter how angry or foul,
curve and billow like a wave: coming
to the men on a soft wind
caressingly, like sirens singing.
Too Bright to See / Alma:Poems -
Too Bright to See / AlmaPoemsFrom"The Grub"
The almost transparent white grub moves
slowly along the edge of the frying pan.
The grease makes the only sound, loud
in the empty room. Even the rim is cooking him.
The worm stops. Raises his head slightly.
Lowers it, moving tentatively down the side.
He seems to be moving on his own time,
but he is falling by definition. He moves forward
touching the frying grease with his whole face.
Too Bright to See / Alma:Poems
“[Gregg’s] poems are as pure and clear and elemental as the Greek light and the dramatic action as sharply portrayed as in classical art.” —American Poet [on All of It Singing]
“[Gregg’s] poetry breaks and devours comforting sentiments, soothing language, elevated humbug, wishful thinking . . . [Her poetry] menaces or devours not flesh and blood but cozy preconceptions.” —The Washington Post [on In the Middle Distance]
“In the gorgeous and conflicted middle distance of Gregg’s poems, “the sun . . . is always going down,” and the speaker is walking and thinking of love and solitude and silence, leaving the reader to lavish in the charged intimacies of the moment.” —Boston Review [on In the Middle Distance]
“I have loved Linda Gregg’s poems since I first read them. They are original in the way that really matters: they speak clearly of their source. They are inseparable from the surprising, unrolling, eventful, pure current of their language, and they convey at once the pain of individual loss, a steady and utterly personal radiance.” —W.S. Merwin
Selected Works
