An Animal of the Sixth Day

There is such excitement and joy in the poems of Laura Fargas—a rush to embrace the earth, an exuberant "giddy greed" for life. "I like the voice, the spirit I find in her poems," says Walter McDonald. "She accepts and celebrates the rich possibilities and, even with the risks and limitations of all, insists that living on this earth is splendid." Grass the Fine Body Hairs of Earth My shorthand for it is passion is holy We can live inside the lilies-of-the-field text. Watching gulls startle off the ground as if hundreds of lashing wings are our native air. Breathe in wings, exhale speckled orange wildflowers. eyes, elbows, tears: suns, mountains, rivers. Lovemaking rings with hosannas. "Through the doors of her poems the reader enters into a multifaceted and clarified knowledge—of self, of others, of this widely inhabited and passionate earth."—Jane Hirshfield "Visceral beauty with a calm, cool center, the work of a mature and gifted poet . . ."—Toi Derricotte Between Angels Between the angels who peel our hearts and the ones gnawing steadily inward comes the stolid oath that holds us fast to the world of apple and fire. And the heart wants something to be kind to, even if only a fish to sprinkle crumbs on the water for once or twice a day. I like it when the sky says where have you been? Housed in a fist, I explain, stuck inside somebody's movie. Have I missed too many clouds to ever catch up? ("I like it when")