Light snow, bare branches.
It’s easier now to see
Deep into the woods,
Loss upon loss settling
Under a lattice of ice.
Phillis Levin is the author of six poetry collections, including An Anthology of Rain and Mr. Memory & Other Poems, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. She is the editor of The Penguin Book of the Sonnet.
TERAO TETSUYA
I remembered reading in a magazine about “cabin fever,” a phenomenon common in high-altitude areas during harsh winters. When forced to stay in the same small indoor space for an extended period, people will develop abnormally intense feelings toward each other such as disdain
MICHAEL JEROME PLUNKETT
Years later, while transferring units in the Marine Corps, I kept noticing the strange dissonance between the bureaucratic language of my written orders and the very human Marines drafting them. That tension—between voice and duty, between past and present—helped me imagine the men doing the cleanup in Verdun.
ILAN STAVANS
If he had a scientific mind, he also had a fretful, adventurous spirit. He was convinced, as his letters attest time and again, that every experience, regardless of how mysterious it might be, ought to be described in words. He loved to take chances, even if they led to a dead end.
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