© 2015 by Kathleen Ossip
FIRST EDITION
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced without written permission of the publisher. Please direct inquiries to:
Managing Editor
Sarabande Books, Inc.
2234 Dundee Road, Suite 200
Louisville, KY 40205
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Ossip, Kathleen.
[Poems. Selections]
The Do-over : poems / Kathleen Ossip. -- First edition.
pages ; cm
ISBN 978-1-936747-96-2 (pbk. : acid-free paper) -- ISBN 978-1-936747-98-6 (ebook)
I. Title.
PS3615.S6A6 2015
811’.6--dc23
2014010250
Cover by Kristen Radtke.
Interior by Kirkby Gann Tittle.
EBook ISBN 978-1-936747-98-6.
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Sarabande Books is a nonprofit literary organization.
| The Kentucky Arts Council, the state arts agency, supports Sarabande Books with state tax dollars and federal funding from the National Endowment for the Arts. | |
| This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts. |
Contents
4 Ode
6 The Road Trip and the Apron String
7 Lyric
2 How can we know the journey from the path?
3 On Political Crisis
4 The Great Man is dead,
5 It’s hard to keep identities
6 Veterans Day
7 Amy Winehouse
8 Steve Jobs
9 Troy Davis
10 Lucian Freud,
11 Donna Summer
12 Three True Stories
13 The Millipede
3
1 A. in January
2 What is A.
3 What is Death
4 Sonnet for A.
5 Libraries & Museums
4
1 “No use”
2 Three Short Lyrics
3 After
5
1 On Sadness
2 The Do-Over
3 A. in September
4 Words for a Newborn
5 The Arrival of Spring
6 Funeral of My Character
7 One Short Lyric
8 Oh, wow, mausoleums,
Borrowings
Acknowledgments
Thank you to the editors of these journals, which first published some of the poems:
Boston Review, The Literary Review, Academy of American Poets Poem-A-Day, American Poetry Review, Absent, jubilat, The Awl, Fence, The Atlas Review, Poetry, Court Green, 1913: A Journal of Forms, At Length, MoonLit, A Public Space, Plume, The Hat, StoryQuarterly, TriQuarterly, Magma, The Believer.
“How can we know the journey from the path?” is for Roddy Lumsden; it was written for his Subterranean Homesick Blues Project reading, which took place in New York on October 30, 2009.
“Three True Stories” is for David Trinidad.
“The Millipede” is for Ellen Sauer, Christian Sauer, Muriel Ossip, and Keira DiNuzzo.
Thank you also to Joelle Biele, Christina Davis, Barbara Fischer, Jenny Goodrich, Joe Harrington, Joe Salvatore, Leah Souffrant, Arthur Vogelsang, and Susan Wheeler for encouragement and advice; to the women of the Poet-moms listserv for wisdom, laughs, and handholding; to Kathleen D. Marshall and the staff at the Sylvia Plath archive in the Lilly Library, Indiana University Bloomington; and to the Corporation of Yaddo and Preston Browning at Wellspring House, where I was given time to write some of the poems. Tons of gratitude to the Sarabande team: Sarah Gorham, Kirby Gann, and Kristen Radtke. Thanks and love to Robert Ossip, Muriel Ossip, Al Ossip, and Philip and Ann DiNuzzo.