L.S. ASEKOFF
READS IN THE GALLERY
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 17 @ 7PM
L. S. Asekoff has published four books of poetry: Dreams of a Work (1994) and North Star(1997) with Orchises Press, and The Gate of Horn (2010) and the verse-novella Freedom Hill (2011) with TriQuarterly/Northwestern University Press. His poems have appeared in such magazines as The New Yorker, American Poetry Review, and Ninth Letter. He has received awards from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the National Foundation for the Arts, the Fund for Poetry, and in 2012 was chosen by poet laureate Phil Levine for a Library of Congress Witter Bynner Fellowship. Mr. Asekoff received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2013.
Born in 1939 in Boston, Massachusetts, Asekoff grew up on the grounds of two mental hospitals, Danvers State and Metropolitan State, where his father was a resident psychiatrist. He attended Bowdoin College, Trinity College (Dublin), and Brandeis University and taught for forty-two years at Brooklyn College where he was coordinator of the MFA Poetry Program and faculty associate of The Wolfe Institute for the Humanities. He lives in Clermont, New York with his wife, the printmaker, Mary Louise Kalin. He is currently working on Clermont, a book of poems and prose poems culled from his journals, and a book-length poem, The Vanishing Hand.
The Conquerors
They showed us the white flower of surrender
They showed us the red
They fell down before us at the gates of their city
Terrible to behold we hovered above them
Lords of the Air
We promised them the peace
That passeth understanding
We promised them the freedom of the broken knee
Only the conquered can know
Rumors arose strange premonitions
A talking fish a white crow
& news of uprisings in the distant provinces
Trouble closer to home
Victims killing victims a priest cried
Who is blameless?
The Lords of the Air who dare not touch earth?
Those who kill without risking death?
Following the itinerary of stars
We returned to our city
There we found they had raised in our absence
At the center of the great walled marketplace
A statue to Phobos
God of Fear
As they fell down before us
Perhaps we can be forgiven for asking
Having lived so long among strangers
What is there to fear?
L. S. Asekoff
Profile photograph by Star Black.
READS IN THE GALLERY
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 17 @ 7PM
L. S. Asekoff has published four books of poetry: Dreams of a Work (1994) and North Star(1997) with Orchises Press, and The Gate of Horn (2010) and the verse-novella Freedom Hill (2011) with TriQuarterly/Northwestern University Press. His poems have appeared in such magazines as The New Yorker, American Poetry Review, and Ninth Letter. He has received awards from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the National Foundation for the Arts, the Fund for Poetry, and in 2012 was chosen by poet laureate Phil Levine for a Library of Congress Witter Bynner Fellowship. Mr. Asekoff received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2013.
Born in 1939 in Boston, Massachusetts, Asekoff grew up on the grounds of two mental hospitals, Danvers State and Metropolitan State, where his father was a resident psychiatrist. He attended Bowdoin College, Trinity College (Dublin), and Brandeis University and taught for forty-two years at Brooklyn College where he was coordinator of the MFA Poetry Program and faculty associate of The Wolfe Institute for the Humanities. He lives in Clermont, New York with his wife, the printmaker, Mary Louise Kalin. He is currently working on Clermont, a book of poems and prose poems culled from his journals, and a book-length poem, The Vanishing Hand.
The Conquerors
They showed us the white flower of surrender
They showed us the red
They fell down before us at the gates of their city
Terrible to behold we hovered above them
Lords of the Air
We promised them the peace
That passeth understanding
We promised them the freedom of the broken knee
Only the conquered can know
Rumors arose strange premonitions
A talking fish a white crow
& news of uprisings in the distant provinces
Trouble closer to home
Victims killing victims a priest cried
Who is blameless?
The Lords of the Air who dare not touch earth?
Those who kill without risking death?
Following the itinerary of stars
We returned to our city
There we found they had raised in our absence
At the center of the great walled marketplace
A statue to Phobos
God of Fear
As they fell down before us
Perhaps we can be forgiven for asking
Having lived so long among strangers
What is there to fear?
L. S. Asekoff
Profile photograph by Star Black.