National Poetry Month got me thinking about poems I read and poets whose work I enjoyed, which led me to think about Renate Wood. When I was in college I read some of her poetry in class (my professor chose awesome poems) and had the opportunity to see her read. Her work is fantastic, and she seemed like a lovely person as well. I just searched for her poems and found out that she passed away in 2007. This is very much a loss for the literary community; I’m glad I got to see her when I did.

You can check out some of her work online at VQR. I especially like The Dump, which ends:

perfectly round lips softly breathing ohhh,
the longest, most patient moan: ohhh for polio,
for summers gone, and ohhh for us and for, oh, everything.