Cloud Studies: Rachel Wetzsteon

Cloud Studies (III)

by Rachel Wetzsteon

Enough, for now, of the willful invisible tendrils
that storm the sky and sculpt the clouds
into all the things I'm thinking of
as I wander up and down the tree-lined drive.
(I said anima, animal, animus
and they turned, my faithful shape-shifters,
into drifting souls, flying sheep, bulging cannonball sacks.)
No matter if noon's cumulus
becomes four o'clock's cumulonimbus;
I'm still not the one who's got the vapors.
(I cried out: how could I bear to add
the sky to my abandoners?
Then I loosened the reins and learned the facts:
nothing can hold this much water forever;
the letting go is the growing lighter.)
I opened my eyes, I wept like a cloud.

~ From Sakura Park: Poems © Rachel Wetzsteon

Rachel Wetzsteon, who committed suicide in December 2009, age 42, published the poetry collections The Other Stars and Home and Away (available only through other sellers on Amazon), as well as a book of criticism about W.H. Auden, Influential Ghosts.  She also wrote the Introduction for The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson.

Wetzsteon's poems appeared in The Paris Review, The Nation, The New Republic, and The New Yorker, among many other literary magazines and journals. She taught poetry, creative writing, and modern and contemporary literature at William Paterson University. She also taught at the Unterberg Poetry Center of the 92nd Street Y, in New York City. She was The New Republic's poetry editor. 

Resources

Wetzsteon's New York Times obituary is here.

Audio of  Wetzsteon's "On Leaving the Bachelorette Brunch" is here.

Poets.org published online Wetzsteon's "At the Zen Mountain Monastery", from Sakura Park.

Wetzsteon's "Love and Work" is here.

5 Poems by Rachel Wetzsteon

"On Form: Rachel Wetzsteon: Marvellous Sapphics" at Poetry Society of America

"Remembering Rachel Wetzsteon" is published online at The Best American Poetry. Another feature, with several of Wetzsteon's poems, is here.