Say It

by Roland Flint

Originally from Park River, North Dakota, Roland Flint was the author of eight collections of poems, including the 1990 National Poetry Series selection, Stubborn . He received a 1982 National Endowment for the Arts grant and a Discovery Grant from the same auspices in 1970. His work appeared in Triquarterly, Salmagundi, Poetry Northwest, Ohio Review , and The Atlantic , among other publications. He was professor of English at Georgetown University for 29 years and was on the teaching staff at Warren Wilson College and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. As Poet Laureate of Maryland from 1995 to 2000, he traveled to every county in the state, taking poetry into schools, prisons and hospitals. He died in 2001.Say It was Roland Flint's second full books of poems. It was originally published by Dryad Press in 1979 and is now available in this eBook edition. Here's an Tulip TreeI’m sitting at a glass-topped table under a tulip tree, whose blooming my new friend Nellie and I have made our predictions on. It is February, this is Georgia, and yesterday for the first time we had 80 degrees. I am out here in the bright warm day, liking it, and without warning I miss my son, not only in the usual ways but with a kind of wonder that it persists so hard and long and that it is so physical, that I want to hold and feel him in my hands and arms, and that my grief at its worst still is something in my chest like the dreams that go on hurting but you want them as all you have left.And part of a sheath, the covering of a tulip bud, falls onto the table by my right hand. It is a color between ripe pear and chamois, very delicate, covered with the fur of a small creature, more than on a peach. Inside it is smooth and feels like the inside of a kitten’s ear, exactly.There is no special providence in this, I think, but I am grateful anyway that the sheath is simple and useful and beautiful, that I know it, and that I like very much its falling here on my table and that it means the tulip tree will bloom when Nellie said it would, which is fine with me because it is even sooner than I guessed.

Paperback

First published January 1, 1979

Reviews

[j.e.rodriguez · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Gone into the lives and terrible / deaths of others we love."

[Jan Mcginn · Rating 5 out of 5]

when i first heard roland read, i finally understood the form