Virginia Konchan

Oct 2, 2024 | beta.poetryfoundation.org | Christian Gullette |Virginia Konchan |Virginia Konchan Purchase

Californian landscapes in crisis and transitiveness as a state of being frame Christian Gullette’s Coachella Elegy. These chiseled, cartographic poems take us through Joshua Tree, Palm Springs, Santa Cruz, Mendocino, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, in intimate, foreboding portraits of self, state, family, and love. The poet, seeking terra firma, proves place to be a metaphor for mind:We spent the nightlooking at lights on mansionsin the Provo hills wherethere were songs and warm babies.

Sep 30, 2024 | newyorker.com | Virginia Konchan

Glory be to god for septic tanks, drainage pipes:for conversions thermodynamic and of the soul. Glory be to god for this quiet, cheap hotel room:only music the mini-fridge’s vibratory drone,creaky plumbing groaning through the walls. We underestimate the perfect peace of objects.

May 31, 2024 | thewalrus.ca | Virginia Konchan

The moment I embrace, I’m told,my Buddha nature is the momentthe light shines in. The momentI allow the Holy Spirit to coursethrough me is when I’m healed. What about my flower nature? Chrysanthemum, peony, rose? I’ve one that was run over witha lawn mower, then a truck,then a stampede of children,before dying of pesticideexposure, then drought. Every year it comes back. Every year it shakes itslioness head and roars.

May 28, 2024 | poetryfoundation.org | Callie Siskel |Virginia Konchan |Edgar Allan Poe

Heavy and constricting is the specter of death. Though its monuments in literature are often haunted by a procession of literal ghosts, these presences also materialize in protagonists’ memories. Both approaches reflect humanity’s inability to move beyond trauma or grievance. The cessation of the body in exchange for a spirit effectively forces a bait-and-switch, with the physical act of dying supplanted by the active forces of a person’s attempt to comprehend it.

May 20, 2024 | poetryfoundation.org | Andrew Motion |Virginia Konchan

By Andrew Motion Andrew Motion’s Waders opens with “Evening Traffic,” a study of witness and perception that introduces a speaker whose mind figures as a sieve for nature and the world. This poem ends with the speaker “composing myself for a night flight,” into sleep: When I look upward I see schools of fish in one mind while they change direction, and sunlight in a dimpled ring as if hands were washing there, or reaching through.