Inscrutable Twist by Anne Pierson Wiese : American Life in Poetry

The Poetry Foundation

Library of Congress

University of Nebraska
at Lincoln

American Life in Poetry: Column 199

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE

I’d guess that most of us carry in our memories landscapes that, far behind us, hold significant meanings for us. For me, it’s a Mississippi River scenic overlook south of Guttenberg, Iowa. And for you? Here’s just such a memoryscape, in this brief poem by New Yorker Anne Pierson Wiese.

Inscrutable Twist

The twist of the stream was inscrutable.

It was a seemingly run-of-the-mill

stream that flowed for several miles by the side

of Route 302 in northern Vermont—

and presumably does still—but I’ve not

been back there for what seems like a long time.

I have it in my mind’s eye, the way

one crested a rise and rounded a corner

on the narrow blacktop, going west, and saw

off to the left in the flat green meadow

the stream turning briefly back on itself

to form a perfect loop—a useless light-filled

water noose or fragment of moon’s cursive,

a sign or message of some kind—but left behind.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2007 by Anne Pierson Wiese, whose most recent book of poetry is Floating City,” Louisiana State University Press, 2007. Poem reprinted from “Ploughshares,” Vol. 33, no. 4, Winter 2007-08 by permission of Anne Pierson Wiese. Introduction copyright © 2012 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

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