Poet and translator Marie Ponsot was born in New York, and taught at New York University and Columbia University. Her first book, True Minds, was published in Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s City Lights series in 1956. The book went unnoticed, and she did not publish another volume for decades, focusing instead on her career as a translator. Her three subsequent books of poetry won several awards, including the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her poems are both verbally complex and extremely formal, embracing such difficult forms as the sestina and the villanelle, as they engage with intelligence and drama the occurrences of everyday life.
More By This Poet
Old Mama Saturday
“I’m moving from Grief Street.
Taxes are high here
though the mortgage’s cheap.
The house is well built.
With stuff to protect, that
mattered to me,
the security.
These things that I mind,
you know, aren’t mine.
I mind minding them.
They weigh on my mind.
I don’t mind them well.
I...
Among Women
What women wander?
Not many. All. A few.
Most would, now & then,
& no wonder.
Some, and I’m one,
Wander sitting still.
My small grandmother
Bought from every peddler
Less for the ribbons and lace
Than for their scent
Of sleep where you will,
Walk out when you want, choose
Your...
Winter
I don’t know what to say to you, neighbor,
as you shovel snow from your part of our street
neat in your Greek black. I’ve waited for
chance to find words; now, by chance, we meet.
We took our boys to the same kindergarten,
thirteen...