The Leaf Path

Emily Warn

Emily Warn is a poet of kinship and harmony. And she often uses narrative to establish surprising relationships. Warn’s poems define a sensibility that is fully in focus, one that expresses a reverence for humanity and nature as two participants in a greater whole. Eschewing unnecessary artifice and the latest literary fads, she writes poems, it seems, only from necessity, from great faith in a possible world.
 
In selecting The Leaf Path for the 1981 King County Arts Commission Publication Project, Susan Griffin wrote: “Emily Warn’s poetry is feeling, moving, dealing with the powerful and deepest part of being, yet delicately, even precisely crafted. This is a new voice we will all be blessed for hearing.”

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ISBN: 9780914742616

Format: Paperback

Dwelling

Outside a rain steady and hard as nails
knocks at the first plum blossoms
to brush February’s dull grey.
All winter I have come to this empty house
in mid-afternoon, to this quiet,
begging to be silenced by you.
I cook dinner at three,
blinding the windows with steam,
or bury myself in books
fighting the impulse to curl into a seed
dormant until your return.
Occasionally, I rouse myself to walk in the rain
past the gully, the alder’s red haze
decorated by ghost globes of nests
and last year’s purple clematis flowers.
Each morning it is more difficult
to face the round of emptiness and desire.
One dawn they will find us,
our legs spiralled as morning glory,
our bellies warm,
and our eyelids fluttering,
a rippling sheen of birds.

About the Author

Emily Warn’s latest book is Shadow Architect. Her previous books include The Leaf Path and The Novice Insomniac; she has also published two chapbooks, The Book of Esther and Highway Suite. Her poems and essays appear widely in such publications as Poetry, Poetry Northwest, Bookforum, The Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, Blackbird, Jacket2, and Narrative. She is a former Stegner Fellow and founding editor of poetryfoundation.org. She teaches at the Richard Hugo House and has taught previously at Lynchburg College and the …

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Reviews

“Emily Warn’s poetry evinces an exuberant life tempered with quiet intellect and a restraint born of conflict—conflict between the amused and amusing curiosity of the public figure, and the hesitance of the provate self.” —Northwest Review

“A good first book in what I’m sure will be a long series of good books.” —David Wagoner

“These poems are a series of journeys, or one long journey.” —Northwest Passage

“The Leaf Path is a necessary addition to collections of poetry of women’s sensibility.” —Women Library Workers Journal

“To use a cliché, here’s a poet we must watch. The promise is great.” —Western American Literature