Ad Hominem
  • Home
  • Archives
  • Reviews
  • Blog
  • Submit
  • About
  • Friends
  • Donate
Picture
Photo credit: R.H.W. Dillard

jeanne larsen

Jeanne Larsen’s first book, James Cook in Search of Terra Incognita, won the AWP annual award series in poetry. She subsequently published two collections of translations (Brocade River Poems & Willow, Wine, Mirror, Moon: Women’s Poems from Tang China), as well as three novels (Silk Road, Bronze Mirror, & Manchu Palaces). A new novel, Sally Paradiso, is out in e-format from Brown Fedora Books. Her poetry, fiction, & essays have appeared in many journals, & she has received grants & awards from the NEA, the Japan/US Friendship Commission, the Virginia Commission for the Arts, the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts, & others. Most of the time, Jeanne Larsen lives in southwest Virginia’s Roanoke Valley, just west of the Blue Ridge. She is currently Susan Gager Jackson Professor of Creative Writing in the Jackson Center for Creative Writing at Hollins University.

"Paradise Garden" finds its way to Ad Hominem from Jeanne's latest collection, Why We Make Gardens, available to purchase now!

Order your copy of Why We Make Gardens.

Read blurbs about Why We Make Gardens.


Paradise Garden

What grew there before
its arrangement?
We know this—within it,

one apple tree blooms
beside an oasis where flowers rise radiant

from water, cradling morning
thrones. Or maybe it offers
ripe fruit & pods that float up,
holding savory seeds.

So. We don’t even know:
April or autumn?

Could it have both,
bees burrowing while
on some simultaneous branch
the tart red globes hang?

Impossible! Apples
round & they drop.
Or else sheathed buds
unfold in that cloister.
Dream tells us

this much:
in the Persian enclosure,
those forfeited pleasure grounds,
that serene lotus basin,

in the groomed
bride of earth—in the garden
of paradise, if

time there is mastered,
as it must be, then some

moment from all
must be chosen. Is it
this one?           This?

Ad Hominem Art and Literature Review 2010.
Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.