Sara Moore Wagner and H.D.

Alan May: 00:08

Welcome to The Beat, Knox County Public Library’s poetry podcast. Today, we’ll hear four poems read by the poet Sara Moore Wagner. The first three poems, “Purity Test,” “Captivity Narrative,” and “Legend Says,” are from Wagner’s book Hillbilly Madonna, which was published by Driftwood Press last year. The fourth poem Wagner will read is “Leda,” written by H.D. and published in 1919.

Sara Moore Wagner: 00:42

"Purity Test"

One day the world will ask

you to walk through the bees

to see if you are ready or clean

enough to serve, girls

that you are, in all white down

an aisle with the buzz around

or inside you. And maybe like

me you’ll want to lay down

in the soil: lion, well fed,

let the bees hive your torso—

consider the wax, the candle,

the flame—how holy it is, how

important, as pure

as the honeybee,

virginal drone—like the work

of Our Lady, heavenly

Mother, blessed with split,

and implantation of our Lord,

with the quiet furnish. Consider the wick

of the candle, how it rests inside

the body, how it’s lit and destroys

everything. You will build it just

so they can wear it down.

"Captivity Narrative"

In the middle of the day, the vultures crown

the lake above where you lie

on the shoreline, your skirt knit full

of sugar ants, the sweet of your skin

seeping into the dry clover.

You could almost be the old cow

our grandfather pushed

into the creek bed, released

like a bluegill. Found later, split

open, ribs like fingers. And didn’t you know

you were this—unidentifiable

figure, redolent as meat, pickled

in your own age, the salt of every

meal expelled into droplets.

It’s the season for it, though,

for lying still in a meadow

while the clouds and birds festoon

the sky, so that anyone could just

imagine it being made for—being made in

the image of—where there might

be a pasture beyond this, full

of honeysuckle, where nothing tracks

your slow progress into sleep, nothing

scurries over your arms so small

and dark—invisible world now

suddenly open as a mouth or palm.

Here you are: almost to the molar.

Ripe. Isn’t the land supposed to be

here for you, to carry you home

as your feet do your body, little

by little: Plodding and smacking

across every stone until: Doorway

or something else, it never matters

how you get out, only that you

always do.

"Legend Says"

Our first ghost came from the old railway tunnel, tall as pokeweed she’d glide and sing the songs our mothers sang, ballads like “Swing and Turn Jubilee.” It’s all out on the old railroad, all out on the sea. Sing and sew the road like a spider, she’d weave back and forth over the tracks until it was like the wind took them or the rain, and we’d stand in the tunnel just to hear her or smell her perfume, like White Diamonds, musk and of another time. Stand at the wide mouth of the tunnel to feel her threads around us. In the glint of sunset, at just that time, we’d swear we could see her outlined in all that thread and dust, a web of her in the canopy of oak and walnut. We’d paint her in the tunnel with clay from the creek, and then spray paint her tall or shorter, naked or corseted; we’d make up different stories of how she died. Maybe she jumped and swung from the top of the tunnel, or she wandered drunk out of her mind onto the track when the train was still going. Maybe her husband worked the mine and also never came out, you can see him wandering too, on some nights lantern in hand calling Mary, Mary, Mary. If we hide in the rotting trestle, we can see them both some nights call us into the water black as coal. We keep going into the water. Watch us fall over and over: fall and disappear, fall and fade.

"Leda" by H.D.

Where the slow river

meets the tide,

a red swan lifts red wings

and darker beak,

and underneath the purple down

of his soft breast

uncurls his coral feet.

Through the deep purple

of the dying heat

of sun and mist,

the level ray of sun-beam

has caressed

the lily with dark breast,

and flecked with richer gold

its golden crest.

Where the slow lifting

of the tide,

floats into the river

and slowly drifts

among the reeds,

and lifts the yellow flags,

he floats

where tide and river meet.

Ah kingly kiss—

no more regret

nor old deep memories

to mar the bliss;

where the low sedge is thick,

the gold day-lily

outspreads and rests

beneath soft fluttering

of red swan wings

and the warm quivering

of the red swan’s breast.

Alan May: 06:27

You just heard Sara Moore Wagner read her poems “Purity Test,” “Captivity Narrative,” and “Legend Says.” She followed by reading “Leda” by H.D. Wagner was kind enough to record these poems for us at her home in West Chester, Ohio. Sara Moore Wagner is the winner of the 2021 Cider Press Review Editors Prize for her book Swan Wife, and the 2020 Driftwood Press Manuscript Prize for Hillbilly Madonna. Her book Lady Wingshot, based on the life of Annie Oakley, won the Blue Lynx Prize and is forthcoming in 2024. She has won the Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award and she is a 2021 National Poetry Series Finalist. Her work has appeared in Beloit Poetry Journal, Waxwing, The Cincinnati Review, Nimrod, Rhino, and others. Hilda Doolittle, who wrote under the pen name H.D., was born in 1886 in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and she grew up in Upper Darby near Philadelphia. She attended Bryn Mawr, where she was a classmate of Marianne Moore, and the University of Pennsylvania, where she became friends with Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams. H.D. published numerous books, including poetry, fiction, nonfiction, memoirs, essays, and translations. The publication of her collected and selected poetry helped to establish her as a major poet of the 20th century. H.D.’s work is revered by countless writers and critics, and she’s often thought of as a poets’ poet. She died in Zurich, Switzerland, in 1961. You can find books by Sara Moore Wagner and H.D. in our online catalog. Also look for links in the show notes. Please join us next time for The Beat.