National Poetry Month

Jan Zwicky is a musician, philosopher and award-winning poet. In 1999, she won the Governor General’s Literary Award for poetry for Songs for Relinquishing the Earth. Her most recent collection of poetry, Thirty-seven Small Songs & Thirteen Silences (GP, 2005), was nominated for the Pat Lowther Award and the Dorothy Livesay Prize. In May 2008, we published a hardcover new-edition of Zwicky's GG-nominated book of philosophy, Wisdom & Metaphor. Zwicky currently teaches philosophy at the University of Victoria.

Today's poem, 'Small Song in Praise of Ears' appears in Thirty-seven Small Songs & Thirteen Silences and Gaspereau Gloriatur: Volume 1 (GP, 2007).

from Gaspereau Gloriatur: Volume 1
Jan Zwicky

Small Song in Praise of Ears

Ah, my mushrooms,
my little fishes!
They laugh
when I tell them
you are beautiful.
Ah, my pink mice,
my infant trolls!

But who among them
has drunk dawn with its
thrush-scented air?
Who but you
has fingered silence,
that dark jewel
burning at night’s throat.

Copyright © Jan Zwicky, 2005