LESLEY WHEELER

Tag: derecho

  • Mess, noise, static

    “The derecho felled my father, I mean my maple tree”: that’s a line from my forthcoming book, Radioland. My desk at home faces a large old maple, and beyond that Myers St., and beyond that House Mountain. A storm cleaved the tree, however, during the summer of 2012, about a month after my father died. Half the…

  • I write my way out of it

    One of my talisman poems is section 6 from H.D.’s “The Walls Do Not Fall.” The poet imagines herself as a worm, emblem of lowly persistence, among mist-jeweled grass blades. Her mantra: “I profit/ by every calamity;/ I eat my way out of it.” The calamity for H.D. was living in London during the Blitz.…