Live Encounters Poetry & Writing March 2025
Four Sonnets “From The Furies” by Moira Egan.
These poems are forthcoming in Moira Egan’s next book, The Furies (LSU Press, 2025).
Four Sonnets from
“The Furies”
(a hero[in]ic sonnet crown)
Another poet bites the dust. They grieve
most openly and throatfully: “He blurbed
my second book.” “In faith he never swerved…”
I have a different story. Please believe
I mean no disrespect, but he, one evening
was asked to name some women poets whom
he loved, admired. A silence. Then a hem,
a haw; his helpful friend tugged at his sleeve—
[while in this auditorium there sat
a dozen noted women poets, eyes
downcast in what? anger? reflected shame?]
“Well, Sappho. Dickinson of course — and what’s
her name, I chose her book once for a prize—
yes, Jane, Jane, can’t remember her last name.”
*
And yes, it’s plain, we must reclaim the names
they hurtle at us. Vixen, harridan,
virago, harpy, nag, hag, termagant,
she-devil, fishwife, hellcat, la belle dame
sans merci (though I do wonder, where’s the shame
in being merciless at times). Gorgon,
old bag, old bat, old trout, old cow, dragon.
A bitch so mythic there’s no one to blame
but maybe you. I learned another choice
vocabulary word the other day:
it’s fawning, a response to complex trauma.
We smile, we shrink, we charm, avoiding drama.
Of course, my dear, it’s never what you say
but I cannot unhear your tone of voice.
*
“Sometimes, my dear, it seems my very voice
annoys you. What to do? Change timbre? Pitch?
Intensity? Stuck in your craw? My sitch?
If hearing’s given, listening’s a choice
that I don’t think you choose. I take up space
— or try to, anyway, discussion nixed
when my poor mouth I open. What’s the fix
that you’d propose? I’m all ears, you’re all voice.
“Elective mute myself? Electrocute
myself? Go glottal, velar, labio-
dental? Go mental? Head toward the river
with stones in pockets? Oh, I don’t think so.
Whatever angle, straight, obtuse, acute,
I’m out to take it back, Indian giver.”
*
It’s hard to write a poem with a fever
despite the precedents of history:
of Plath, her out-of-body 103,
or deathbed Keats, his final days a river
of sweat and blood, hope whittled to a sliver
O! I can feel the cold earth upon me
– the daisies growing over me –
How blest he was in Severn, who outlived him.
Our sweet friend died, the early weeks of covid.
He’d just retired, wanted to be a poet
and play guitar full-time. What have we learned?
No masks, no vaxx, logic and science turned
to enemy. Their signs scream It’s my body
it’s my choice. Ah, blissful blessed irony.
© Moira Egan
These poems are forthcoming in Moira Egan’s next book, The Furies (LSU Press, 2025). Recent work has appeared in Best Spiritual Literature (2024) and in numerous American journals. She won the 2023 Raiziss/de Palchi Translation Fellowship of the Academy of American Poets for her translations of the poetry of Giorgiomaria Cornelio. Egan lives in Rome.