Beaumont, Jeanne Marie

United States, (b.1954)

A Lesson

  1.  
  2. I. Vocabulary
  3.  
  4. Soil is for planting in,
  5. otherwise, dirt.
  6. The donor is the third person
  7. in the triangle.
  8. Sty and style are not related;
  9. neither are braid and bread
  10. except in the bakery window
  11. where they twist into temptation.
  12.  
  13. But some words like river and rival
  14. surprisingly are, and more obviously,
  15. void and avoid.
  16.  
  17. II. Multiple Choice
  18.  
  19. The woman on the bus has a ______ around her head.
  20. a. braid b. style c. void
  21.  
  22. The man who sells his sperm to pay for art school is a ______.
  23. a. river b. donor c. rival
  24.  
  25. Their child was taught to ______ the oven.
  26. a. rival b. soil c. avoid
  27.  
  28. She still liked to put her hands in the ______.
  29. a. bread b. dirt c. river
  30.  
  31. The pigs, meanwhile, seem content in their ______.
  32. a. style b. sty c. void
  33.  
  34. III. Conversationally Speaking
  35.  
  36. The river enriches the soil for planting.
  37. The river is the donor of riches. The sty, however,
  38. is full of dirt (the pigs might see this differently —
  39. planting their feet, their snouts). The pig
  40. is the ultimate donor of pork, which is to say
  41. it has no rival. We avoid thinking of it this way.
  42. We avoid the (thought of the) sty; hence the separation
  43. from lunchmeat. We like better the smell
  44. of bread (daily, given, whole) done up in the style
  45. of a braid, pure product of the soil.
  46. It is wise to avoid the void, which is nothing really
  47. like the river, the sty, or the emptied bakery
  48. window (its closest rival). Instead
  49. we could relax by the river, picnic on meat
  50. and bread, or just bread–pigtails are kin
  51. to braids–since eating pork’s gone out of style.

 Jeanne Marie Beaumont. Placebo Effects. W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. (1997).

RITE (TO COMBAT A BAD MOOD)

  1. 1. Remove the word rabbit from the word hat.
  2. 2. Turn the pig back into the porcelain.
  3. 3. Wake the mother tongue asleep on the roof.
  4. 4. Tell my ills to go. Madame, tell my ills …
  5. 5. Fill the vacancy on the swing.
  6. 6. Be there when the bread comes out of the oven.
  7. 7. Scraps happen to have their uses.
  8. 8. The floor is a problem that must be carefully
  9. solved.

 Jeanne Marie Beaumont. Burning of the Three Fires. Rochester, New York: BOA Editions Ltd. (2010).

About the Poet:

Jeanne Marie Beaumont, United States, (b.1954), is a poet, educator and playwright. She holds an MFA in Writing from Columbia University and is the author of four books of poetry. Her first, Placebo Effects, was selected by William Matthews as a winner in the National Poetry Series and published by W.W. Norton in 1997.

Her work has appeared in Boston Review, Harvard Review, Harper’s, Manhattan Review, The Nation, Ploughshares, World Literature Today, and many other journals. Beaumont won the 2009 Dana Award for Poetry, and also The Greensboro Review literary award for poetry in 2003. From 1992 to 2000, she was co-editor of the literary magazine American Letters & Commentary.

Beaumont has taught in the Stonecoast MFA Program at the University of Southern Maine, at Rutgers University, and at The Frost Place, where she served as director of the annual Advanced Poetry Seminar (2006-2010). She currently teaches at The Unterberg Poetry Center of the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan. [DES-06/22]

 • Biographies here are short. Yet all the poets presented have fascinating lives. And they have created a bountiful trough of treasures beyond these works. Please root on about those you enjoy! I hope you find something informative, meaningful or that provokes your further contemplation.

Additional information:

Leave a Comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.