Christina Pugh

Christina Pugh Poems

Christina Pugh Biography

Christina Pugh is the author of two books of poems: Restoration (Northwestern University Press / TriQuarterly Books, 2008) and Rotary (Word Press, 2004), which received the Word Press First Book Prize. She has also published a chapbook, Gardening at Dusk (Wells College Press, 2002). Her poems have appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, Poetry, TriQuarterly, Ploughshares, and other periodicals, as well as in anthologies. Her honors have included the Lucille Medwick Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America, the Grolier Poetry Prize, an individual artist fellowship in poetry from the Illinois Arts Council, the Ruth Lilly Poetry Fellowship from Poetry magazine, and residencies at the Ragdale and Ucross colonies. In addition to her own poetry, she publishes criticism; her recent articles have discussed Emily Dickinson’s metrical “ghosts” and the role of imitation in creative writing pedagogy. Pugh has also reviewed the work of many contemporary poets and poet-critics in publications such as Poetry, Verse, Ploughshares, and Harvard Review. At present, she is completing another collection of poems that takes the sonnet’s volta, or turn, as a formal principle guiding the construction of contemplative free verse. She has also recently completed a critical book manuscript about ekphrasis (poetry that treats visual art) in twentieth-century American poetry. Literary Awards Ucross Foundation Residency Fellowship (2005) Word Press First Book Prize (2003) Grolier Poetry Prize (2000) Ruth Lilly Fellowship (Poetry Magazine 2000) AWP Intro Journals Award (2000) Whiting Fellowship for the Humanities (1997-1998))

The Best Poem Of Christina Pugh

Rotary

Closer to a bell than a bird,
that clapper ringing
the clear name
of its inventor:

by turns louder
and quieter than a clock,
its numbered face
was more literate,

triplets of alphabet
like grace notes
above each digit.

And when you dialed,
each number was a shallow hole
your finger dragged
to the silver
comma-boundary,

then the sound of the hole
traveling back
to its proper place
on the circle.

You had to wait for its return.
You had to wait.
Even if you were angry
and your finger flew,

you had to await
the round trip
of seven holes
before you could speak.

The rotary was weird for lag,
for the afterthought.

Before the touch-tone,
before the speed-dial,
before the primal grip
of the cellular,

they built glass houses
around telephones:
glass houses in parking lots,
by the roadside,
on sidewalks.

When you stepped in
and closed the door,
transparency hugged you,
and you could almost see

your own lips move,
the dumb-show
of your new secrecy.

Why did no one think
to conserve the peal?

Just try once
to sing it to yourself:
it's gone,

like the sound of breath
if your body left.

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