Poem of the Week | October 24, 2016
James Harms: “Aubade (Lisa Lisa Lisa)”
This week, we are excited to offer a new poem by James Harms. Harms is the author of nine books of poetry including, most recently, Comet Scar (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2012), What to Borrow, What to Steal (Marick Press, 2011), and the forthcoming Rowing with Wings (Carnegie Mellon University Press). His awards include a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and three Pushcart Prizes. He teaches in the MFA Program at West Virginia University, where he chairs the Department of English.
Author’s note:
Thankfully, an aubade requires little explanation. Here’s the Poetry Foundation’s definition: “A love poem or song welcoming or lamenting the arrival of the dawn.” So there you go.
This is obviously a love poem, and it’s also a lament, since dawn means the lovers will soon have to part. I quote (and, I suppose, invoke) Shakespeare’s Sonnet 29, since the end of that poem is so inspiring: Loving someone really does create a force that pushes back against the stuff in life that causes suffering. And there’s always suffering. Let’s hope there’s always love.
Aubade (Lisa Lisa Lisa)
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