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Things My Grandmother Said

Turmeric can heal anything but a broken heart. I’ve got some Benadryl I bet could shush that dog of yours. Sounds fun but what does it pay. You can’t shoot the spots without shooting the leopard. If dressmaker’s dummies could cook, we’d all be old maids. Poetry? You’re grinding water with a pestle of ice, but when you’ve never thirsted a day in your life, I guess you can play. I know plenty of family history, but don’t ask me where green eyes got into the bloodline. India invented recycling, we called it karma, but trash now is trash later. I wasn’t crying, I was dicing onions in a memory in Ahmedabad. Every time I stand up there’s Rice Krispies in my knees. This girl is perfect for you, I know her aunt. Read that to me at my funeral, boy, right now my show is on. I got to be this old by nibbling a little raw ginger every morning. Ambition’s a sinkhole that deepens the more you dump in it, but that doesn’t mean don’t get a job. In the old days, families were so big, counting nephews felt like counting stars. Every kite forgets its string. Sure, the Ganga is holy but who told you to drink from it?

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On this Valentine’s Day, the title poem of Richie Hofmann’s new collection reminds us to believe in our own strength and in the power of what we feel for one another.

The Bronze Arms

Love is a memory now, you said. Most of the bronzes have been melted down and made into other bronzes, coins, weapons—

Love is a memory now, you said to me. If antiquity can survive, love can too.

But it must be forceful.

. . .

More on Richie Hofmann and our Knopf Poetry Newsletter:

More of Richie Hofmann’s new work will be featured this April, when we send daily poems throughout the month in celebration of National Poetry Month. Please pass along this link  to share the Knopf Poetry newsletter with friends in anticipation of our poem-a-day selections, coming to your inbox starting on April 1.

Learn more about The Bronze Arms by Richie Hofmann.

Browse other books by Richie Hofmann and follow him on Instagram @richiehof. 

Visit our Tumblr to peruse poems, audio recordings, and broadsides in the Knopf Poetry newsletter series.

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[Bordered Sallow]

Before the raised eyebrows and the big tut-tut,

did any of you lot ever truly try burning a book?

You have to attend, broddle and stoke, make flames go leafing

page to page, drive oxygen into the gills till a sheaf

peels open exposing its sheets to the blaze,

get the parchments – wadded and slabbed – to surrender in turn

until the effacements begin, before the retractions of ink. Even then some charred erratum or index

floats off through the trees, some ashen verse or black-edged stanza

can still be riddled from layers of sludge after rain.

How many books did I burn? Scores.

Whose books? Whose books did I burn? Reader, I burned yours.

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Margaret Atwood’s recent Paper Boat: New and Selected Poems 1961-2023 treats us to some delightful previously uncollected poems, such as this portrait of a domestic surface and what lies beneath.

The Interior Decorator

I practise the outworn Victorian art Of hooking wool roses to cover The piano legs; limbs rather; but under These ornate surfaces, the hard Naked wood is still there.

I am industrious and clever With my hands: I execute in paint Landscapes on doorpanels and screens. Down my arranged vistas, furniture And pillows flourish in plump scenery

And on my table stands a miniature Lemon tree in a small china garden. It is prudent to thus restrain one’s eden Indoors. I never eat my bitter lemons And everything remains in its own spot

Except the devil, who is under the piano With a fringed purple tablecloth over Him. I hear him sucking lemon rinds. I cannot make him blend with my decor Even with roses: his tail sticks out behind.

More on this book and author:

Learn more about Paper Boat by Margaret Atwood.

Browse other books by Margaret Atwood and follow her on Instagram @therealmargaretatwood and X @MargaretAtwood.

Visit our Tumblr to peruse poems, audio recordings, and broadsides in the Knopf poem-a-day series.

To share the poem-a-day experience with friends, pass along this link.