Track the Whales Make

Marjorie Saiser is the author of seven previous books of poetry and coeditor of two anthologies. Her most recent books are Learning to Swim, The Woman in the Moon (Backwaters, 2018), and I Have Nothing to Say about Fire (Backwaters, 2016).

“Marjorie Saiser is a poet of ephemera, a poet who looks east at sunset to watch subtle light changing: ‘The glow is, and then is gone.’ And so is everyone and everything we love. Saiser tells this truth: ‘Every last thing is transitory.’ She looks at the difficult moments, at the precious fleeting moments: ‘That’s what it was like, though there is no record of it. / Let me be the record of it.’ When a whale’s flukes slip underwater, a trace shimmers for a fraction of a liquid second. That’s the moment of Saiser’s poetry, a poetry of generations of profound compassion, passed down.”-Peggy Shumaker, author of Cairn “Marjorie Saiser’s poetry is wise and generous and altogether genuine. No poet in this country is better at writing about love, and, in a sense, all of her poems are in some way about love.”-Ted Kooser, U.S. poet laureate, 2004–2006 “Marjorie Saiser writes, ‘I wanted / the luminous coin, big sky over rooftops, / the celestial and the neighborhood.’ In these pages she finds both and gives them to us in an extraordinary volume of new and selected poems. With one poem, ‘Charmed by the Dirt Road,’ she explains generations of women. I move from delight to tears reading these brilliant, compassionate, and beautifully wrought poems. Saiser is a great poet.”-Hilda Raz, author of Letter from a Place I’ve Never Been: New and Collected Poems, 1986–2020

• AcknowledgmentsIntroduction by Ted KooserI Could Taste It: New PoemsThe Shirt I Would Have Bought YouSometimes I Remember to WatchWhen You Write the StoryWe Wait for the TrogonSo Bad I Could Taste ItI Had a Marriage in Those DaysWhat I Shouted and He ShoutedCharmed by the Dirt RoadTo the Cattle in the DreamThe Moon Is a SwanThis Is How I Bow Down in HomageKindness Scraped Up the MoneyIt’s a Small BreathNot Enough Space in Storage DeviceHope SpringsFrom Learning to Swim, 2019Weren’t We BeautifulI Save My LoveEvery Last Thing Is TransitoryPlastic Bag on the LawnEdith Porath Nelsen, You Signed Your QuiltAfter the Divorce the Soccer GameWhat She Taught MeTo the Author I’m Reading at NightThis Year I Did NotThis Is the Photo of My Father BeforeHe Taught Me to DriveI Pretend I Can RememberThe One with Violets in Her LapFor the RecordThe Citrus ThiefInsomnia Is a StreetlightFrom The Woman in the Moon, 2018The Nobody BirdMy Love With His Saw Has Taken the Cedar DownWhen Life Seems a To-Do ListEach Wrong Choice Was a Horse I SaddledWhat I Think My Real Self LikesMy Mother the ChildWhat He NeededFinal ShirtDespair Woke MeAh, Charles, If You Could HaveWhat Did You Think Love Would Be?About That Smart Thinly-Veiled StuffMy Daughter Tells Me She Loves MeGreen AshMy Notes in MarginsFrom I Have Nothing to Say about Fire, 2016The Track the Whales MakeShe Gives Me the Watch Off Her ArmThe Story, Part of ItHow I Left YouBad News, Good NewsThanksgiving for TwoWe DisagreeLet Me Think of the Frost That Will Crack Our BonesDraw What Is ThereThose Pieces We CarryWhat I Think My Father LovedIt Does Not Have to Be Worth the DyingLast Day of KindergartenFor My DaughterFrom Losing the Ring in the River, 2013Clara Says I DoClara Loses the RingWhen I Have Hurt Him as Much as I CanPotato SoupI Was New and ShinyPlaying My CardsLet Me Be the First Snake of SpringTo the Moon in the MorningNote to My Father After All These YearsI Leaned in CloseTake, Eat; This Is My BodyYou and I, the Cranes, the RiverFrom Beside You at the Stoplight, 2010Pulling Up Beside My Husband at the StoplightWeekends, Sleeping InEven the AlphabetOn the RoadTemplateI Didn’t Know I LovedStand-InShe Was Perhaps DeadLaborTextileFor My BodyI Want to Be a ManYou Can’t Say IMammogramYou Wonder Why We Don’t Get AlongHer Kid Brother Ran Beside the CarWe Visit the HomesteadOne-Finger WaveFrom Lost in Seward County, 2001The Sisters Play Canasta in a SnowstormOverheard at the CafeOttoAs Long as Someone RemembersSummer, StrikingYou Gave Me a TypewriterLying on the Driveway, Studying StarsHoled Up in Valentine, NebraskaPrairie Pretends to Be MildThe Muse Is a Little GirlNight FlightFrom Bones of a Very Fine Hand, 1999ResurrectionThe Green CoatKeeping My Mother WarmSaying Yes on the RoadPerfume Counter, Dillard’sThe World Was Not EnoughLoving Her in the MountainsI Let My Daughter DownCutting My HairWashing the WallsTaking the Baby to the MarshShoppingStorm at NightI Want to CreateThe Last Thing He SaidToday