Lemon Peeled the Moment Before

Roger Mitchell

Lemon Peeled the Moment Before gathers work from Mitchell’s previous nine books of poetry, and adds a generous selection of new poems. Charles Simic has written of his Mitchell’s work, “We want a book—be it a work of fiction or poetry—to remind us how varied and complex our experience of the world can be at times. And yet when we encounter such a book, we realize how rarely we come across one that fits that description and how astonishing it is when we do… Not many poets now writing have as wide a range as he does, both in terms of subject matter and form. His poems are rich in detail, masterly in execution, and always a good read. He is savvy about the way we Americans live and try to make sense of our lives in this moment in history.”

Paperback: $16.00 list price

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ISBN: 9781931337410

Format: Paperback

Beneath A Cloud

So much of it is or seems (who knows the difference?)
transplanted, uprooted, dangling, frittered.
I like invisible, though visible
has its properties, proprieties, its strange
amazements. I’m equal to the bees, let’s say,
transparent, bespattered, rearranged, though not
without being first arranged. How or by what,
I don’t ask. Gathered, scattered, secret. Here
for a moment. In terrible, terrifying,
ordinary distance from matter and things,
from reasons I can’t see the reason for.
Lucid and fluid, I look out the window.
Do things in stages, leave them unfinished,
believing that nothing ever becomes
completely. Is always coming about, around.
Sometimes remembered. Remembered again,
but fragmentarily, or by someone else.
Ancient, delirious, wise, unable.
Shouted across a field. Fallow, hollow,
hallowed. Done in the dark, all of it. At dawn,
on a Tuesday or Friday. All of it
always arriving. Convinced, confused. Knowing
and unknowing. A cloud beneath a cloud.
A sky bringing all of itself along.

About the Author

Roger Mitchell’s most recent book, Reason’s Dream, was published by Dos Madres in 2018. A fellowship from Artists in Residence in the Everglades allowed him to write The One Good Bite in the Saw-Grass Plant: A Poet in the Everglades, published by Natural Dam Publishing in 2010. His work appears in numerous anthologies, most recently the Penguin anthology Zoo of the New, edited by Nick Laird and Don Patterson. Currently, he is poetry editor of the e-zine Hamilton Stone Review.

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Reviews

“Surely Roger Mitchell’s book should find a place among the best of contemporary writing.” —Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

“Mitchell is such a good writer, so unpretentiously devoted to alertness in words, that he leaves his readers more pleasure than exegetical work.” —Hudson Review