Amy Munson
Photo by Scott Munson
Bio
Amy Munson’s debut collection, Yes Thorn, won Tupelo Press’s Berkshire Prize for a First or Second Book of Poetry and was a finalist for the 2016 Minnesota Book Awards in Poetry. Her work has received grants and support from the McKnight Foundation, the Jerome Foundation, and the Minnesota State Arts Board. She lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and is currently completing her second manuscript, Infancy Gospel.
This gift of the National Endowment for the Arts' support arrives, for me, at an ideal time. The publication of my first book of poems in 2016 was sandwiched right in between the births of my children, who are now one and three years old. I can count on one hand the number of times I have slept through the night in the past few years; I can count on the other hand the number of uninterrupted hours I’ve had to dedicate to my writing. With this fellowship, I can secure childcare and studio space to enable the completion of my second book, Infancy Gospel, without straining my and my family’s resources in an unhealthy or unmanageable way. When confronted with the near-constant, palpable, primal needs of young children, I have struggled to prioritize the attention, reflection, and abstraction that poetry demands. I am exceedingly grateful for this fellowship, and for the NEA’s generous and enduring support —not only for my own creative work but also for the work of so many of the authors and artists who’ve been my models, mentors, and inspiration.
"ACCORDING"
In my mouth the name of God an overripe pear: a grain, a grit
on the tongue. A grail, all vowel-shaped gaps, like lipping the rim
of an empty cup, that low-frequency opening undoing, unhinging
the jaw. God’s name as eyetooth, meat-intended, a visible
skeletal hint. God as salve for chalk. For the bent heart, the desire
that my desires would move in unison as fish. For a fox seems free,
but he’s leashed to each rabbit. To the bustle in a hen’s throat.
For sometimes an oak upended by unbearable wind
exposes a rib cage rooted in, for we forget
who’s interred where once the crosses disappear—the unearthed
remains indistinguishable, no matter what loves or aches
once marked the softer, vanished parts. For even enduring yearning
can’t scrimshaw into marrow. The mercy of a wish’s eventual
hush. God’s name inhabiting the pauses
between consonants, those intercostal lulls, omissions
when written but bound, once voiced, to sinew in.
(from Yes Thorn, Tupelo Press, 2016)