Betsy Sholl

Fragment

I was always asking something, asking over and over,

never listening to the answer, as if the question was mine,

the answer more like someone else’s wow

over a shooting star I didn’t see.

And isn’t the point to see? —

to be dropped to our knees by a light-struck violin,  

its pitch intent on breaking the heart, and us

crying out, Yes, all right, break it.

Betsy Sholl’s tenth collection of poetry is As If a Song Could Save You

(University of Wisconsin Press, 2022), winner of the Four Lakes Prize.  Her ninth collection is House of Sparrows: New and Selected Poems (University of Wisconsin, 2019). She is faculty emerita in the MFA in Writing Program of Vermont College of Fine Arts and served as Poet Laureate of Maine from 2006 to 2011.