by Anne Carson
Lawns and fields and hills and wide old velvet
sleeves, green things. They stretch, fold, roll away,
unfurl and calm the eye. Look lush in paintings.
Battles are fought on greens. Or you could spread
a meal and sup. How secretly they lie, floors of
distant forests. Next comes the grave, in many a
poem about green. But this is not a poem. This is a
billboard for frozen green peas. Frozen green peas
are good for pain.
Copyright © 2023 by Anne Carson. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on August 25, 2023, by the Academy of American Poets.
- The Nobel Prize in Literature 2026 was awarded to Anne Carson “for her bold and inventive oeuvre that, in playful dialogue with the classical tradition, has created new forms for contemporary literature.”
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