This is Poetry Moment on WPSU – a weekly program featuring the work of contemporary Pennsylvania poets. Your host is poet Marjorie Maddox, a 2023 Monson Arts Fellow, author of more than 20 books, and retired professor of English and creative writing at the Lock Haven campus of Commonwealth University.
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Welcome to Poetry Moment.
It’s been one hot summer—muggy and sticky! In today’s poem, Nathalie Anderson gives us summer in Philly, part of a multimedia performance piece commissioned by the Concerto Soloists of Philadelphia to celebrate Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. Get ready to “Sweat!”
Nathalie Anderson moved to the Philadelphia area in 1982 to work as a Professor of English Literature at Swarthmore College. Her poems have appeared in such publications as The New Yorker, Nimrod, and Plume. Her books of poetry include Following Fred Astaire, Crawlers, Quiver, Stain, and Rough. In collaboration with Philadelphia composer Thomas Whitman, Anderson has authored libretti for five operas.
Nathalie Anderson’s poem, “Sweat,” drips, slips, spins, and suffocates us through Philadelphia’s oppressive summer. It also gifts us community. The poet explains her collaboration with composer Jonathan Holland and photographer Jim Wasserman, each trying “to get at the sticky discomfort of summer. . . particularly for people without resources to protect themselves.” But this musical, sensuous poem, also gives us “camaraderie. . . and the breeziness that makes the discomfort more bearable.”
Here’s “Sweat” by Nathalie Anderson
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The slick palm slips its grip and the world
tips on its axis – loose ball, jump ball, screw ball.
The world’s gone woozy, peels off its jacket,
smacks the backboard, thwacks the bat, teeters, spins.
The only breeze we’ve got is the world’s swerving.
One palm slicks another out on the dance floor,
the hip hand slips its juicy grip, silk slithers –
couples careening into the spin, spritzing
the muggy crowd. Open-mouthed, panting
its heart out: blue note, blue moon.
One palm washes the other, brother sears the hand
of brother, the wilting overcoat slips
from the shoulder and off the arm. He’s shedding
the winter as if there’ll never be another.
Sidewalk grit. Sun-scalded skin.
Damp sheets, dank air, a key riding a kite:
crackle and spit. The river gets goose bumps,
the sky claps its hands, the air opens
in a wet kiss. Rainbows slick the ripples.
The ball nests all night in the pitcher’s glove.
A man’s sweat wringing out of him as he walks,
a woman pooling before the window fan,
and children incandescent, haloed in thick air.
Wet patches on a dark shirt. Steam clouds the sky
where by night the stars are boiling.
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That was “Sweat” by Nathalie Anderson. Thanks for listening.
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Listen for Poetry Moment with Marjorie Maddox Mondays during Morning Edition and All Things Considered on WPSU. You can more episodes at wpsu.org/poetrymoment.
Our theme music is by Eric Ian Farmer.
