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The Roanoke-Chowan Award for Poetry will be presented to Dorianne Laux of Raleigh for her collection, “The Book of Men.” 

 

  • Facts About the Moon


    The moon is backing away from us
    an inch and a half each year. That means
    if you’re like me and were born
    around fifty years ago the moon
    was a full six feet closer to the earth.
    What’s a person supposed to do?
    I feel the gray cloud of consternation
    travel across my face. I begin thinking
    about the moon-lit past, how if you go back
    far enough you can imagine the breathtaking
    hugeness of the moon, prehistoric
    solar eclipses when the moon covered the sun
    so completely there was no corona, only
    a darkness we had no word for.
    And future eclipses will look like this: the moon
    a small black pupil in the eye of the sun.
    But these are bald facts.
    What bothers me most is that someday...

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Dorianne Laux

Award-winning Poet and Author

Dorianne Laux's fifth poetry collection, The Book of Men (W.W. Norton, 2011), is now available. Laux’s fourth book of poems, Facts about the Moon,Dorianne Laux’s, is the recipient of the Oregon Book Award...More