As it was for the ancients, it would be for me: songs written down in pictures. The one about the trees on fire
when I came upon them, and the grass flattened around me-- that was what I saw. The trees are like a fresco, I thought, insofar as they are gold and tell a story.
76 The Paris-American
Richie Hofmann is the recipient of a 2012 Ruth Lilly Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation. His poems appear or are forthcoming in Ploughshares, Poetry, New England Review, and the New Yorker, among others. His poetic sequence, “Old World Elegy,” winner of the Memorious Art Song Contest, is being set by composer Brian Baxter and will premiere at the Poetry Foundation in Chicago in May 2013. More information at www.richiehofmann.com.