Bernadette Mayer: Midwinter Day

Midwinter Day, as Alice Notley noted, is an epic poem about a daily routine. A poem in six parts, ‘Midwinter Day’ takes us from awakening and emerging from dreams through the whole day-morning, afternoon, evening, night-to dreams again: . . . a plain introduction to modes of love and reason/Then to end I guess with love, a method to this winter season/Now I’ve said this love it’s all I can remember/Of Midwinter Day the twenty-second of December//Welcome sun, at last with thy softer light/That takes the bite from winter weather/And weaves the random cloth of life together/And drives away the long black night!