Ingrid Wendt: "Armistice"

The VPR Poem of the Week is Ingrid Wendt’s “Armistice,” which appears in the just released Spring/Summer 2009 issue (Volume X, Number 2) of Valparaiso Poetry Review. I invite visitors to read additional poems, “The Keeper of Secrets” and “True to Form,” by featured-poet Wendt in the current pages of VPR. The issue also includes an essay by Wendt and an interview with her by Barbara Crooker.

Ingrid Wendt, whose parents were each raised in German-speaking families in Valparaiso, Chile, and on a farm in southwest Michigan, spent the year 1994-1995 as a Senior Fulbright Professor in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, returning in 2004 and 2005 as a Fulbright Senior Specialist. She has won the Oregon Book Award in Poetry with Singing the Mozart Requiem, the Carolyn Kizer Award, and the Yellowglen Prize for her 2004 book, The Angle of Sharpest Ascending. Her fourth full-length book, Surgeonfish, received the 2004 Editions Prize. Her other books include Moving the House (poetry); From Here We Speak: An Anthology of Oregon Poetry; In Her Own Image: Women Working in the Arts; and Starting with Little Things: A Guide to Writing Poetry in the Classroom. She divides her time between Eugene and Seal Rock, Oregon, with her husband, poet and writer Ralph Salisbury.

ARMISTICE

“The strongest of all warriors are these two—Time and Patience.”
—Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace


All their lives the girl studied the mother.
This was her favorite subject, the one she
was best in, there was nothing

about their history of battle the girl
did not remember: which words could turn into
land mines, how to keep distant and still

appear loving, look sweet, how much
of independent thought to sacrifice for
a truce that never would last, her heart

from an early age taking a break each time it was
called upon to perform, no allies in place
to protect it, no trench. After your death

I say it: I was that girl. You were that mother.
Now, the small unexpected bells of forgiveness
ringing, ringing, calling me

to attention: what made you
someone to love. All along. I loved you.
And was too busy practicing defense to see.


—Ingrid Wendt

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