Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Burying the Wren
    Burying the Wren
    Burying the Wren
    Ebook60 pages20 minutes

    Burying the Wren

    By Deryn Rees-Jones

    3.5/5

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Alive to the world and the transformative qualities of love, the poems in this collection concern emotions and relationships. Utilizing a clear and mature vision, the poet lyrically expresses experiences concerning love and family. Skillfully pitting the ordinary yet mysterious “small things” of the universe, such as flowers, against loss, these poems also elegize the poet’s late husband, poet and critic Michael Murphy.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSeren
    Release dateJan 1, 2013
    ISBN9781854115980
    Burying the Wren
    Author

    Deryn Rees-Jones

    Deryn Rees-Jones works as a poet, editor and critic. She won an Eric Gregory Award and The Memory Tray (1995) was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. She is Professor of Poetry at Liverpool University, and editor of the poetry series for Pavilion Press).

    Related to Burying the Wren

    Related ebooks

    Poetry For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Three Poems

      Mar 1, 2020

      All the animals you knowwill die. You set foodout for them anyway,let the oily seeds fallamong the fiddleheadsto be ground downpermanent as bone.The forest fills and unfills,drops itself down roottubes and turns to dark lace.One undoing: leafto sparr

      1 min read

    • Article

      Four Poems

      May 1, 2022

      —after Gerrit van Honthorst’s “Samson and Delilah,” c. 1621 They’ve made a monster of me, marring my namefor eternity. I’m not Delilah,but Laila. I loved him. Each night, in bed, after our bodies became one body, he would succumb to sleep, resting hi

      3 min read

    • Article

      Song Of The Woods

      May 23, 2022

      Song Of The Woods
      7 min read

    • Article

      AUSTRALOPITHECA1 & STARMAN2

      Sep 1, 2019

      The countdown to you begyns with me, deere Starman, when I wander, dumbly, deep into a space hospittable to Hunger. Now, all’s desert. No milk in syte. Just pitifull sand, what shushes as it slydes through your hande to rejoin itself. I’d join myself

      7 min read

    • Article

      Four Poems

      Jan 1, 2021

      I learned the world through the bottoms of my feet, barein the creeks of summer, stepping on pebbles, the squidgeof moss between my toes. On hot asphalt, the hop and skipover cracks, feet already toughened by bramble, dirt, the pricklyground of pine

      4 min read

    • Article

      Five Poems

      Jan 1, 2020

      How slow is all of this dying? Across the county linea fossil in the making, off-road exhaling last lightin nightmud. A small cat in a steel trap. Pendulous sparrows preen. Holding on for the last bluedark nightwe ate fruited scabs off each other’s m

      4 min read

    • Article

      Sweet Fantasy

      Nov 20, 2021

      Sweet Fantasy
      8 min read

    • Article

      The Primeval Comic Book

      Aug 1, 2017

      The Primeval Comic Book
      8 min read

    • Article

      A Book of Hours

      Nov 25, 2022

      A Book of Hours
      12 min read

    • Article

      Two Poems

      Sep 1, 2022

      Are you ready? I nodded. She slid the needle inand the sick cat, who only a moment before had tried toleap to the floor closed his eyes and exhaled. Andthat’s it, she said a little too brightly, pulling the needle out.That’s it? I asked. That’s all t

      3 min read

    • Article

      Summer Diary

      Jun 3, 2021

      Every day we are exploring more of the forest park across the road from us, relishing it in small sections, getting to know it like a friend. We have found secret paths among the jays and rooks. We have climbed banks of leaf litter, strayed far off p

      7 min read

    • Article

      Dark Tales

      Dec 2, 2021

      Dark Tales
      6 min read

    • Article

      From Beyond The Somber Station

      Jun 22, 2022

      From Beyond The Somber Station
      1 min read

    • Article

      Retriever of Souls

      Nov 25, 2021

      What they don’t say is that, sometimes God will call you to the wilderness, gesture toward the trees, and then, hang back and wave you on alone. —“Prayer for the Wretched Among Us” from The Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded At nig

      18 min read

    • Article

      Three Poems

      Nov 1, 2021

      That the semi-circular canal is part of my ear,not a style of Venetian waterway arch,I learned mid-air on a Huffy.That bicycles left long out in the rain split.That prepositions are tricky.That I was made part industrious,part lazy-assed. That descri

      3 min read

    • Article

      Two Poems

      Jan 1, 2021

      Light delimits the darkness as snowgives shape to the silence of winter trees.Above a rooftop, the shadow of illness hoversindistinguishable from the wraithsof common chimney smoke.Strip skin from flesh, flesh from boneto behold the comical, adumbrat

      4 min read

    • Article

      Red Kite Grey Shadow

      Nov 3, 2022

      Red Kite Grey Shadow
      6 min read

    • Article

      Seven Poems

      May 1, 2023

      There was a boy even stranger than I waswho’d call me in the eveningto see if I’d come to Scouts. Something in mehesitated. Then one morning during eighth grade English we got hall passesand did it in a stall in the bathroomtaking turns over the john

      3 min read

    • Article

      Spell

      Apr 25, 2018

      Spell
      4 min read

    • Article

      Named After the Animal

      Oct 13, 2020

      Named After the Animal
      18 min read

    • Article

      TWO ESSAYS from FINGER EXERCISES FOR POETS

      Nov 1, 2022

      Russian Formalists have a word, “ostranenie,” which means constantly attempting to discover new ways of looking at everyday things. There are almost always two realities rubbing up against one another in every poem, whether they are specified or not,

      10 min read

    • Article

      Six Poems

      Nov 1, 2023

      loved best. Words I have neversaid. New sentence, at 80. Of coursenot more than his children, and their children. That goeswithout saying—but I want to lay down eachelement of love’s house. First,the hole, under—apple cellar, potato cellar,cellar to

      5 min read

    • Article

      Why look at Beth Cavener's Animals?

      Nov 1, 2017

      Why look at Beth Cavener's Animals?
      12 min read

    • Article

      The Final Truth

      Jan 21, 2020

      The Final Truth
      5 min read

    • Article

      from BLACK PASTORAL

      Nov 1, 2023

      somewheres, some lifetimes ago I have run so far, so long.There is nowhere I haven’t beenBut here, in this field, a bodyLength from the ragged brinkThat gives way to forest.I collapsed here, the thin, hard slipOf me whittled at both ends.I want badly

      4 min read

    • Article

      Six Poems

      Jul 1, 2018

      When I said, to my mother, What was a goodthing about me as a child?, my mother’sface seemed to unfurl from the center,hibiscus in fast motion, the anthersand flounces springing out with joy. Oh you wereenchanting, she breathed. What do you mean—craz

      5 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Burying the Wren

    3.5/5

    3 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Burying the Wren - Deryn Rees-Jones

      Deryn Rees-Jones

      Burying the Wren

      For Michael

      (1965-2009)

      In a dark time, the eye begins to see,

      I meet my shadow in the deepening shade;

      I hear my echo in the echoing wood –

      A lord of nature weeping to a tree,

      I live between the heron and the wren,

      Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den.

                                              – Roethke

      The wren, the wren, the king of all birds,

      On St. Stephen’s Day was caught in the furze;

      Up with the kettle and down with the pan,

      Pray give us a penny to bury the wren.

                 – Traditional Irish Wren song

      Contents

      Title Page

      Dedication

      Epigraph

      I

      Three Glances at a Field of Poppies

      Burying the Wren

      A Dream of Constellations

      After You Died

      Dogwoman

      II

      Trilobite

      Truffles

      A Chinese Lacquer Egg

      Shaved Fennel with Blood Oranges, Pomegranate, Pecorino

      Couvade

      Daughter II

      Aderyn Yr Eira

      Slugs

      Hallucigenia

      My Grandfather’s Tattoo

      Daughter III

      L

      III

      from: The Songs of Elisabeth So

      IV

      Shrub & Willow

      The Fetch

      The Box

      A Scattering

      Chinese Lanterns

      Peony

      Moon River

      Kinks

      Ellipsis

      Stillborn

      Letter from Marrakesh

      Meteor

      Persephone

      Tom-Tom

      Burying the Wren (coda)

      Acknowledgements and Notes

      Also by Deryn Rees-Jones

      Copyright

      I

      Three Glances at a Field of Poppies

      The first, a pointillist’s dream:

      blood drop, an ache, or a smudge

      of dolour.

      *

      Zoom in, where an ant tips a blade

      of grass and the steps of its brothers

      are footfalls of sorrow.

      *

      Now where? To the dark, where

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1