Out of the Woods

The winning volume in the 1988 Yale Series of Younger Poets competition is Out of the Woods by Thomas Bolt. As James Merrill, distinguished poet and judge of the competition, has said: "Here is an up-to-date pastoral: wrecked cars, glades of debris, polluted streams, all gravely held in Thomas Bolt's unflinching gaze. 'I had found,' he writes, 'the secret center of America.' Given this wealth of evidence, its bleakness and sparkle, we can almost bring ourselves to believe him." A Hill in Virginia In this rude worldMemory pertainsIn bald things,Of promises skipped over, violenceOr accidents of kissing.Read within the deep patinaOf the old stumpOf a shainsawed black walnutIts circularHistory from sex to ruin; Look whereCracked and spattered chunks of cold quartzStuck in mudGlitter up from a dull hill.Downhill, the wrecked car:A punched in windshieldSags whole,An afterimage of collision,Brilliant with sky.