Mark Irwin

Mark Irwin (1953-  ) was born in Faribault, Minnesota. He received a BA from Case Western Reserve University in 1974, an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop in 1980, and a PhD from Case Western Reserve University in 1982. He is the author of nine poetry collections. Irwin now lives in Colorado and Los Angeles, where he teaches in the creative writing and literature program at the University of Southern California.

Toward Where We Are

Now light turns the room a deep orange at dusk and you

think you are floating, but in truth you are falling, and the fall

is so slow, yet precise, like climbing a ladder of straw. Now

leaning forward, you open your hands that keep opening. Is

this what Yes feels like? Making a shore where no water was?

— Mark Irwin