Susan Stewart

Susan Stewart (1952- ) Poet and scholar she earned a BA from Dickinson College, MA from Johns Hopkins University, and PhD in folklore from the University of Pennsylvania. Among her books of poetry are Cinder: New and Selected Poems (2017), Red Rover (2008), The Forest (1995), and Columbarium (2003), a National Book Critics Circle Award winner. She is currently a professor of English at Princeton University where she teaches the history of poetry and aesthetics. 

I am as far as the deepest sky between clouds

and you are as far as the deepest root and wound,

and I am as far as a train at evening,

as far as a whistle you can't hear or remember.

You are as far as an unimagined animal

who, frightened by everything, never appears.

I am as far as cicadas and locusts

and you are as far as the cleanest arrow

that has sewn the wind to the light on

the birch trees. I am as far as the sleep of rivers

that stains the deepest sky between clouds,

you are as far as invention, and I am as far as memory.

— Susan Stewart from 'Yellow Stars and Ice'