<DIV><p>Karen Volkman’s first book, <i>Crash’s Law</i>, was a National Poetry Series selection, published by W.W. Norton in 1996. Her second book, <i>Spar</i>, received the Iowa Poetry Prize and the 2002 James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets. Her poems have appeared in numerous anthologies, including <i>The Best American Poetry</i>, <i>The Pushcart Prize Anthology</i>, and <i>The Norton Introduction to Poetry</i>.</p><p><b>From “Brown is the flat”:</b></p><p><i>Brown is the flat gestation of a maze,<br>grass-grown remembrance of a second look<br>the field holds open like a nascent book<br>in which the wind has written, Sudden strays,<br>sudden numbers beat—the roots of days<br>branched intangibles a stupor took<br>and slept and stroked and scattered in a shook<br>haze of wakenings, refracting rays<br>outleaping their seasons, daughters of a glance<br>ago—ahead, a retrograde advance.</i></p></DIV>