A special issue of The Volta honors the life and work of poet Molly Brodak.
The December 2020 issue of The Volta, out now, includes an “In Memoriam” feature on poet and memoirist Molly Brodak.
The feature includes 20 previously unpublished poems from Brodak’s final decade of life: “A Letter,” “A Meeting,” “Ark,” “Bargain,” “Camp,” “Charnel Ground,” “Conversation,” “Court,” “(Crude Chair,” “Election,” “Mount Yonah,” “Ok,” “Other Peoples’ Lives,” “Specter in Glyph,” “State,” “Vessel,” “Wheel in Air.” It also contains remembrances of Brodak from Caroline Crew, Carrie Lorig, Gina Myers, Nick Sturm, and Blake Butler. Says Blake Butler in his essay “Molly,” “Please speak up. The world is clouded. We must try. Even now, at least at times, I still believe that.”
The feature, “Evening Will Come,” can be accessed here. Below is Brodak’s poem “Ok”:
Ok
If you are tied
If you are bitter
If you are overjoyed
If you are lying
what will I know,
after all I have agreed
to hope and the pain of it.
Some doom.
Sweet light fire on the horizon.
This drift grids into a fabric,
a permanent fortune, and I fold it
into a drawer and care for it.
Where I first met you,
here we are. Against cold
and only dead pink branches
left, the fuck it of branches, in a crowd
of iron holly and knife sedge, walk
to the dark. Then walk.
