Stuart Dybek

Broadcast
June 9, 2013 Dybek Stuart

Broadcast

 

1

Five blank days of snow,

and then a sunset fills feeders

emptied of thistle seed

with the glow of vacuum tubes.

 

2

Without the golden weight

of finches, radiant columns sway

from the white silhouette

of a black walnut tree.

 

3

What frequencies might they

transmit? Beyond the wind-

blown static of memory,

what music?  What news?

Stuart Dybek’s most recent book of poems is Streets in Their Own Ink (Farrar, Straus and Giroux). His fiction includes Childhood and Other Neighborhoods, The Coast of Chicago, and I Sailed with Magellan, a novel-in-stories. Dybek’s work has won numerous awards, among them a Lannan Prize, a PEN/Malamud Award, a Whiting Writers’ Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a MacArthur Fellowship, a Rea Award for the Short Story, and numerous O. Henry Prizes. His work has also appeared in both The Best American Short Stories and The Best American Poetry.