"Peacock Island" by Jennifer Kronovet

[View this email on a browser]( [Forward to a friend]( [facebook-icon]( [tumblr-icon]( [twitter-icon]( November 23, 2018 [Peacock Island]( [Jennifer Kronovet]( From the island he saw the castle and from the castle he saw the island. Some people live this way—wife/ mistress/wife/mistress. But this story isn’t the one I’m telling. From the island he saw the castle and that made him distant from power and from the castle he saw the island and that made him distant from imagining what power can do. The story I’m telling is the war coming. How can you go from island to castle to island to castle and not give birth to a war? No. I still can’t explain it. [Like this on Facebook]( [Share via Twitter]( Copyright © 2018 Jennifer Kronovet. Used with permission of the author. [Kronovet reads "Peacock Island."]( About This Poem “Peacock Island is a real place: sixty-seven hectares in the middle of the Havel River, just off the western edge of Berlin—after a thirty-second ferry ride you’re there and can hear the peacocks screaming to each other. The island was once given to an alchemist who discovered how to make ruby glass but was shipped off when his lab burned down, and one hundred years later, the island was given to the king’s mistress for her pleasure, and she was shipped off when the king died. The castle, the fountain, and the temple were all designed to look like ruins—the fantasy of ruin—and yet were untouched when World War II’s bombs fell. When I first went to Peacock Island I thought, If I can understand this place, I can understand all of the real and imagined history of Western civilization. This place of artifice and hubris snagged me, and since then all my poems have been about Peacock Island.” —Jennifer Kronovet [Jennifer Kronovet]( Jennifer Kronovet is the author of two poetry collections, including her most recent, The Wug Test (Ecco Press, 2016). She is the editor of Circumference Books, a press for poetry in translation, and lives in Berlin, Germany. Photo Credit: Anthony Brosnan [The Wug Test]( Poetry by Kronovet [The Wug Test]( (Ecco Press, 2016) "Earthquake Country Before Final Chemotherapy" by Max Ritvo [read-more]( "Build, Now, a Monument" by Matthew Olzmann [read-more]( "Glass House" by Heather McHugh [read-more]( November Guest Editor: Don Mee Choi Thanks to Don Mee Choi, author of Hardly War (Wave Books, 2016), who curated Poem-a-Day for this month’s weekdays. Read more about [Choi]( and our [guest editors for the year.]( [make a one-time donation]( [make a monthly donation]( [Small-Blue-RGB-poets.org-Logo]( Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit [Poets.org](. You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click [here](. © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038