Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry keeps us up to date on the latest poems that describe American Life. The column continues the tradition he started in 2004.
Ted Kooser’s latest column features a poem by Steve Orlen, an Arizona poet. The poem’s title is “In the House of the Voice of Maria Callas.” The following are the first five-and-a-half lines:
In the house of the voice of Maria Callas
We hear the baby's cries, and the after-supper
Rattle of silverware, and three clocks ticking
To different tunes, and ripe plums
Sleeping in their chipped bowl, and traffic sounds
Dissecting the avenues outside.
Kooser describes the poem as a “lovely tribute to the great opera singer, Maria Callas.” He also says, “Most of us never saw her perform, or even knew what she looked like, but many of us listened to her on the radio or on our parents' record players, perhaps in a parlor like the one in this poem.”
To read the entire poem, please see American Life in Poetry “In the house of the voice of Maria Callas.”
*****
