Footsteps with a hiss attached, dis dis dis, dragging a mutant shadow from which the object has gone.

Ann Lauterbach’s most recent book is Spell from Penguin (2018).

A friend recently handed me a bumper sticker that reads WHO NEEDS POETRY. A question in the form of a statement.

A recent advertising flyer from the clothes designer Eileen Fisher has the picture of a woman leaping, accompanied by the line Power Moves You. Where will it take you?

ANN LAUTERBACH is a poet and essayist. Her next book is due from Penguin in 2018. She teaches at Bard College.

Ann Lauterbach's most recent book is Under the Sign. She teaches at Bard College.

Ann Lauterbach is the author of eight books of poetry, most recently Or To Begin Again, a finalist for the National Book Award in 2009. She is also the author of the prose books, The Night Sky: Writings on the Poetics of Experience, and The Given & The Chosen.

Try this. Better? Somewhat. It will do for the time being. Seem to make some mistakes.

To narrate oneself into a catastrophe with unknowable global consequences seems trivial, or vain, or both.