Five-Paragraph Essay on the Body-Mind Problem

Playful love poems to kids, coral reefs, and crows_x000D x000D_Winner of the 2024 Cardinal Poetry Prize_x000D x000D_Five-Paragraph Essay on the Body-Mind Problem is the inaugural winner of the Cardinal Poetry Prize, selected by renowned poet Robert Pinsky. In free verse and invented poetic forms, Rachel Trousdale explores how the interplay between the mind and body illuminates our most important relationships, whether with other humans, wild spaces, or works of art. Inhabited by crows, yetis, coral reefs, and aliens, these poems playfully examine the intensity and conflict of romantic love; the entropic joys of parenthood; illness and grief; and the ways our physical loves and intangible losses teach us responsibility to the world around us. x000Dx000D[Sample Poem]x000Dx000D_Love Poem With Dereliction of Duty_x000D_x000D_It's true-I like you more than I like_x000D_the Marquis de Sade; God that_x000D_mid-April afternoon in 1995,_x000D_when I said, "let's take a walk"_x000D_and you said "sure" and we circled_x000D_the New Haven Green saying_x000D_who the hell knows what_x000D_because if we had seen_x000D_all this falling in love stuff coming, we_x000D_would have paid more attention;_x000D_I just know it took two hours,_x000D_past the churches and the porn shop_x000D_and over to the cemetery with all_x000D_those skull-topped slabs leaning_x000D_memorially against the brownstone wall;_x000D_round and round we went like marbles_x000D_dodging the traps in a game_x000D_of labyrinth; and finally back_x000D_to campus through that big stone gate_x000D_which we entered just as the prof_x000D_of the philosophy class I was skipping_x000D_came out and I said oh the pain_x000D_the pain I can't take it any more_x000D_and doubled up laughing