Sky River

Nan Hannon

Nan Hannon’s Sky River, first published in 1991, is a work that cleaves hard, archaeological substance to fragments of emotion and intellect. It is a poetry in which Hannon, bent above the detritus of our ancestors, reflects upon the passage of time and the timelessness of the heart.

Born in Eugene, Oregon, Nan Hannon has lived in Oregon all of her life. She is a graduate of Sacred Heart Academy in Salem and Lewis and Clark College in Portland, where she studied writing with Vern Rutsala. She holds a master’s degree in social science from Southern Oregon State College and is the recipient of numerous writing awards.

A sample poem from the book

Ukranians

In Chiloquin, displaced,

she made Pysanky eggs.

Painted crosses and wheat sheaves

in wax resist, invisible and negative.

Dyed them red and black.

No Fabergé, she lived

on scrambled eggs, meringues, soufflés,

on yolk and white coaxed

from the shell with gentle lips.

Blown eggs. Hollow.

Waiting to be sold,

the ovals hung in her windows,

empty as Christ’s tomb.

Her new life:

every morning Easter.

Egg money, woman’s gold,

brooded in her jar.

Until her husband

got into her house

and in a rage of breaking

crushed her eggs.

Ten thousand painted tesserae

mosaic beneath his feet.

Bright and Byzantine.