Idris Anderson :: Beverly Burch

Donatello got it wrong, stooped her penitent,
whipped to shame, shunned. Worm-eaten wood.
In rags. A sore on her lip.
                                                     I wrote my love
a postcard with a photo of the Magdalene.
I was in love with the heart of the wood, the woman within.
I saw but did not say the truth of it. Here it is. 

                                                 --from "A Correction" 

I love how Idris’s work combines high culture and a low country — i.e., coastal South Carolina — sensibility. She writes from a wide-ranging mind and keen intuition, poems that are personal, political, ekphrastic and earthy. In the writing group we share she always has an attuned ear for other poets’ work as well.

  -- Beverly Burch, poet of the week