Will Schutt
Poetry Reading: Tuesday, September 8
7 p.m. Bucknell Hall

Will Schutt is a poet and translator from New York City. He earned his BA from Oberlin College and his MFA from Hollins University, where he was a teaching fellow and editorial assistant at The Hollins Critic. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in such journals as Faultline, FIELD, Harvard Review and The Southern Review. In 2003, he co-founded Verso, a culture and arts magazine based in Siena, Italy, where he was a contributing editor and translator until 2007. He guest edited the “Focus” section of the summer 2008 issue of A Public Space, which featured a selection of his translations of contemporary Italian fiction. He is also the recipient of the 2008 Gertrude Claytor Poetry Prize from the Academy of American Poets.

 Schutt will share the reading with Philip Roth Resident Michael Scalise.

The Message the Rider Carried

—At the Basilica of the Annunciation, Florence

Had she known the message the rider carried
Mary would have turned into the house
and locked her door: in the angel’s colossal
light, the walls, and not her face, blanch;
a palimpsest of bronze inlay the original
door beams and sloped roof; cows shoulder
the golden yolk; a sheen settle over billhooks
and shears in the hedge. Until Joseph comes
home, Mary waits, wondering what to answer
when asked why she’d locked the door.
Something about a midday fright at storm clouds.
Simple and girlish, so he can let his hollow
laugh out, and the house remain intaglio.
Then there would be darkness, but less
guilt, maybe. Save for that angel delivering
the news that no one was home. Shielding
its eyes with its wings. Or so we tried imagining.