> ## Content Index
> Fetch the complete content index at: https://hyperallergic.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further.

# Two Poems by Sara Nicholson
- URL: https://hyperallergic.com/two-poems-by-sara-nicholson/
- Published: 2019-08-28T11:01:12.000Z
- Updated: 2025-11-24T16:39:26.000Z
- Description: Our poetry editor, Wendy Xu, has selected two poems by Sara Nicholson for her monthly series that brings original poetry to the screens of Hyperallergic readers.
- Author: Wendy Xu
- Tags: Poetry, Hyperallergic Poetry, #wp, #wp-post, #image-position-hidden, #Import 2025-11-24 07:34 (2019, 2020, part 1)

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2019/08/anni-albers_k.jpg)

Anni Albers at Tate Modern (photo by Steve Bowbrick via Flickr)

## Nut

It must be nice to own  
A strong feeling.  
To walk about the towns and fields of Earth  
A man of taste, a woman  
Who lacks confidence  
In the public and its institutions  
And is therefore serious  
About art. About line and color  
I feel very little.  
Textures make me nervous:  
The trunks of trees,  
The flesh of the octopus, its  
Suckers, hair and horns.  
What is it about the abstract  
Words for feelings that bother me? Is it  
The dailiness of ecstasy  
Or the ecstasy of dailiness?  
Rage and integrity, why do they stun?  
The plastic tub of bluets  
In my neighbor’s backyard  
Embarrasses me.  
Bodies embarrass me, as does the soul  
When aflame, with grief or dolor.  
A woodcut of the Magdalen,  
Doughty and rough-hewn.  
Though easily put off by feelings  
I am not ashamed  
Of my embarrassment. It is natural  
To be petty about beauty,  
To want to hold it in your hand  
With purpose, and reduce it  
To the size of a nut.  
Trees in poems, especially trees  
In my own poems  
I am not ashamed to admit  
Embarrass me.  
It must be nice to live among them  
Under a clear, blue sky  
In October, my trees  
Full of laughter and weeping,  
Plagued by an idiom.  
I do not envy them Poetry. Oh Lord  
They can have it.

## Adagia

Literature is an invention; it was  
Written by men to praise war.  
Economy is tragic; the economy

Comedy. What the heart feigns  
The mind rehearses, circles  
A river on the map, as if to say

“*Voilà!* Now the non-linear  
Has maneuvered the rational  
Into position, and may rest.”

So we rewrite the old sayings—  
That art achieves through effort  
Ease; or that metaphor has

No prerequisite, like calling light  
The data windows encrypt  
And actually meaning it, right

Now, for example, to set down  
Pen to paper, voice to verse  
And claim that art itself is wholly

Suffix to experience, unheard  
But not unheard-of. A universe  
Gracelessly flashing forth.

\* \* \*

Sara Nicholson is the author of [*What the Lyric Is*](https://www.amazon.com/dp/0996778616/?tag=hyperallergic-20&ref=hyperallergic.com) (2016) and [*The Living Method*](https://www.amazon.com/dp/0988464349/?tag=hyperallergic-20&ref=hyperallergic.com) (2014), both from the Song Cave, as well as a chapbook of stories, [*Mortal Tales*](https://catenarypress.com/books/c1eae0c1-658c-4dae-9bc0-7fe29c1a5978?ref=hyperallergic.com) (2018), from the Catenary Press.