Ann Keniston
Opaque Landscape
Anselm Kiefer, Secret of the Ferns
A fern for example might be plucked
from dirt
pressed flat then
propped back up
in the vault of swords
as an example
of the leaf-great heart of shadow
as an opacity
lacking flowers seeds or pods
what Linnaeus called
a hidden marriage
its spores scattered
almost invisibly
which signifies a sadness or curse
in Victorian times a fern mania
ensued—pteridomania—followed by
a shortage
this time the artist pressed stems twined
with wire into parched earth
here in the museum among
the other desiccated specimens
a memorial ahead of time
for the next extinction
a pillow more black
Ann Keniston is a poet, essayist, and critic interested in the relation of the creative to the scholarly. She is the author of several poetry collections, most recently, Somatic (Terrapin 2020), as well as several scholarly studies of contemporary American poetry. The winner of Weber’s 2026 Sherwin Howard Award, she has recently published poems and essays in Interim, Gettysburg Review, New England Review, Tampa Review, Five Points, and elsewhere. A professor of English at the University of Nevada, Reno, where she teaches poetry workshops and literature classes, she lives in Reno.