“‘Solstice in Truro’ is one of those poems that just slips out and finds its final form very quickly, in an attempt to respond to my immediate world of sensation. One line led to another, pretty much in the order in which they appear. The emergence of my grandfather in the final lines, and the war in Ukraine, too, was a discovery I wasn’t looking for. I had been reading a lot of Sung and Tang Dynasty poems, classical poems, over the previous few years, mostly in Red Pine’s translations. I think you can hear the influences of line and image in what I wrote.”
—Joshua Weiner