Contain

As much as human beings were made to stay inside their homes in many places, pulled back like the awkward weeds we can be, threatened with culling by the mind of the garden, we were, in that way, contained by the pandemic. However, in Contain, the poet asks that we all remember what must not be held inside us if we are to remain resilient. Hogue meditates on the necessary questions of what is owed in return for the gift of life, as she writes out of her inspired dialogue with Morgan O’Hara’s work, and reminds us of how poetry can help us to see inside the gift of sight that is the painter’s province.