Author's Note
by Matthew Brennan

I wrote this poem in June 2000. I'd returned to my alma mater Grinnell College for a poetry reading and on the way there was stunned by the lush fertile beauty of the rolling Iowa farmland. Then in the college bookstore I found the WPA Guide to 1930s Iowa, whose cover reproduces Grant Woods' painting Fall Plowing. The night before the reading I stayed up writing the first draft of the poem. The stanza form -- tercets with each line successively indented -- is meant to mimic the undulating form of the landscape, as are several of the enjambments such as "slope / and roll" and "works over / a silken hip." I also concentrated on infusing musical sound devices (assonance and consonance) to fit the sensual effect of the painting.