Karen Volkman's first book, Crash's Law, was a National Poetry Series selection, published by W.W. Norton in 1996. Her second book, Spar, received the Iowa Poetry Prize and the 2002 James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets. Her poems have appeared in numerous anthologies, including The Best American Poetry, The Pushcart Prize Anthology, and The Norton Introduction to Poetry.

From "Brown is the flat"

Brown is the flat gestation of a maze,
grass-grown remembrance of a second look
the field holds open like a nascent book
in which the wind has written, Sudden strays,
sudden numbers beat--the roots of days
branched intangibles a stupor took
and slept and stroked and scattered in a shook
haze of wakenings, refracting rays
outleaping their seasons, daughters of a glance
ago--ahead, a retrograde advance.