The Committee Weighs In by Andrea Cohen
The Committee Weighs In
Andrea CohenI tell my mother
I’ve won the Nobel Prize.Again? she says. Which
discipline this time?It’s a little game
we play: I pretendI’m somebody, she
pretends she isn’t dead.
SELECTED BY TARA SKURTU
This is my favorite all-time-go-to poem. It’s small enough to carry by heart, and it carries within its 8 lines an unexpected slide down the spectrum of emotions (and in less than 30 seconds!).
Whenever people tell me “I don’t like poetry” or “I don’t get poetry,” this is the poem I say aloud to them, and I have yet to meet a person who doesn’t feel this poem. There are no gimmicks here, no flash and dazzle, no overly-poeticized words: Its power is in its simplicity.
I recommend reading this poem to someone. See what happens.
ABOUT TARA SKURTU
Tara Skurtu is the author of the chapbook Skurtu, Romania, the full poetry collection The Amoeba Game, and the forthcoming collection Faith Farm. A two-time Fulbright grantee and recipient of a Robert Pinsky Global Fellowship, the Marcia Keach Poetry Prize, and two Academy of American Poets prizes, her poems and translations have appeared in magazines such as AGNI, The Baffler, The Common, The Kenyon Review, and Salmagundi. Tara is a member of the Brooklyn Poets Board of Directors. She lives in New York, where she teaches poetry and is a writing coach for clients worldwide.
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SHARED WITH GRATITUDE
This poem appeared in Furs Not Mine by Andrea Cohen, published by Four Way Books, 2015. (Available on: Amazon • Bookshop)
DESCRIPTION
“The poems in Furs Not Mine display Andrea Cohen’s masterful craft and lyricism and her keen wit. In Cohen’s elegiac shoals, we see how “Great griefs are antidotes / for lesser sorrows,” and in her strange, surprising narratives, we glimpse a man darting into traffic for a hubcap, “meaning to build his dream / vehicle from scrap.” These poems, too, have the feel of dreamy constructions, in which bliss “from a distance, can look like pain.” That’s the magic of this collection: it holds loss and promise in the same image—sometimes even the same word.” (Source)
ABOUT ANDREA COHEN
Andrea Cohen’s poems and stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, The Threepenny Review, The New York Review of Books, The Atlantic Monthly, The New Republic, Glimmer Train, etc. A new poetry collection, Sugar, will be out in early 2026. Other books include The Sorrow Apartments (Four Way Books, 2024), Everything (Four Way, 2021), Nightshade (Four Way, 2019). Unfathoming (Four Way, 2017), Furs Not Mine (Four Way, 2015), Kentucky Derby (Salmon Poetry, 2011), Long Division… (more)
Read more poems by Andrea Cohen • Find books by this poet on Amazon • Bookshop • Website • Or view my library
ENDNOTES
- This is Day 77 of Poems We Carry, celebrating the 20th anniversary of Read A Little Poetry—a living archive I’ve nurtured for two decades. For this milestone series, I invited writers I deeply admire to share poems that have meant something to them over time.
- Explore other works in pursuit of: grief • connection • imagination • Or browse the index
- If this work resonates with you, please consider supporting the archive. Thank you for reading.
Billy Juniper
I agree, I like this one a lot.