Leah Umansky’s “Ars Poetica: The Thing Is …”
Leah Umansky offers a treatise on living among nature, in a poem from LARB Quarterly no. 46: “Alien.”
By Leah UmanskyOctober 10, 2025
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This poem is a preview of the LARB Quarterly, no. 46: Alien. Become a member for more fiction, essays, criticism, poetry, and art from this issue—plus the next four issues of the Quarterly in print.
¤
Ars Poetica: The Thing Is …
—for Dante Di Stefano
How to be a person in the world?
Study birds.
See the clouds.
Step
Out into
The light
And see.
¤
Featured image: Alexandre-Blaise Desgoffe, Soap Bubble, 1882, is in the public domain. Accessed October 3, 2025. Image has been cropped.
LARB Contributor
Leah Umansky is the author of three collections, including the recent Of Tyrant (The Word Works, 2024); an educator; and the curator of the COUPLET Reading Series in New York City since 2011. This poem is from a new manuscript of ars poeticas.
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Did you know LARB is a reader-supported nonprofit?
LARB publishes daily without a paywall as part of our mission to make rigorous, incisive, and engaging writing on every aspect of literature, culture, and the arts freely accessible to the public. Help us continue this work with your tax-deductible donation today!