Brilliant Amaryllis-red can help brighten the gray landscape of winter.

Connie Wanek is the author of four books of poetry and one book of short prose. Her work has appeared in Poetry, The Atlantic Monthly, The Virginia Quarterly Review, Quarterly West, Poetry East, Prairie Schooner, and Missouri Review. She co-edited, with Joyce Sutphen and Thom Tammaro a comprehensive historical anthology of Minnesota women poets, called To Sing Along the Way (New Rivers Press, 2006) Her many awards include the Willow Poetry Prize, the Jane Kenyon Poetry prize and Ted Kooser, Poet Laureate of the United States (2004-2006) named her a Witter Bynner Fellow of the Library of Congress for 2006.

She lives with her family in Deluth, Minnesota, where she has worked at the public library and as a restorer of old homes.

“Amaryllis,” first appeared in Rival Gardens: New and Selected Poems, 2016, University of Nebraska Press.