Curator

Up, and with W. Hewer in Colonel Middleton’s coach to White Hall, and there to the Duke of York, to attend him, where among other things I did give a severe account of our proceedings, and what we found, in the business of Sir W. Jenings’s demand of Supernumeraries. I thought it a good occasion to make an example of him, for he is a proud, idle fellow; and it did meet with the Duke of York’s acceptance and well-liking; and he did call him in, after I had done, and did not only give him a soft rebuke, but condemns him to pay both their victuals and wages, or right himself of the purser. This I was glad of, and so were all the rest of us, though I know I have made myself an immortal enemy by it. Thence home by hackney, calling Roger Pepys at the Temple gate in the bookseller’s shop, and to the Old Exchange, where I staid a little to invite my uncle Wight, and so home, and there find my aunt Wight and her husband come presently, and so to dinner; and after dinner Roger, and I, and my wife, and aunt, to see Mr. Cole; but he nor his wife was within, but we looked upon his picture of Cleopatra, which I went principally to see, being so much commended by my wife and aunt; but I find it a base copy of a good originall, that vexed me to hear so much commended. Thence to see Creed’s wife, and did so, and staid a while, where both of them within; and here I met Mr. Bland, newly come from Cales after his differences with Norwood. I think him a foolish, light-headed man; but certainly he hath been abused in this matter by Colonel Norwood. Here Creed shewed me a copy of some propositions, which Bland and others, in the name of the Corporation of Tangier, did present to Norwood, for his opinion in, in order to the King’s service, which were drawn up very humbly, and were really good things; but his answer to them was in the most shitten proud, carping, insolent, and ironically-prophane stile, that ever I saw in my life, so as I shall never think the place can do well, while he is there. Here, after some talk, and Creed’s telling us that he is upon taking the next house to his present lodgings, which is next to that that my cozen Tom Pepys once lived in, in Newport Street, in Covent Garden; and is in a good place, and then, I suppose, he will keep his coach. So, setting Roger down at the Temple, who tells me that he is now concluded in all matters with his widow, we home, and there hired my wife to make an end of Boyle’s Book of Formes, to-night and to-morrow; and so fell to read and sup, and then to bed. This day, Mr. Ned Pickering brought his lady to see my wife, in acknowledgment of a little present of oranges and olives, which I sent her, for his kindness to me in the buying of my horses, which was very civil. She is old, but hath, I believe, been a pretty comely woman.

up here
among things I found

I have made myself old
a copy of a good original

light-headed and raw
profane as a lived-in book

or a little orange horse
which is old hat

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Friday 29 January 1669.

Sticky gift

Up, and to the office, where all the afternoon, also after dinner, and there late dispatching much business, and then home to supper with my wife, and to get her to read to me, and here I did find that Mr. Sheres hath, beyond his promise, not only got me a candlestick made me, after a form he remembers to have seen in Spain, for keeping the light from one’s eyes, but hath got it done in silver very neat, and designs to give it me, in thanks for my paying him his 100l. in money, for his service at Tangier, which was ordered him; but I do intend to force him to make me [pay] for it. But I yet, without his direction, cannot tell how it is to be made use of. So after a little reading to bed.

my wife got me a stick
for pain
for keeping the light
from one’s eyes
for £100
but I cannot tell
how to use it

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Thursday 28 January 1669.

Postromantic: a cento

To find a kiss of yours

The great warehouse doors open; I fill with gratitude
I'm not asking you to finish

so I look at the blue water, the snowy egret, the lace of its feathers

without a trace of irony or blush of shame—
We prefer to do it with the lights on

and what I do not say is, I trust the world to come back.

What is a story we never tell?
A hundred birds flew over a hundred fields.

                  sandstone, red basalt
From iron clangor and the engulfing crowd

Ladders, and whatever else
Might fall from the sky.
 

*

[Sources: Federico Garcia Lorca; Rumi; Djuna Barnes; 
Aria Aber; James Crews; Traci Brimhall; Ada Limon; 
Gabriela Mistral; Yanyi; Babette Deutsch; Alicia 
Ostriker; Alison C. Rollins]
 

Self-impersonation

Up, and with Sir John Minnes in his coach to White Hall, where first we waited on the Lords of the Treasury about finishing the Victualling Contract; and there also I was put to it to make good our letter complaining against my Lord Anglesey’s failing us in the payment of the moneys assigned us upon the Customs, where Mr. Fenn was, and I know will tell my Lord; but it is no matter, I am over-shoes already, and therefore must not fear. Then we up to a Committee of the Council for the Navy, about a business of Sir D. Gawden’s relating to the Victualling, and thence I by hackney to the Temple to the Auditor’s man, and with him to a tavern to meet with another under-auditor to advise about the clearing of my Lord Bellasses’ accounts without injuring myself and perplexing my accounts, and so thence away to my cozen Turner’s, where I find Roger Pepys come last night to town, and here is his mistress, Mrs. Dickenson, and by and by comes in Mr. Turner, a worthy, sober, serious man — I honour him mightily. And there we dined, having but an ordinary dinner; and so, after dinner, she, and I, and Roger, and his mistress, to the Duke of York’s playhouse, and there saw “The Five Hours’ Adventure,” which hath not been acted a good while before, but once, and is a most excellent play, I must confess. My wife and The. come after us, after they had been to buy some things abroad, and so after the play done we to see them home, and then home ourselves, and my wife to read to me, and so to supper and to bed.

I put on my shoes
and must not fear

another audit
is a clear bell

it is an adventure
to play ourselves

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Wednesday 27 January 1669.

Poetry Blog Digest 2022, Week 6

Poetry Blogging Network

A personal selection of posts from the Poetry Blogging Network and beyond. Although I tend to quote my favorite bits, please do click through and read the whole posts. You can also browse the blog digest archive or subscribe to its RSS feed in your favorite feed reader.

This week found many poets suffering through the winter doldrums—which is not to say that blogging dropped off. Quite the opposite, in fact, probably because writing is a coping mechanism for so many of us. But there were also plenty of light moments, although they had a certain surrealism about them. And of course there were poetry-related enthusiasms to share, as always. Enjoy.


February. A grey white month. More light but still cold. The forecast is for two weeks of snow showers. A month that still belongs to winter though the light lingers later now, long slow sunrises and sunsets when the clouds relent.

Today, a walk along the beach because it was a balmy 28 degrees. And that isn’t me being funny, 28 degrees feels quite warm indeed when the winter has been one of slashing winds and single digits. Bishop’s Beach is an active beach, windrows of cobbles shifting and reforming, great tidal changes, snow and ice at the top, waves at the bottom.

I walked mostly at the highest tide line because closer to the water’s edge would have meant crossing deep channels. But walking closer to the bluffs means cobbles which slide and clatter. Twist underfoot and crimp an ankle. Slide down toward the water almost as efficiently as ice so that one finds oneself scrambling to stay on stable footing.

I actually enjoy this kind of walking because it forces one to stay in the moment. If you’re walking with someone else, it forestalls any prolonged conversations. But the sheer kinetic effort allows me to focus on the here and now.

Erin Coughlin Hollowell, Winter beach wisdom

A dirty sky, and a dreary cold day ahead. This winter has settled into my bones as no other ever has: for the first time I understand people going away to sunny places for vacations. I could stand a week or two dreaming in the sun.

Dale Favier, Golden

post-storm driving
through an arboretum
of glass

Jason Crane, haiku: 6 February 2022

I haven’t seen my favorite eight-year-old since Christmas Eve. Her parents are, again, being careful because of Covid case counts in our area. Although I miss her and her younger siblings so much I feel tearful writing this sentence, our occasional phone call lets me talk one-on-one with her in a way we rarely get to do during visits.

Today, our nearly 90 minute call started with guessing games. What Am I Thinking is her favorite. Some of today’s correct guesses turned out to be ladybugs, clouds, and atoms. Then we played Would You Rather, which simply consists of taking turns making up questions like, “Would you rather travel by hot air balloon or sailboat?” and “Would you rather be an elephant or a whale?” but she’s so darn mature these days that she tends to say, “I’d like to experience both.” This lasts until our questions get much sillier, like “Would you rather eat worms or garbage?”

She switched screens to show me her room which she recently cleaned and organized. Her large stuffed bear, who she’s named Friendly Bear, holds its own toy animal pal under one arm and a book under another. “I know you’ll like this,” she said, “because books are your favorite thing.”

We discussed which superpowers we’d choose. I said healing, so I could help heal the world. She said she’d like to be able to fly. “I’d fly over right now to hug you.”

We discussed what it’s like to talk to animals and trees. She and I agreed, they are very good listeners. “Especially when you’re sad,” she said. I told her I don’t hear dogs or trees answer in a way I can hear with my ears, but I sometimes I feel what they say inside of me. “Me too!” she said, “We’re just the same!”

Then she talked about how her mind likes to go so wild that she doesn’t notice time passing. She said, “I look around and say to myself, ‘How is this real? How am I real?’” and I said, “Me too! We’re just the same!”

Laura Grace Weldon, Just The Same

Yesterday I taught movement class and was introducing the students to Laban’s method for describing movement dynamics. You break down an action: “kick”, “snap” etc. I asked them to pick a verb that we could deconstruct into Laban’s categories fast/slow, strong/weak, etc. One student was trying to be difficult and said: “Mmmm”. No problem. We can break down a word that is not a verb, that is not a word. Because sound/utterances also have dynamics.

I had a banal little breakthrough about the link between movement and sound. Nothing original or earthshattering, but one of those beautiful moments where experience precedes acquired knowledge. Like catching a fish bare-handed from a dark stream.

This morning I read about the Tetris effect: where we experience the movements we have executed during the day as we are falling asleep. And there is the imagined speech of our inner monologues, which I know can slide out of linguistic grooves, shaking the consonants and fricatives that give it context, but keep its truth.

It seems scientists focus on what we take from this realm into sleep. And don’t acknowledge what is indigenous to sleep, and whose shadows we cram into our pockets: what little gods’ humming fills the spaces between the stop motion bits of our days. A color – or a shade of grey.

They don’t acknowledge what gods and ghosts welcome us back at night, putting a warm hand on our forehead, pushing us under the surface.

Ren Powell, I See Ghosts

crossing by river or drowning by bridge :: shall i visit the same dead

Grant Hackett [no title]

I have been dreaming about maneless Eurasian cave lions. In these dreams, I see Palaeolithic paintings of horses, eight-legged arguing bisons, extinct rhinoceros, ancient bones of bears, sparkling formations of rocks that resemble tourmalines, and etching of one woman whose head is turning into a mammoth’s. The name of the man who has printed his hand with one crooked finger can only be known by 32000 year old lions who do not speak. 

At the end of the serpentine cave, there is a six year old boy eating an apple that he has just plucked from a blossoming tree. He doesn’t know that a wolf is right behind him. Tens of thousands of years later, archaeologists will find his footprints right next to the wolf’s. 

Near the river, while watching this scene, I am playing Schubert’s Ave Maria on an ancient flute made of a hollow bone of a vulture. 

At the end of these dreams, I inevitably find an abandoned book of prayers in which the word God has been replaced by two words: Grotte Chauvet

Saudamini Deo, God and Grotte Chauvet

February moves across midnight fields of love notes, Jim Crow stones, sorrow bones, and emancipation.

It’s like chains that lose themselves in moments of song.

It’s like a guitar made of blackbirds and brambles.

It’s like a ghost home reminded of its living sweetness.

The night winds remind us we’ve come a long way to find warmth, we have a long way to go to find healing.

Rich Ferguson, Upon a February

The hotel room speaker with its choice of reassuring white noise was designed to soothe unpredictable and unfamiliar noise to enable hotel guests to sleep. This masking of unpleasant noise with pleasant noise is the only current treatment for tinnitus. There is no cure and hearing aids can worsen the problem by making the tinnitus louder so are only used if there is also underlying hearing loss. However, when everything you hear is competing against the constant ringing/buzzing/static of tinnitus, hearing is frequently difficult.

Even a relatively quiet room can seem noisy depending on the frequencies of the background noise. If you are trying to hear someone speak against background conversation and tinnitus, separating out the noises and focusing on the one you want to hear takes a lot of cognitive effort. Staying home and using text based chat is easier but feels isolating. Not everywhere can be made library-quiet and background can help even out the unpredictable, irregular noise that interrupts a conversation.

This week is Tinnitus Awareness Week. I will never know silence. But I will never be alone either. My tinnitus is always there, but it’s not constant. There are loud and quieter periods. It is not always the boring static I usually have. Sometimes it mimics other sounds or has a rhythm that can be interpreted into song. A companion.

Emma Lee, Blanket of Sound

As I pass, they quiet. I move,
they start again, we play this game
of love, of fleeting signs and flipping
our display, of feigning and igniting,
such delicately tuned engines.
In the glitter of winter sun, why shouldn’t
songbirds rock the hedge — I walk on.

Jill Pearlman, (Valentine) Birds of Play

Finding time to write is not easy for me. Almost all of my time is taken with working in publishing and teaching. I work from the time I wake up until about midnight every day. I work on weekends. When I walk my dog, I make phone calls. When I drive to the beach, I make phone calls and when I walk on the beach, I make phone calls. I wrote this poetry during my few free evenings and in the early mornings. I wrote out the first drafts and then worked on edits. In the first drafts, the narrator sounded wild around the edges, but eventually I got the dark of the poems into stanzas and into that heady place that we consider a publishable poem.

Writing poetry for me requires being alone in a quiet place. There’s not much quiet in the world, it’s full of noise. Slowing down enough to be at the pace of poetry requires stepping away from the internet, the phone, the television, and entering the void. The Loneliest Girl was written at the bottom of the well. I was down there in the dark finding my way with a flashlight, a pen, and scraps of moonlight.

When I was a child, I once spent the night at the bottom of a well. I remember when the moon rose above me and I stood to throw up my arms and yelled, “Save me!” But the moon was far away and sailed on and left me in the dark. In the morning, someone found me and threw down a rope.

Writing these poems felt like that night in the well. We are lit by our own imaginations when we write poetry, we are sailing on a canoe in the dark over the moon going to find language, story, the island of forgiveness. Sometimes I think every poem is a prayer to the universe to forgive me for not being perfect. Poetry is the language of silence. I have found my way there in The Loneliest Girl, and I emerged with a book in my hands.

The possibilities of Medusa & The Loneliest Girl – guest blog post [by] Kate Gale (Trish Hopkinson’s blog)

The buzz and whine of the shredder
is company for a whole afternoon. I dig

deep into each folder in my file cabinet
and lift out who knows how many years’

worth of dead paper—ancient receipts, stale
explanations of benefits or of where our

money went. When did we buy that? Why?
Where is it now? Still, I know more things

brought some version of happiness into this
life we’ve made, even if briefly. I would stand

in a queue in the rain to listen to a rapturous
writer or a beautiful song; would walk miles

through foggy green countryside, wait
patiently for a herd of sheep to finish

crossing the lane.

Luisa A. Igloria, Sixty

Lunerd: only accepts moon poems

Purretry: only accepts cat poems

For Goodness Ache: only accepts poems with the word “ache” somewhere in the poem

Poe-a-Tree: only accepts poems about trees

Poe-atry: only accepts poems about Edgar Allen Poe

Then I Woke Up: only accepts poems where the whole poem is actually just a dream

The Franco Review: accepts author photos first, the poems after

After: Only accepts poems that are “after” (in the style of) another poet

______: only accepts poems that use blanks, like Jorie Graham poems

The Graham: only accepts poems by Jorie Graham

Renee Emerson, Themed Literary Magazines that Should Exist

This morning, I wrote a poem.  You might say, “Of course you did.  You’re a poet.”  But I’m a poet who does more writing in other genres these days:  blog posts, e-mails, seminary writing, social media updates.  I’ve been here before, so I no longer fret.  I know that Poetry Kristin is always there, observing, making connections, tucking details away for later poems.  Poetry Kristin can outwait everything that competes with poetry for my attention.

I always feel like I am not having much luck creating whole poems, but this line came to me this morning, as I was getting a sweater out of the back of a closet and wishing I had a door to Narnia back there: we pass our planetary wealth in sweaters. I sat with this line–and these ideas of enchantment, sweaters, closets, cheap junk jewelry, portals of all sorts–and I slowly began to see a poem shimmering through.

Who needs a portal to Narnia when a poem shimmers in the pre-dawn?

I tend to think that I’m not writing poems, but my poetry legal pad tells a different tale.  The last time I wrote a poem was January 31–not that long ago, especially considering that was the week that I was severed from my job.

It seems so long ago, but it was only last week.

Kristin Berkey-Abbott, Enchantment, Sweaters, Poetry, Portals of All Sorts

Four rejections in 36 hours. I become depressed. Twenty-four hours later I’ve done two more submissions. It occurs to me to wonder if, in fact, I have not a writer’s work ethic for publication but a gambling problem.

One more roll of the dice. Maybe this time. Come on baby, mama needs a new pair o’ shoes. Maybe this is not the noble seeking of the writer for the reader. Maybe this is just an addiction.

Someone posted on a writers’ FB exchange that every submission moves one closer to publication. It’s a nice thought but flawed in terms of the laws of probability. Every submission has a 50:50 chance: yes:no. (The maybes don’t count. In all my years of doing this, my maybes have NEVER turned into a yes with the next submission.) Every time.

I guess there may be the rare occasions in which a writer has caught an editor’s eye, and the editor becomes more inclined toward acceptance with each promising submission. (I don’t really believe that, but I’m going to offer it to you as some sort of solace.)

I think I’m addicted to the hit of possibility, grubbing in the smoke-filled, ding-crazy hall of chance, and you, editor, are my one-armed bandit.

Marilyn McCabe, There’ll be time enough; or, On the Publication Gamble

As I close out my first week of working wholly for myself, I will give a massive shout out to the ability to actually complete things. I mean, like to the end. I’ve pretty much lived the last 18 or so odd years in a state of half-finished.  Half finished projects, half finished layouts, half finished orders strewn about.  When I had the studio, I could spend a couple hours working, but always had to switch gears and go to work.  Ditto the last couple of years. Even when I worked on things at night, I was at the end of my day and less productive, and had to often stop to go to bed.  Or weekends, to do whatever of my own stuff (housecleaning, errands, etc,) that badly needed attending. And then of course, there was the energy wasted shifting gears, moving from one things to another, whether it was an e-mail interruption or a phone call or a suddenly pressing task that needed to take precedence.  And even when you moved back to the original, it took time to refocus (if you could at all.)  I think only  in the absense of such circumstances do you realize how not at all productive they are. How much they cut away, not only from the quality and quantity of output, but your general mental drain and feelings of burn out. […]

I’ve talked with friends about the energies it tales to constanly be switching gears, and how much time and energy it takes. To pause, refocus on something else, to go back, then refocus again. At the library, distractions were constant, even when I purposely tried to ignore the dinging e-mail notification on my pc and the phone. I’d be working steadily and get interrupted by a student worker question or needy patron or broken printer.  Come back and get distracted by the news or social media, and then get back to what I was working on and then get interrupted again.  This was actually less difficult and more micro  than the shifting I would do during the day at large. Writing in the morning, press work, commuting, library (where I could potentially be working in three different modes and for three different jobs). No wonder I was mentally exhausted all the time. Sometimes I tried to devote days to one or another line, but some things, like ILL processing had to happen every day or get backed up to move smoothly. And e-mails. Sometimes 3-4 accounts to check.  Egads the amount of time to just get through them (and I feel like I never really do.) If I had an exhibit to hang or web pages to build on top of that, it was even more intense. 

So needless to say, despite feeling a little strange that I am spending so much time alone (which is fine as an introvert, but I don’t want to become Miss Havisham levels of mad) things are going quite well. I even consented to a pre-Valentines outing to a movie and maybe dinner after.  And  it occurred to me that weekend plans were usually NO because I need to reset and rest, but now I will not hit the end of the week quite as frazzled, so am much more open for outings, especially as (hopefully) the covid rates continue to fall. 

Kristy Bowen, switching gears

You can see it through the window, the saint’s face
pressing against the pane of glass,
his breath making a tiny fog.

You are outside in the cold air and the saint is inside,
the glass and a number of sins are still between you.

It is the gray of winter and the entire world seems
to be painted in shades of black and white and gray,
like some old movie.

On the other side of the window the saint breathes again,
exhaling as hard as he can, and with his finger
he begins to write you a message
on the foggy glass.

James Lee Jobe, The warm breath of the saint.

The end of January found me in some amazing company! I got to participate in two release readings for A Harp in the Stars: An Anthology of Lyric Essays (U of Nebraska Press, 2021). I’m still pinching myself to make sure I’m not dreaming about having a piece included in this gorgeous book!

On Saturday, January 29, The Writers Place in Kansas City hosted a reading on Zoom with anthology editor Randon Billings Noble and contributors Dorothy Bendel, Heidi Czerwiec, and me. Lyric essay as labyrinth? Lyric essay as body wash instructions? I loved hearing these essays aloud and sharing my “Nevermore” in such company. The sponsor was also special to me: I helped connect us to TWP, and this organization gave me a scholarship when I was an MA student at UMKC. I’m honored to be a member now.

On Monday, January 31, San Diego Writers, Ink sponsored our reading, and my former student Madi Bucci, who is now their administrative assistant, was our Zoom host! This time I got to read with Randon Billings Noble, Laurie Easter, LaTanya McQueen, and Maya Sonenberg, and I was once again stunned by my fellow contributors. Have you ever seen a lyric essay take the form of a word search (and then have it gut you with its content)? Well, you can if you read this anthology, and you definitely should.

Katie Manning, Readings in the Stars

It fascinates me how inherently collaborative and interconnected creation almost always is, even if it is not explicitly shown. We don’t only stand on the shoulders of giants, we get a boost from everyone.

Gary Barwin, BIG SAD: a video and notes about collaboration, influence and process

Yes, our trip today to Open Books – the first place I visited as a tourist to Seattle on the recommendation of one of my English professors at University of Cincinnati – reminded me of how things have changed since we moved here. Pioneer Square – a rowdier, bar-filled tourist spot that once housed Elliot Bay Books – will be the new home of Open Books, which lived in sleepier, more residential Wallingford since before I came to the town as a visitor. Elliot Bay moved to hipster – but now more “corporate condo” than “hipster artists and bars” – Capitol Hill. I used to meet friends at Open Books – see pictures – and I’ve had almost every launch reading for my books there, too. See a picture of one of them below. I’ll have to make new memories at the new location.

I used to spend hours in the rundown former funeral home that housed the Richard Hugo House when I first moved to town, imaging I was in a real artist’s place – and then I volunteered there for small local lit mags for a while. Back then, yes, there were drug deals in front of the place, it wasn’t at all accessible, and there was a rumor of a baby ghost in the basement (along with a baby’s coffin) but it felt charmingly quirky, much like the area of Capitol Hill, where you could get a drink at a dive bar with pinball machines or papier mache unicorn heads. Now, Hugo House is housed in the fairly cold, corporate grounds of a re-done condo building (and paying much more than it used to on rent, which leads to more fund-raising and less, well, artist-nurturing), and it just doesn’t feel as cozy and welcoming and well, artistic. It is more accessible (bonus!) and has bathrooms you don’t accidentally get locked in…and no ghosts (yet…)

The places that I’ve relied on to meet other writers – like Open Books and Hugo House – are changing, and have changed, and while I’m sad about that, I recognize that a city doesn’t stay the same, and a literary scene doesn’t stay the same. During the pandemic, we haven’t visited Seattle much, and we used to go every weekend, to hang out, to visit Pike Place Market or one of the many bookstores and coffee shops, always exploring new (to us) neighborhoods. Seattle’s increasing homeless problem, litter, and crime are unfortunate side effects of growth and some serious housing affordability problems as well as a lack of resources for the poor, the mentally ill, and people who age out of the foster system. Our politicians have promised fixes but haven’t (as yet) delivered. Does this affect the art scene in Seattle? Yes. Did the pandemic hurt our art scene? Unquestionable. Do we have AWP coming out next week? Yes we do! Do I want to show Seattle in its best light to my friends who come to town? Yes I do! So I will keep exploring to find out where writers and artists are hanging out now. Maybe I’ll find the next new cool artistic hangouts. I hope so.

And another problem – I live in an “ex-urb” of Seattle, Woodinville, a sleepy area of farms and wineries and a surprising number of hidden charming corners, but it has almost nothing that you could call “culture.” No art galleries, barely any indie shops, we have one Barnes and Nobles and a couple of coffee shops besides Starbucks but it’s been hard for me to build a community out here – and I encountered similar problems in 2012 when I was Redmond’s Poet Laureate, working hard with schools and librarians and visual artists and local language clubs to try to generate interest in poetry and art. Even though Redmond has Microsoft and a fair number of millionaires, and Bellevue’s real estate is now more expensive than Manhattan (said our local paper this weekend,) it’s tough to attract people or the funds to create cultural centers where art, music, theater, and poetry might thrive. I’ve dreamed of throwing salons in the area, which is beautiful, and I’m sure has a lot of artists, musicians, and writers in it, it’s just…I can’t find them, or we have no gathering places.

If I had unlimited funds and time, I might build a poetry bookshop/coffee shop/art space myself here in Woodinville, where real estate isn’t quite as pricey. I lived in Napa for a year, and they had a wonderful mix of wineries, indie book shops and restaurants, and unique gardens, farms, and markets that just made for a lovely quality of life. (Fires, earthquakes, and high taxes – all endemic to California – notwithstanding.) They even had their own writer’s conference each year! We need to start something like that. I’ll keep dreaming…

Jeannine Hall Gailey, Happy (Almost) Valentine’s Day, Faux Spring, and Thinking About Changes in Seattle’s Lit Scene

Christine Stewart-Nuñez: I know you are a prolific storyteller and an author of many novels. As I read Tell Me How You Got Here, I kept looking for an overarching narrative, but the collection refused me in the most satisfying way. I enjoyed swinging from poem to poem by collecting imagery and emotional impressions. Can you tell us more about what the genre of poetry opens for you that novels may not?

Emily Franklin: I started life as a poet, publishing in high school. In college I worked with great poets (Tom Lux, Kimiko Hahn) and thought for sure I would keep writing poetry while I worked numerous other jobs (cook, construction, teacher) but wound up being pulled into fiction writing. It made sense since I wrote mostly narrative poems. After years in the fiction world, I found lines of poetry coming back to me. For me, writing poetry is about sharing the biggest truth in the smallest form. I felt relief in trimming words and focusing on line breaks, really paring back in order to tell what needed to be told.

Christine: As a child, I maintained collections: knicknacks, earrings, dolls, stickers. Having moved a lot as an adult, I’ve let go of this tendency–with books a hearty exception. Tell Me How You Got Here appeals to my love of things because so many objects shimmer with meaning. Can you tell us more about your relationship to artifacts?

Emily: I’ve always been fascinated by what people (or crows!) collect. What people keep is also who they are or markers of what happened to them. Having moved a ton growing up, what we keep has special significance to me. I wrote Tell Me How You Got Here considering the amassing we do—and the sloughing off of items either when children grow out of things, or when a house floods (which happened to us), or what remains for people to sort through after someone dies. I like the record keeping of objects, and the freedom that comes from letting some of those objects or what they represent go.

Diane Lockward, Terrapin Books Interview Series: Christine Stewart-Nunez Interviews Emily Franklin

It has been some time since I’ve seen a book by Vermont poet Bianca Stone, since her full-length debut, Someone Else’s Wedding Vows (Octopus Books and Tin House, 2014) [see my review of such here], having clearly missed out on Poetry Comics from the Book of Hours (Pleiades Press, 2016) and The Möbius Strip Club of Grief (Portland OR: Tin House, 2018), so I was curious to see her latest collection, What is Otherwise Infinite (Tin House, 2022). In sharp, first-person narratives working around (as the front flap of the collection offers) “how we find our place in the world through themes of philosophy, religion, environment, myth, and psychology,” Stone composes poems as threads connecting accumulating points; her narratives stretched as sequences of stunning lines and connective tissue. “Time does not go beyond its maiden name.” she writes, as part of “Does Life Exist Independent of Its Form?,” ending the stanza with the offering: “how uncomfortable we are with happiness.” I remember, years ago, Ottawa poet, publisher and archivist jwcurry describing the long poems of northern British Columbia poet Barry McKinnon: how every poem worked its way toward, and then away from, a singular, central point. In comparison, Stone isn’t writing with such length, nor with a single point, but up and away from multiple points-in-succession. It is as though she is composing poems as a series of communiques across telephone wires, connecting pole to further pole to build each poem’s thesis. Through What is Otherwise Infinite, the dense lyric structures of her debut have become far more complex, extended and philosophical; there is a further depth of attention here, one that could only be achieved through experience, as the second half of the poem “I’ll Tell You” reads:

my sister tells me things
that frighten me
what I mean is
how did we get here
made of gingerbread in the oven
eaten by the mother
eaten by the wolf
my little pale nephew standing on the porch
explaining lava in the netherworld
that if you fall in a certain hole
in his game
you keep falling forever
and you don’t get to keep
any of the things
you made.

There is something curious in the way Stone attends to the “infinite,” writing around and through Biblical stories and texts, illuminated manuscripts and other religious depictions, considerations and conversations. “Human nature is bifolios,” she offers, as part of the poem “Illuminations,” “versos, even blank pages / with preparatory rulings for the scribes, never painted upon. / Little books of suffering saints and resurrections. / That’s what we are.” A few lines further, offering: “On this sheet / the Evangelist dips a pen into an inkpot / and rests an arm on the side of a chair, / inspired, like Luke, by the dove, / preparing to set down an account of a life / on paper made from the skin of sheep.” There is a wit to these poems, as Stone offers both guidance and clarity through lived experience and wisdoms hard-won, articulating her takes on depictions of the spiritual from sources high and low. She writes from a world that includes faith, medieval texts and trips to Walmart, and both a sense of ongoing intellectual and spiritual pilgrimage alongside flailing, falling and being nearly overwhelmed. “A serious drama in a cosmic joke. / Scarred,” she writes, as part of the poem “The Way Things Were Until Now,” “masked, dangerous. / And what of the new Eucharist? / How hungry I always am. How I long to lack. / Though in Walmart / my heart beats a little faster. / I want the world to heal up.” Here, Stone becomes the pilgrim, and the composition of these poems-as-pure-thinking are, in effect, as much the act of pilgrimage as they are the articulation of that same journey. “I don’t know. What is it to be seen?” she writes, as part of “Artichokes,” “I can forget / it’s language I long for. Man and his ciphers / cannot save me.” This truly is a stunning collection, as Stone offers her narrator a chaos equally physical and metaphysical that requires balance, one that can only be achieved through a constant, endless and attentive search.

rob mclennan, Bianca Stone, What is Otherwise Infinite

As Judi Sutherland mentions in the introduction to her new book-length, beautifully illustrated poem, Following Teisa (The Book Mill Press, 2021), rivers have long played an important role in U.K. poetry. From Wordsworth to Oswald, water in general is perhaps more present and prevalent as a symbol, an image, a leitmotif or even a theme in itself than in other countries. This might well because the poets in question are living on an island or in a dodgy climate, of course. However, leaving aside attempts at cod psychology, the fact remains that Sutherland is acknowledging and tapping into a rich seam.

History and the significance of place are both important cornerstones of this collection. The title itself, for instance, references an 18th Century long poem about the River Tees which was titled Teisa, Sutherland explores our relationship with the evolving role of our surroundings. In doing so, her perspective is also crucial, as explained in the following extract from the introduction:

…I moved to Teesdale in 2014 and felt dreadfully homesick for my previous village near the Thames. I started walking by the Tees as a way of getting to know and love my new environment and decided to repeat Anne Wilson’s poetic journey for a different generation…

In other words, Sutherland engages as an outsider. There’s no forced attempt at vernacular, for instance. Instead, she invites us along on her own exploration of the River Tees, portraying it in language that’s both rich yet deft, as is indicated by the opening lines to the poem itself:

How it wells up from nowhere to chase
gravity downhill, becomes a rill,
a rickle of old stones, then hurtles rocks,
purls and pools in reed…

There’s huge skill present here, not just in the assonance, alliteration and internal rhyme, but in the precise way it’s all patterned and  interlinked, one device starting before the previous one has come to an end: downhill-rill/rill-rickle/rickle-hurtle/hurtle-purls/purls-pools. The effect is to mirror the onrushing movement of water.

Matthew Stewart, History and place, Judi Sutherland’s Following Teisa

The way it breaks is
the way it breaks,

the old monk said,
whether you’re talking

about a storm,
a walking stick, or

a line of poetry.

Tom Montag, THREE OLD MONK POEMS (131)

I have been learning much and enjoying Robert Alter’s The Art of Biblical Poetry; as much as I found his texts on biblical narrative intriguing, this book appeals to me more not just on the levels of scholarship, history, and explication but because he clearly loves and understands poetry. Which cannot be said about every scholar who writes about the Old Testament books (and they are many).

For example, Alter recognizes that trying to categorize biblical poetry into formulaic genres is useful only in the most general way, because the most enduring (poetically ‘best’) verses persist as significant and special because they are excellent poems. Which means they may not follow stereotypical genres or fit the “given conventions of style” of a type of poem. Indeed, he refers to the author of Job’s Voice from the Whirlwind and the prophetic author known as Deutero-Isaiah as geniuses. Then he provides evidence of this genius through explications that rely not only on scholarship and historical sources and contextual information but through the beautiful poetry itself.

Convention gives writers of both verse and prose a solid framework in which to construct their own discourse, but good writers always exert a subtle pressure on convention…remaking it as they build within it.
Robert Alter

Paradoxes and “radical ambiguities” abound in these ancient poems, and the urgent ideas they chose to convey through poetry manage to feel significant even today, thousands of years later. The fictive aspect of poetry–its imaginative spur–appears in the biblical imagery of (imagined) apocalypse, (imagined) utopia, (imagined) peace and bounty. [Non-believers might add: (imagined) god.]

Alter writes with some wit and considerable modesty, though maybe it’s false modesty since he’s clearly attached to his arguments concerning the Masoretic text, translations of biblical Hebrew, and the structure and syntax of these poems. At any rate, his style permits him to write for the non-scholar. Much appreciated by this non-scholar!

Ann E. Michael, Psalms, Job, & poetry

Recently Mr. Typist bought a microscope, and it took me back to a strangely happy memory of when I was in grade school and we would go out into the woods behind the school, gather pond water in baby food jars, then look at it under a microscope. The first time I saw a paramecium, it filled me with elation and a deep sense of spiritual comfort. It felt like such a miracle that there could be an entire unseen universe of tiny busy life forms carrying on their functions, breathing, excreting and pulsating deep under the surface. I loved looking at the paramecia, and if I had a better brain for science and math, it would have inspired me to become a biologist. When it warms up a bit and we get through a fairly daunting apartment-improvement project, Mr. Typist and I are going to go gather up some water samples from our local parks and shorelines and see what we find under the lens. I’m super-excited about it.

Kristen McHenry, Fun with Paramecia, Gym Fail, Appeasing the Coffee God

Step outside yourself, the air here tastes of stubborn
wonderment. The statelessness negates gravity, wings

tickle the fears in your back. There are more moons
than you can count, each one a different shape.

Rajani Radhakrishnan, What if I don’t want to go back?

When I posted a photo from this series of cocktail still lifes, I used the caption, Photography: a magic or an art? They’re just photos of three drinks mixed with various spirits, but I had a lot of questions floating around in my head at the time, as happens. Like, how are photos believable and in what ways are they simply pretend? What is beauty for? And can it be an antidote for the fuckery of the world? I was mixing these drinks up one afternoon like they were potions or cures. I was thinking about love because someone had said about the protests/illegal gatherings, that you know there’s something off about them because there is no love present. How did we even get here? Historians will be dissecting this time period forever. What happened to people? When did some of us stop caring about others? And I don’t mean just the anti-vaxxers etc. What about us too? Is it just generally harder to care about others because of distance, space, isolation, our hardened hearts? I know I have changed a lot in these past two years. I hold myself back, I’m less open-hearted.

If people can change, can they also change back? Is there a drink or a potion or a magic trick for that? I don’t know if I’m going be able to completely transform, you know, but when I’m not dead-tired and soul-deadened, I want to. If I can change, can I believe that someone with opposing viewpoints can also change? If I want you to see me for my spirit and aspirations, is it not only fair that I try to see yours?

Shawna Lemay, The Spirit in Aspiration

I find myself taking my time when returning from tasks outside of the house, taking the Ghost Lake route, my mind wandering the contours, the black peat fields, the terraced valley sides. I watch the crows, I watch the way the rain makes the leafless trees darker, so that their bark is black, the water filling every cell, every crevice, every crack. I feel like I am absorbing this week in the same way, letting the darkness of it into me, filling me up until it comes out of my mouth, or at least out of my fingers, leeching out of my finger prints, through the pen, the computer, onto the white of the page. This is where I am right now. […]

Tomorrow is a new day, though the rain is set to continue for a good week. I have lots to look forward to: I am loving my own The Caged Bird Sings course, my Friday afternoon group are so engaged and willing, and kind and fun, it is genuinely the highlight of my week. Next week I’m also looking forward to running a workshop for the Poetry Business on de-romanticising the rural, you can book a place here. I love talking to people about poetry and finding new ways to write, so I’m really looking forward to working under the PB banner. And I’m looking forward to the private course chats I have scheduled over the week. I’m also meeting a new writer friend for coffee. It’s going to be a very ‘people heavy’ week, something I’m not used to, being the rural hermit that I am, but perhaps something that will do me good.

I see so many people facing so many challenges lately, I want to give us all a hug. Spring’s on it’s way, though, catkins in the lane, the jackdaws are poking their heads into last year’s tree-hole-nests. We just have to weather it out.

Wendy Pratt, A Challenging Week

and so here we are
funeral day
and the new patio isn’t half finished
they will have done a bit more by the time
we come back from the crematorium
they are not turning the soil there
with a red digger like ours
they / we are burning memories
deep into the patio of the past
the flowers of ash
would make good fertiliser
on the wind from here to the garden
is but a breath not taken
one foot in each world
we withdraw one from the sinking
and place two on a brand new patio
how nice it all went

Jim Young, for janet

I’ve finished reading James Joyce’s Ulysses in time for its centenary year. This wasn’t my plan when I picked it up for the first time in, when was it? 2009 I think. It’s taken me twelve years with many pauses, re-starts, pauses. 

The copy of the book I bought at the Keele University bookshop (I was studying for an MA in Creative Writing at the time, was open to influence) has travelled with me, sat on various shelves, its spine cracking, the edges of its pages yellowing. 

The book was recommended to me by Scott McCracken, by Miss Cooper, by Jeremy Fisher, by Pope Innocent III, by Sue the Librarian, and all of them in it for the literature. I took it with me to France, to Italy, to Wyle Cop, to Ceredigion, and even to Dublin itself. It weighed me down with its great reputational promises and its respectable unrespectability. I began to think it had defeated me.

What is it to be so famous and to represent a formidable pinnacle of literature, to become reading for the super-diligent? By degrees, Ulysses became a monument to a decline in concentration, to my perception that the pandemic and Facebook between them had done for my ability to read at length. What I could manage had been reduced to Guardian articles, or, on a good day, Billy Collins’ poems. […]

The final reading was all done and dusted in less than a year among the bed sheets and pine cones and sometimes with the sea lapping at my feet at Fairbourne. Penelope is the most wonderful thing I’ve ever read because it’s wonderful, and because it came like that cold beer, crisps and pie I ate all at once at the pub at the foot of Cader Idris after misreading the largescale OS map on the descent.

So yes to the book which sat on my shelf plump and teasing with its thousands upon thousands of tiny pawprint words yes the twelve years the eighteen episodes yes the rollicking kidney of Irish history fried up in memory yes the guffaws yes the blushes and the winding boredom with another mug of coffee yes the classical religious literary references assumed in hours of lying there propped up on one hand making no sense and then sense coming unravelling its freewheeling veracity all over the inside of my imagination and yes yes I will read it again Yes.

Liz Lefroy, I Say Yes

Breviary

Where I am today is potentially
still only half of the half of the distance
from where I was last and where I think
I am headed; which I suppose is different 
from where I want to go—away from here, 
where by turns I'm chilled to the bone 
or too hot under the covers, where I have 
enough or even everything I need, or nothing 
to which I can lay claim. Today I felt surely 
the loneliest I have ever been in  this life, 
and called it heartbroken. In the evening, I
crept out of my curtained cell to fill a tall
glass with ice and water. This is the way it
goes today; and on another day, and another. 

The bird of the spirit

flies out of hollowed-

out bone, searching 
for more than stray seed, 

more than crumbs 
of afterthought or

happenstance. All day
I've called to it to come

down from its restless sky,
but it isn't ready to stop

striking at broken bells
or pushing bits of stone

and straw into readable
shapes or words.

 

Occupation

Up, and to the office, where busy sitting all the morning. Then to the Office again, and then to White Hall, leaving my wife at Unthanke’s; and I to the Secretary’s chamber, where I was, by particular order, this day summoned to attend, as I find Sir D. Gawden also was. And here was the King and the Cabinet met; and, being called in, among the rest I find my Lord Privy Seale, whom I never before knew to be in so much play, as to be of the Cabinet. The business is, that the Algerines have broke the peace with us, by taking some Spaniards and goods out of an English ship, which had the Duke of York’s pass, of which advice come this day; and the King is resolved to stop Sir Thomas Allen’s fleete from coming home till he hath amends made him for this affront, and therefore sent for us to advise about victuals to be sent to that fleete, and some more ships; wherein I answered them to what they demanded of me, which was but some few mean things; but I see that on all these occasions they seem to rely most upon me. And so, this being done, I took coach and took up my wife and straight home, and there late at the office busy, and then home, and there I find W. Batelier hath also sent the books which I made him bring me out of France. Among others, L’Estat, de France, Marnix, &c., to my great content; and so I was well pleased with them, and shall take a time to look them over: as also one or two printed musick-books of songs; but my eyes are now too much out of tune to look upon them with any pleasure, therefore to supper and to bed.

busy sitting
all morning

I am summoned
by a song

my eyes too out of tune
to look up

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Tuesday 26 January 1669.

Cozy

Up, and to the Committee of Tangier, where little done, and thence I home by my own coach, and busy after dinner at my office all the afternoon till late at night, that my eyes were tired. So home, and my wife shewed me many excellent prints of Nanteuil’s and others, which W. Batelier hath, at my desire, brought me out of France, of the King, and Colbert, and others, most excellent, to my great content. But he hath also brought a great many gloves perfumed, of several sorts; but all too big by half for her, and yet she will have two or three dozen of them, which vexed me, and made me angry. So she, at last, to please me, did come to take what alone I thought fit, which pleased me. So, after a little supper, to bed, my eyes being very bad.

little home
the eyeprints of love
all too big

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Monday 25 January 1669.

Orb after orb,

shimmerblue

quilled with faint green.

                         Or a cluster of them, holding 

together: miniature chrysalis of spit

almost unseen, balanced on the edge

of a grass blade. 
                                      Faceted, flawed, 

but more perfect than any chipped 

synthetic zirconium thing. Do you not 

love the paradox of tensile surfaces?

Globe 
     
                after globe enclosing each

watery world, each ecosystem;  

contained, but also perennially 

on the brink of perforation. 

                               What would keep there? 

Flowering groves, a windswept

coast. Fields flocked with wheat

and cotton or soy. 
                        
                                         Oyster beds,

caves, ports of call. A light-

house. The marvel of a rain-

drop you could eat 

like a cake.