June 2014

FEATURED POET: Jeff Tigchelaar poems appear in journals including Flyway, Fugue, Flint Hills Review, Tar River Poetry, Southeast Review, North American Review, and Pleiades, as well as in anthologies including Verse Daily, Best New Poets 2011, and A Ritual to Read Together: Poems in Conversation with William Stafford. His blog, Stay-at-Home Pop Culture, is published by XYZ Magazine and his first book is forthcoming from Woodley Press (Certain Streets at an Uncertain Hour: The Kansas Papers). Check him out at Jeff Tigchelaar He is also a featured poet in Crab Creek Review!


Speaking of the Crab Creek Review!

Seattle-based literary journal Crab Creek Review is in its 31^styear of publishing the best writing from the Northwest, and beyond. New Editors-in-Chief Ronda Broatch and Jenifer Browne Lawrence have just sent off to press the spring issue, featuring a host of marvelous poets and writers including Judith Barrington, Wyn Cooper, Tom C. Hunley, Tina Kelley, Bill Neumire, and Diane Seuss. The results of the 2014 poetry contest, judged by Sarah Vap will be announced in July. Visit Crab Creek Review at  Crab Creek Review or find them on  FaceBook

ABANDON

Someone, this morning,

at the vacant gas station –

the long-deserted Phillips 66

with tall weeds

and for-sale signs

and broken concrete

and no prices on the marquee –

trying to fill up

*

Dropping Sam off

at pre-school I saw

a mom in a minivan

dabbing her eyes

*

Leaving the lot

I see a pink Cadillac SUV

and laugh and laugh

― Jeff Tigchelaar

S

STOP

I’m at a truck stop in central Kansas staring at a t-shirt display while my three-year-old marvels at a claw game I’m totally not letting him play. Tequila makes my clothes fall off, says one shirt. Rebel born, rebel bred, I’ll be a rebel until I’m dead, says another, with a skeleton face and Confederate flag. A black man walks past us toward the Huddle House diner. Shower customer seven, your shower’s now ready, the ceiling speakers say.

― Jeff Tigchelaar

― 

WRITE YOUR POEM

What is the balance between form, theme and message?

Thanks to Walt Whitman we have decided that form is mutable.  It hearkens back to when meter killed the message with strict rules.  Poetry was part of an entrance exam to graduate school in Ancient China.  Hermits like Han Shan did not care to attend.  So for us the poet is an individual voice choosing all elements.  

No matter what you do poetry must echo back to its musical roots.  Each thing must ring like the gong or bell of a Tibetan or Franciscan order.  It must call people to pause from their infinity of cyber space prose.  Write your poem.  Print off the page and toss it in the ocean.  Watch the ink dance.  Let the words ring.

May 2014

FEATURED POET: Jenifer Browne Lawrence is the author of One Hundred Steps from Shore from Blue Begonia Press. Awards include the Orlando Poetry Prize, the James Hearst Poetry Prize and a Washington State Artist Trust GAP grant. Recent work appears in Bellevue Literary Review, Los Angeles Review, Narrative, North American Review, and Rattle. Jenifer lives in a seaside community west of Seattle, where she is co-editor of Crab Creek Review. Jenifer Browne Lawrence


Speaking of the Crab Creek Review!

Seattle-based literary journal Crab Creek Review is in its 31^st year of publishing the best writing from the Northwest, and beyond. New Editors-in-Chief Ronda Broatch and Jenifer Browne Lawrence have just sent off to press the spring issue, featuring a host of marvelous poets and writers including Judith Barrington, Wyn Cooper, Tom C. Hunley, Tina Kelley, Bill Neumire, and Diane Seuss. The results of the 2014 poetry contest, judged by Sarah Vap will be announced in July. Visit Crab Creek Review at www.crabcreekreview.org or find them on FaceBook at https://www.facebook.com/crabcreekreview

CANDLING

Say that it bloomed, put down roots, lodged

like an egg in a nest, snow in a cleft, wedged

for a winter’s nap, say it

turned three times round, curled up

with its nose toward the door.

Say myometrium. Say wand. Say gel,

neoplasm, adenoma. Say benign.

Benign.

Put a light bulb behind it and watch it

tumesce.

Say the raven is growing

a new planet in your body.

Should the nascent body bloom, say

is this the beak, that the beginning of legs.

(first published in North American Review)

― Jenifer Browne Lawrence

SACRAMENT

You can’t swallow

the moon without changing

your shape. Sugar

moon, you called it,

but I opened my mouth

and knew it was salt,

hanging in the east window

above the topmost branch.

Let it in and your heart

will list to the west, headlong

into the Pacific, hard waves

scattering your light.

(first published in Cab)

― Jenifer Browne Lawrence

WRITE YOUR POEM

Poets, regardless of vocation write for love, politics and observation.  On his way to becoming a prominent physician, Oliver Wendell Holmes senior wrote this to commemorate political strength.  He was the first and only dean of Harvard Medical School (until 1945) to advocate for a woman to be admitted to that major of study.

Do we observe, love or advocate?  Write your poem.  Han Shan would paint then on mountains for the weather to mock and erase.  Holmes wrote this one for patriotism. 
Paint yours on a wall.  Send it in an email.  Scribble it on the back of a recycled paystub.
Just get it down.  The world needs more doctors who write poetry.  

Old Ironsides

Ay, tear her tattered ensign down!
Long has it waved on high,
And many an eye has danced to see
That banner in the sky;
Beneath it rung the battle shout,
And burst the cannon’s roar; —
The meteor of the ocean air
Shall sweep the clouds no more.

Her deck, once red with heroes’ blood,
Where knelt the vanquished foe,
When winds were hurrying o’er the flood,
And waves were white below,
No more shall feel the victor’s tread,
Or know the conquered knee; —
The harpies of the shore shall pluck
The eagle of the sea!

Oh, better that her shattered hulk
Should sink beneath the wave;
Her thunders shook the mighty deep,
And there should be her grave;
Nail to the mast her holy flag,
Set every threadbare sail,
And give her to the god of storms,
The lightning and the gale!

April 2014

FEATURED POET:  Esther Altshul Helfgott: is a nonfiction writer and poet with a PhD in history from the University of Washington. Her work appears in American Imago: Psychoanalysis and the Human Sciences, The American Psychoanalyst, Beyond Forgetting: Poetry and Prose about Alzheimer’s Disease, Blue Lyra Review, Chrysanthemum, DRASH: Northwest Mosaic, Floating Bridge Review, FragLit Journal, HistoryLink, Into the Storm: Journeys with Alzheimer’s, Journal of Poetry Therapy, Maggid: A Journal of Jewish Literature, Raven Chronicles, Seattle P.I., Seattle Star,  and elsewhere. She’s a longtime literary activist, a 2010 Jack Straw poet, and founder of Seattle’s “It’s About Time Writer’s Reading Series,” now in its 24th year. She is the author of The Homeless one: A Poem in Many Voices (Kota, 2000) and Dear Alzheimer’s: A Caregiver’s Diary & Poems (Cave Moon Press, 2013).

I don’t know

what the mountain feels

but we liked watching

it change—clouds came

seasons went

I wish I could find you

in my dreams—

you must be busy

—what are you doing

that’s so important

my friends help me

get up in the morning—

Lucille Clifton

does too—

—Esther Altshul Helfgott

WRITE YOUR POEM:

Esther writes in the spirit of the tanka.  A Japanese word for a short poem, the more formal form became known as a waka. Unlike people drinking coffee in cafes and listening to friends, the waka became a formal poem exchanged between lovers set up over rituals around drinking tea.

What are your rituals?  What drives you to write your poem?  Make it short.  Send it to someone you love.  Write your poem.

March, 2014

FEATURED POET:  Elizabeth Austen is the Washington State Poet Laureate for 2014-16. Her debut collection, Every Dress a Decision (Blue Begonia Press, 2011) was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award. She’s also the author of two chapbooks, The Girl Who Goes Alone (Floating Bridge Press, 2010) andWhere Currents Meet (Toadlily Press, 2010). She produces poetry programming for NPR-affiliate KUOW 94.9 and earned an MFA at Antioch University LA. She makes her living at Seattle Children’s Hospital, where she also offers poetry and journaling workshops for the staff.

A FORMAL FEELING COMES

After Dickinson and Atwood

Start with what is near.

Your own hand. Knotted pine. Graying

picnic table. See before you speak.

Knotted hand, graying pine, empty

table. When you cannot

welcome what is difficult

to say, repeat a gesture—

open your hand, set

the table with familiar linen—

until it is ritual, until it calms

your need. Find your allies

in the speechless beauties—pine,

yes, and maple, hemlock, fir.

Form lends freedom, if not

ease.  Take whatever

hand is offered, sit

at the table spread before you.

Let quiet include birdsong.

NOT YET

                        …my disordered soul thirsts

                        after something it cannot name.

                                                       —Jane Kenyon

How many summer afternoons found us

at this lakeshore, unable to account

for our fate? Dear whirligig,

you want what is only possible

with stillness. We have yet to learn the names

of nearly everything we love. These

tiny birds in the yellowing lilac—who are they?

Branch to branch—in search of what?

Each winter we earn the next summer’s light

until—not yet—it arrives unannounced:

our last. From the corner of an eye

we’ll see—not yet—how perfect and brief

our bodies were—how even one afternoon

of lakewater and sunlight, the girlchild

splashing in the shallows, the laughter

carried from a far shore—

how even this was enough, seen

from the diminishing vista of a rearview mirror.

mirror.

WRITE YOUR POEM:

Who is your mentor?  Renoir used to sit in the Louvre and paint the Master's, finding inspiration. Which poet do you emulate?  Take a page out of the Washington State Laureate's book.  Keep following.  Keep learning. Here is one by Margaret Atwood.  Write your song on the back of your electrical bill.  Send the poem in the envelope and keep the lights on.

Is/Not

Love is not a profession
genteel or otherwise

sex is not dentistry
the slick filling of aches and cavities

you are not my doctor
you are not my cure,

nobody has that
power, you are merely a fellow/traveller

Give up this medical concern,
buttoned, attentive,

permit yourself anger
and permit me mine

which needs neither
your approval nor your suprise

which does not need to be made legal
which is not against a disease

but agaist you,
which does not need to be understood

or washed or cauterized,
which needs instead

to be said and said.
Permit me the present tense. 

February 2014

FEATURED POET: Joannie Stangeland’s new book, In Both Hands, was published by Ravenna Press, which also published Into the Rumored Spring. Joannie’s also the author of two chapbooks: Weathered Steps and A Steady Longing for Flight, which won the Floating Bridge Press Chapbook Award. Her poems have appeared in Superstition Review,Tulane Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, First Water: Best of Pirene’s Fountain and other journals and anthologies. 

Roost

Words tonight fly out as black as crows,

oily and stubborn, ruffled and sharp.

Feathers may litter the floor.

The air holds a fever, a taut pitch,

a howl we hitch to, each unsure

of our turf. Bristling, a hiss—

and it isn’t the kettle or the cat.

But we swallow the rest, stinging

until the barbs wing into the night.

We settle our worries like eggs.

Tomorrow, we draw the same breath

when we see the mountains rising

into morning, as white as clouds.

A crow’s nest is a sloppy mess,

a loose muddle of twigs in a tree.

Love is like that—on a hard day, held

with spit and bits of string—

on a good day, home.

A Pocket of Time

The sky drops like a crow’s night wing

and clouds build behind the dry hill.

A thimble of weather,

a pocket of time.

You reach in for the moments,

warm your hands. You have stood

on this shore, listened for the gossip

of dried grass, the secrets reeds tell.

At the cusp of another decade,

language is fledging.

Swallow the light on the wind.

Stay for the heron that might alight

before dark. The old words fly south,

leave nests of questions in the shadows—

What is the length of an hour?

What is my deepest fire?

What blessed letting go

will give you back the sunlight

on the thickest cedars,

the clear path through them?

WRITE YOUR POEM:

At times a poem takes on historic proportions when a non-existent prisoner memorizes it.  This poem itself was written by someone in a hospital, struggling against their own existence.  This was the favorite poem of Nelson Mandela.  What is the power of poetry?  It gives the poet life.  It gives the listener life.  Write your poem.  Share it with the wind.  Who knows who will pick it up.

Invictus- William Ernest Henley

Out of the night that covers me,

      Black as the pit from pole to pole,

I thank whatever gods may be

      For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance

      I have not winced nor cried aloud.

Under the bludgeonings of chance

      My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears

      Looms but the Horror of the shade,

And yet the menace of the years

      Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,

      How charged with punishments the scroll,

I am the master of my fate,

      I am the captain of my soul.

January 2014

FEATURED POET: Tim McNulty is a poet, essayist, and nature writer. He is the author of three poetry collections,Ascendance, In Blue Mountain Dusk, and Pawtracks, and ten poetry chapbooks.  He is also the author of eleven books on natural history, including Olympic National Park: A Natural History.  He lives with his family in the foothills of Washington’s Olympic Mountains.Check him out here!


Some Ducks

"Now, if we're real quiet...," I whisper to Caitlin,

and with the next step

a thunder of wings fills the sky,

cloudburst of feathers and spray

as dozens of mallards explode

                        from the small pond.

Blue-white shimmer of wingbars and vapor

billows across the winter sky.

Caitlin stands frozen,

as a second, then third wave

                        erupts before us,

astonished

that our quiet approach

could trigger such spectacular alarm.

The roiled surface splashes up in waves

over the shore ice,

the din of wingbeats fades,

and the sky is suddenly

                        monumental in its emptiness.

Our eyes meet with my unfinished thought:

"...we might see some ducks."

Tim McNulty

My Father Speaking

In those years, the oughts and early teens,

it was woods from Mt. Pleasant Street clear

to West Peak.  Eight of us kids then—

Fran wasn't born yet—and I'll be honest,

we were often hungry.  We'd find food

where we could.

In fall when the chestnuts were ripe

we'd comb McCarty's woods for them.

We smaller kids would get a boost up

to the lower limbs, but

the big boys would find stout logs

and give the trees a whack. Oh brother,

would those chestnuts come showering down.

We'd fill gunnysacks, all we could carry,

and haul them back to Ma

who'd roast them in the cookstove. 

The house would fill with their flavor,

the nicest, sweetest nuts you ever ate.

In 1917 the blight took them all. 

They never came back.

When you were kids I'd bring home

bags of European chestnuts, remember?

But nothing, nothing compared to those wild nuts

from the woods.

To tell the truth,

I don't know what we'd have done without them.

Tim McNulty

Write your Poem!

What does your family inspire for the internal portion of the poem.   Although poetry was the language of royal court life and even the story telling medium poets seem to always find gentle ways to address what is intimate and central.  Write your poem in the snow, or on a napkin and let the ink float away in a melting drift.  

Baby's World

I wish I could take a quiet corner in the heart of my baby's very
own world.
I know it has stars that talk to him, and a sky that stoops
down to his face to amuse him with its silly clouds and rainbows.
Those who make believe to be dumb, and look as if they never
could move, come creeping to his window with their stories and with
trays crowded with bright toys.
I wish I could travel by the road that crosses baby's mind,
and out beyond all bounds;
Where messengers run errands for no cause between the kingdoms
of kings of no history;
Where Reason makes kites of her laws and flies them, the Truth
sets Fact free from its fetters. 

Rabindranath Tagor

November 2013

FEATURED POET: Alice Derry:   Her third collection of poetry, Strangers to Their Courage (Louisiana State University Press, 2001), was a finalist for the 2002 Washington Book Award. Stages of Twilight (Breitenbush, 1986), Derry's first collection, won the King County Publication Award, chosen by Raymond Carver ; Clearwater was published by Blue Begonia Press in 1997. Derry also has three chapbooks: Getting Used to the Body (Sagittarius Press, 1989), Not As You Once Imagined (Trask House, 1993), and translations from the German poet Rainer Rilke (Pleasure Boat Studio, 2002). Derry has won a number of prizes, and her poems have been widely published in anthologies. She teaches English and German at Peninsula College in Port Angeles on Washington's Olympic Peninsula where she has co-directed the Foothills Writers' Series since 1980. Tremolo is her fourth collection. 

NOOTKA

            —Peninsula wild rose

I’m learning to balance

on the roadside bank,

teetering at the edge

where the bramble sprawls,

and the full force

of the roses’ scent                                                      

can reach me.

After I’m quiet enough

the swallows—gray, blue, gold—

resume their swoop and dive

for insects.

One petal near me loosens

to fall; in the thick of bloom,

one bud unfolds.

I’m suspended

as neither bird nor flower

seem to be.

―Alice Derry

AFTER DAYS OF RAIN 

                       

Three nights in a row, a full moon

blasts in our windows,

taking sleep. Before it wanes,

we wake one morning

to a thin wafer of blessing                 

hung in washed blue.

Winter crawls to its end.

When the cold descends again

briefly, the willows, their catkins

already turned from gray

to expectant yellow, wait.

The hawk resumes her place

at the highest point on the alder.

―Alice Derry 

WRITE YOUR POEM
With the season of consumption gratitude comes to mind for small graces.  Think through all the reasons and write your own poem in reaction to a new poem by Alice Derry from her manuscript Hunger.

THEY START USING CHILDREN AS LIVING SHIELDS 

                        —the wars, 2013

Readied for burial

in their white blanket cocoons,

the children lie side by side

as if they were at a sleepover.

Staying up way past

their bedtime, hide-and-seek,

tickling, or mid-story, mid-word,

they pause for a minute,

and their eyes, sensing

immobility, close.
Then the parents come

to tuck covers around them.

               

If this row of boys and girls

were the only one.

―Alice Derry