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