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.