November, 2015

FEATURED POET: CRYSTA CASEY Crysta Casey (1952-2008) was born in Pasadena, California. She graduated from The State University of New York, Stony Brook, in 1976, where she was one of the founding members of The Women Writers Workshop. After college, she became the first woman hired by the City of Irvine, California, in Parks and Maintenance. In 1978, she enlisted in the all-new voluntary military, serving in the U.S. Marine Corps as a journalist, then as a self-declared “Resident Poet” until her honorable discharge under medical conditions in 1980. She moved to Seattle, Washington in the early 1980s, where she studied with the poet Nelson Bentley and collaborated with Esther Altshul Helfgott on the It’s About Time Writers Reading Series. Her first collection of poetry, Heart Clinic, was published in 1993 (Bellowing Ark Press). In 2004 she received a Hugo House Award from Richard Hugo House, and, in 2006, she was a finalist for Seattle Poet Populist. In 2010, Floating Bridge Press brought out a chapbook of her work, Green Cammie. Rules for Walking Out (Cave Moon Press, 2016) was the last manuscript Crysta completed and approved before her death at the Seattle VA in the spring of 2008. Crysta’s papers are housed in the University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections. 


POEM FOR AN UNKNOWN SOLDIER

The flag at the park hangs
half mast. I asked a young mother
pushing a child on a swing,
“who died?”
“Orville Redenbacher did,
but I don’t think they’d fly a flag
for a popcorn man.”
I spoke with another mother
in the parking lot,
“Maybe it was
for the elections yesterday?”
she said, “That could depress
some people, but I don’t think
they’d lower the flag.
Somebody famous or local?”
I listened to the radio, waiting

for the news.

JIM

Jim is a Vietnam Vet. He watches television
and sleeps all day. He eats sporadically.
He doesn’t get out much, but one day decided to go
downtown to the V.A. Regional Office
and make sure he was going to get an American flag
on his coffin. The clerk took down his name
and service #. He came back and said,
“I’m sorry sir, but according to our records

you’re already dead.”


WRITE YOUR POEM

One's-Self I Sing

Walt Whitman

One’s-Self I sing, a simple separate person,

Yet utter the word Democratic, the word En-Masse.

Of physiology from top to toe I sing,

Not physiognomy alone nor brain alone is worthy for the Muse, I say the Form complete is worthier far,

The Female equally with the Male I sing.

Of Life immense in passion, pulse, and power,

Cheerful, for freest action form’d under the laws divine,

The Modern Man I sing.

??? What changed about poetry after Whitman?  The Modern Man is here and in Whitman's footsteps we confess to the world our personal interiors.  Crysta's interiors were clear as a mountain lake.  They just happened to be of battlefields forgotten

Is that the interior of a Buddhist landscape painting?  Does that interior reflect an urban cacophony?  A battlefield?  

Write your poem.  Take this time around solstice to light a candle and put words to the page.

October, 2015

FEATURED POET: JUAN FELIPE HERRERA- 2015 U.S. Poet Laureate
The son of migrant farm workers, Herrera was educated at UCLA and Stanford University, and he earned his MFA from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. His numerous poetry collections include187 Reasons Mexicanos Can’t Cross the Border: Undocuments 1971-2007,Half of the World in Light: New and Selected Poems(2008), and Border-Crosser with a Lamborghini Dream (1999). In addition to publishing more than a dozen collections of poetry, Herrera has written short stories, young adult novels, and children’s literature. In 2015 he was named U.S. poet laureate.
 
In 2012, Herrera was named California's poet laureate, and the U.S. poet laureate in 2015. He has won the Hungry Mind Award of Distinction, the Focal Award, two Latino Hall of Fame Poetry Awards, and a PEN West Poetry Award. His honors include the UC Berkeley Regent’s Fellowship as well as fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and the Stanford Chicano Fellows. He has also received several grants from the California Arts Council.

He has taught at California State University-Fresno and at the University of California-Riverside. He lives in California. 

(Bio adapted from Poetry Foundation.  Poem used by permission from A Arreguín: Correspondencías)

JUAN FELIPE HERRERA- VIDEO

TASMANO

Tasmano

         tasmano

                 let me

                           hold you

                                     & let me

                           bury myself

                 into your seasonalsalmon skin

        ice disappearance

blackness lips

caballera máscaras cholula culebra gold spattered spiral breasts la

humbre michoacana

de las cumbres brujas ripping spirit flesh blue madness locuras dentro

greener yellowness tehuana tehuanasalt storms arms i bow to

your tejido king kodiak spirit in your sacred belly egg

man woman flayed scales fins gone lives

gone face destroyed turquoise

azar albedrío

love will

love unto infinity

WRITE YOUR POEMA

(VIDEO BELOW)

CORAZON- CARLOS SANTANA Y ESPOSA

This prompt will be short and sweet.  PBS and everybody loves to hear how nuestro maestro de poesia has been influenced by Ginsberg y Jackson Pollock.

Screw that.  Viva la Raza.  Escucha Carlos Santana.  Escucha nuestro maestro Juan Felipe Herrera.

Escribe su poema.  Baile.  Canta.  Viva la Raza. Si se puede.  Write your poem.  Dance. Sing.

September, 2015

FEATURED POET: Judith Skillman’s new book is House of Burnt Offerings, available from Pleasure Boat Studio. She is the recipient of The Eric Mathieu King Fund award from the Academy of American Poets for her book Storm (Blue Begonia Press), among other grants. Two of her books were finalists for the Washington State Book Award (Red Town and Prisoner of the Swifts.)

In addition to writing poetry, Judith does oil painting and plays the violin as a rusty amateur. Her poems have appeared in J Journal, Poetry, FIELD, The Southern Review, The Iowa Review, Midwest Quarterly Review, Prairie Schooner, Seneca Review, and other journals and anthologies. She has been a Writer in Residence at the Centrum Foundation in Port Townsend, Washington, and The Hedgebrook Foundation. At the Center for French Translation in Seneffe, Belgium, she translated Belgian-French poet Anne-Marie Derése.

A Jack Straw Writer in 2008 and 2013, Skillman’s work has been nominated for Pushcart Prizes, the UK Kit Award, Best of the Web, and is included in Best Indie Verse of New England. For more, visit www.judithskillman.com

Ms. Skillman is available for manuscript consultations through her website.

DESIRE

Long after a woman

accepts the rack of age—

intolerant overseer

with his bloodied instruments—

a vestige of passion clings.

Like the appetite of boiled milk

for its skin, or a winter day

for the sun. Like the single

marigold blooming

on a veranda—

that stubborn, red-headed child.

Long into the lateness of life,

after the shadow puppets

of parents have been pulled

from the theatre,

their heads twisted off—

deep inside the body

an extravagant wish surfaces,

requests to play the part

of descant.

THIS POTASH DAWN

Come, but come early too much, arrive

with your toxins that turn the sky yellow

as our sun rises above the tree

that fell last summer on a windless night

from drought. Come already, I know

your face more than sound—the birds

dying to catch up on news, puffed up,

full of sleep, feathers catching a quick beak.

C’mon into this-–how else to say—

chronic pain, this age, the crown

of grand motherhood tarnished. Lust

synthesized: old lovers, new husband,

new husband, old lovers. Wheeze me

out of the house mid afternoon, blowsy

as laundry strung on a line, for the shower,

the chores, the stretch of muscles tight

with spasms and that curve where discs

non-surgical—bulge against nerve,

bent anew as with the wrench

my father wielded, when he had a door

to fix, and later the vise on his workbench,

teeth clenched, uttering curses for lack

of oil, as I watched my child-self

grow up to the lip of the wood.

WRITE YOUR POEM:

Back to basics.  How to you juxtapose your metaphors to maximize irony?

Poetry distills words like moonshine distills corn mash.  Are you treating the words like kernels of corn to be treated under pressure?

Look at what Judith does:

"after the shadow puppets

of parents have been pulled

from the theatre,"  

Look at the power of shadow puppets juxtaposed against the power of parents.  Just three words carefully chosen.

Another:

"arrive

with your toxins that turn the sky yellow"

Consider the power of toxins and sky set up with the modifier of yellow.  You get the hints of acids and the sunset all wrapped into a couplet.

Distill your words.  Make them punch.  Cut things out until the words hit your core.

August 2015

FEATURED POET: Lawrence Matsuda was born in the Minidoka, Idaho Concentration Camp during World War II.  He and his family were among the approximately 120,000 Japanese Americans and Japanese held without due process for approximately three years or more.   Matsuda has a Ph.D. in education from the University of Washington and was:  a secondary teacher, university counselor, state level administrator, school principal, assistant superintendent, educational consultant, and visiting professor at Seattle University (SU).

In 2005, he and two SU colleagues co-edited the book, Community and difference: teaching, pluralism and social justice, Peter Lang Publishing, New York.  It won the 2006 National Association of Multicultural Education Phillip Chinn Book Award.  In July of 2010, his book of poetry entitled, A Cold Wind from Idaho was published by Black Lawrence Press in New York.  His poems appear in Ambush Review, Raven Chronicles, New Orleans Review, Floating Bridge Review, Black Lawrence Press website, Poets Against the War website, Cerise Press, Nostalgia Magazine, Plumepoetry, Malpais Review, Zero Ducats,Surviving Minidoka (book), Meet Me at Higos (book), Minidoka-An American Concentration Camp (book and photographs), Tidepools Magazine, and the Seattle Journal for Social Justice.

In addition, eight of his poems were interpreted in a 60 minute dance presentation entitled, Minidoka performed by Whitman College students in Walla Walla, Washington (2011). 

Lawrence Matsuda by Alfredo Arreguin

NISEI FALL

Fall down seven times, rise up again.

In Rainier’s shadow, sacred torii* beckons like Mt. Fuji,

welcome sight after our release from WWII desert prisons.

Cherry blossoms flutter like snow.

*________

Japanese archway gate

WEDDING POEM

                                               

                                                          for Matthew and Jesika

Who stands on this precipice of life?

Lavender, sage, and thyme--plump bumblebees hover at play.

Rose-entwined fences welcome this husband and wife.

Bachelor spiders spin gossamer threads—rife

with sticky strands fluttering to Elliott Bay.

Who stands before me on this precipice of new life?

Laughing children in the park, a dozen Monarch butterflies.

Sacred vows bind forever and a day.

Rose-entwined fences welcome this husband and wife.

Rings sparkle and shine, illuminate the golden afterlife.

Near pineapple sage, hummingbirds fly away.

Who stands before me on this precipice of new life?

Dark skies and rain--cobblestones on the road of life.

Bells toll and inspire determination to stay.

Who stands before me on this precipice of new life?

Fate unveils surprises, wonderments, cheer, and strife.

Tears of happiness and joy--a blessing, I pray.

Who stands before me on this precipice of life?

Rose-entwined fences welcome this new husband and wife. 

WRITE YOUR POEM!
So why do you write your poem?  Is it political?  Is it personal?  Is it both?

Ancient court poets of Japan gave rise to certain forms to let the readers and listeners know what was their intent.  A renga was a collaborative poem.  The tanka ended up being a romantic form for court poetry.  Sometimes the West gives us some formal forms but when that started to break down before 20th century experimentation forms tell us less about the poet and more about the experiment.

What is your experiment?  Does your reader know?  Does it matter?  Write your poem.  Give it to a random stranger on the bus (try not to get arrested.  Already enough poets that have that problem....)

July 2015

FEATURED POET: TIM McNULTY is a Northwest poet, essayist, and nature writer.  His work draws from a long-standing engagement and regard for the natural world and its inhabitants. He is the author of three poetry collections: Ascendance, In Blue Mountain Dusk, and Pawtracks, and ten poetry chapbooks, including Cloud Studies, and Through High Still Air: A Season at Sourdough Mountain.  Tim is also the author of eleven books on natural history, including Olympic National Park: A Natural History, From the Air: Olympic Peninsula, and Washington’s Mount Rainier National Park.  Tim has received the Washington State Book Award and the National Outdoor Book Award.  He lives with his family in the foothills of Washington’s Olympic Mountains, where his is active in wilderness and conservation work.  Tim's website is timmcnultypoet.com

MOON, HORSES, AND GROUNDFOG

A corner of dream opened

into night--soft ring

of the bell mare, close

to the open shelter where I slept.

A low fog had moved up from the river,

and the dark shapes of horses grazed

knee-deep in silvery light.

In the hazy reach between sleep

and waking,

I was among them, tasting the fog

that was our ground.  It was cool,

and smelled of leafmulch,

of dampened ash,

and the slow breath of a glacier.

The moon stood still in a spruce tree,

and the sound of the river

moved away over polished stones.

I was midpoint on a journey

I had forgotten I'd begun,

and the dust of winter stars

covered the empty shoes beside me.

― In Blue Mountain Dusk―Broken Moon/Pleasure Boat Studio, 1992

DIVERS

Before practice the divers walk

on their hands along the far edge of the pool. 

Their reflections in the still, blue water

merge with their actual selves,

palm to palm,

hand-stepping delicately along the curb

like mythic creatures—half liquid,

half vapor, long-limbed and angelic—

feeling their way

along the verge of earthly elements.

In minutes they will hurl themselves

swanlike through the unhurried air,

spin like tumbler pigeons

and rip the clear surface water

sleek and powerful as dolphins.

But now, as the girls move delicately

as water striders, bound neither by earth

nor gravity nor time, they are most themselves.

―Ascendance―Pleasure Boat Studio, 2013

WRITE YOUR POEM!

Tao Qian (365-427) lived in China when the word poet conjured up two images.  One was a court appointed position.  In that case the poet was a postal worker or DMV clerk of some stature much like our current federal system for any clerical service of education, health or welfare.  But anybody from the FBI to the meter maid understood their role. 

The other image was that of Han Shan and others who traded celebrity/bureaucrat status for farms and hill country.  Tao Qian knew both worlds.

He was fired when the new administration came in.  He walked away from the bureau. Tao Qian paved the way for later Chinese poets to explore the connection of the poet to nature, much like Tim McNulty does in his essays and poems.  

How much of the poet inhabits the poem?  How much of the poem inhabits the poet? Where is nature in that border.  Seeking to dissolve that line came to be an attempt at becoming one with the Tao.

What is your poem?  Look at it on the page.  Type out two copies.  Throw one in the pond and watch the ink run.  Does your poem invade the world or discover the world?  The questions drive your next line break.  Write your poem.  Hand it to your aunt who has Alzheimer's.  If she smiles then you succeeded.  Write your poem.

RETURNING TO LIVE IN THE COUNTRY (I)

Young, I was always free of common feeling.
It was in my nature to love the hills and mountains.
Mindlessly I was caught in the dust-filled trap.
Waking up, thirty years had gone.
The caged bird wants the old trees and air.
Fish in their pool miss the ancient stream.
I plough the earth at the edge of South Moor.
Keeping life simple, return to my plot and garden.
My place is hardly more than a few fields.
My house has eight or nine small rooms.
Elm-trees and Willows shade the back.
Plum-trees and Peach-trees reach the door.
Misted, misted the distant village.
Drifting, the soft swirls of smoke.
Somewhere a dog barks deep in the winding lanes.
A cockerel crows from the top of the mulberry tree.
No heat and dust behind my closed doors.
My bare rooms are filled with space and silence.
Too long a prisoner, captive in a cage,
Now I can get back again to Nature.

Tao Quin

June 2015

FEATURED POET: Matthew Brouwer is a performance poet and teaching artist residing in Bellingham, WA. His work bridges the worlds of spoken word and literary poetry to create a style that can be both evocative and subtle, enlivening and profound. He has performed throughout the US and been featured in regional literary, performance, and visual arts showcases such as Cirque, Phrasings, and Strands.  Matthew leads workshops and retreats for teens and adults, coordinates the Whatcom Juvenile Justice Creative Writing Project, and has facilitated Kintsugi: a writing circle for people suffering chronic medical conditions. In April he released his first full collection of poems, Stories We Must Tell, which details his lengthy journey of descent and recovery after a backpacking injury in 2009 slowly stripped him of the ability to walk. More on Matthew at www.matthewbrouwerpoet.com

VIDEO: Matthew Brouwer

Back Home, Week Five

Three times now

I have seen the Trickster

The latest in broad daylight

ears propped

padding down my lane

Now I am sure it must be a sign

What he wants

I don’t know

or maybe I do

Five months

unable to walk right

and now this wheelchair

beside my bed

Childhood room where I lay

refugee camp of all my things

Dad snoring in the room above

Mom tossing

Sleep doesn’t seem to help

a thousand prayers neither

Dreams still come

but these days

I play catch and release

Doctors think I’m nuts

parents, too

And what good am I to friends

except a burden to their minds?

Everything gets stripped

and beneath a single question

Who am I?

Without my scribbling hands

without my scrambling legs

Just a mind

rising in the night

full of words

VIDEO: Matthew Brouwer

And then the Moon

scratched me on the arm with its white hand

and I took hold the rope that hung

from its luminescence

and swung out over gardens

and fields

and lakes and hillsides

and forests

and the birds who were sleeping in them

Over newlyweds and divorces

and children in their animal pajamas

and the grandpas who could no longer

rise to lift them

And the horses in their barns

and the girls who every afternoon

forgot their loneliness to ride them

Over townships and cities

and playgrounds and water fountains

and empty parking lots and churches

and places where the dead collect

beneath the grass and stones

After the dream I was still in bed

when I was visited by foxes

and they rubbed against my arms

with their silken tails

until I too smelled like a creature

of the foliage

And I knew from them my life was the one thing

I could not have

unless I did not try to hold it

But there I sat

as if before a hundred miles of mountains

aching to be crossed

and the compass I had been given

I’d not yet learned to read

But that in the crossing I would learn to read it

and when I came to the river at the edge

that becomes a mouth

WRITE YOUR POEM

What is the relationship of your poem to silence?  Notice that Matthew's video's offer the viewer an entirely different experience.  

It makes you wonder about the brogue of Dylan Thomas and if he read the poem for his father when he wrote the refrain, "Rage, rage against the dying of the light"

The spoken word has as much impact on the poem as the choice to use elements of prose over musical forms.

Why do you make the choices?  There's no right or wrong answer.  Write your poem.  Ask yourself why you write with or without form.  For a spoken word or a silent study.  When you are done thinking write it first on paper and then lean over the river next to your house and write it with your finger on the surface of the water.  Watch your poem flow with the Tao to another sea of words down river.

May, 2015

FEATURED POET: Caleb Barber holds a BA in English from Western Washington University, as well as an MFA in poetry from the Northwest Institute of Literary Arts. He has lived in Arizona, Montana, and Alaska, but he currently resides in his hometown of Bellingham, Washington, where he works at an aerospace machine shop. He is an avid bike commuter and runner, and is a pretty good banjo player to boot. He has been widely published in literary journals, notably in Fulcrum, New Orleans Review, Los Angeles Review, and he was given a feature in Poet Lore. His first book, Beasts and Violins, is available from Red Hen Press. The title poem appeared in Best American Poetry 2009.

IN A TWILIGHT TOWN

At these hours a girl shows me the scar

she earned after her father’s chainsaw

bucked against her calf while he evened

the backyard stumps.  “It cut clear to my meat,”

she says.  “They had to fly me to the city.”

The rough, shiny lump is not grotesque. 

Her leg has grown around the wound

same as how trees will hatchet swings.

She stills wears skirts, for now, because

her body won’t be a woman’s for a few

more years, and free magazine offers

don’t come this far out in the country.

The bald slice through one eyebrow is either

from barbed wire or dog.  Could have

been her brother, before they sent him

to that school for boys just like him.

I’d like to hear about all those goldfish

that never survived through winter

on her parents’ porch.  I’d like to know how

the couch felt when it froze through.

But the plane for the mail route is spinning on

and this place will always be her stop. 

The night makes us all older, and just walking

toward it, she covers her thighs with the dark.

IN THE BASEMENT APARTMENT

My landlords who live upstairs begin

construction projects around 10pm

and finish arguing by six

the next morning. Their voices

are loudest in my back bedroom

near a duct, so that is where

I sometimes stand, one ear toward

the ceiling, trying to decode their grudge.

What begins with snaking

the bathroom sink, becomes war over

their daughter’s drinking.

Drywall repair actually concerns

a lie the wife told seven years ago.

Once, they decided one of them

would “just have to go,”

but they uncovered how to open

the kitchen windows instead. 

Someday, we’re all going

to find out what really happened

on that trip to New Jersey.

WRITE YOUR POEM

Caleb's poems remind you of a William Carlos Williams or Raymond Carver poem by offering you pictures.  We are inundated with images but his poems force you to slow down and wonder. They offer you humans.  Small moments of humanity.

What do your poems offer in the way of small moments of humanity?  Boil it down. Drink some tea.  Write your poem and blot the paper with the tea bag.  Send a copy to your mother.

April 2015

FEATURED POET: James Bertolino taught literature and creative writing for 36 years at Washington State University, Cornell University, University of Cincinnati, Western Washington University, and retired from a position as Writer-in-Residence and Chair of Creative Writing at Oregon’s Willamette University in 2006. His books have issued from publishing programs associated with Brown University, Cornell University, Princeton University and Carnegie-Mellon University, as well as Copper Canyon Press, New Rivers Press, Granite Publications, Cherry Grove Collections and World Enough Writers. His 12th volume of poetry,Ravenous Bliss: New and Selected Love Poems, was published by MoonPath Press in 2014.  He lives near Bellingham, Washington with his wife, artist and poet Anita Boyle.


VIDEO: JAMES BERTOLINO

Dishonesty

Chocolate-covered evil

with shattered almonds

waiting to inflict

sweet wounds.

==

The love song

of the mosquito

is often aborted

by a slap.

A wet red spot

many times larger than

the flying beast

achieves

something like

genius.

==

Look between your bare knees

and you might find a tiny moon,

its orbit pulled back and forth

by your knee-caps.

==

Some dishonesty

is very creative,

and should be appreciated.

          ==

Our Golden Collie

We were living across the street from

railroad tracks in Ashland, Wisconsin—

which was much larger, and many miles from

tiny Pence, Wisconsin where, when I was four

and my oldest sister nine, I unintentionally drowned

her puppy in a pond. She never forgave me.

It was the first time in my life that I was

associated with evil.

That day in Ashland I was playing outside

with our collie. We never kept her tied, or on

a leash, and when I heard tires screeching

on the road I ran around from the back of the building

and almost stepped on our dog, as she howled

and dragged herself away from the road.

I got my wagon, carefully lifted her in, and carried

her to the backyard, where I settled her into the grass

below the kitchen window of our apartment.

The lady upstairs, who was a kindergarten teacher,

had heard the car braking and seen our dog.

I soon found out she had called the police.

When the cop arrived he asked to see the dog.

He then told me she was suffering pretty bad, and

was too busted-up to survive. He said to head around

to the front, and halfway there I heard him shoot his pistol.

Without saying a word to me or anyone else,

he got back into his squad car and drove off.

When I found her dead, I held her sweet head and cried.

           I had just started second grade at a Catholic school,

and told my mother I did not want to go back.

I was sure that our beautiful collie being dead

was God’s punishment of me

           for having drowned my sister’s puppy 

            

WRITE YOUR POEM:

For Kin or King?

Poetry shares an odd quality that faces all artists.  Why do we do it? There poems written for our children. "Twas the Night before Christmas" was penned by a lawyer for his children.

Is your poetry for an audience with a soul or a commodity of ancient tradition.  Beethoven wrote symphonies and thousands of people compete to play in orchestras that play those symphonies.  Seth Godin calls these musicians victims of a well dressed sweat shop.  They play for the king.  They play for the court.  These musicians are driven by rote work and fear.  Love is mixed in their somewhere but the script is always the same.

Ancient China had its courts.  Poets in those courts were victims of a well dressed sweat shop.  So was their poetry. Praise came for those who could conform to the rules.  Invention and experimentation was left to hermits in the hills.  Admired but starving.  Who are you? 

As we practice any given craft something gnaws at the back of our soul. that we are practicing the art that reconnects us to our best selves or we are doing a math problem.  Ancient China put built poetry into their version of the SAT for a good job.  There's no clean answer.  Write your poem.  Wherever you are the world needs your work.  Write. Create.  Be the best part of your self and give it to the world.  Dance your dance. Write your poem.