MY OWN NAME SEEMS STRANGE TO ME, Karen Whalley. Off the Grid Press, 2019, 65 pages, $16 paper, www.grid-books.org. I have known Karen Whalley for at least 30 years and consider her one of my dearest friends. All the more amazing, then, that her poems continue to surprise me, and make me swoon. But don’t take […]
GREEN CAMMIE, Crysta Casey. Floating Bridge Press, 909 NE 43rd St, #205, Seattle, WA 98105, 2010. 47 pages, $12 paper, www.floatingbridgepress.org. Many years ago now, when I was an undergraduate at the University of Washington, I enrolled in an evening class to study the writing of poetry with Professor Nelson Bentley. It was not the usual […]
THE LACHRYMOSE REPORT, Sierra Nelson. Poetry Northwest Editions, 2000 Tower St., Everett, WA 98201, 2018, $29, https://www.poetrynw.org/. Here’s another northwest native, but with an entirely different aesthetic than yesterday’s poet. Elizabeth Bradfield describes the sensibility behind The Lachrymose Report as a “bright, bird-mind” that “sees the world and its questions in the best kind of strange light.” Reading it […]
THE LOVELINESS OF THIS WORLD, John L. Wright. Finishing Line Press, PO Box 1626, Georgetown KY 40324, 2020, 36 pages, $13.00 paper, https://www.finishinglinepress.com/. It is always a pleasure to recommend a local poet. Wright lives in Edmonds and until 1988 was a physician at Swedish Medical Center. I’m so glad he made his way in retirement to poetry, […]