RAVENOUS BLISS: NEW & SELECTED LOVE POEMS, James Bertolino. MoonPath Press, PO Box 1808, Kingston, WA 98346, 2014, 140 pages, $18 paper, http://moonpathpress.com/. What a lovely way to spend my afternoon! In this new & selected potpourri of love poems from the inestimable northwest treasure, James Bertolino, you encounter images that make you want to pour a […]
AUGUST POETRY POSTCARD FESTIVAL 2011, Carla Shafer. 2011. self-published, 32 pages, https://chuckanutsandstone.blogspot.com/. My dear friend Carla Shafer is a force to be reckoned with. In addition to being a fine poet (and coordinating multiple poetry events in her hometown of Bellingham, Washington), she’s a political activist for peace and justice, and a fierce advocate for indigenous […]
THE LAW OF THE UNFORESEEN, Poems by Edward Harkness. Pleasure Boat Studio, 3710 SW Barton St., Seattle, WA 98126, 2018, 116 pages, $14, paper, pleasureboatstudio.com. In the cover notes, Anne Pitkin describes Ed Harkness’s poems as riding “a current of melancholy, a certainty of loss which deepens the vitality.” A northwest native, Harkness writes about his […]
ABCS OF WOMEN’S WORK, Kathleen Kirk. Red Bird Chapbooks, 1055 Agate St., Saint Paul, MN 55117, 2015, 52 pages, $12 paper, www.redbirdchapbooks.com. What a delight to spend my morning with this book. It’s an abecedarian of poems, and a work of art itself, hand-sewn, a print of a needlework alphabet sampler on the cover. Several of […]