Northwest Greats

/2 Comments/in /by

When I visited Edmonds Bookshop for my reading last week, I was inspired by a couple of things. First, I am almost certain that it was something I saw there (on the website? on a poster?) suggesting I plant a northwest shrub in honor of northwesterner and writer Ivan Doig, who died on April 9. So this weekend I bought a blossoming currant. (And snapped a picture for you.)

A second northwest impulse inspired by the bookshop — while browsing their poetry shelves, I found Robert Michael Pyle‘s Evolution of the Genus Iris. And even though I seriously do not need to buy any more books (!) I bought it. Here’s a poem for spring. And peace.

PINK PAVEMENTS

How the sidewalks flush and run
when cherries, crabs, and apples shed
their petal pelts. How exploded
blossoms soften concrete and stone.

In Colorado, nights before track meets,
I walked and walked, dreaming of Olympus,
holding in the exhalations of Hopa crabs
that lined our streets. Next day, the same cold
wind that always blew my discus down too soon
would strew the streets with pale pink disks.

In Cambridge, cherry blossoms daubed
the rosy fronts of colleges, scented stale
doorways of pubs. Memories of winter on harsh
fen breath stripped set fruits of flower, laid
pink silk over ancient pavements, lifting skirts
and dressing lanes in time for the May Balls.

Even now, when hard spring wind unclothes
the cherries in town and crabapples thicken
the night air, I feel the blunt rim of the discus
on my fingers, the cool rim of the pint on my lips.
And I think, as yet another April whiles itself
away in war,

how the pavements of Baghdad must go pink,
spattered with the petals of peaches and plums,
when the car bombs burst. How blossoms
soften exploded concrete and bone.

-Robert Michael Pyle

Maxine Kumin, 1925-2014

/1 Comment/in /by

Maxine Kumin’s poetry, rich in horses, has always been dear to me. Here, from her 1978 book, The Retrieval System, is her poem, “Late Snow”:

LATE SNOW

It’s frail, this spring snow, it’s pot cheese
packing down underfoot. It flies out of the trees
at sunrise like a flock of migrant birds.
It slips in clumps off the barn roof,
wingless angels dropped by parachute.
Inside, I hear the horses knocking
aimlessly in their warm brown lockup,
as the soul must, confined under the breastbone.
Horses blowing their noses, coming awake,
shaking the sawdust bedding out of their coats.
They do not know what has fallen
out of the sky, colder than apple bloom,
since last night’s hay and oats.
They do not know how satisfactory
they look, set loose in the April sun,
nor what handsprings are turned under
my ribs with winter gone.

-Maxine Kumin

A beautiful, brown horses in the farm during the sunrise. Rural morning scenery of Northern Europe with farm animals.

Dorianne Laux, “On the Back Porch”

/1 Comment/in /by

 

Dorianne Laux was a great favorite of mine before she chose Sparrow for the Gell Poetry Prize, before she wrote the forward for Sparrow, before I met her at LitFuse in 2013. I’ve included her poetry on the blog before, but in doing a little research today, I found an interview at a fascinating poetry site called Dive Dapper; divedapper? Anyway, click on the link to find out more. I am all the more determined to see that our paths cross again. And again.

In the meantime, here is a poem from her early collection, Awake. 

ON THE BACK PORCH

The cat calls for her dinner.
On the porch I bend and pour
brown soy stars into her bowl,
stroke her dark fur.
It’s not quite night.
Pinpricks of light in the eastern sky.
Above my neighbor’s roof, a transparent
moon, a pink rag of cloud.
Inside my house are those who love me.
My daughter dusts biscuit dough.
And there’s a man who will lift my hair
in his hands, brush it
until it throws sparks.
Everything is just as I’ve left it.
Dinner simmers on the stove.
Glass bowls wait to be filled
with gold broth. Sprigs of parsley
on the cutting board.
I want to smell this rich soup, the air
around me going dark, as stars press
their simple shapes into the sky.
I want to stay on the back porch
while the world tilts
toward sleep, until what I love
misses me, and calls me in.

-Dorianne Laux

Joseph Millar, “Family Therapy”

/0 Comments/in /by

“Poetry is often regarded as a mystery, and in some respects it is one. No one is quite sure where poetry comes from, no one is quite sure exactly what it is, and no one knows, really, how anyone is able to write it.”
–Kenneth Koch

Here is a poem from Joseph Millar, who I was fortunate to take a workshop with — on depicting physical work in poetry — at LitFuse two years ago. He introduced me to (or reminded me of) Ideas I have been crunching up against ever since. “Family Therapy” is from his 2001 book, Overtime. 

FAMILY THERAPY

My brother’s brown eyes narrow
when I tell him about the money
I stole to pay Christmas bills,
the lies I told the IRS and the bursts
of cruelty to my son,
how close I came last week
to picking up a drink.

He slides the five-eighths boxwrench from its case
and leans under the hood,
tells me to pry up against the alternator.
The belt’s too loose, he says.

An evening breeze rustles down the pavement
as my niece comes out of the house,
long hair draped beside her face,
and leans against the fender.
Go back inside, he tells her.
Bring us a Coke. Then he turns
on me. Fuck
the government, he says.
Do you want to starve? He swipes
at the grease on his forehead
and the big knuckle on his right hand
bleeds down onto the wheel well.
Back off some on that pry bar
or we’ll break this goddamn thing.

The pale fists of the hydrangea bump
against the fence and a light
comes on in the kitchen, its glow
sifting onto the driveway
as his wife opens the screen.
Everybody yells at their kids,
he says quietly,
tightening the bottom bolt.
Get in and start it up.
We need to go for a ride.