Joanna Thomas

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RABBIT: AN ERASURE POEM, Joanna Thomas. Dogtown Press, Ellensburg, WA, 2018, 22 pages, $5, paper.

I met Joanna Thomas two years ago at Litfuse. She does this really arty, fun stuff with erasure poems and visuals and — because I generally don’t do those sorts of poem — I almost skipped her workshop.

I am SO GLAD I went. More than the keynotes or anyone else I encountered that year, Thomas’s work burned a hole through my imagination all the way down to my bootsoles. She is a wonder. If you can’t get your hands on any of her limited edition books (exquisite little gems you’ll want to keep and give to friends), then you should invite her to give a workshop for you. (Adults and our delights aside, I think these would inspire some pretty wicked home school lessons.) To read more, visit Thomas’s very visual blog:  https://www.joannathomas.xyz/.

Because the poems don’t run down the left hand margin, my blog space will just make a botch of it; hence, the photograph. In short, Thomas has erased  Webster’s Elementary Dictionary: A Dictionary for Boys & Girls (New York: American Book Company, 1941), and she shares the image from the dictionary, then duplicates the poem (and its peculiar layout) on the facing page.

 

John Haines

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AT THE END OF THIS SUMMER, POEMS 1948-1954, John Haines. Copper Canyon Press, PO Box 271, Port Townsend, WA 98368, 1997, 80 pages, $14 paper, https://www.coppercanyonpress.org/.

A friend gave me this book a number of years ago, and though I have occasionally read around in it, I had never read it straight through, as a book, until today.

I know John Haines better by his late poems, set in Alaska where he lived for many years. The poems in At the End of This Summer are from early in his career, what he describes in the preface as an “apprenticeship” (ix). In the preface, he also explains why he chose to share them here: “It would not be too much to say that at some point in that early period I had simply caught fire with the written word, a passion that held me in spite of every obstacle and momentary distraction.” A worthy goal for any beginning poet, to catch fire with the written word. 

Song

As if my love were like the bending year:
Bleak marvel I look upon with tenderness,
There is no outcast singing, she rides high
In a maze of cloudy passion, a tower of seeming,
Drunk with the snowless winds
That cry for that white veiling. Oh, more than present,
Long ago we felt the parched leaves fall —
Be gathered with them, you mindless snore of death.
Desire is mine; it is like that hopeful turning
When the earth sleeps beneath a blanket of sorry
Dead and does not move, appears unwatchful,
And yet, fair girl, she dreams.

Sandra Noel

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THE GYPSY IN MY KITCHEN, Sandra Noel. Finishing Line Press, PO Box 1626, Georgetown, KY 40324, 2015, 29 pages, $12.95 paper, www.finishinglinepress.com.

I met Sandra Noel in 2017 at SoulFood Coffeehouse when we read our poems  together. Noel writes about Indonesia, where she  has worked with the Alliance for Tompotika (ALTO), a non-profit conservation organization, and she writes about walking and running in the woods. This poem especially inspired me and seemed to have been written especially for me to read today. (I looked up Horus, who is, appropriately–given the red-tailed hawks circling above the poem–a god in the form of a falcon.

Sacrifice

The day after…
stillness comes
it’s the same trail
I ran yesterday
the same moss covers
the dead tree branches.
Today a small rain creates concentric magic.
A pair of red tails circle overhead
patrolling the parameter
with serial grace.
I offer up my heart to them
broken as it is
a sacrifice to Horus.
I will go forth singing
in the ancient way
with the old joy
and sweet grace
of the body.
This is what I trust
This is all I know
about anything.
I came here closed
and broken.
I leave filled with light.

James Bertolino

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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 glass of red and call your beloved inside. In “Origami Prayer,” for instance: “The whisper / of the delicate paper / folds her fingers // springs her East / to a bird // the wings of which / trip bright / gardens / in my heart.” In these poems, limbs become bowls of fruit and relationships move forward “over the frets / of a guitar.” You never know what’s going to happen, and then it does.

With cover art by Bertolino’s wife, Anita K. Boyle (also a fine poet), Ravenous Bliss is a book to own, and makes a swell Valentine’s Day gift.

Like Quartz

If I said I love her the way
I love rutilated quartz,
would she understand?

My love for lizards
and my love for her are not
the same, but what I feel

for nested fledglings, and
the brown and yellow salamander
with its wide grin, is mixed

with my love. The blue
wildflowers high in the dry
California hills remind me

that she is gentle, yet hardy.
Could she believe me if I claimed
my love is the lightning of

the aquatic garter snake
when it moves its single dorsal stripe
across a pond? I think of power

rising through her
from the earth to touch me,
and shriek with joy

like the Steller’s Jay.