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.

Carla Shafer

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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 peoples, as well as our beleaguered planet.  No matter how bleak the headlines, she never despairs, but always sees a way through. She inspires me every day.

I have several of Carla’s self-published chapbooks of poems and I’ve been after her to pull together a collection to submit to presses. Here is one poem, written nine summers ago. (To learn more about the August Poetry Postcard Festival, visit Paul Nelson’s https://popo.cards/.)

Beauty and My Story Return

To see for the first time (with your own eyes),
the steady up and down flux of wings
by a stilled butterfly and realize what it means–
that it is sucking nectar through its proboscis
in rhythm, feeding from the pool below the petals.
When you compare that to something you have watched
all your life–noisy bees hovering over borage
and lavender–you continue to wonder, follow the
threads of your own unanswered questions
step again to the drum, apply pressure
from your fingers wing-like, tap in steady motions
repeat the throbbing of the earth, buried in your heart
somewhere between the buzz and the silence.

–Carla Shafer

Ed Harkness

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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 travels at home and abroad and reaches back through time to share the paths his ancestors took before him. And, in this poem, Walt Whitman joins the chorus.

Today’s poem suggests a great poetry prompt. What would happen if you invited a poet from the past (Dickinson, Rilke, Yeats?) to join your morning walk? What will they notice that you might otherwise miss? What snippets from their poems might you weave in? What will the two of you talk about as you meander?

Whitman Reading by Moonlight

Walt Whitman pads around on the lawn
in bathrobe and slippers. Moonlight
silvers the lilac tree by the dooryard,
the flowers long gone from lavender to rust.
He opens his notebook to read a recent draft,
the title appearing as–he can’t make it out–
“Growing Broken Berry,” it looks like.
Back in bed he sees himself forlorn,
alone on the stern, riding the Brooklyn Ferry,
his shirt collar turned up, his fingers
clutching the brim of his straw hat.
He opens his notebook and reads aloud
by moonlight a draft, its working title:
“Crossing Brooklyn Ferry.” In bed,
staring at the blank screen of the ceiling,
he watches himself tear out one page
from the notebook, then another.
When he releases them, they rise like gulls
aloft on the back draft, awhirl in a billow
of coal smoke and steam. Pages flutter
ungainly, as if wounded, alighting
on the wake’s white fire where they swim,
swirl, flatten and disappear
into the black waters of the Hudson.

Kathleen Kirk

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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 the poems are ekphrastics (poems about works of art), beginning with “Annunciation,”  after the Botticelli painting. The poems continue through the alphabet — “Before I Can See,” “Cold in the House,” and so forth.

I was mightily tempted to share Kirk’s poem for Q (“Quinsy,” a two-page riff on Q words: “Quirky and antique,” “the dear quotidian”). But I think the poem that really has me dazzled is the last one. In addition to working in band names (such as Feist and Morphine), this poem itself is an abecedarian.  Look for the letters A-M down the left margin, and N-Z, up the right. What a hoot!

(XYZ) ABCs of Woman’s Work

John Sloane, A Woman’s Work (1912)

A woman’s work is better done with a jazz
background, I learned late in life. Hanging laundry
can be a breeze with the right music, and sex
doesn’t drag with a lush instrumental. How
easy now to polish the lav,
Feist on the boombox, or U2.
“Genteel euphemisms” aside, it’s hot
here in the kitchen, cooking with gas.
I am a realist, not a Realist with a capital “R.”
John Sloan can’t paint me as his Susie Q–
Kathleen, Poet with Dust Mop, 
leaning over the fire escape railing to shake it to
Morphine, “Early to Bed,” earbuds in.

My morning’s response was to write an A poem…but I think an abecedarian (A Waitress’s Alphabet?) is definitely in the works.