spring to winter, winter to spring

Spokane was in the mid-fifties yesterday and sunny. Spring felt so near! I spent a couple hours on the porch replanting succulents and, to be honest, ended up with a bit of a chill. Despite all the hopeful sunshine, fifty-two degrees is not exactly t-shirt weather. Silly me. And today is positively dreary. Wind and gray skies for hours and hours. So, I felt the need for a stark little poem today. Thus, "Peach Fires"...

via Oh. Pioneer!

PEACH FIRES

BY DAVID ST. JOHN

Out in the orchards the dogs stood

Almost frozen in the bleak spring night

& Mister dragged out into the rows

Between his peach trees the old dry limbs

Building at regular intervals careful pyres

While the teeth of the dogs chattered & snapped

& the ice began to hang long as whiskers

From the globes along the branches

& at his signal we set the piles of branches ablaze

Tending each carefully so as not to scorch

The trees as we steadily fed those flames

Just enough to send a rippling glow along

Those acres of orchard where that body—

Sister Winter—had been held so wisely to the fire

from The Place That Inhabits Us, Sixteen Rivers Press, 2010, via the Poetry Foundation

you are afraid of the dark

Another poetry reading tonight! I think they aways come in pairs. My dear friend, Maya Zeller, will be reading from her collection, Rust Fish, and the lovely and talented  Kathryn Nuernberger will read from her collection, Rag & Bone. Since I'm in such a poetry mood tonight, I thought I'd share one of Kate's poems with you. It seems quite appropriate given the stark and spooky feeling that the end of October brings...

YOU ARE AFRAID OF THE DARK

You are afraid of the dark,
for which you blame the raccoons,
or more to the point, your father,
who took you and your mother
into the night with a flashlight
and shotgun, then left
with both, while you held
her shaking hand. You
would follow your father
to the end of the world,
those distant birch woods
where raccoons rustle
and flash their green eyes.
His gun was firing
into the persimmon trees
and the rain of leaves and ripe fruit
fell farther and farther,
until only the crackle
of his shots and the distant baying
of the hounds could be heard.
The raccoons came then
to hiss all around:
he left you, he left you,
and now you are ours.

Rag & Bone may be purchased here

Rust Fish may be purchased here

Off to the reading!

sturdy as potatoes

Tonight I'm attending a reading organized by one of my dear friends, Maya. It's been a while since I've gone to a literary reading, so I'm quite excited! Also, anticipating all the great fiction, nonfiction, and poetry I'm going to hear reminds me of this awesome series of poetry books by Faber & Faber.

Poetry Classics

Plath

Hughes

Based in Britain, Faber & Faber has been publishing poetry heavyweights for almost a century.  T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, W.H. Auden, Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes, and Philip Larkin all have collections under the F&F imprint. Pretty impressive poet roundup. Plus, they just appointed Jarvis Cocker as their newest Editor-at-Large. How rad is that? I mean, do you see U.S. publishers making those kinds of moves? Nope. 

Auden

Yeats

Betjeman

Eliot

Aren't they lovely? Don't you want them all on your bookshelf? If you have a little time today,
I suggest you pay a visit to Faber & Faber's:

  website,

literary podcasts,

or swell blog, The Thought Fox. 

P.S. This post's title is taken from Plath's Poems, Potatoes.

Someone's at the door...

If you've spent any length of time around me, you're probably well aware that I enter panic mode when there's unexpected action at the door. Call first, people, always. Unless you want to put me into a tizzy, and keep in mind that Matilda also goes into a tizzy when there's an unannounced visitor. Don't do this to us. It makes our hearts beat really fast.


But today, the someone at the door was the postman, Jimmy, dropping off an unexpected package. It was a poetry broadside from Dorianne Laux! I actually said, Eeeeekkk! when I picked it up. Do you know Dorianne Laux? If you don't, you should step up and get to know her. She's on facebook, which is how I came by the broadside. She offered to send one if you supplied an address. I did and she did...thus

A swell broadside!

And a sweet blue signature!





A few of Dorianne's other books.

Totally worth opening the door. Dorianne has a new poetry collection out, The Book of Men, which I will be purchasing in a shortly. "Cher" is taken from this collection. You can preview the book here.

There's a lot going on inside those underpants.

Hey, does "Someone's at the door" sound familiar in a way that creeps you out, yet also makes you think about Harriet from Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip? Hmmm...interesting. Maybe, like me, you've seen American Gothic. Maybe in 1995 you had a total crush on both Gary Cole and Jake Weber. (The Gary Cole crush has since waned. The Jake Weber crush has only grown stronger.) And oh yes, there really is that much screaming. Complete series, available on hulu.

Man, how did American Gothic and Dorianne Laux end up in the same post? Strange days indeed.

Rust Fish

My lovely and amazing friend, Maya Jewell Zeller, is officially a published author! I mean, she's been publishing in literary magazines and anthologies for quite some time, but now she's able to add a book of poetry to her list of achievements. The long awaited Rust Fish arrived yesterday.


You know how cool Maya is, right?

I mean, she's the one who recently discovered the frozen sap on the T.J. Meenach trail along the Spokane River. She's also a finder of presidents, a picker of berries, an eater of coconut cupcakes, a maker of muffins, a chopper of downed trees,  a receiver of felted foxes, and a sender of kickass postcards.  And that's just her life inside this blog. She has a whole other life outside--in the real world--where she's a mother and a teacher, a wife and a runner, and a terrific poet.

from Rust Fish
First Friday of Spring

This evening I cut your hair
in the kitchen while we listen
to Bob Seger tell us
it's funny how the night moves.
I could sing along, add
a bar or two about the way dark
brings its heavy water
against my bones like lake
to driftwood. Today we walked
a rim of indigo
and counted the subalpine buttercup,
the first stars of Idaho blue-eyed grass.
My hands slide through the light
brown of your now-short hair,
finding your skin
like fingers sinking to reach
new sand. This
is my favorite part, your breath damp
through my shirt,
your eyes an open sea
calling me in.

Yup, she's a keeper! And if you're in Spokane on 7 April, I know of a certain book launch you should attend...