One personâs âDocumentary Poeticsâ may overlap, to a large degree, with another personâs âPoetry of Witness.â Does it matter why? Does it matter how they differ?
I should start with how I met him. I had seen him around several times before I wrote this poem. I would go to this bar, sometimes, and heâd be there, standing under this swarm of discotheque lights, and he liked to get drunk by the end of the evening, but I donât judge. Anyway, there were these blots of wallpaper that if you followed along the base of the stairwell, youâd get to this red door that led out back, and you had to go through this red door if you wanted to smoke, which I did, then, sometimes. So, you really had to push down on this handle, like just punch it to get it open. I did just that, and when the door shut, there he was, standing on the other side, and I was a little embarrassed of my debut. He introduced himself, Hey, Iâm Zac, and the way he said his name was both infinite and staccato, like a feeling of love and death at the same time, and he …
Poetry Northwestâs monthly podcast series, The Subvocal Zoo, features editors and friends of the magazine interviewing poets. Each episode features lively conversation between writers in a different location. Episode 9 features Danez Smith in conversation with William Camponovo during the 2015 AWP Conference in Minneapolis. Topics of discussion include the importance of community; The Dark Noise Collective; composing for the page vs. composing for performance; Ocean Vuong, Chinaka Hodge, Patricia Smith; Yusef Komunyakaa; The BreakBeat Poets and the April 2015 issue of Poetry magazine.
“And yet, even as the language of naming is commonplace, our stories are both singular and universal.”
By Maggie Trapp
Leaving Mother Waiting for Father The evening went on; I got very old. She kept telling me it didn’t matter. The real man would come back soon. We waited. We had alarms fixed, vases of white and purple flowers ready to thrust on him should he. We had to sell the place in a hurry; walked downtown holding hands. She had a yard of blue material in her pocket: I remember that so well! She fell asleep and a smile began to blister her old mouth. I propped her against an old hotel and left without any noise. — James Tate (1943-2015) was the author of more than twenty collections of poetry, including the Pulitzer-Prize winning Selected Poems. His Dome of the Hidden Pavilion will be published in August 2015 by Ecco Press. — “Leaving Mother Waiting for Father” was published in the Summer 1968 issue of Poetry Northwest, and appeared in The Oblivion Ha-Ha. — photo credit: Peace Lily BW | (license)
Poetry Northwestâs monthly podcast series, The Subvocal Zoo, features editors and friends of the magazine interviewing poets. Each episode features lively conversation between writers in a different location. Episode 8 features Michael Bazzett in conversation with Justin Boening. Topics of discussion include a review of Michael Bazzett’s book published in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, Minnesotan/Eastern European irony, the etymological opposite of “to remember,” recreating delight, Robert Hass; translating the Popol Vuh, and Mark Strand.
As I pieced together the verbal knife strokes of âThe Old Woodcarver,â I was remembering German imagist poetry and thinking about the Native view of animals as so much more than what we call âtotems.â I tried to capture a woodcarver aware of his subjects as not only emerging from the wood, but entering him, playing an intimate part in his life, a process the artist must surrender to more than create. We sometimes refer to lucid dreaming in relation to such ideas, but itâs more like lucid sleeping, the acceptance of the value and importance of where our internal experience takes us when we invite it, as we do falling into sleep, a choice but an acceptance as well of what is both part of us and beyond us. This is a process that continues into waking, when we allow it, overcome by it as we find ourselves entering the dream creatures awakened in the life already around us. The knife is the instrument of separation that also creates. We may use many things …
Sailing by Ravens Holly J. Hughes University of Alaska Press, 2014 Holly J. Hughesâ recent collection of poetry, Sailing by Ravens, is an immersion into nautical language and life, and an exploration of what it means to live with direction and drift, two opposing energies that tug our human lives. Sailing by Ravens is arranged in sections like compass points: north, west, south & eastâeach section accruing depth about navigating the ocean, experiencing the loss of love, and an exploration of human losses. The collection acts like a plumb line measuring the depth of the charts and maps that Hughes learned to love so young in her lifeâa plumb line of the self, that âfaint tick tick of the heart.â The collectionâs first section, “North,” draws subtle connections between map makers and self makers. âX saying here,â Hughes writes, offering a destination to be measured in degrees yet âwrenched from time.â The tension in this section quietly builds in the differentiation between actual and magnetic direction, in how the slightest metal objects on a boat can effect the path that will be …
Poetry Northwestâs monthly podcast series, The Subvocal Zoo, features editors and friends of the magazine interviewing poets. Each episode features lively conversation between writers in a different location. Episode 7 features Sally Keith in conversation with Dan Beachy-Quick. This episode was recorded in the galleries of Minneapolis’ Walker Art Center during the annual AWP Conference. The two poets discuss poems from Keith’s earlier books as well as work from her newest book, River House. Topics of conversation include: motion & emotion, Jorie Graham, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Agnes Martin, image & memory, and the joys of friendship.
