Author: Staff

WSBA Poetry Finalists: 7 Word Reviews

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by Kevin Craft   Ed Skoog, Rough Day: Every rough day has its dogged song. Familial ruminations cut to the quicksand tongue. Sample line: “deranged and precise as the Grand Canyon” Sherman Alexie, What I’ve Stolen, What I’ve Earned:No way seven words names this groundswell.Highly recommended, with or without strong reservations. Sample line: “He’s sixty-two percent of me. Like water.” Rebecca Hoogs, Self-Storage: Note to self: this book holds wonders. Storage unit compact: poignantly wry, explosively tender. Sample line: “I would tell any you almost anything” Derek Sheffield, Through the Second Skin: Gives skin deep a whole new meaning. Poems that move through thick and thin. Sample line: “They build where they will and live” Nance Van Winckel, Pacific Walkers: Oceanic archive giddily stalking the unrealized real. Sample line: “A Man Mistakes Me For a Mannequin” Sample line: “Stopped in the Midst of Going On” — Read a full review of Rough Day here, and of Pacific Walkers and Self-Storage in our Notable Books feature from the Fall & Winter 2013-2014 issue.

In Memory of Carolyn Kizer

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We learn this weekend the sad news that Carolyn Kizer, a founding editor of Poetry Northwest, has passed away. She touched many lives as a poet, mentor and friend, and we’d like to share with you a few recent pieces that sing her praises: David Rigsbee recalls one telling moment with his friend and mentor and transforms another. Martha Silano appreciates Kizer’s “Pro Femina” and Katrina Roberts admires her singular voice. Former student Barbara Baldwin remembers her dignity and humor. Our Spring & Summer 2011 print issue was devoted to a collective appreciation of Carolyn Kizer’s life and work, and we will share with you more from its pages here in the coming days. Read the first of these features here.

The Subvocal Zoo: Episode 4 – Zach Savich

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Poetry Northwest‘s monthly podcast series, The Subvocal Zoo, features editors and friends of the magazine interviewing poets during the 2014 Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) Conference in Seattle. Each episode will feature lively conversation between writers in a different Seattle location. Episode 4 features Kevin Craft interviewing Zach Savich. Their conversation takes place at the Washington Convention Center in Seattle. Topics of discussion include George Oppen, where the eyes go after reading a great line of poetry, creative community and collaboration, and Zach Savich’s most recent collection of poetry, Century Swept Brutal.

Megan Snyder-Camp: “’why / put me in charge’ – Ellen Bryant Voigt’s Headwaters”

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Headwaters Ellen Bryant Voigt Norton, 2013 — In Headwaters, Ellen Bryant Voigt has composed a volume of poems entirely free of punctuation, an approach in part responding to, as she notes in a 2013 Rumpus interview, the impermanence of “life, art, and these days even the planet—don’t you think? Seems to me it has always been absolutely in evidence, although one prefers to ignore it, that impermanence, or labor against it.” “My part,” says Voigt in the poem “Milkmaid,” “was laboring through the drifts.” In this particular poem the drifts are snow banks, the speaker a girl helping her father deliver the mail, but it’s that labor, in which the speaker “put something in took something out,” that the speaker both traces and questions throughout the book. Headwaters: the source of a river, but also the head: this is a book following the current of how a mind moves. Listening to Voigt read these new poems aloud a few months ago, I was struck by the seamlessness of her cadence, and the immediate clarity of …

Matthew Olzmann: “Super Villains”

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It feels strange to write an “introduction” for this piece because—while writing the poem—what I thought it was “about” kept shifting. When I thought I was describing old-fashioned, human meanness, what I actually wrote was a mere caricature of that meanness. When I began to humanize that caricature, to make it more tangible and honest, what I wrote was actually about empathy. When I thought I was revising a poem about empathy, it turned into a study of the complicity—the speaker’s or the world’s—that allows the terrible to be terrible. When I went to finish the poem about complicity, a poem about meanness emerged. This poem is a revolving door of those elements, which (in its own way) is probably a more actuate portrayal of that human characteristic I originally set out to describe. (Olzmann) Super Villains The New Face of Evil dreamed it was an eagle ripping the lungs from a sparrow, or it was an altar for human sacrifice, or it was seated at the head of a long table in a boardroom …

The Subvocal Zoo: Episode 3 – Dorothea Lasky

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Poetry Northwest‘s monthly podcast series, The Subvocal Zoo, features editors and friends of the magazine interviewing poets during the 2014 Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) Conference in Seattle. Each episode will feature lively conversation between writers in a different Seattle location. Episode 3 features Ed Skoog interviewing Dorothea Lasky. Their conversation takes place at the Hiram Chittenden Locks in the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle. It’s a typically steely Seattle afternoon. Topics of discussion include poetry in education, Shelley and Eminem, salmon ladders, and carbonated beverages. And here is a creature that will be discussed but not seen during the interview:

The Triggering Town Review

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Please join us with Ed Skoog and friends for a certain-to-be-memorable two-evening run of poetry, music and performance! Where, Now? The Hugo House Theater in Seattle. When, You Ask? This weekend only. Friday August 22 and Saturday August 23 at 7:30 pm. Who Else? Sarah Galvin, Kary Wayson, Bill Carty, Sam Watts, Kevin Murphy, and more. So many more. More Information About the Event. Tickets.

The Subvocal Zoo: Episode 2 – Richie Hofmann

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Poetry Northwest‘s podcast series, The Subvocal Zoo, features editors and friends of the magazine interviewing poets during the 2014 Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) Conference in Seattle. Each episode will feature lively conversation between writers in a different Seattle location. Episode 2 features Managing Editor Matthew Kelsey interviewing Richie Hofmann. Their conversation takes place on a ferry traveling from Seattle to Bainbridge Island and back. Topics of discussion include inspirational teachers, silence, Cavafy, and messages in bottles.

The Subvocal Zoo: Episode 1 – Dan Beachy-Quick

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We’re very pleased to introduce Poetry Northwest‘s new audio podcast series, The Subvocal Zoo. This first series will feature editors and friends of the magazine interviewing poets during the 2014 Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) Conference in Seattle. Each episode will feature lively conversation between writers in a different Seattle location.