All posts filed under: Archival Features

A fresh look at poems and essays previously published in the print edition.

P. K. Page: “Improbable Concept”

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For January & February we’re featuring P.K. Pages “Improbable Concept,” which appears in the current issue of Poetry Northwest. Page writes, “‘Improbable Concept’ is written in the seductive and challenging glosa form, which dates back to the l5th century Spanish Court. The lines of the opening quatrain are chosen from the work of another poet; they are followed by four ten-line stanzas, whose concluding lines are taken consecutively from the quatrain; their sixth and ninth lines rhyming with the borrowed tenth—I suppose a liking for crossword puzzles helps!”

W. S. Di Piero: “Raven”

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To end the year we’re featuring W.S. Di Piero’s “Raven,” which appears in the current issue of Poetry Northwest. “Years ago I read the opening phrase in a field guide’s description of a raven,” says Di Piero, ” and it stuck with me:  ‘Big black bird.’ I see ravens out my window every day and appreciate their don’t-mess-with-me posture and gliding maneuvers. (Crows don’t glide.) Apparent monochromatic blackness with endless flashing inflections — that’s one definition of good style. They have no songfulness, just a marvelous variety of noises and calls, which recommends them to poetry but not to pretty poetry. “Most of my books contain a poem about a bird, none from a birdbrain’s consciousness, though:  they all in some way are about hunger, appetite, or aspiration that sounds like fury.” Raven Ratso pigeons strictly for the birds. Morning vocalizing to settle one’s nerves. Practice makes perfect. Hello high wire art, and come back O red-tail youth. Upstart. Hair bulbs down there. Feed and need. Sunshine so justified upon my wings and I sing …

JEHANNE DUBROW Discussing MiƂosz

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A red wing rose in the darkness. — “Encounter” After the red bird rises through the night, it leaves a wing-shaped shadow on the sky. The teacher asks, If the field is dark how can the poet see red flight? and would like one of the boys (his baseball cap pulled low over his eyes) to answer that we know the color of our blood from memory. We don’t need light. A girl would reply the bird predicts both darting hare and man whose gesture follows, a lightning run of fur and tail, the sleek hind legs to leap into the third couplet where we skip across the years, both hare and man now gone only their motions left behind. And then like sudden grassfire the class would understand the poet’s awe, why he writes these words instead of weeping, why the poem must streak by, bleeding and animal but not quick to die. I have tried teaching CzeƂaw MiƂosz’s ‘Encounter’ several times, but never with much luck. “Encounter” is a small poem that travels …

MICHAEL HEFFERNAN “They Always Say He Marks the Sparrow’s Fall”

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It seems I must have gone into a tailspin brought on in part from madness already there, compounded with much that came on by the minute, and found myself on top of a high curb that felt to me like a bridge or a cliff edge on which I rocked and then quite literally emptied myself like a chamberpot into l’AbĂźme. At the time I was, in fact, speaking quite good French, about any number of things that came to mind though I was an audience of one, and at that one nutjob, who was alone in knowing what the hell he was talking about for Christ’s sake, and since nobody was there to ask me that, I wasn’t very likely to ask myself; and therefore didn’t, but instead just stood there muttering about la poĂ©sie de l’hivernage, in a guttural mumble like a corner-boy giving out upon la pluie, la neige, mĂȘme quelque catastrophe diluvienne, or equally likely Professeur Michaud pacing around in his brown plaid double-breasted suit, from the crinkly left cuff of …

Mary Jo Salter: “Song of the Children”

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From the Spring-Summer v3.n1 issue of Poetry Northwest, “The Political Issue,”  we’re featuring Mary Jo Salter’s “Song of the Children.” According to Salter, “‘Song of the Children’ is one of the few poems I’ve written that was ever, in any sense, commissioned. A French friend was helping to put together an international anthology of poems about war, and asked me to try to write one. I saw I had been censoring myself: I had wanted, in some way, to write about the Iraq war, but had held off simply because I had no clue how to do it.  The poem—which is partly about not knowing how to speak or write adequately about violence—got written, but the anthology was never published. I was fortunate that Poetry Northwest was interested in my attempt.

Gibson Fay-LeBlanc: “On Leaving Home”

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Gibson Fay-LeBlanc’s “On Leaving Home” appears in Poetry Northwest Fall-Winter 2007-08 v2.n2. The poem focuses on departures and those who are left behind. According to Le-Blanc, ” I left Chicago at 18 and somehow knew that I would never be back for any length of time. I wanted to capture something—who knows what—about that experience.

Eva Heisler: “Lover’s Manual”

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For November we feature Eva Heisler’s “Lover’s Manual,” which appears in Poetry Northwest Fall-Winter 2007-08 v2.n2. The  poem is part of a longer series of prose poems entitled “Reading Emily Dickinson in Icelandic.” According to Heisler, “‘Lover’s Manual’ originated as journal entries written during the first three years of a nine-year period in Iceland.  This was a period in which the romance and astonishments of a foreign land were challenged by the difficulties of earning a living as a foreigner.  I was constantly faced with just how deeply language shapes perception and, as I struggled to learn Icelandic, the blind spots proliferated.