Bruce Bennett
Two Poems
stars and stars with no designs
All posts filed under: Poems
Weekly poems, selected by the editors. Featuring new work as well as poems from our rich archives.
Bruce Bennett
Catherine Wing: “Self-Medication”
I hate New Year’s Day. There’s something dull and numb about it—beyond the hangover—that never fails to feel disheartening. Some years ago, when I was still lucky enough to be living in Seattle, my writing group proposed to meet on New Year’s Day as an antidote to the annual drear. Even if we had no new work to share we would at least write something and fend off the prevailing sense of the wasted day. So on January 1, 2008, we were somewhere in our pre-writing preamble when my good friend Ariana mentioned that she had decided not to drink for a while. Now, Ariana is no heavy drinker, quite far from it, and she went on to explain that she was doing so to remind herself where her edges were—because alcohol, it seemed to her, is a kind of situational softener, and she wanted to be reminded of her sharper aspects. By which she meant her more difficult—edgier—self. The poem “Self-Medication” was born entirely from this idea. What are we at our edges and …
Vis-Ă -Vis Society: “Scientific Method: Am I In Love?” and “Scientific Method: Noir Sestina”
Editor’s note: Our objective is to determine whether the relationship between poetry and science is field-specific, or something. We hypothesize that a sentence will grow best when infected by the same ideas, images and methods that occur within either field. Preliminary results have been published in the Poetri Dish [experiments in verse] section of Poetry Northwest, Spring & Summer 2012 (v7.n1). Here, doctors Ink and Owning of Vis-Ă -Vis Society offer further findings: — Scientific Method: Am I In Love? Question: Am I in love? Research: I sleep in a bed with another, I have held his breath in my mouth. Hypothesis: If I run away, I will know. Experiment: Fog up the window and see whose name your finger writes. Observation: Made it all the way to Vancouver: wrote one name, smudged it out. Results: It is true, the finger moves. Report: Scientists in their lab coats leap to their feet in applause! +++ Scientific Method: Noir Sestina From a broken phone booth she called our her question, under-eye circles purple as bruises told of …
Amit Majmudar: “On Richness of Metaphor”
When it comes to poetry, metaphor is cake to me, and music is icing. Personal details are sprinkles, and frankly I can do without them. The Furor Poeticus is a lit candle stuck in the cake. Or, in the best cases, a lit stick of dynamite. There are poets out there who think of metaphor as an “ornament” to poetry. They go for lush descriptions. They go for hushed statements. They go for wry non sequiturs. My eyes glaze over when I read their work. It helps if they rhyme or scan or something, but even then I get bored. Tell me the hailstorm nails a coffin shut on summer’s green shroud, though, and suddenly my mind is a dachshund flushing out the badger of meaning. I’ve noticed that the poets of my generation really love non sequiturs. Straight non sequiturs are easy. Metaphor is the non sequitur that means. English may be rhyme poor (so I am told; this has not been my experience in practice), but all languages are equally metaphor-rich. O my …
Bob Hicok
The Fortune Teller
cannot tell me if Americans will come to believe in evolution. “You will get a sliver of cedar in your hand,” she says, kissing my palm where Christ would have had a scab, whose father made everything, including Band-Aids, according to polls. And what about the oceans? Will senators admit we’re breaking them? Her eyes roll to white, a wave of capitalism snaps her flesh to and fro in her chair, “I see a woman telling you not to worry, it happens to all men,” and falls back, arms flung out, panting as if she has just won gold in the hundred meter fly. Can you at least see if we’ll stop beating up nerds in movies? She takes her wig off, her mole, her hooked nose is a prosthetic, her crap teeth are fake, layer by layer she un-uglies herself until I’m looking at a beautiful woman lighting a cigarette and saying, “no one likes the smartest person in the room.” She’s so wise I want to marry her brain and protect it at …
Kathleen Flenniken: “Augean Suite”
Herbert Parker (1910-1984) started the Health Physics program at the Hanford Works in 1944, charged with designing and implementing radiation monitoring systems for both workers (who must remain within “permissible” exposure limits that he, in part, established) and the downstream and downwind environment. Parker created standards and methods in an industry that had never before existed. His team brought back proof of new and unforeseen contamination every day; monitoring must have been—I think, looking back—a terrifying adventure. Parker embraced and advanced secrecy, and worried in now-declassified memos that an action like closing the Columbia River to fishing (in the 1950s, sediments, fish, and water samples tested well above the radiation exposure limits he helped set) or evacuating public lands (a particularly alarming stack problem at Redox Plant in 1954 resulted in widespread airborne radioruthenium contamination large enough to see with the naked eye) would do irreparable “public relations” damage. Armed with his own calculations that scuttled “overly conservative” safety factors, Parker invariably erred toward maintaining morale. The italicized sections of “Augean Suite” are in Herbert …
Albert Goldbarth: “Some Archeology”
Editors’ note: Thumbing through the Poetry Northwest archives, many names appear with pleasing frequency, and Albert Goldbarth’s as often as any—particularly in the magazine’s early days with David Wagoner as editor. One finds already in those early-published poems the strobe of wit and intelligence we’ve come to expect from Albert Goldbarth’s poetry and prose. On the occasion of his visit to Seattle and of the publication of his new book of poems, Everyday People, we bring you five poems as they originally appeared in two vintage issues of Poetry Northwest, featured here with the poet’s own reflection on what these pieces mean to him now. Look for more from the archives in months to come! On Thursday, February 9, 2012, Albert Goldbarth will read as part of the Seattle Arts & Lectures Poetry Series. Details here. — 1971—forty-one years ago! I was twenty-three when “Village Wizard” and “The Death of the Printed Page” appeared in Poetry Northwest, probably twenty-two when they were written. The cells of my body have completely replaced themselves six times since …
Stephen Kampa, “Watering the Garden (Till It Bursts into Flame)”
While some poems originate in incident and others in image, this poem arose from a musical motif that guided me forward (impatiens, portions), backward (patience, potions, passion’s), and then beyond as I explored other musical themes and variations (plots, spots, touch-me-nots; “rung to hear her wring harangues”; “wedded bliss” and “weeds that blaze,” “forages” and “for ages”). Listening to that music, I found myself writing a vignette about one of those homely, undersung virtues, which in addition to patience could include chastity, temperance, or humility. They are such painfully unsexy traits! Yet I believe that steadfast kindness, even in something as simple as sharing a little neighborly gardening, can invite grand passion, one that generates enough heat to be worth the wait. For that kind of passion, perhaps it helps to have a little magic—a secret potion—and all the better if that potion should be patience, finally getting its due (here in the poem if nowhere else) as not merely a sexy potion, but the sexiest. (Stephen Kampa) — Watering the Garden (Till It Bursts …
Molly Tenenbaum Afternoon Off
Some out riding, some on skates, some promenading
James Bertolino, “Waves Again”
The Pacific Ocean has a huge presence in the Northwest—we live in a region where it’s likely everybody has, or would like to, experience ocean waves. And I mean physically, as symbol, and in the way the Pacific figures in stories and myths that have emerged over the generations. I wrote this poem as a way to both examine what I know about waves and to think in new ways about this planetary phenomenon. While I’ve lived within a few hours’ drive of the Atlantic or Pacific for over 30 years, my entire life has been spent close to water: ponds, lakes, creeks, rivers and the sea. Sometimes a wave is a ripple, sometimes a tsunami, but always an aspect of the dynamic life of water. Earth is the planet of water in this star system. (James Bertolino) — Waves Again What has not been said about ocean waves? That they resemble white chicken feathers in the wind? Or cream cheese icing on a carrot cake after you’ve dragged greedy fingers through it? Waves have a sense of …