Embed Size (px)
Citation preview
~©~«E >+~i " ':~UM~'.:4',":--+:@e TBe:,.". tev1-7a
C 0
',.' z>i
4
' 8k
.'"Agf' ' "
„,) „"p;44M
P
POET R Y g + NORTHWESTVOLUME EIGHTEEN NUMBER FOUR
EDITOR
David WagonerWINTER 1977-78
EDITORIAL CONSULTANTS
Nelson Bentley, Wil l iam H. Matchett
JANIs LUI.I.T hree Poems. . . . . .
CAROLE OLESFour Poems
CONRAD HILBERBYScript for a Cold Chris
JOHN UNTERECKEBtmas.
. .
3
COVER DESIGN
Allen Auvil
Coverfrom a photograph of an osprey's nestnear the Snoqttatmie River in Washington State.
BOARD OF ADvISERS
Leonie Adams, Robert Fitzgerald, Robert B. Heilman,Stanley Kunitz, Jackson Mathews, Arnold Stein
RON SLATE
Two PoemsVICTOR TRELAwNY
What the Land Offers .FRED MURATORI
Confessional PoemRONALD WALLACE
Three PoemsCAROLYNE WRIGHT
613CABoL McCoBMMAGH
Rough DraftsALVIN GREENBERG
poem beginning with 'bMARKJABMAN
Writing for Nora
Pastorale. . . . . . . .JOHN C. WITTE
eginning' and ending with 'ending'
18
19
16
13
15
10
POETRY NORTHWEST WI N TER 1977-78 VOL UME XVIII, NUMBER 4
Published quarterly by the University of Washington. Subscriptions and manuscripts should be sent to Poetry Northwest, 4045 Brooklyn Avenue NE, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98105. Not responsible for unsolicitedmanuscripts; all submissions must be accompanied by a stamped self-addressedenvelope. Subscription rates: U.S., $5.00 per year, single copies $1.50; Canada,$6.00 per year, single copies $1.75.
© 1978 by the University of Washington
Two PoemsWILL WELLS
Two PoemsMARJORIE HAWKSWORTH
I Never Clean It. . . .
VASSAR MILLERTwo Poems
SANDRA MCPHERSONTwo Poems
RICHARD GROSSMAN
Torture
. 24
21
20
Distributed by B. DeBoer, 188 High Street, Nutley, N.J. 07110; and in the Westby L-S Distributors, 1161 Post Street, San Francisco, Calif. 94109.
MILLER WILLIAMSHusband. . . . . . . . . , . . . .
PAUI.A RANKINThe Man Who Invented Fireworks
JOAN LABOMBARDMarbles
LINDA ALLARDTTwo Poems
RICHARD FROSTTwo Poems
KATHERINE SONIATIn Another Mold
CHRISTOPHER HOWELLThree Poems
JACK CRAWFORD>JR.Brushing Away Gnats. . . . . .
.
. 34
. 30
31
33
28
Jaeis Lull Three Poems
P OE T R Y N O R T H W E S TW I N T E R 1 9 7 7 - 7 8
36
ARTHUR MILLER
SUSAN STEWARTTwo Poems
DICK HAMBY
Two PoemsHOLLIS SUMMERS
Two PoemsSHERRY RIND
Who's Harley-DavidsonP
Why the Dead Return
. 41
. 39
. 37
Or none of the aboveP
THERE ARE FIVE GREAT THEMES
The question is: are they Nurture,Sin, Reconciliation, Desire and Death:Or are they Innocence, Interdependence, Wandering,Enlightenment, and the rhythm of heart and breathPOr Birth, Ingratitude, Renewal, Mutability and Love,
. 43EDWARD HIRSCH
A LetterMARK McCLosKEY
Three Poems
. 45
Notify us promptly when you change your mailing address.Send both the old address and the new — and the ZIP code numbers.
Change of Address
. 46TO HERSELF REFLECTED
This breath is you if you could faceIt; the old one-two each timeExpresses all, and each time new.Just so you saw yourself escapeAs vapor on the winter afternoonYou turned five. Years later, it was youReturning as rasp and gulp the dayThey pulled you from the spilled canoe. Your coughKept you alive, and kills you nowYou like to say and laugh and smokeOne more. This song, this sigh, this arching rateW on't change; could change, but won' tAllow us at least six weeks for processing the change.
This breath predicts the next and whenWe take the air we take it asWe used to. The one surprise isThat there are no surprises; no CaveOf Self, no secret alveolus whereA treasure's locked of air so pureIts whisper would crack glass. The mirrorFogs and clears and keeps stillIts fascination. What you willMeans nothing in the mirror: what you think or mightThink is never there. Yet this is youW hen you can face it; all you doThat counts here is breathe and shine in the borrowed light.
Carole Oles
OLD TEXT
Three things are too wonderful for me;four I do not understand:the way of an eagle in the sky,the way of a serpent on a rock,the way of a ship on the high seas,and the way of a man with a maiden.
Four Poems
— Proverbs, 30:18, 19I' ll tell you.The way of a manwith a maidenis the way of allthree wonders.
He soars and tuinblesdrawing loops in the air
DREAM MAN
He only drives night loads
He gets kicks snapping chains, shaving skulls, smashing cars.Skin won't hold scars
which she flies intoand he cinchespulling her downto the pfle of stickson the ledge.It begins.
He wears his electrodesDown to his assEats naked babies on buttered glass.
He smells of excess thoughtOzone or sulphurHe's got an extra mouth on the top of his headFor sucking the sky.
Don't you know this is a job for MoonwomanP
If he don't get what he needs,You' re gonna see some shreds.
Just give me an hour with himIn the cab of his pickup truckOh brother,He' ll be licking me all over
He's all muscle.How can she resistPShe knows that dance.Even the rock squirms under it.He hardly sees her.If she doesn't fight back
For the salt.
she's female.He has no shadowuntil he's erect.Then, even the trees applaud.
Only those on the shorecall the sea Mother.The maiden's the shipmade to dip and rise
He's dark-eyedwith his moods.
POETRY NORTHWEST
a roaring drunk
Remorseful in the morning.Rolling the sunoff his tongue.
a batterer.
THE UNTEACHING
the teacher lives in another form.
She talks about sick people,says they need help.A girl with braids is yawningshe has slept fitfully — a red-headed boysits rigid, as if he hears her through water.His study habits will not improve.
The children are not stupid.
they do not relinquish the one pricelesspicture of their teacher crumblingbefore a blackboard spattered with lessons.
She talks about the lawof averages. How many storms it would takebefore lightning struck one of them.How often they would have to fly.As she speaks, they glance at the doorhe came in by, they tracethe stain on the hardwood floor.
She does not mention the law of opposites,love and hate for example. How they cohabit.Or the law of gravity, demonstratedby the teacher's falling. Or the law ofconservation of matter: that nothing is lost,
A social worker was sent into the 3rd grade classthat had witnessed its teacher shot and killedby her estranged husband. She was sent to assurethe class that school is a safe place.
— UPI
about noon on the beach.
RESPONSE TO A. J. DALY,SPECIALIST IN 'PERMANIZING',POSTMARKED PROVINCETOWN
Dear Mr. Daly, Thanksfor your offer to 'permanize'this clipping about me.But I'm writ ing to tell you
The bodies. From the splayedlegs and surrendered feetyou can tell they' re goners.No blood, but poisonous quietunder the sun's drumming.Even the sea's tongue cut out,no water until the Point,a period on the horizon.
Over the flats, more bodies.Crabs belly-up, squid with tenuseless arms, flies drinkingtheir eyes. And mill-ends:the lower jaw of a bluefishbiting on air, scales driedto fingernails, bones too smallto extrapolate from. And shells,whole city blocks of roomswhere no one makes love.
Mr. Daly, for a dollar-fiftywith your sparkling clearplastic and special equipmentcan you protect me foreveragainst moisture, soilingand the wear due to handlingPMr. Daly, at night herethe foghorn persists in itstwo wornout notes, questionand answer. The sea, that reformer,works its dark industry. Free.
As she talks on and on
POETRY NORTHWEST
there. L ook how
A MANIFESTO FOR THE FAINT-HEARTED
Don't curse your hands,the tangle of lines
in the deepening snowyour feet make blue fish
Don't take personally
not to lose it.
no one can catch.
the defection of leaves.You can't be abandonedby what you never owned.Spring will give back moregreen than you can bear.
Don't rest by the hearthwhen all you' re worthtells you Run!If the fires withinstrangle, not even sunswill comfort your bones.
You' re not so special.The jungle's full of animalswhose guts invertwhen a stronger one partsthe camouflage, peers throughas they climb a tree.
Don't think you' re different.The world's full of runts,stutterers like yourselfwho'd save all they have
They lose it.
Leave trails, be separate,dress warm, travel light.Eat fear to grow muscle,even Olympic champs fall.
in a cool, dry place.
Conrad Hilberry
SCRIPT FOR A COLD CHRISTMAS
These reds and greens, of course, are all wrongthe blazing log, the star like a sunfloweralmost toppling the tree. All fall, the colorshave been diminishing. L o ok : the beech treebreathes twigs of vapor against the grey sky,icicles drop their spindly light in a long beardfrom eaves to bush to ground. My promiseshave cracked and dropped away like old bark.I am a winter stick, a flagpole clanginga hollow note in the wind. There is nothingdramatic here, neither jubilationnor despair, but rather a kind of exileas when in a foreign country you shrinkinto yourself, unable to speak.
Our rituals exaggerate. The starwas no Catherine Wheel spinning and hissingover the stable. I t was a star, a pointof no dimension, one match flaring acrossa frozen lake. The shepherds, hearing the angels'song, thought it the wheeze of a cold sheepit had so thin a sound. They heard but hardlyspoke, saving their words like a last handfulof grain. And the child — one child, not a crechein every park. This one was different, butnot now, not yet. Now it was a small jugof flesh with a candle glimmering inside.
It is almost cold enough. The year is shrinkingtoward a small festival, a saturnaliathat will fit in the cavity of a tooth.We may gather up our deaths and makeof them a twig fire, hold our handsto it and sing for the cold seed.Store advice
POETRY NORTHWEST
not to lose it.
there. L ook how
A MANIFESTO FOR THE FAINT-HEARTED
Don't curse your hands,the tangle of lines
in the deepening snowyour feet make blue fishno one can catch.
Don't take personallythe defection of leaves.You can't be abandonedby what you never owned.Spring will give back moregreen than you can bear.
Don't rest by the hearthwhen all you' re worthtells you Run!If the fires withinstrangle, not even sunswill comfort your bones.
You' re not so special.The jungle's full of animalswhose guts invertwhen a stronger one partsthe camouflage, peers throughas they climb a tree.
Don't think you' re different.The world's full of runts,stutterers like yourselfwho'd save all they have
They lose it.
Leave trails, be separate,dress warm, travel light.Eat fear to grow muscle,even Olympic champs fall.
in a cool, dry place.
Coerad Hilberry
SCRIPT FOR A COLD CHRISTMAS
These reds and greens, of course, are all wrongthe blazing log, the star like a sunfloweralmost toppling the tree. All fall, the colorshave been diminishing. L o ok : the beech treebreathes twigs of vapor against the grey sky,icicles drop their spindly light in a long beardfrom eaves to bush to ground. My promiseshave cracked and dropped away like old bark.I am a winter stick, a flagpole clanginga hollow note in the wind. There is nothingdramatic here, neither jubilationnor despair, but rather a kind of exileas when in a foreign country you shrinkinto yourself, unable to speak.
Our rituals exaggerate. The starwas no Catherine Wheel spinning and hissingover the stable. I t was a star, a pointof no dimension, one match flaring acrossa frozen lake. The shepherds, hearing the angels'song, thought it the wheeze of a cold sheepit had so thin a sound. They heard but hardlyspoke, saving their words like a last handfulof grain. And the child — one child, not a crechein every park. This one was different, butnot now, not yet. Now it was a small jugof flesh with a candle glimmering inside.
It is almost cold enough. The year is shrinkingtoward a small festival, a saturnaliathat will fit in the cavity of a tooth.We may gather up our deaths and makeof them a twig fire, hold our handsto it and sing for the cold seed.
Store advice
POETRY NORTHWE ST
Jobe Urtterecker Two Poems cnv0 4 cd
cd .g
0 NOTHING SOFT, NOTHING LOVED
— Cape Breton, Nova Scotia
cntn V
V cn
0 cd0
cd
4J
o cd
cdbOcd
cooIO
0
goo
coocd
74
bO g
0cd
v
8cd ~
co
• ~ ClbO
bO0 v
4J
ocdco
cdbO
'6
cdbO
Fat swells coil on a headland I' ve never seen,its seagull-crested tongue of rock and lightrammed into ocean. We walk to cliff 's edge.If there were a path, it would be a precarious path,and I turn to you wanting to say, "Stop.This is an edge. There is no path down."
Far out at sea, the long swells round toward shore,Below us, waves flake into salty dustand the hard rattle of pebble on stone.
I have never been to this place.I have never talked to you at the edge of this cliffnor watched these tom rocks feather into air.
v0 0
cd ln
0Q '0
o
cn0 cd
f4
05 v
0 cd
0 0
~4' o0 0' .0
oo
U Q z cd
~O +
CQ 0
0 0
Indl0
0
g!5
0 o
0 00
CJ
8
co
cd
bO~
90 g
2
8
0 v
E
0
0
94
K
bO
In
o
cn
8 O' cn
0 .g0 co
v I
cn 0
In cdb O v
cd
2 0
0
co rnv
4J
0
rn
"0 cd
0
0
0
0
o cd
0
gcdQ
0
>> 00 g co
cd0
oCk cd
gIn 0
I4J
In
In0
Victor Trelaseny
Unaware of the silence
But here the wheatfields combine
WHAT THE LAND OFFERS
The fence goes on to great lengthLike an answer to a difficult questionThe farms pose. Because of hungerWe believe the abundant bough only so far.
With what the land offers, rise as with yeastIn the fall sun between barns, and becomeThe immense tables of the worldPeaceful plentifulThe silos like salt shakers,T he almost circular lazy Susan towns . . .
So we drive along the empty roadway,
Entering through the lowered windowsLike an unseasonable heatcd
10 POETRY NORTHWEST
I want you to skirt me widely,as you would a rabid goat or cripple,and pretend that I don't matter.I want your poems to standfor everything I think is funny.I want you to look away.What I do is better left to shadowand grey-green landscapesthat would not support the barest life.
Tightening our throats. Anything we might sayWould overwhelm us, slam the brakesTo the floorboard and send the car skiddingInto the ditch. If at lengthThe fence repeats itself, we listenAs the fine wire of the argument returns againTo the rain-blackened stakes, the premisesEvery few feet.
In the backseatThe pears glimmer in their deep crate.Our children sleep in the seat aheadOf us. As the light dims, we can almostSee them through the windshield,Reflected in our reflected faces, wrappedIn each other's arms, wakingUp into the world we leave them.
Rortald Wallace
ART WORK
of me, comical figure: m y ha i ra spike of asparagus, my facea round tomato, fat and red,my eyes two curvy wormstugging at their hole, my mouth.She is bending over this garden,tending it carefully, absorbedin her own small making.I smile, and return to my larger workwhere, later, I find myselfscratching my thick green hair,squeezing my ripe plump cheeks,my old eyes squirming away from me,tugging at my blind mouth.
Fred Muratori
My daughter is drawing a picture
Three Poems
before mirrors.
CONFESSIONAL POEM
The moon is sludge grey, pin-stripedin places like a patchwork suit.My blood is the color of Colby cheeseand each night, after dinner gets cold,I open my veins with a potato peeler.
Never in my life have I practiced
Both parents loved me dearly.I got A's in school.My car has fantastic gas mileage.There's nothing in my dresser drawersanyone would be afraid to touch.
I tell you these thingsbecause I long for your resentment.
SPRING
5A.M. We are safeinside our house, sleeping,when, suddenly, the sunreaches in through the window,grabs us, shakes us awake.The thin sky cracks open
NORTHWESTPOETRY
to a clatter of birds:waxwing, towhee, junco, jay;the plum tree erupts with blossoms;the bloodroot and toothwort,scylla and trout lily fester.Even the tulips open their mouths,and the moss uncloses its fist.Spring. We lie awake listeningas the sparrows and warblers clatterat the windows, the wildflowers nudge toward the house.And down in the basement,dark and voracious,the carpenter ants slowly
I hold my wife closer.We do not go back to sleep.
Carolyee Wright
continue their work.
613
Never bring your elbows to this class.There's barely room to duck the dean's eyecoming at you like a clammy funhouse hand.You wake up at dawn, love nailed highon your list of intentions, remind yourselfto hold your blood's calls in abeyancetill the right bells ring, get to classon time. This time, we learn howto manipulate the inside views — wordsthat have heard of each other,ridden up elevators together,never yet been introduced. You tryto remember what comes after how are you.But it's a damp fuse, and the omniscientauthor's prose monotonous as the barroomconquests in the late late shows.You doze; lovers drift side-by-sidein your thoughts like leaves on a river.You peel off superlatives like clothes;the dream stands up to repeated readings;there's not one adjective to edit out.You start; it's over. The class falls outlike a regiment — the same show of feet,meters winding down in all the faces,briefcases tight with thoughtstoo stuffy to admit they' ve met.Left out, like a student from oneof those small, angry countries, you seeyour best harangues have dwindled, sunkto footnotes in some rival text;even old lovers, whose best moansquote yours, keep the credit. A secret zerostarts its slow growth in your heart.It will look for allies everywhere.
CONVERSATION WITH THE MAKER OF CLICHES
Up here above the treetops:green heads, you say, green hair.Why not green water waving?A thousand locusts hoveringP Green airP
The branches, now, the bark. You say:the long arms of dark ioomen, mossy skin.Why not the hard scars of barnaclesPDead husksP Stuck wings moltingP
Now the roots and trunk. You say:the long body, crossed thighs, soft toes.Why not a sunken Spanish galleonPDead cicada dreaming toward the sunP
But now the leaves like fingersopen in the poem, combing theirgreen hair, green arms holding my throat.They love me; won't let go.
14 POETRY NORTHWEST
Carol McCormmach
ROUGH DRAFTS
December 1975
6 F rom the calendar's stiff hingethe untried daysat a time pressed for resolutiondangle
And while your peremptory arms enclose meI am warynursed on air by wistful ascetics
But this is where we meet ourselvesin this housein such a seasoneking frail harvests from our separate crust
The tree of dreams burns too longin a windy alcovegrey and baldingready for the splintered alley
We neglect that knowledge
There is no mantela sock fallsand crops up lost alvin greeeberg
Five o' clock
A flock of lightsblown to stars in the fraying branches
Where your fingers grazefine nerves sing and scattersparks in a tilled, implacable landscape
Christmas was stillborncards mailed latethe unrevealing ink smearednot by a tear or snow but drizzle
It was dusk all dayin the chinked room the lamplight strucklike fire from flintthe hush a bruise
We wait listening in the sheetsthe rain pocks mud
Or cut our rum with apple juicepronounce it wine when we are thirstyshadows on the white curtain fabricating
poem beginmng with begmmngand ending with 'ending'
beginning on the wrong note's everything:you cannot sing your way from thereto where you wanted: you can't begin
again: back where you started simply isno more, even though it flaps in the windat you like an american flag raised upside
down. so beginnings signify distress andmiddles fill up quickly with the stuff you' redistressed about — beginnings, mostly — and
endings! let night come even more quicklyand save us from the endings, save usfrom having to reel the flag back down
in this damned wind where even the wrongnotes won't carry and the flag's as big asa parking lot: just try folding it yourself
if you think you can manage an ending.snowdrifts
16 POETRY NORTHWEST
Murk Jurmue And you will twistme everywhere to find, at least,one way to tell how you diedthe way you would tell it, digressions turningand twisting till I fallas you fell in your fit,Grandmother, ghost, epileptic,caught, sick of it.
WRITING FOR NORA
I should be pleasing myself, you know,old woman, though I owemyself to you. Through the hospital windowedged with ferns, the trucks and birds appear,gearing up hill, up air.Should they be includedPThey have not been informed you are here.Or that I, waiting with youfor your last seizure, can' tstand to listen againas your dictaphone winds through
the buckets of sweet water,the sponges stroking and strokingyour wrists and ankles cinchedbecause your prone dancing toretoo many sheets... Each time I' ve almostgot it, the plasticred recording tape ticks offand again you accuse me,thinking me one of the brothers who sent you to fetchfoxfire in the woods, and followed, and watchedlaughing when you fell down.I can't convince you they are gone.Bold as the girlyou think you are you twirlaround in bed, and thrust your kneesin my face,pointing to scars as fresh cuts,to the shine of the loose skin.
Desperate story-teller,those words of yours that wore me outsworn on tapes crammed in a boxwill be lost.You know I owe you them.
Roe Slut'e
PASTORALE
An afternoon that demandsappreciation, plentyof reasons to take that drive.Pulling off the road, you wantto feel a part of all this.The book says it's meadowlarkson the phone lines, that'sQueen Anne'slace beside the fence, that's mint.You don't know him but a boyleans his rusty bicycleon the car and says "Them's redpoll Herefords," and all this timethey' ve been staring at the Ford,the glint of your belt buckle.They' re not planning anything,not apprehensive, just fixedthe way you are fixed on them.When they go back to the grassit's only you and this onecow, eyes locked, your bodies deadweight and attracting horseflies,until a red-winged bird fliesbetween, and the cow lets gofor no reason, and you letgo to save the day from dread.
the summer of the first:
18 POETRY NORTHWEST
Jobe C. Witte Two Poems
POWER FAILURE
In darkness someone returnshis glass to the table with a soft tick.We question the roof.A huge oak has not toppled
our hands at the ends of our arms.
Flames appear gliding up the stairs.Lovers rise and paddlethrough the air over Pennsylvania.The farmer drifts over his fields, in moonlightadmiring the pattern: alfalfa, drainage, sweet corn.Now the police are playing their sirens.
Night surges over the buildings,against the picture window with a few stars.
The city has vanished.The children have shut their eyes.How will we find our way back.
Now the tomatoes. Now
over the wires. We reach out
Will Wells
Doors slammed, cups springing from their saucers.
the sunflowers looking down.Their only child, what with the warand the payments, and then he was gone.
She is dreaming on the dark porch,water rumbling in the hose.Flowers grow lushgrasping her hem and hand — and nowthe roses, now vegetables sprawled on the soil.Her beauty is still inside,in a summer dress wanderingback and forth through the weedy field.
Two Poems
TROY, OHIO
My father built dreamhouses on scratch pads,piled high on his desk.
Mother hated a mess.She must have been Greek.She burned his secret city.
He sold shoes that year.It was only a job,but he gave his customer
a good fit: enough room
for the toes, arch support,
MY NEIGHBOR HOSING HER LAWNIN THE DARK
And now the roses — arcing cool raininto the garden, the dry loam talks almost.Heavy blossoms rock on their stems.All afternoon bending her rake, white oakleaves catching on herdizzy head, she rolled brittle piles into the fire.
"a home for each foot."
Who is ever that luckyPI carry him with me.I am my father's house.
Where is her husband?From the stoop she can reach the whole lawn,swishing spray over the grass.What did their impossible son shout at himP
20 POETRY NORTHWEST
Vassar. Miller Two PoemsFARMING THE RIVER
He seeded the slow currentwith stones, and watchedhis broken face compose itself
time after time, barelytransparent, dark so soon.It would rain, enough to grow
deeper gullies, new stonesto bear him down, like sonsthat drifted off, weary
of working a family farm.He'd meant to plow straightto Colorado, but always veered
at the property line: drawnto the river, murky-eyed,angry at all of his planting.
A RESIGNATION
They sit, attended by a yesfrom which the world's no falls awayunheeded like the dogs that pressupon my heels day after day.
Although I pass their secret doorand feel the shadows of their song,I try to enter there no moreas once, where I do not belong,
tracking the carpets everywhere,staining their sofas with my sweat,my pause, the best part of my prayer,makes angels happy I forget
until at long last I have creptto that same door I could not winby pain or other right excepta tired child's to be taken in.Marjorie Hau ksseorth
lie at the back of the cave.
I NEVER CLEAN IT
The oven is black.A charcoal potatoand puffballs of carbonfrom the sweet juice of pies
Their substance is like the dryyet faintly shiny tissue of snakesthat emerged from pillsignited on Fourth of July morningwhen pyromaniacssat on the front porch stepsat ten o' clock in the morningbecause they could not waitin their burninguntil the time of sparklers.
OBSTINATE
Like Adam I am flushed out nudeThough I have hidden in the wood:I cannot bless my solitude.
Like Cain I will not pour out bloodAs much too cruel, much too crudeTo my hell of solitude.
Oh Lord, You are a hard man, shrewdAnd cautious, miserly with good:I cannot bless my solitude.
Yet I believe that if I could,At its dark root I might find God,Whose other name is solitude.
POETRY NORTHWEST22
TO MY MOTHER
Saedra McPbersors
after Amichai
Two Poems THE BLUE SKY
Air, light blue,light's blue
its nut breath,sneezing,
its fixturespurple locust pods,
the shot:the frozen
bird songs:
the story of your life' ?
dried fish.
for selfish ends.
to her newest born.
One's history should be blankto show you didn't use yourself
Once you held your baby by a palm tree.Your hands itched in the humidity.You smile toward the camera, but the truth
is you are gazing out to sea.
Night, the blackness of the telephone,you on the hookhold down all other voices.
Mother, I say, Mother why don't you write
— Oh, if everyone did that
Though children are raised from breasts, those halvesas clean as cereal bowls,
those bowls are modestly put awaywhen not in use,a pear or peachpainted in the center depth of each.
Mother sat on the beach and out of her knitting baggrew a red sweater.Sand knitted into the purl,sand for eggs and long distance calls,sand such as wore down the teeth of ancestors who ate
And she gave it to her granddaughter.Secretly a moth gave it also
and stolen suet
hollow roota buried
bushel basket,its sounds
soft swatsat tennis balls,
whale-likesnorting of bison,
storm puddlesbehind time,
its clouding,smoking up,
its blowing clean.Every day, every day
it's clear,the river dropping,
the hill too dryfor mushrooms,
dinnersmeaty with fat
poured into cans,
drags a nuthatchto the ground.
I don't expect
I look.
a web raised
the blue
that tumblesdoubling up
stockpiles.
in and around
above the autumn
for an alternative.
But it isthe blue
that keeps on falling
the spent shell,
the deft transmission
of a soundfor practice.
Breathe quick,the goose
wedge out its wings,the tree top
look straight up.Where is the targetP
Assembling hawks,
like the frame of a barn,
and people being solitaryfire lookouts,
each reads the sky
So formal
24 NORTHWESTPOETRY
Richard Grossmae Two Poems
TORTURE
In each movement we uncovered
new logic and became wiser.
With every bite and breaththe world cleared, gained
in the sovereign presenceof the senses. Something.
What was itP asked the shepherd. The elementof sightP The source of lightP What was perceivedP
It was the clarity itself we saw,the animals sang. Absolutely free and tame.
The animals were weeping copiously.The plants had stolen their mystery
and rammed it down far beyond their roots.The sky had sucked it up and dissipated it.
The ocean was rolling it long distances.It was no longer theirs.
They hated themselves. It was hell.They were now no more than animals.
What they had was on the outside. Peeked at.It had become part of what wasn't quite.
Once we were each king in a world of meaning.Now the world is king. We are meaningless.
The shepherd said, No! You are spotless!Guilt is always blameless. Inconsistency
is the edge of the shadow. Where can it gowhen light fills every corner of the meadowP
Miller Williams
HUSBAND
She's late. He mixes another drink.He turns on the television and watchesa woman kissing the wrong man.
to the cat. W e l l Cat, he says.
CLARITY
There was nothing there.Perception justified by itself.
Detail taking over the whole.Depth risen to the surface, alone.
Over and over we repeatedthe name of God, the animals said.
This also makes him feel foolish.
He looks at his watch. He feels close
He feels foolish.He mixes another drink and standsturning the stem of the glassback and forth in his fingers.
He looks at his watch. Well Cat, he says.Lights turn into the driveway.He slumps into his chair. Hekicks off hi shoes and spreadsthe open newspaper peacefully
He hears the tiny grating of the key.His heart knocks to get out.
over his face.
POETRY NORTHWEST 27
Paula Raekie Perhaps he knew how some nightsthese collisions of stars, shells, saxonswould still be the only holesworth congregating for,
how that is all we would own,that, and the shared, humbling aftermathof backdrop.
THE MAN WHO INVENTED FIREWORKS
Once a man with Roman candles gunpowderinghis head went out at nightto find sky's inattentionresembling too much the ceilingtowards which an invalid strainshis dimmed eyes. Or perhaps
he simply weighed the various actsby which one is rememberedand chose combustion, the vocationin which whole moments are strungon short fuses, tattooing air with vermilion,emerald, flumes of white fire.
He may have foreseen us,huddled by one shore ofJekyll Island,awaiting promised flags, chrysanthemums, riderspinwheeling unbuckable stallions;and if so, predicted a marketfor charcoal, saltpeter flaring from mouthsof medieval statues, while priestsuttered prayers on atonement.
He may have sensed that the path to attentionwould not change much,that those with strained eyeswould still be arounddrop-mouthed at the trick of ignition,of getting shows not only off the groundbut shot through the sky's epidermisand the skins of each other's eyes,a searing of tissueto last the whole length
For who gets enough attentionP
Joae LaBorebard
MARBLES
They are his planets,his suns and milky spheres, his red Mars.Their clustered fires seethe in his pocketcompelling his mindtill he must touch them, count themover and over for luck;aggie and cat' s-eye, his brilliant clearies,the prized green shooterwhere all the leaves of all his summers burn.Ambling onto the playground,he chalks the ring of a universe.Other boys drift overto watch a champion set outmarbles like pigmy moons, globes of iceand crystal, closed worldswith miniature rivers in them,colored like sky or tigers, vivid as blood.It is Genghis Khan baiting his surly chieftainswith hope of treasure,who hunches beside the circled suns, and aimsthat Pearl of Marbles, which obeyshis eye and cunning thumbso wickedly.
of its moment.
28 NORTHWESTPOETRY
Linda Allardt Two Poems
LATECOMERS
To all those who have come too lateand found the doors closed against them,the dance hall doors, the musicstolen by talk and distance,the gates to the sea, the subway barriers,
no marriages tonight,no barnraisings, no rooftrees lifted up,no lot lines run,no woodlot walked off,no garden in the flood plain ploughed,no key turned in the ignition,no border crossed:strike up! we will dance where we are,live in the open, becomethe teachers of their children.
In the matched cases, a handgun. It's been fired.In this flowered hatbox with the Continental labelsa perfume bottle is obviously broken.In the heavy leather, wool shirts, moths,some excellent hunting boots, the smellof male sweat and alcoholic urine.Others I have hesitated to open. I know,I ought to have called the Salvation Armylong ago, or piled them at the curbmy ludicrous responsibility! I keep themfor whoever it is who takes my name to travel,though the hall, large as it is, begins to benarrow to walk in, and nights latelyI' ve begun to dream again — the bell rings,I can't get past the baggage to the door,the cabbie swears, can't be made to hear me;sounds: something heavy — trunksP — cratesPpiled against the door, the cab driving away,someone's fists pounding on leather, latches snapping.
the license bureau doors so there can be
Richard Frost Two PoemsBAGGAGE
The man at the door says it' slost luggage coming home by cabwith the apologies of the line's agentwho hopes that I will travel with them again.Travel? I can't remember traveling.Perhaps a former tenantP but thenI' ve lived behind this door for twenty years.GreyhoundP I hazard, UnitedPUnion Pacific? GraceP but the man is gone.This has happened before.I' ve opened a few.That overnighter by the stairscontains a green chiffon, a color I never wear,a flapper style from the twenties, and snapshotsplainly of the traveler's relatives,inscribed in German.
IN A FILM WINDING BACKWARDS
I come out of my carrump first and heelto my front door,which opens to a handI reach back blind.My wife unhugs me,I fill my raised glasswith juice, fork my eggsout of my mouth,fit them whole on my plate.
My shirt shaken off, folded,my bath up the nozzle,I muss my bed, sit on it,
All as it was.
POETRY NORTHWEST30
Katheriee Soniatslip into the coversand hear the alarmset me to sleep.Day before day
until I am cared for,cared for, cared for,and all's put away.
HEART
I return what I have
IN ANOTHER MOLD
After too much night-staring, taken inby constellations and carried offby underworld heroes, I began walkinglines of wet, warm streetsin what was to have been November.I'd come for blessings, an earthly shapeto support me in this cloudcovercalled lowland heat.
The asphalt surface winds, the housesrepeat themselves, but belief breatheseasy on scrubbed doorsteps in the sun,ammonia rising proudly from them every day.Front yards are built-in squares of belief,resting under the calm hands and plasterof a little blue Virgin.
Slowly I make my ears deaf to the backyardpredicament of an old hunting doglonging for a last dream of trees, forgettingwhen it was, if ever, I thrived on grass fieldsopening with dark deer and stars.
Now I am ready to live upfront, settleunder my own small flat roof,paint my bedroom bril l iant lavender,shock myself with locked windows hungwith yards of orange organza.I would never be touched by the giantside of seasons so liable to blowin through screens.
Only at noon will I trust myselfbehind the house to take pleasureclearing trees for a fenced field
I shift my pillow so I won't hear my heartknock like the mad boy who burned his room.I would leave secret everything insidethat floats in blood, yet in the darkI rummage in my guts for bad news.
Again I cheat him out of his comic books.I am up to my chin in his funny books.His starved face, his raw picked nosepressed against his window, he knocks to get mein there. I drag his comics home in my wagon.
He heaps my foreign stamps, my woodcarving set,my new shirt in tissue in its boxunder his bed and puts a match to them.When they pull him out the back door,he kicks the air and screams I have cheated him.
That afternoon I shove him onto his faceand sit on him. "You moron, you stink you' re so dumb,"I set him straight. I educate him. I takehis hair in my hands and teach him to eat grass.Despite all this, he seems to learn nothing.
My deeds knot in my belly like string saved.My blunt, resourceful bloody ghost beating,I want sleep! But through the shadesmy windows form, and a beam of dust,and cars rattle up and down the street.
POETRY NORTHWEST 33
of plastic poinsettia. Come fallI' ll clip their wires, stick themat my blue Virgin's feet, praynever to see clouds spreadwith blue openings or rememberhow the dark made me thinkwith big eyes.
Christopher Hou ell Three Poems
cleared the flightdeck and went down like a goose, sir." Fifty fathoms. Enough oxygen for half an hour.
Locked in the chill black with his prayers, wondering did themarker buoy surfaceP Could divers find him so far down, so cold,darkP No time to sing into the squawker, Just that rush of shim- rmered blue, the steely shadow and the jolt as 41,000 tons steamedover the closed seam that had allowed him in, then darkeningstripes of aqua through the thick way down.
Black scotch broom pods snapped. A '41 Chevy rolled pastfour years of NROTC, sacrificed summers, haircuts, harassmentfrom fellow students; all for thisP Thirty minutes in a slow-fill ingmemory of lightP Water lapped. The whaleboat came back full ofexhausted divers; sun scratching the stanchions, the useless day-glolife preservers. And Johnson slept, book over his face; the writing ofthat next-of-kin letter making a wide, slow approach through the
the sea of harm on which we moved. We smoked.
MEMORIES OF MESS DUTY AND THE WAR
Garbage went over the fantail, boiling into bluewhite wake. Among shark snouts rising to sample thatsweetness, it rode like the rawstuff of hope. We watched. Our aprons dripping.Who knew what we, six hundred miles from shore,thoughtP What we were doing there (the abstractcrime afloat) kept glitteringphosphor-like in the day to day, unnamed. We didn't guess
We missed our women in the glo-bake blacknessof the crew's compartment, hated brass, cursedour uniforms and thought that was enough. Grinning,thoughtless, the cargo burned at Asia. Let the garbage sinkthen, let sharks sever bone from scrapand keep on following. Still, on the floor,our longings and the spilled bloodgathered.
DEAR MRS. TERRY
Johnson said, "yes sir, Mr. Carney, right away, sir, aye aye,"in his sleep. The ship droned in the lead hot Gulf into which CadetPilot Terry shot his plane, the impact of the catapult socking himforward, his gear snagging the stick. "I don't knoto, Captain, he
dead chain of command.
his heart on the kitchen floor. So unreasonable
WATER SCULPTURE
for Patricia White, 1944 to 1968
Wrecked bits of face and speedcome back; and the bottle of pills. Such smallfood for breathing, Patricia. When the dead fileslet you loose, I almost catch the poor star of absencein my palms. Bill's dead, too. Cancerflooding him like honey or the lost notes of a drumburied in sand. And Grandpa, whom you delighted, broke
these departures for the cold other shore.
Here in the high burnt shadow of Horsetooth, farfar from the sea, I murmur onlya hollow bone of you and bring this nothing-stitched skinof words. Take i t . . . p le ase. I know our l ives and the carved sea
to water. Not even grief will wake youfrom those phenobarbital arms. Maythey love you senselessand forgive us your penny of sleep, forgive youthat you dove so deep.
come
34 POETRY NORTHWEST 35
Jack Crau ford, Jr.i can feel your concentration. you theresitting before it: the whole thing.bringing it all together. the riot, the pleas, the blood.your quotes from the warden. et cetera. and howto find the lead. i feel your head working!how you shaped your lead, david,i don't remember. i'm sure it was good.full of your dash and intensity. as you dragged itnine times round the trojan walls and smashed itshield on shield and left it ringing.the pool hall murmurs with voices. the softcommotion of men, their sliding shoes.pronged fingers propped for the pool stick.
of collision. and harlan — and david.
BRUSHING AWAY GNATS
I just had a bowl of cornflakes with abanana sliced over it. good. good. and the milkcool going down the throat on a hot night.remembering in a pool hall, years ago,the clicking of the balls. the lampshadeover each green table. the leather pockets.those pockets! the softcommotion of men. their sliding shoes.the positions they assumed to make their shots.the cue stick, smooth, thicker at one end, tapering.good to feel, good to slide over the pronged fingers.how they cranked the tip with chalk, as if it were oneof the great pleasures. the fingersgrinding it on. as if it would hold the sticksteady. as if the ball wouldn't slip.and the cue ball riding over the green baize, and the
were you really there, harlanP and did you marry ciaand did you not write for the morning dailyhow the ball game went that afternoon and howpeople sitting in the bleachers had tobrush away gnatsP what a touch!when the riot broke at the penitentiaryyou, david, got the assignment. what awhirl! what a going out of the office! what athing to be doing: covering the great riot!going out — all of us watching.and when you returned, dashing inas if you'd stopped the presses. what athing it was. with that hat you wore, yoursharp face. those dark, burning eyes.and snatching the notes out of your pockets.dashing off your jacket. snaring it'on the back of your chair. taking your seat
before the machine. staring at your papers.
click
udiaP
Sasae Steu art
TERROR
A man has died in the house next door,rain pours through the open windowand the curtains flap their wet armson the bricks. Upstairs a phone ringsfour times, for you. There is nothingso prosaic as terror. Even as I write this,a lamp is turned over. The debutante's haircatches fire. The heroine breaks her teethon the tracks and hopes that the trainwill loosen the ropes. Wars break outin the subways, and if I pick up the phone,I know no one will answer, nothing so
the hammering of his mother's heartand swears he will never leave the wombalive. Snow drifts slowly on the insideson the windows like the ponderous moaningof widows. The piano refuses to rhyme.Life as we know it runs out of our reach,even as I write this, police fill the streets,
Two Poems
voiceless as terror. A child feels
36 POETRYNORTHWEST 37
Louise begins to play her violin, the nameof the song is "The way their white wings"and the curtains are throwing lace roseson her shoulders and her shoulders are achingfrom holding up the song. There is a roomin the house you haven't found yet, where the ceilingleans down to rest on the window and brushesthe hair from the eyes of a woman, who sits thereall day sewing clouds to her apron.She will lend you her needle to take out the splinters,but when she tells you it's simple,
their horses limp along like battered children.There is nothing so deliberate as terror,like a wound that doesn't hurt and won' tstop bleeding, like a coat lined with gunsand razors, terror wounds us with itssilence and blindness, wounds us with thecalculated violence of lovers. Strangersare tearing at your books and letters,some are slitting your mattress with knives.Even as I write this, blood soaks the feathers,and the dead man stands behind you, terrifiedby this poem. His skin is luminouswith rain and weeping, and he carries
remember what I' ve said.
his voice in his arms like a child.
Dick Humby Two Poems
THE WAY THE MILKWEED PODS
No, the way a chicken watches his wingslug his heart toward the woodpile and the greatred tear swells on his throat, nothingever dies simply. Your right hand tom with splintersand your left hand freckled with blood, the wayyou walk so slowly toward the woodpile and foldthe wings into the basin, no, nothing so simply,each foot dragging a world behind the other.Remember this, the way the milkweed podsfly open with a shout, the way their whitewings sail out into the meadow with the surenessof some immortal animal, sail outon the stillest, most windless day of summerwhen the crickets burn up with staticand a single hair sticks wetly to your cheek.There is a little money beneath the carpet,a little milk still cold in the bucket,there are two blue letters in the mailboxthat think they are patches of sky.This very minute the bread is rising on the table
The cows are out on the road again and in the parlor
GOING HOME WITH THE DROW NED MAN
There is a moment in the air when the skyfalls away like a rising, blue balloonand you think that what must splashwill be your life. The cold watercloses around you and there is nothingin the swirl of the sea to hold on to,no hand or word to say you are not alone.So, you begin calmly to move your arms,undulate, flatten your hands like finsand you find it is so easy, swimming,this new feeling of being at home,everything decided, necessary. Soonyou learn to love the taste of brine andsmall fish, the smell of your new mate,her nudge and bump, the slide of herthick body against yours, her gentle song.Rising and falling in waves or sounding deep,you glide in a wide current where time isthe distance between leaving and returningto places that are nc.. ".." 'ostin the net of the past.
with the unworried brow of a wise man.
38 POETRY NORTHWEST 39
Hollis Sunsmess Two PoemsRUNNING BACK
It is late afternoon and heWaits for the snap.This will be the last play.He' ll break up the middle,Put on all the moves, be freeAt mid-field, running for the score.
The crowd goes wild.They cheer as he leapsOver linemen, speedsPast the Safety, sprintsInto the end-zone, turnsUp the runway, leavesThe stadium behind.
Bus drivers, huddledOver schooners in the First and Ten,Watch dumbly as he strides by.He cuts into the street, sidestepsHonking cars, zig-zags by peopleWho stop to stare. Steaming,Panting, thumping the pavement,He startles shopkeepers closing up,Lovers pressed against the bricksIn dead-end alleys. Families,Saying grace at firelight dinners,Hesitate, listen to what seemsThe thud of footsteps across their lawns.
Out in the fields, it is cold and dark.His breath puffs out before himLike a ghost. The sweet smell of hayHangs in the brittle air. Each stepSinks into the marshy turf; he pushes off,Rises, soars past stands of trees.Lights of towns float by in silence.The sky is so wideHe could be a star falling into it.
LinedWith violet and vermilionRibboned Dacron;The design
THE PENITENT
Yes, hisDouble breasted Eterna-WearShirt of hairIs
PETROGLYPHS
The nieces and nephews of lieutenant governorsCompose the roadside signs for tourists:Historic Marker, Item of Interest, LandmarkThey are full of words.
Take Indian rocks;The writers like to say the Indians wrote,When, in fact, they drew, I knowHaving drawn at a poem.
Are these marks a form of magicPThe writers ask the sweating travelers.Are these marks religious, ceremonious,Or are they simply funP
The answer is yes,Foolish nieces and nephews.
Of orchidNylon flossesEmbossesQuid
40 NORTHWESTPOETRY
EstAnd Quid Pro QuoAs the inside mottoOf his chest.
with itHe said you could lose your balance leaning wrong; you must go
even if, as his did, the bike leans into the pavement and leaves youfifty yards away with your face scraped clean and a hole in your lipyou smoke your cigarette through. His face made the girls cry.I said, love should be better than that.He said, you'd go farther with a Harley.
GuaranteesNotwithstanding, a hair shirtAttracts dirt.Laundries
DemandOutrageous feesFor specialities.Washing by hand
Is only impossible.He, loathing poseurs,Provident, enduresHis gospel.
Devout,He wears his shirt, a sweaterOf fur,Inside out.
Arthar Mil ler
WHY THE DEAD RETURN
IBoredom. H e aven the white holeis managed by idiots.Hell is smaller than they imagined:
composed of whips and alarm clocksstuck on Monday morninglike a broken recording.
Sherry Rind
WHO'S HARLEY-DAVIDSONP
I had to slide my fingers down that long silver run of exhaust pipeand burned them. On my first ride the boy called me a natural.Said I leaned well, rode light.
Years later, my lover rode a bike all winter. A foot-rest fell offand I learned to balance with one foot, cling with my knees.I arrived at parties frozen into a bow-legged walk, brushing shredsof his long blond hair from my mouth and eyes. We steamed like
too were ahve. Rituals
IIEach Spring they flop out of trees.Playing hooky they gloat,cruise for another hot time
among the living: snakingonto supermarket linesgobbling fast food with French fries
and rejoicing as if they
replace feast days and the last
rites for the dead. They requestthe colonel to cater theirbrief escapes from the casket.horses.
42 POETRY 43NORTHWEST
III Edu urd HirschCuriosity. They peereyes bloated, staggering behindblimp-like bellies. They regard
with total recall the humbefore that inopportunequiet, but the first return
is the detective pruning spacebetween there and here. His nosemashed to the pavement detects
the criminal, an odorcarving smoke into footprintsvivid as the dead, vivid
as the final smell, foolishone that never died. He stalksthe villain, sniffing clues
and rounding up the usualsuspects, but wonders if he overlookedsome obvious aroma.
A LETTER
Come home. I don't want to sound frightened,but this morning when I got back from workI couldn't scrub the grease off my hand;
it had settled into my skin like a deep film,the veins were black, and the bargeswere blurred on the flayed rivers in my palm.
The warehouses were empty. The streets were jumbled,and the canals tunneled out in all directionsnone of them homeward, though somehow
they all funneled back into an open basin,a blank sea, like a tree gathering inits last branches, or a map smudged with dirt.
I don't want to sound desperate, but all nightI could hear my feet opening narrow gravesin the sawdust, the rats crawling through a maze
of pipes inside my chest; and I spentso many hours stacking crates inside of cratesinside of crates, like paper cups, so many crates,
so many other places. . . . C o m e home.This morning when I pressed my hand to the glassI saw a black sun buried in sludge
and a thousand rivers clogged with wasterunning into the basin of a single mapmuddied with features, so many features,
so many faces, but none of them yours.
IVSo they come, unlike their birth:this time they are well prepareddragging hindsight to guide them.
Their umbrellas stuck openexpecting prophecies orvisitors from Uranus
they bring sketch pads, cameras,and cages to capture life,their first obituary.
44 NORTHWEST 45POETRY
Mrs' McCloskey Three Poems her nightgown around all day sometimes,pushes up her nose and rolls her eyes back.Her farts pop her out of her chair, she laughslike the roof of the jungle at moonrise.
This is where she goes: southto the little cheerleader pleats she jumpedfor the sky in, the Salvation Armyto try on hats, my house to play dead,Oz to come back north like a wedding ring.
And this is what she knows: A Munchkinwas her babysitter, Garland blew it,the Witch is in commercials, the futurechurns the flats of sleep up like a twister,all her pictures of herself are in the air.
IS EVERYTHING ALL RIGHT
Mother calls. My sisters aren't happy.One of them is so heavy she's tipping overinto diabetes, another is going blind,another is flying home to escape her brats.
This time she doesn't mention my dead brothers,or the one who stays abroad like a war crimeonly the one who had his head cut open;he's drifted into another drunk collision.
For once I' ve got good news to leave her:I have a girlfriend now who's broken recordswhere I'm concerned; I'm almost getting younger.But mother says she has to get a scraping,
so I report the black she's used to hearingthat child support still bites me like a watchdog,and I can't know what my children look likeif no one sends me pictures, no one writes.
I leave the best news to her; she saysthe old housekeeper got drunk at the last shower,and she herself and father's big successorwill rendezvous at a swim-meet in the Midwest.
Mother waits for me to round her call offby telling her I'm going to live foreverin spite of headaches and having no more children.The false news chokes the bad down like cold peas.
HER PICTURES
These are the pictures in her room:Cary Grant supporting her mother's handin his, grinning at her engagement ring;Ophelia in a storm of posies,lakefronts with nothing on them but ellipses.
MY DAUGHTER ENTERS HIGH SCHOOL
Maybe the nuns will like her, but I don't think so.They' ll know the Devil comes to her in personby her frosty lips, her blue eyelids, the streakshis fingers leave in her limp hair,the bells about her ankle which drive them crazy.
They' ll fix her good: her breasts my grown-up loverthinks outdo her own by a full size,they' ll flatten in starch, and drag down her backsidein wool pleats, pack her feet in Oxfords.They' ll stick her head in a white hood and teach her
decline and conjugate for Jesus' sake,knee-in-the-Devil' s-groin, thumb-in-his-eye,give her homework to fall asleep on in her clothes,while her boyfriend — nine feet tall and growingwhines on the ladder against her window.
This fall it starts. Maybe it's good for her;her eyes don't take to shadow as it is.But damn the nuns — the same who schooled her motherto be the personal secretary of the Lordif they cut short h'er career as an outcast.And this is what she does: she wears
46 NORTHWEST 47POETRY
About Our Coetributors
J~xs LDLL lives in Brooklyn.CAROLz OLzs was recently poet-in-residence for the Massachusetts Arts andHumanities Foundation.CDNBAD HILRRRRY teaches at Kalamazoo College.
JDHN UNTRRzcxzR's two most recent books are Dance Sequence (Kayak Books)and Stone (University Press of Hawaii).Vxc Toz TRzx,AwNY is a graduate student at the University of Arizona.FRzn MvxvITDBI teaches at Syracuse University.
RQNALD WALLAGE teaches at the University of Wisconsin.C~RDLYNz WBIDHT's first book, Stealing the Children, will be published in1978 by the Asahta Press. She teaches at Syracuse University.CAROL McCOBMMAGH lives in Seattle.
ALvxN GBzzNRRRo's novel, The Invention of the West (Avon/Equinox), appeared in 1976. He teaches at Macalester College.MARKJ~xLuu lives in Evansville, Indiana.RON SLATE, editor of Chowder Review, teaches at the University of Wisconsin.JDHN C. WITTz is currently a Fe l low at t he Provincetown Fine Arts WorkCenter.
WILL Wzx.x.s is a recent M.A. graduate from Ohio University.MARJQRIE HAwzswoRTH teaches creative writing in Santa Barbara.VAssAR MILLRB s sixth book, Small Change (Wings Press), appeared in 1976.SANDILI McPxxzzsoN's third book, The Year of Our Birth, will be published byEcco Press in the spring of 1978.Rxcaazn GRossxLIN's book on business, Tycoon Boy, was published by KayakBooks.MILLER WILLIAlvls spent last year in Rome as winner of the American Academyof Arts & Letters Prix de Rome. His newest book, Why God Permits Evil (LSUPress), appeared in 1977.PAULA RANKIN s first book, By the Wreckmaster s Cottage, was published in1977 by Carnegie-Mellon University Press.Jo~ L+BDMR~ re c eived the Celiea Wagner Memorial Award and the Consuelo Ford Award from the Poetry Society of America in 1977.LIND> ALLOT teaches at the University of Rochester.RxcxIABD FRosT teaches at Oneonta State College in New York State.K>THRBINz SDNIAT lives in Metairie, Louisiana.
CHBISTOPHRR Howzx.x. has published three books of poems, directs Lynx HousePress, and is poet-in-residence at Colorado State University.
Jacx CBawzoRD,JR., teaches at SUNY in New Paltz, N.Y.SUsAN STzwABT is a graduate student in folklore at the University of Pennsyl
DIGK HAMBY teaches high school in Kent, Washington.Hox.x.xs SDMMRBs teaches at Ohio University.SxxzBBY RIND is a teaching fellow at the University of Washington.ABTIIIIB Mxx.x.za teaches.a workshop at Home Base, an alternative high schoolin Watertown, Mass.Enw~ H mscu lives in New York City and has published widely.Mazx McCLoszzY teaches at Occidental College.
to Poetry Northwest's Donors' FundNews for Contributors
PozTBY NOBTHwzsT reminds its readers that it is the recipient of a $1830grant from the federally sponsored Coordinating Council of Literary Magazines. Since that amount has been given to us in the form of matchingfunds, every tax deductible contribution in support of Poetry Northwestfrom you, our readers, will be doubled until we reach that figure. TheCCLM rules stipulate that you should say you intend your gift to apply tothe matching-funds grant. We hope for your help.
vania.
