Elliot Bay Readings

http://www.elliottbaybook.com/events/next/index.jsp;jsessionid=FA6627D86A6E5C968A8411E11A583BA6

So much poetry! The Writers in the Schools reading will undoubtedly be killer.

CATHERINE WING
January 10 at 7:30 p.m.

Catherine Wing reads here this evening from her new poetry collection, Enter Invisible (Sarabande), the second title in the Woodford Reserve Series in Kentucky Literature. Now based in Seattle, she grew up in Fort Knox, Kentucky, and, along the way, has also had work appear in The Chicago Review, Field, and Poetry. "Every publisher announces a debut collection by claiming that the poet's voice is fresh, groundbreaking, surprising. Wing's actually is all of that...she creates dazzling, surreal vignettes populated by strange characters who seem both recognizable and dreamlike...Wing is an impressive talent, well worth watching." - Booklist.
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CHRISTINE DEAVEL & KARY BARRETT WAYSON
Thursday, January 12 at 7:30 p.m.

This evening brings two fine Seattle poets together to read from new chapbooks that have been published by Seattle’s LitRag Press. Christine Deavel, also known for her vital part in poetry matters here as co-proprietor, with John W. Marshall, of the wonderful Open Books: A Poetry Emporium, is here with Box of Little Spruce. Some of the poems have appeared, along the way, in Fence, Iowa Review, and LitRag. Kary Barrett Wayson, a 2004 The Nation/Discovery Award-winner, reads from Dog & Me. Some of this work has appeared in Field, Mass Ave., Seattle Review, Poetry Northwest, LitRag, and a few of the Pontoon anthologies. Also expected to be on hand tonight are some past and present issues of LitRag, the literary journal (see www.litrag.com).


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BRIAN TURNER & ANDREW HIMES
Sunday, January 15 at 2 p.m.

Co-presented with VOICES IN WARTIME. The poetry of Brian Turner, who served in both the Bosnia-Herzegovina conflict and the Iraq War, has been compared to the wartime poetry of Komunyakaa, Sassoon, and Anderson, among others. His powerful collection, Here, Bullet (Alice James), has received positive attention in Military Review, Library Journal, The New Yorker, and elsewhere. He and his work were prominently featured in the acclaimed documentary film, Voices in Wartime. "Turner has sent a dispatch from a place arguably more incomprehensible than the moon—the war in Iraq—and deserves our thanks." - The New Yorker. "Readers take note: 21st-century poetry, as such, may well begin here." - T.R. Hummer. Joining Brian Turner here today is peace and social justice organizer Andrew Himes, editor of the anthology, Voices in Wartime: A Collection of Narratives and Poems (Whit Press) and executive producer of the film, Voices in Wartime.
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WRITERS IN THE SCHOOLS Faculty Group Reading
Saturday, January 21 at 2 p.m.

Presented by SEATTLE ARTS & LECTURES. Eight local writers-in-residence from Writers in the Schools, a program of Seattle Arts & Lectures that serves over 7,000 students in nineteen regional public schools, share the stage here today to present new work. EMILY BEDARD, poet, screenwriter, and editor of Crab Creek Review; ROSALIND BELL, novelist and screenwriter; LYN COFFIN, writer and actor; SIBYL JAMES, author of six books, including the Vietnam travel memoir Ho Chi Minh's Motorbike; poet SIERRA NELSON of The Typing Explosion and currently the Vis-à-Vis Society; poet REBECCA HOOGS, author of Grenade; and poet CODY WALKER are all expected to be here. Please join us. Read more about Writers in the Schools at www.lectures.org.

Poetry Northwest-Seattle Event

Here's the reason why this is exciting, from C. Dale Young's blog: "I just received a Press Release. Apparently, Poetry Northwest has been resurrected. David Biespiel has been named their new Editor. It will be twice yearly, instead of quarterly. Not sure what role the University of Washington will play in the magazine in the future, but apparently the magazine is back. It was one of our oldest poetry magazines before it lost its funding at UW and died."

They're based out of Oregon now. http://www.poetrynw.org/

You're invited...January 20, 2006
Join the editors of Poetry Northwest at the Elysian
Each month we get together for a cocktail, & this month we're having our drink in...Seattle!
Please join us.
_______________________________________________________________

Dig out those nickels & IMBIBE at your leisure
MEET the editors
SUBSCRIBE to the magazine (if you haven't already!)
& go home HAPPY
_______________________________________________________________

the facts:
cocktail hour, friday, january 20, 2006, 5:30 pm till whenever
at the elysian brewing company, 1221 e. pike street

All are welcome. Spread the news.

Gjertrud Schnackenberg

Love Letter

Dear love, though I am a hopeless correspondent,
I found your letter habits lacking too
Till I received your card from H.-lulu.
It made me more-than-slightly-less despondent
To see how you transformed your ocean swim
Among dumb bubble-blowers into meters
And daffy rhymes about exotic tweeters
Beyond your balcony at 2 a.m.

I went to bed when you went to Hawaii,
And shut my eyes so tightly I saw stars,
And clenched my sheets like wadded-up memoirs
And made some noise like wah-wah-wah, i.e.,
I find your absence grimly problematic.
The days stack up like empty cardboard boxes
In ever-higher towers of cardboard
Swaying in senseless-lost-time's spooky attic.
I'll give the -atic rhyme another try.
To misconstrue the point-of-view Socratic,
Life is a painful stammered-out emphatic
Pronunciation of the word Goodbye.

Or, as it came out on the telephone,
Sooner-the-better is the way I see it:
Just say, "I guess not"; I'll reply, "So be it."
Beloved, if you throw this dog a bone,
TO readopt the stray-dog metaphor,
I'll keep my vigil till the cows come home.
You'll hear me howling over there in Rome.
I have no explanations, furthermore--
But let me say I've had it up to here
With scrutinizing the inscrutable;
The whys and how-comes of immutable
Unhesitating passion are unclear--

I don't love you because you're good at rhymes,
And not because I think you're not-so-dumb,
I don't love you because you make me come
And come and come innumerable times,
And not for your romantic overcoats,
And not because our friends all say I should,
And not because we wouldn't or we would
Be or not be at one another's throats,
And not because your accent thrills my ear--
Last night you said not "sever" but "severe,"
But then "severe" describes the act "to sever"--
I love you for no reason whatsoever.

And that's the worst, as William S. the Bard
Wrote out in black-and-white while cold-and-hot:
Reasons can be removed, but love cannot.
The comic view insists: Don't take it hard,
But every day I'm pacing up and down
The hallway till I drive my neighbors mad,
And evenings come with what-cannot-be-had
As lights blink on around this boring town,
Whence I unplug the phone and draw the shade
And drink myself half-blind and fantasize
That we're between the sheets, your brilliant eyes
Open me and, bang, we have it make--
When in reality I sit alone
And, staring at my hands, I think "I think
Till love and fame to nothingness do sink"
While hating everything I've always known
About how you and I are sunk as well.

Under the aspect of eternity
The world has already ended anyway.
And, without you, my life can go to hell
On roller skates, as far as I'm concerned.
Two things are clear: these quatrains should be burned,
And love is awful, but it leads us to
Our places in the human comedy,
Frescoes of which abound in Italy.
And though I won't be sitting next to you,
I'll take my seat with minimal complaints.
May you sit in the company of saints
And intellectuals and fabulous beauties,
And not forget this constant love of Trude's.

...totally fun, occasionally over-the-top. Enjoy!

Mary Oliver

Poets like White Elephants was really, really good. Just sayin'.

I'm a twee bit drunk & writing a personal statement for law school (the twine shall ne'er meet again)

enjoy some Mary Oliver!

Black Oaks

Okay, not one can write a symphony, or a dictionary,

or even a letter to an old friend, full of remembrance
and comfort.

Not one can manage a single sound though the blue jays
carp and whistle all day in the branches, without
the push of the wind.

But to tell the truth after a while I'm pale with longing
for their thick bodies ruckled with lichen

and you can't keep me from the woods, from the tonnage

of their shoulders, and their shining green hair.

Today is a day like any other: twenty-four hours, a
little sunshine, a little rain.

Listen, says ambition, nervously shifting her weight from
one boot to another -- why don't you get going?

For there I am, in the mossy shadows, under the trees.

And to tell the truth I don't want to let go of the wrists
of idleness, I don't want to sell my life for money,

I don't even want to come in out of the rain.

Kasischke

Ever since I saw her poem "Hostess" in the Poetry Daily 366 Collection, I've adored Laura Kasischke. I couldn't find the poem online and it's mega long, so I'll just brief you on my favorite bits:

In the beginning of the poem, these lines:

He smiles. He says, "I'm
here to ruin your party, Laura," and he does.

...and then, at the end of the poem:

When I
passed him in the hallway by the bathroom, I
thought I heard him say, "Laura, I want

to ruin your life," and, trying to be polite, I said,
"That's
fine." I said, "Make yourself at home."

Here's a newer poem of hers, from the NER (be sure to read it aloud, there's some subtle rhyme schemes at play):

http://cat.middlebury.edu/~nereview/Kasischke.html

Miss Congeniality

There’s a name given
after your death
and a name you must answer to while you’re alive.

Like flowers, my friends—nodding, nodding. My
enemies, like space, drifting
away. They

praised my face, my enunciation, and the power
I freely relinquished, and the fires
burning in the basements

of my churches,
and the pendulums swinging
above my towers.
And my

heart (which was a Boy Scout

lost for years in a forest). And my

soul (although the judges said
it weighed almost nothing
for goodness had devoured it).

They praised my feet, the shoes
on my feet, my feet
on the floor, the floor—
and then

the sense of despair
I evoked with my smile, the song
I sang. The speech
I gave
about peace, in praise of the war. O,

they could not grant me the title I wanted

so they gave me the title I bore,
and stubbornly refused
to believe I was dead
long after my bloody mattress

had washed up on the shore.

Another Reading-Free Wine!

Just do it, yo. A week away, the UW MFAs play:

Poets like White Elephants

Thursday, December 8th Pioneer Square, 89 Yesler #3
Free Wine & Snacks
Reception begins at 7pm; Reading is at Eight

Poems of Questionable Taste
By MFAs (Mostly Female Alumni)
· Dana Elkun · Julie Larios
· Rebecca Hoogs · Sierra Nelson
· Johnny Horton · Susan Parr
· Ariana Kelly · Jonathan Shapiro

I know Johnny and Sierra's work--both fun & good--so, worth attendance. Did I mention free wine?

~Dani

Joy!! SAL Series announced

Yes, SAL has announced the 2006 line up (finally!)

http://www.lectures.org/poetry.html

The line up:

Robert Bly: Monday, March 6, 2006

Adrienne Rich: Wednesday, March 22, 2006

Tony Hoagland: Tuesday, April 4, 2006

Peter Gizzi, Tyehimba Jess, and Mary Ruefle: Monday, April 10, 2006

...very, very excited. There are cheap tickets for students, and the series does usually sell out. Catch it if you can!

~Dani