Announcements

Posted on March 21, 2013 by Kathleen Flenniken

SPENCER REECE WILL READ FOR THE FIRST TIME IN SEATTLE

Poet Spencer Reece will be reading from his forthcoming collection of poems, The Road to Emmaus, at Richard Hugo House on Monday, March 25. The title poem recently appeared in Best American Poetry 2012, edited by Mark Doty.

The evening will include a screening of James Franco’s short film based on Reece’s poem, “The Clerk’s Tale.” Spencer Reece will also discuss his work at Our Little Roses orphanage for girls in Honduras, where he is currently spending a Fulbright Year. James Franco is producing a documentary about Reece’s work with the girls writing and illustrating poetry.

This event is free and is supported by Poets & Writers, Humanities WA, and ArtsWA.

Michael Spence

Posted on March 18, 2013 by Kathleen Flenniken

ADDENDUM TO THE SAFETY OFFICER’S ACCOUNT

. When the spanwire
Snapped like a line mooring Seaman Holt
To this world, the severing released a flood
Of paper from his body. I had to fill
Every sheet with words.
. A month washed by–
I’d written the letter to his family,
The accident report, the memoranda
To the various departments that had fed
And clothed and paid him, my journal entry.
His face began to lose its puzzled look,
Dissolving in the darkness of my thoughts.

The Shore Patrol had fished him out of bars,
Disorderly and drunk; he’d been written up
For ragged dungarees, skipping watch
On the quarterdeck and unrep duties
On fueling details. His final day, though,
He was on that rig.
. And then Personnel
Called for a Terminal Evaluation.
In every category on that form–
Skills, discipline, personal appearance–
I wrote a 4.0. The yeoman typed
From this a “smooth eval” which I proofread:
The comma at its end I whited out
To a period.

“Addendum to the Safety Officer’s Account” is reprinted from Crush Depth (Truman State University Press, 2009) and The New Republic.

Michael Spence has driven public-transit buses in the Seattle area full-time for twenty-eight years. His poems have appeared recently in The Gettysburg Review, The Hudson Review, The Sewanee Review, The Southern Review, and Tar River Poetry; other work is forthcoming in The New Criterion and Tampa Review. A bus-driving poem of his was chosen as a finalist for the James Hearst Prize and will appear in the Spring 2013 issue of The North American Review. His third book, Crush Depth, appeared in 2009 from Truman State University Press.

Deborah Woodard

Posted on March 17, 2013 by Kathleen Flenniken

Phantom

I can play each part, be Hamlet, hands in pockets, and then the bikers disappearing over
the lip of the grave. Plus, the dog’s four legs. There’s a cold gold light, everything shaking
and Ophelia newly dead. My initial schlep toward Hamlet and the tannic depths of the glass cap
cast glitter, the plaid shorts stayed snug over the leggings. Let inspiration toss more confetti:
sky turn apricot, mind crack down the visor. Raise the visor. See both sides of the dunce.
I found a little more strength. Summon the dream. Be quick! (Difficult in sun.)
There was the most serene sky with peaks, blue sitting up there awhile with white.
Was there another place? The teabag withers inside my cup, its little paper flag
bumping gently in the air. My long jacket—well, that’s the kind of ease that comes
with green and brown suspenders. The tipsy birds were insects in the distance.
It was déjà vu to clear my throat, begin. My son, dig yourself out. Move. Displace.
The burgundy hedges stayed unruffled, despite Hamlet shambling in and out of them.
I’d like two pairs of legs, please. My son is not very bright. He’s fully leafed, well, almost.
The holly never drowses. Let it scratch out notes on the sky’s paper.
How is hell going to be? Well, hell. What’s the difference between a violin and a viola?
A viola burns more slowly. (There’s more of it. Heh, heh.) Uncover the berries.
The little bits of scarlet make us feel safe, like the grey of bare branches, truisms.
Ah, and now there’s my son Hamlet again. Ophelia guides him with her ungloved hand.

“Phantom” first appeared in Chelsea.

Deborah Woodard was born in New York City and raised in Vermont, and currently lives in Seattle. She holds an MFA from the University of California at Irvine and a PhD from the University of Washington. Her first full-length poetry collection is Plato’s Bad Horse (Bear Star Press, 2006). Her second collection, Borrowed Tales, was released from Stockport Flats in December, 2012. She is the author of three chapbooks, most recently Hunter Mnemonics (hemel press, 2008), which was illustrated by artist Heide Hinrichs. Her translation the Italian of Amelia Rosselli, The Dragonfly: A Selection of Poems 1953-1981, was published by Chelsea Editions (2009). She teaches hybrid creative writing and literature classes at the Richard Hugo House.

Jason Whitmarsh

Posted on March 14, 2013 by Kathleen Flenniken

History of MacGyver

MacGyver, aged 17, escapes a locked car using a toothpick and a can of aerosol. MacGyver, aged 8, plunges twelve stories into a dump truck. He emerges unscathed, carrying a nearly translucent umbrella. MacGyver, aged fourteen months, establishes contact with a friendly behind enemy lines using a pacifier, an English muffin, and a Glock. MacGyver, in utero, counts his possessions: ten soft fingernails, a fine, potentially braidable hair covering everything, any number of already vestigial parts: the muscles of the ear, gills, the tail bone, the tiny appendix.

“History of MacGyver” is reprinted from Poetry Northwest.

Jason Whitmarsh earned his B.A. in mathematics from the University of Chicago and an M.F.A. in poetry from the University of Washington. His poems have appeared in many literary journals, including Yale Review, Harvard Review, Ploughshares,and Fence. His book, Tomorrow’s Living Room, won the 2009 May Swenson Poetry Award. He lives in Seattle with his wife and children.

Michael Bonacci

Posted on March 13, 2013 by Kathleen Flenniken

AND FOR ALL THIS, NATURE IS NEVER SPENT
–Gerard Manly Hopkins

My mother’s on the mountain,
a seventy-five year journey

joined to deadfalls and blowdowns –
the Romance of fallen trees.

The stuff of her, golden dust
in the candy jar that always held lemon drops,

flung to the breeze, lighting on
licorice ferns, salal and salmonberry,

frenetic fronds of fireweed.
Father followed a year later,

asked for the river, the alluvial fan
at the edge of the flats

around the islands and out to sea.
Flipping through field guides

and fingering topographical maps
I try to conjure them,

buds of the earth’s bounty
briefly grasped, and from a distance.

Michael Bonacci‘s collection of poems, The Former St. Christopher, won the 2004 Floating Bridge Chapbook Award. Michael.writes poetry, adapts historical documents for the stage, and is still shopping around that first novel hoping to find an agent who will bite. Artisan bread baking is another way to keep his hands busy, and now that his Japanese style landscape is maturing, he’s learning how to edit with pruning shears. He and his fiancé David Bricka, and their amazing wonder dog Buddy, live in Mount Vernon, WA.

Eric Stepper

Posted on March 10, 2013 by Kathleen Flenniken

What You Say

“Some have tried to help
Or hurt: Ask me what difference
Their strongest love or hate has made.

I will listen to what you say.”
William Stafford

Here you are at my office door again–Bill,
Going on about the stock market and the Federal Reserve–again.
Nominal GDP, gold index, bond fund, funds rate
Short term, long term, rate hike, inflation spike.
The conversation street is one way,
And you supply me my opinion.
I find myself wandering,
And try not to almost make sense,
Start a sentence–I don’t know where it is going–
And see if I can find the end.
Bill at my office door, here I go again.

During the day, Eric Stepper is a mild mannered CPA, but at night he leaves the numbers behind and works on poems. He recently took the next step in his poetry vocation by taking a creative writing class with Derek Sheffield at Wenatchee Valley College. This is his first published poem. A board member for the Chelan County Literacy Council, he lives in Wenatchee, Washington, with his lovely wife, Kristina.

Samar Abulhassan

Posted on March 5, 2013 by Kathleen Flenniken

For My Mother on her 60th Birthday

I am putting together a parcel to send to my mother,
a bilingual volume of poetry, poems translated from the Arabic.

I read the poems in English, pausing
to lift words in Arabic and copy them in my notebook.
My innocent wide-eyed script. I don’t make a dash
to represent a pair of eyes,
or forgo luxurious curves, like someone fluent might.
Earnest child, setting out each word to sea,
releasing the palms with the blessing of heat, to take flight.

I cannot chart my mother’s spine, whether the book
is a paperweight, pretend-chamber of colored sand
or will she ingest the Arabic like liquid,
and veer to the translation, only to hear a small hum inside her:
Sky, brain, heart.

My ink traces your silhouette.

Here is an unknowable space, this margin between mine and yours.
In the spine, I cast a river over despair, a path in which all eyes must pass.
Verdant.

This is just an entrance.

The Butoh master offers, “I speak baby English. Enjoy.”
We move while words are slowly spoken.

Previous generations are summoned.

The accent of my parents used to make me cringe
but this Japanese man has rinsed English into something bald, phosphorescent.

Mother, let’s find this flower through your body.
Flower never sinking, the Butoh master
recites over and over,
as we circle around the room, invisible
center.

I am trying to lift it
to become the girl who cannot see
but dances to the music.
A line has been whispered from
the center of my head
to the ceiling.

Now the body crumpling, seething.

I reach long for the tender symphony. “And in the evening light they started to dance.”

At your son’s wedding, your body leapt up, wooden.
No buoyant whoosh inside, like a loosening, after many prostrations.

So here:
Now that the museum guards have gone home, slip inside
this hypnotic light show.
The sea roars at your feet.
The page is soaked with glittering sea dragons murmuring
private.
Dance on into the night.

Mother, think about the legendary songstress,

vocal cords so
strong she had to stand
several feet away from the microphone.

Feet, arms, belly, yield to reddened.

Most of all, we long for touch. Who has congregated in this room?
I am listening for the wider stance.
Take, for example, gesture. Your word for it much more sensual,
a true beginning. A long sigh and whisper together.
Tumble,
A word learned by the body.

Samar Abulhassan earned an MFA in Creative Writing from Colorado State University in 2001. She teaches for Writers in the Schools, a program of Seattle Arts and Lectures, and the Richard Hugo House. She has published three chapbooks, and lives in Seattle.

Seattle Public Library Haiku Contest

Posted on March 3, 2013 by Kathleen Flenniken

Children, teens and adults are invited to celebrate National Poetry Month and enter The Seattle Public Library’s first haiku contest. Write a haiku that celebrates the library in your life and submit it beginning Monday, March 4. Your haiku is due online before 5 p.m. Friday, March 15. Winning entries will appear on the Library website beginning April 1.

For more information, go to www.spl.org/haiku.

Raymond Carver’s 75th Birthday Event

Posted on March 3, 2013 by Kathleen Flenniken

ANNOUNCING:

A downloadable poster for you to help publicize your Roethke/Carver event

The Raymond Carver Festival will be celebrating the legendary author and poet’s 75th birthday in a series of events this spring in Port Angeles. You are invited to take part in your own community with programs for adults and children, schools, civic organizations, and libraries.

Please note the “Carver/Roethke” button that has been added to The Far Field banner, above. There you will find resources to help you create a program around the poems of Washington’s own Raymond Carver, along with Theodore Roethke. Poet Tess Gallagher (Carver’s widow and a student of Roethke) and poet Alice Derry have secured permissions for poems by Carver and Roethke that you may download for reading, recitation, and discussion, and have designed lesson plans for high school students and elementary students. There is even a beautiful poster that you can download to help you publicize your event.

Please help us spread the word about this marvelous opportunity!

Gerry McFarland

Posted on March 1, 2013 by Kathleen Flenniken

Skipping Stones

I remember the sway of her forearm gentle
as she stepped small by my side up the hill
to the dam at the end of the steep boulevard.

The man-made lake. Summers then were loose,
sunny, long as the warm sidewalk uphill
from her yellow house. We didn’t know the dam

would burst when the fingers of the old fault
worked loose the bound water onto
the evacuated neighborhood. We were

thirteen. We didn’t know she would be thrown
from a horse in Denver, restrained in the brilliant room
while they set the bone, scrubbed the wounds.

We knew the words to Unchained Melody
and all the names of the Beach Boys. We were the small
flesh of the world. We didn’t know the imminence

of her father’s death. I didn’t know
what it meant when my forearm brushed against hers.
The stone has to look like this, I told her.

She showed a girl’s disinterest, wandered, mute
down the shore, touching the hair she had spent an hour
setting while I demonstrated how

to fit the stone in the knuckle, bend close
to the water, swing the arm parallel
the earth. I threw my heart out the end of my fingers.

“Skipping Stones” is reprinted from Sanskrit.

Gerry McFarland graduated with an MFA in Creative Writing from Rainier Writer’s Workshop at Pacific Lutheran University. He is a co-editor at Floating Bridge Press. His work has appeared in Zyzzyva, Crab Creek Review, Pontoon 8, Sanskrit, Crucible, Berkeley Poetry Review, Bayou and many others. He was awarded the 2005 Sam Ragan Prize and was a finalist in the 2003 WinningWriters.comWar Poetry Contest.