Mosses, Slugs, and Mount Rainier<\/p>\n
Roethke’s last words to me: “Beefeater all right?”<\/em> <\/p>\n Leaning forward, cupping an ear When critics passed over his vision of rapture, Students in the back row heard him swear His classes spilled to the Blue Moon\u2019s bar He mouthed words like smoke, dusk,<\/em> and cincture.<\/em> He gave us our sonnets with circled clutter: <\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cMosses, Slugs, and Mount Rainier\u201d is for Professor Nelson Bentley who taught at the University of Washington from 1952 to 1989. This poem was published in Limbs of the Pine, Peaks of the Range: Poems by Twenty-Six Pacific Northwest Poets<\/em> (Rose Alley, 2007).<\/p>\n Derek Sheffield\u2019s <\/a>A Revised Account of the West<\/em> won the Hazel Lipa Environmental Chapbook Award<\/a> judged by Debra Marquart. His full-length collection was runner-up for the 2012 Emily Dickinson First Book Award.\u00a0His poems have appeared in Poetry,<\/a> The Georgia Review, Orion, The Southern Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review,\u00a0<\/a><\/em>\u00a0Terrain,<\/a><\/em> and Wilderness, <\/em>and he is the recent winner of an Artist Trust Literary Fellowship.<\/em><\/a> He lives with his family outside Leavenworth, WA, and teaches poetry and nature writing at Wenatchee Valley College.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Mosses, Slugs, and Mount Rainier Roethke’s last words to me: “Beefeater all right?” –Nelson Bentley (1918 – 1990) Leaning forward, cupping an ear For every student reader, he loved a great refrain Tinctured with mosses, slugs, and Mount Rainier. … Continue reading
\n–Nelson Bentley (1918 – 1990)<\/p>\n
\nFor every student reader, he loved a great refrain
\nTinctured with mosses, slugs, and Mount Rainier.<\/p>\n
\nHe licked a pencil and penned \u201cLetter to Robert Hayden.\u201d
\nLeaning forward, cupping an ear,<\/p>\n
\nRoethke\u2019s song could match the mind of Auden.
\nTinctured with mosses, slugs, and Mount Rainier,<\/p>\n
\nFor Bud and Blake and windows mottled with rain.
\nLeaning forward, cupping an ear,<\/p>\n
\nAs the Denny clock rang another noon
\nTinctured with mosses, slugs, and Mount Rainier,<\/p>\n
\nOmit?<\/em> O, in every concise beauty, Nelson
\nLeans forward and cups a wakeful ear
\nTinctured with mosses, slugs, and Mount Rainier.<\/p>\n