What are the best ways for someone to engage
with poetry?
I believe in reading poetry, from the page. Out loud
if possible. I like to think of a poem as an act of
reciprocity. I’m there; the poem is there. And so is the
ghost of the poet who wrote it — living or dead. We
communicate. Preferably the poem isn’t mine — I can
spend time with my own work, but I learn something,
as we do when we interact with another interesting
person, by participating with someone else’s art.
Love Poem for the Flood
After the flood I wanted to lie down in the brown
muck of the field and let the earth swallow me.
I wanted to let the earth swallow me the way it had
Who are your favorite poets? What are your favorite
events? the land, water rising up out of the ground,
One of my favorite things in the Inland Northwest
right now is KPBX’s Poetry Moment. After The
Writer’s Almanac ended, Chris Maccini put together
a daily show with regional authors reading a poem a
day, many with ties to Spokane. So that’s an event,
every morning at 9 am, on Spokane Public Radio.
We’re fortunate that groundbreaking poets live in the
Pacific Northwest. For example, Melissa Kwasny’s
work should be required reading for every aspiring
writer — she’s a critic, poet, and teacher. Mita
Mahato, a Seattle poet and visual artist, is making
cut paper narratives that transcend genre and draw
attention to the devastation and beauty of a changing
planet. I adore the poetry of Laura Read, Ellen
Welcker, Kathryn Smith, Katharine Whitcomb, and
Taneum Bambrick, with whom I trade manuscripts in
progress. I consider myself incredibly lucky to work
closely with a community of such scope, who also
happen to be teachers and editors, and who organize
and frequent events — Jonathan Johnson, Nance Van
Winckel, Tod Marshall, Christopher Howell, Tim
Greenup, Sharma Shields, Brooke Matson, Thom
Caraway — pitching in to make Get Lit! happen, as
well as local events at Millwood Print Works or Spark
Central.
And then there are poets whose work I teach, who
appear regularly in publications that influence my
students’ developing aesthetics: Eduardo Corral,
Natalie Diaz, Aileen Keown Vaux, Dorianne Laux,
and Jamaal May. I can’t name them all here — my list
is already obnoxiously long! I feel gratitude for how
small the writing world is — and how supportive we
can be of one another.
falling from the sky, flowing from the hills, spilling
out of rivers. I wanted to spill out of rivers
into the mouth of earth. I wanted the mouth of earth
on my mouth, the blue of sky eclipsed by our kiss.
I wanted our kiss, an eclipse, to flow over the grass
like a flood and muck up gravity. I wanted gravity flooding
my body. I wanted my body pressed into the field,
the field pulling my body deeper, the deep of my body
fielded by mud. I wanted to be a flood. I wanted flood
to know how I felt. I wanted the felt blue sky to lie on its back.
March | April 2019
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