L
aurie Klein is a poet, songwriter and visual artist. She connects all
these disciplines through a keen eye for the natural world and a profound
spiritual exploration.
When asked what connects these practices, Klein said, “Wonder Junkie:
my favorite nickname, ever. The natural world stokes my curiosity with
its perils and quirks, its spine-bending dazzle and jolt. My knees go soft.
Delight rises. And then there’s humanity: our stories, our maverick hopes
and spectacular downfalls. Get quiet enough — attuned, yet still loose —
and often, new connections spark. Sight triggers insight. Hopefully, while
fooling around with words or multi-media or music, a dose of marvel
emanates, laced with mercy and truth-telling.”
The root of Klein’s poetry came from crisis and transformation. Klein
said, “If poetry is a landscape, I’m the autumn crocus. After my dad
died, in 1996, my usual pursuits (art, music, theater) stalled out. Clinical
depression set in, hatched tentacles, a near-fatal chokehold on thought.
I tried therapy. Calligraphy. Epic journaling. Poetry’s potent shorthand
mended me, a way to distill and process the seemingly unresolvable.
Spokane writers Susan Cowger and Kris Christensen mentored me, and
wonder sightings resumed, sometimes in the writing itself. My eventual
chapbook, Bodies of Water, Bodies of Flesh, came out in 2004, even won
a prize. Piecing together Where the Sky Opens, my debut collection, felt
like creating a 75-page collage with implied audio. I relished reordering
words, then lines, then the poems themselves, savored that transcendent,
whiz bang magic when pieces attentively clustered became more than
themselves. Poiema Poetry Series editor D.S. Martin helped me make
the work more accessible to a wider readership — crucial, because I like
bridging gaps.
Midcentury high school English classes left many of us with literary
hangovers. Poetry-schmoetry. We didn’t get it. Probably never would.
Feeling doomed to the stupid list back then may still affect, and afflict, us
now: as listeners, readers, even as writers. I’m all for dispelling academic
miasma. When giving a solo reading, I customize intros, offer listeners a
teaser, a head start. I might sing. Or dance a poem. Might interrupt a poem
with a spontaneous aside if I sense confusion or dismay in the audience.
For a few minutes strangers become a community gathered around an idea.
Wondrous.”
When asked about her plans, Klein reflects, “Is there another book in me?
Sky sold well, but promotion mostly confounds me. Publishing individual
pieces feels easier plus I discover stirring new voices in the journal pages
I share with others. Poetry showcases such a wild continuum of subjects,
forms, and styles. What speaks to our needs and sensibilities often shifts,
seismically, over time. Poets I return to include Rilke, Ilya Kaminsky, Kelli
Agodon, Mary Oliver, Luci Shaw. Susan Cowger’s inimitable work moves
me, as do the Psalms and Isaiah. My monthly writing group regularly
leaves me wonderstruck: inspired, instructed, and deeply heartened.”
How to Live Like a Backyard Psalmist
Wear shoes with soles like meringue
and pale blue stitching so that
every day, for at least ten minutes,
you feel ten years old.
Befriend what crawls.
Drink rain, hatless, laughing.
Sit on your heels before anything plush
or vaguely kinetic:
hazel-green kneelers of moss
waving their little parcels
of spores, on hair-trigger stems.
Hushed as St. Kevin cradling the egg,
new-laid, in an upturned palm,
tiptoe past the red-winged blackbird’s nest.
Ponder the strange,
the charged, the dangerous:
taffeta rustle of cottonwood skirts,
Orion’s owl, cruising at dusk,
thunderhead rumble. Bone-deep,
scrimshaw each day’s secret.
Now, lighting the sandalwood candle,
gather each strand you recall
and the blue pen, like a needle:
Suture what you can.
May | June 2018
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