Poet David Biespiel

The final poet of our Portland Lit Club mini-series is local David Biespiel. He’s the editor of P oetry Northwest and the Director and Writer-in-Residence of The Attic Writer’s Workshop. He writes a monthly column for the Oregonian on poetry. All this leaves little time for Portland to hear his own poetry, so here is our sampling of his work.

It's extremely appropriate that it should publish today, as today is the first day of Poetry Northwest's Week of the Odes. David Biespiel's poetry breathes of Texas, dust, slight breezes and quiet contemplation. From Shattering Air, with permission from BOA Editions, Ltd. -- with a forward by Stanley Plumly.


"I Count A Hundred Falling Stars Each Summer"

It was dawn. The shoe string of its light broke,
Stalled, blazed. I could trace its topaz life
As it burned backward in time.
That whorl, that moment after
Falling was lined with desire
And lined with the yellow light of sorrow too.
The awe glazing like a sigh

Almost loud enough to stop the night
From turning over: over the live oak’s hallowed
Leaves, over the this-way-that-way stillness
In the willow, over the silence blowing
At the other side of all I can remember,
Golden, newborn in the night, any night
Come down, come down from the Texas sky.


"In The Dream I’m Running"

Out the back door. Over a bleak
Rise to the ocean. The beach lifts
Out of the dawn-mist grace of the air.
Out of the faint dunes’ fenceless sheen.
The sun burns the mist with its one blink.
It shines on the sandshale, on the seasalt,
And the white-skinned waves. The water
Another journey worth floating out into.

The tide breaking, easing back.
The child I wouldn’t keep.
Whispers in the tern’s flight,
Falls in my arms. Turns, falls.
Eyes gone blank. Forgetting the world
Never seen. The child blowing
Its only breath into the other life.


"The Dying Come Back"

Like the only cool moment of summer
In the dry soil, in brown grass.
You have to lie there where wind gets low
The way lovers can who can’t stop remembering
To each other. A hand through hair,
A hand pausing at the top of the neck,
Blood coming back. It’s only wind carrying
The crow’s call, calling and searing the air.

It’s only the heartbreak and split-
Fall of a wave, then another,
Unpolished comings and goings.
Meanderless questions the dead
Ask in my sleep: How many times to swim
These waters? How many times on the sand,
Under the namesless sun, to lay the body down?


Kerri Buckley is a writer and artist in the Pacific Northwest. She is the host of The Literary Cafe, which airs the first Monday morning of the month on Coast Community Radio.

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Poet Natalie Goldberg


Natalie Goldberg was in Portland on Valentine’s Day. I interviewed her, then heard her talk that evening. It was her birthday. She told the audience she wrote poems that were never published, so she puts one in each of her books on writing. Never published, except for the collection Top of My Lungs (Overlook Press), which includes her art, and now, our Portland Lit Club.

We are thrilled to publish one of Natalie’s poems, which she read to a huge crowd at Powell’s City of Books, receiving thunderous applause. While it’s not exactly about summer, it’s not about winter, either, which is why it’s perfect for this mini-series. The way she read, slowly, deliberately, with her accent, and the pressure in her voice broke my heart.

Here, with permission from Overlook Press, Free Press (Simon and Schuster) and Natalie Goldberg, is that poem, reprinted also in her latest book Old Friend From Far Away (Free Press).

"Top Of My Lungs"

Even though I am unhappy
I come home singing at the top of my lungs
Shovel off the new snow and shove it on the old
Open the useless screened porch door
and take off my big boots
There are fried eggs
yellow as pearls
The old bed I dive into like a warm whale
The phone ringing
that duck on the wall
And even though I am unhappy
I sleep with the peace of flying angels
And even though I am sad
my wallet's empty
I buy the best soap
And even though my heart is hurting
out of sure will
I come home singing with the last night wind
and the first morning star
and the canary
and the summer that was killed below our house

I walk down to the Rainbow Café
call my Catholic friend Mary to come
have a drink and eat a turkey sandwich
The down coat I wear all winter still has the goose feathers
from a hundred flying birds
They let us smoke at our small table
Mary will always meet me here
They fill your glasses with the most sparking water
for free
and the cold moon rises over the marquee
of the Suburban World theater

So even though I am unhappy
I throw back my old goat throat
and sing slowly
"Oh my darlin' Clementine"
by the beautiful lake in Minnesota
as the pressure of the black night cold
moves in on us from all ten directions
I sing to the moon above the lake
"You are lost and gone forever"
calling the pure beast of loneliness down from the sky
with the old American song haunting city lights
"Dreadful sorry Clementine"
and though the very earth has swelled up
like an elephant with pain
I stand on its back singing
in this sad universe
where one lover leaves another for all time
and nothing to say with your feet on the ground

---

Portland Lit News:

Next Friday begins Poetry Northwest's Week of the Odes, with an appearance by Stanley Plumly on September 28 (4:00pm) at Powell’s on Hawthorne. Polish up your odes, sign up for the magazine’s newsletter, subscribe to the magazine. And don’t miss Stanley Plumly’s appearance. I’ll be writing about his new book, Posthumous Keats in two weeks.

The Attic has new writing classes to check out for writers and for teachers. A meeting for teachers, students and parents is Saturday, September 27. 

My freelance writing classes begin the final week of this month. Visit www.GoldenWordsmith.com for more details.

Next week features the final poet in this season’s mini-series, Portland's own David Biespiel, very appropriate, for this upcoming week is his week. Best of luck to Poetry Northwest with their grand event.

Kerri Buckley is a writer and artist in the Pacific Northwest. She is the host of The Literary Cafe, which airs the first Monday morning of the month on Coast Community Radio.

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Poet Jack B. Bedell

This week’s mini poetry series continues, and it is my pleasure to present the work of Jack B. Bedell, Ph.D, who teaches at Southeastern Louisiana University as an Associate Professor of English and Coordinator of Creative Writing. He edits Louisiana Literature and directs the Louisiana Literature Press. He has been a writer-in-residence in the past at PSU, and will soon be doing a reading at Pacific University. 

I received a second-hand education from him on poetry through one of his students, Wayne Cain. A great deal of what I, myself, know about poetry came from Jack Bedell’s imparted wisdom -- mini-lessons, discussions over time, a question asked, the reply would be “Well, Jack would say....”  It was a great interlude of continued teaching in my life, and I am please to present these poems from his latest book Come Rain, Come Shine (Texas Review Press).

Dr. Jack’s poems are full of tenderness for his family, his roots, and are pure Louisiana -- cane fields, bullfrogs and bayous. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.

"Fếte de la Roulaison"

All morning cane trucks have driven into the mill,
bringing the last stalks for the grinding. The cutters

have burned the fields from outside in and wait
at the edges, guns turned toward rabbits

for the stew. The children run behind the flames,
ruddy as the sky from playing too close to ground.

The women raise tables in the clearing, spread
white cloths for the feast. Last year’s dresses

hang on them, bland from the wash and begging
for the breeze to stir someplace close enough

to remind them winter is coming and this year’s cane
will bring band-new dresses and food from town.

"My Wife Bathing"      

She spends an hour in slow curve
tracing and retracing the bend of elbow,
the back of knee. A long day
frets off her into the water
with soaps and oils, steam rising
toward acceptance of its close.
Her hands hover constantly
stirring her thoughts from one end
of the tub to the other, painting release
across her body.  Slow-eyed and smiling,
she turns to her stomach, the slope of her back
and her shoulders spreading into the heat.
Around her, our house is still.
Even the air waits for her to rise
out of her joy and into the room --
refreshed, clean, and more beautiful
than anything I have ever known.

"Jean Lafitte at Bath"

I put my son to bath the other night
and set about shaving for my next day’s work.
His load of toys seemed random at first glance--
a few ships with crew, rubber alligators,
a treasure chest of Mardi Gras doubloons--
nothing worth breaking the comfort of lather and blade,
until I heard my mother in his voice.

He told himself the story of Jean Lafitte
in the same words my mother had used for me,
how the pirate sailed up Bayou Lafourche to hide
his treasure from the English navy, resting
only on moonlit nights, tying his ship
to the banks, his men pitching chicken parts
in all directions to draw the alligators
so no one could swim up on them as they slept.

He poured these words without taking a breath,
like the Frenchman’s freedom meant something to us all,
like the victory of watching the English sails
wander aimlessly around Grand Isle
was our own treasure to share coin by coin.
He ordered his men to leave food and clothes
at every dock just to make it so.

I didn’t even have to turn around
to feel the pirate’s sunrise on my neck,
to see my son’s blue eyes glisten at the shore
as the trappers’ daughters stepped toward him, giggling,
his ship making its way to open waters,
that Frenchmen’s treasure safe and glimmering
as it fell straight from my mother’s hands to his.

*Reprinted with permission by Jack B.Bedell, Ph.D.

Kerri Buckley is a writer and artist in the Pacific Northwest. She is the host of The Literary Cafe, which airs the first Monday morning of the month on Coast Community Radio.

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Poet Jay Leeming

 

“His poems are witty, winged beings that dive straight to the playful, lunatic heart of human companionship.” — Robert Bly
Now that September has arrived, kids are back in school and we're back on schedule, aren't we? Is our wildness in check? To celebrate these beautiful early days of September, I'm posting a mini-poetry series. These poems celebrate the balance of summer and fall, work and play, and all points in between.

The first is New England poet Jay Leeming. When Robert Bly visited Portland two years ago, he read some of Leeming's poetry. Jay Leeming's first book, Dynamite on a China Plate (The Backwaters Press), celebrates all the things above, and will remind you of the days you carried books home from school thinking, instead, about a ball game, or when you were hard at work on something that mattered. Read on....

"Exit with Moose"

A moose walks into the living room, and stands among my family drinking cocktails. We put down our glasses. This is why the vines have been coming in the kitchen windows, why last week the bathroom ceiling fell in. Brother gets into the car, then mother, father; with only a suitcase full of ribbons. I am ready to go. The moose can have the house now. My foot is on fire, and the moon is in the backyard singing. Get up from the poem. Get up before it’s too late, walk with your lamp off through the fields of the first light, to where the birds sing in the dark, and the dew is on the grass.

"Man Writes Poem"

This just in a man has begun writing a poem
in a small room in Brooklyn. His curtains
are apparently blowing in the breeze. We go now
to our man Harry on the scene, what’s

the story down there Harry? “Well Chuck
he has begun the second stanza and seems
to be doing fine, he’s using a blue pen, most
poets these days use blue or black ink so blue

is a fine choice. His curtains are indeed blowing
in a breeze of some kind and what’s more his radiator
is ‘whistling’ somewhat. No metaphors have been written yet,
but I’m sure he’s rummaging around down there

in the tin cans of his soul and will turn up something
for us soon. Hang on--just breaking news here Chuck,
there are ‘birds singing’ outside his window, and a car
with a bad muffler has just gone by. Yes...definitely

a confirmation on the singing birds.” Excuse me Harry
but the poem seems to be taking on a very auditory quality
at this point wouldn’t you say? “Yes Chuck, you’re right,
but after years of experience I would hesitate to predict

exactly where this poem is going to go. Why I remember
being on the scene with Frost in ’47, and with Stevens in ’53,
and if there’s one thing about poems these days it’s that
hang on, something’s happening here, he’s just compared the curtains

to his mother, and he’s described the radiator as 'Roaring deep
with the red walrus of History.’ Now that’s a key line,
especially appearing here, somewhat late in the poem,
when all of the similes are about to go home. In fact he seems

a bit knocked out with the effort of writing that line,
and who wouldn’t be? Looks like...yes, he’s put down his pen
and has gone to brush his teeth. Back to you, Chuck.” Well
thanks Harry. Wow, the life of the artist. That’s it for now,

but we’ll keep you informed of more details as they arise.

"Supermarket Historians"

All historians should be supermarket cashiers.
Imagine what we’d learn;
“Your total comes to $10.66,
and that’s the year the Normans invaded Britain.”
Or, “That’ll be $18.61, the year
the Civil War began.”

Now all my receipts are beaches
where six-year olds find bullets in the sand.
My tomatoes add up to Hiroshima,
and if I’d bought one more carton of milk
the cashier would be discussing the Battle of the Bulge
and not the Peloponnesian War.

But I’m tired of buying soup cans
full of burning villages,
tired of hearing the shouts of Marines
storming beaches in the bread aisle.
I want to live in a house
carved into a seed
inside a watermelon --
to look up at the red sky
as shopping carts roll through the aisles
like distant thunder.

*Poems reprinted with permission from Jay Leeming, courtesy The Backwaters Press.

Kerri Buckley is a writer and artist in the Pacific Northwest. She is the host of The Literary Cafe, which airs the first Monday morning of the month on Coast Community Radio.

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If your plans for this Thursday are still TBD, consider checking out opening night for TBA:08. The Time-Based Art festival kicks off this year with Anne Halprin’s “Blank Placard Happening.”

The participatory-performance art demonstration includes the “audience” in a reenactment of a march staged by Halprin in 1968. “Blank Placard Happening” was originally performed by the San Francisco Dancer’s Worskshop, but will be rejuvenated this year by TBA:08 attendees. Participants are invited to dress in white and bring a blank white sign with them to the PNCA’s Swigert Commons. A march towards TBA’s epicenter, dubbed “The Works” and located in the Leftbank building located at 240 N Broadway, will ensue at 8:30pm.

Upon arriving at The Works, marchers will be greeted by musical and visual synthesis. For starters, Deelay Ceelay will present Deelay Ceelay Have Nothing to Say, a video/performance that blends the work of a filmmaker and musician with a percussion artist. (I’m imagining a production similar to Tracy and the Plastics, a singer/performer who has performed live at past TBA festivals against a projected film backdrop of various recorded characters played by Tracy.)

Following in the opening night lineup is a performance by Flash Choir, a singing duo, and DJ Acidophilus. While this DJs stage name reaks of Northwest homeopathy, DJ Acidophilus actually hails from New York and has enjoyed an international career that suits his collection of global music.

The TBA kick-off party wont just be a great place to rub elbows with artsy hotties, it’s also free! For more information about opening night and the rest of the TBA schedule, visit PICA’s website.

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