Showing posts with label Issue 6. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Issue 6. Show all posts
Issue 6: Contents
Welcome
“When is a poem not a nature poem?” -- Scot Siegel
One-Act
“First Snow” --
poem by Sarah Rehfeldt, reviewed by Scot Siegel
Poetry, Part 1: How to fish the wind
Vanessa Blakeslee “To
Aaron”
Robert Lietz “The
Understanding”
Tobi Cogswell “This
Kitchen”
“Our
Grandson Seeks Respite from Humidity”
“Thunder”
Scott T. Starbuck “Sign”
“How
to fish the wind”
Judith Barrington “Almassera
Night”
Scott Owens “Beautiful
Tree”
Sherry O’Keefe “Squint”
Book Reviews
Ann Tweedy On Account of Darkness, by Joseph
Soldati
Brian Doose Evensong, by Ingrid Wendt
Poetry, Part 2: Departures and Equatorial Waters
M.J. Iuppa “The
Bees”
“Departures”
David Filer “from Weather Notes”
Kristin Berger “Inside-Out”
Michael Wynn “Hunting”
Paul Watsky “Babyjesus
Day”
David Chorlton “Aftermath”
Chad Haskins “Credit
Score”
Lex Runciman “Equatorial
Waters”
Robert Lietz “Toward
Platinum”
Alyse Bensel “While
Waiting for an Oil Change”
“We
Pretend Like We Lounge Naked
in the Grass Every Day”
in the Grass Every Day”
Art Art in this issue is from Paula Lietz, Sarah Rehfeldt, and Scot Siegel
Issue 6: Welcome
 |
| by Scot Siegel |
October 14, 2011
When is a poem not a nature poem?
--by Scot Siegel
A reader wrote to
me recently with a complaint. Our first! Her note was brief and went like this:
“Why do you publish so many poems by [x]? [He/She] is not a nature poet like
others in your journal.”
Fair question.
Though I had to ask: When is a poem not a
nature poem? The writers here come from all walks of life and hail from different
parts of the world. Some live in large urban centers, while others are located
in rural communities. They write from prairie, city, coast, suburb, desert,
military base, and forest, among other locales.
When is a poet a nature poet? Nature is natural only because we say so.
Nature becomes a resource when we put it to economic use. But nature resists
our efforts to control it; it shapes us as much as we shape it. Our lives
reflect our engagement with, or our turning away from, nature: Sun, Oak, Wind,
Snow influence our writing even as we are thinking of skyscraper, wheelbarrow,
asphalt, eraser. So when is a poet not a nature poet?
I am glad this
journal prompts questioning and feedback. If this topic piques your interest,
please consider submitting a guest essay when we reopen for submissions in
November. We have a new features section called “One-Acts,” which is open to
short pieces of literary criticism (e.g., one-poem reviews) and creative
non-fiction. Our first One-Act follows this letter.
Thank you for
reading, and welcome to the 2011-2012 Fall-Winter Issue of Untitled Country Review.
Warmly,
Scot Siegel
Issue 6: One-Act -- "First Snow"
 |
| by Sarah Rehfeldt |
One-Act
#1:
“First
Snow,” poem by Sarah Rehfeldt, reviewed by Scot Siegel
First
Snow
Stepping out into the silence,
the first print of snow
covering the ground –
I can hear it.
Breath escapes our lips
in hard, expectant spirals.
It asks a question –
Listen.
The answer is enormous.
--Sarah Rehfeldt
The threshold from fall to winter is an ethereal
place, one that can hold promise or bring ruin. Will the snow stick? Is the new
season received as a gift: laughter of children sledding in the streets. Or
does it deliver a crushing blow: power lines down, the elderly snowed-in. How
do our lives take hold in a new year?
Rehfeldt’s poem must live up to its title.
“First Snow” could promise something romantic or foreshadow tragedy. The title
potentially carries the baggage of cliché and sentimentality. This poem is
deceptively simple. It succeeds, in my mind, because of its simplicity,
directness, and lack of ornamentation. This is not James Russell Lowell’s “The
First Snowfall” or Robert Frost’s “Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening.” There
is no melodrama, no hard end-rhymes.
Rehfeldt builds onto the literary canon by
invoking familiar images (footprints and steam rising from breaths) but uses
them in new ways. Here the advancing snowstorm, not the traveler, is “stepping
out” and leaving prints. Here puffs of steam from one’s breath rise, not passively,
but in “hard, expectant spirals.” The rhymes are shushed, but present, like the
sound of skis sliding across a distant frozen lake: silence, snow, lips,
spirals, listen, enormous… A question that is larger than us hovers or looms
under the ice; it is invisible, yet we “can hear it.”
Times are tough. There is much uncertainty. In
“the news” reason gives way to rhetoric, mostly, and we cannot hear the
questions over the racket. We know the problems—with the economy, the
environment, and the social contract that is/was America, among others—are
enormous. But this little poem, in its prescience and contrariness, assures us
that “the answer [too] is enormous.”
Rehfeldt’s poem resonates with one of my
favorite poems by William Stafford (1914-1993), “Reading with Little Sister: A
Recollection” (Crossing Unmarked Snow, University of Michigan, 1998; edited
Paul Merchant and Vincent Wixon):
Reading with Little Sister: A Recollection
The stars have died overhead in their great cold.
Beneath us the sled whispers along. Back there
our mother is gone. They tell us, “If you hold on
the dogs will take you home.” And they tell us never
to cry. We’ll die too, they say, if we
are ever afraid. All night we hold on.
The stars go down. We are never afraid.
While Stafford wrote “Reading with Little
Sister” late in life—a draft first appears in his daily writings of 26 December
1986—the poem harkens to his childhood in Kansas, a time between world wars
when the country sank into the Great Depression. While it is unclear whether
the event in the poem occurred during the Depression, or whether it occurred at
all, that foreboding presence, that “great cold,” is darkly familiar: It is
with us today.
“We are never afraid.” “The answer is enormous.”
Stafford’s and Rehfeldt’s end-lines say it all. These compact little poems
embrace uncertainty, and that is their strength. Yes, the world is a
complicated place, they say—and at times we cannot help but be afraid—but we
must remind ourselves, and teach our children—as our “sled whispers along” and
“[b]reath escapes our lips,”—that we will push on. Ultimately, this is the only
way forward.
Sarah
Rehfeldt lives
in western Washington with her family.
She is a writer, artist, and photographer. Her most recent publication credits include: Third
Wednesday; Dappled Things; Stone Voices; Presence Journal; and
DailyHaiga. Her photography
web pages can be viewed here: www.pbase.com/candanceski
William Stafford (1914-1993). For more information about William
Stafford, including links to his writings and the William Stafford Archives at
Lewis & Clark College, please see: www.williamstafford.org
Scot Siegel edits Untitled Country Review.
Issue 6: Vanessa Blakeslee
 |
| by Paula Lietz |
To
Aaron
As the years pass,
we speak of you with more frequency,
rather than less.
Can you imagine that the living would speak
of the unborn that way?
Perhaps we speak of you more as the
inevitability
of your absence solidifies into stone
with each passing year,
while our longing for you increases.
What would our lives have been like with you
around?
No doubt you would have fallen mercy to my
big-sister-bossing.
I might have turned you into Huckleberry Finn or
the Tin Man
or, dear me, Almanzo Wilder.
Would you and Sissy have ganged up on me?
Would you have dragged me into the prickly pines
and forced my fingers around a football?
Even though we have never met,
I can see you as the third one of us:
light brown hair, slight frame, slim nose.
Would you have grey or brown eyes?
And I can guess why you didn’t come, after all—
the fighting, the selling of all the couches and
toys,
the uncertainty but for good grades.
I forgive you.
But we miss you and hope to see you soon.
We speak of you often, as a family—
over wine and cheese at the Montreal Jazz
Festival,
at weddings and at Christmas.
Did you hear?
David and Sean and the other cousins
stare at our sisterly snickers with strange
love,
but you know them.
Aaron, we miss you.
We’re sorry we didn’t beg Mom for you.
That we thought each other would be enough.
Vanessa Blakeslee
has been awarded grants and fellowships from
the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Yaddo, the Ragdale Foundation and
the United Arts of Central Florida, and her work has
appeared in The Southern Review, The Bellingham Review, and The
Paris Review’s “The Daily” among others. She was a finalist for the
2011 Philip Roth Residency at Bucknell University and the Sozopol Fiction
Seminars. Her website is: www.vanessablakeslee.com.
Issue 6: Robert Lietz
 |
| by Paula Lietz |
The
Understanding
What if there'd been no railroad / radio -- and
would not -- for a long time -- be -- no tarmac
maybe / or strip-mine a half-mile walk uphill
through thorn-tangles -- where
the capguns cracked -- and crabapple arsenals
taught bad kids what kids could --
what would the same words seem -- played down
to scarcely measureable proportions -- or
the children seem -- who would grow
up -- afterward
and well -- and leave us ( I suppose )
what wishing now -- as easily ruled / ruled out --
as easily lost maybe -- as block-dances were
and summer socials -- as old occasions were --
for public music and odd costumes -- when
the disgust itself / the village-wide fatigue assumed
the stairs and wreaths and
ribbons /
the scripts
and instruction manuals -- and the square
itself --
where
one lopped thing stands -- the acres where set flames
or dozers feed themselves -- on skeletal trees and stumps --
where once they shaded families? Even
the mind clears out -- after twenty say / thirty years
remembering. And grandeur the cruel outdoors
exaggerates / plays down -- to say what a poplar
meant -- or groomings made the planet -- this
poplar say -- dropped headlong into skinned water -- but
greening / greening still -- after the cousins / aunts
/ after the uncles say
and the oldest
spooks dance
their unwindings -- while wilder and scarier dozens
doze and flame and redevelop -- since spectacle
must count -- since leather must count -- and
mission pine -- initials reminiscent of hill causes --
since all they had said of pleasure then
or of awaiting -- of avoiding monasteries -- overbooked
with penitents or outlaws in disguises -- must
( after all ) seem belliesful -- when we have asked
what gives / examined the last cliches
and the old name-plates -- having practiced we thought
to speak the names and origins
and
textures --
which must have mattered once -- when the
wines
( varietal ) -- and the goat cheeses
/ the stone roads -- reminiscent of the tastings
and lawn-bowling -- left us
the wonder and the understanding
nature of.
Robert Lietz has over 700 poems in more than one hundred
journals in the U.S. and Canada, in Sweden and U.K, including Agni Review, Antioch Review, Carolina
Quarterly, Epoch, The Georgia Review, Mid-American Review, The Missouri Review,
The North American Review, The Ontario Review, Poetry, and Shenandoah. Seven collections of poems
have been published, including Running in
Place (L’Epervier Press,). At Park
and East Division ( L’Epervier Press,) The
Lindbergh Half-century (L’Epervier Press,) The Inheritance (Sandhills Press,) and Storm Service (Basfal Books). Basfal also published After Business in the West: New and Selected
Poems.
Issue 6: Tobi Cogswell
 |
| by Scot Siegel |
This
Kitchen
“How can the poem and the stink
and
the grating noise – the quality of light,
the
tone, the habit and the dream – be set down alive?”
Cannery
Row, John Steinbeck
Where kisses are given
and kisses received,
the charted course of
coffee and the smell
of jasmine outside
sweet as gold.
This kitchen is community.
It is healing, olives and bread.
It is the evening wine, reflection
of damp and generous faces
in a window masked by
the steam of warm water. Slate
on the floor invites mops and socks,
the slight trace of lemon. This kitchen
is an oil drum playing Calypso beats,
a feral, fertile field swaying with
the clamor of the gas stove’s
pooling flames.
Its inhabitants are hard workers
and hard lovers, a child
who thinks he’s an adult and adults
who wish to be children. It is
a blessed, bright, spicy-warm room,
a nurturing sentinel, like
skin touching skin.
Standing back to back
in the narrow galley, the slight
swell of bodies brushing
holds the promise that when
it’s dark there will be sweets.
Making chiffonades of basil
to grace the salad, the love
is spoken as well as made,
and perhaps that might be
the way to define, and write,
the stories of this loving family.
Our
Grandson Seeks Respite from Humidity
He is ours because I claim him.
We have different storms here,
they will not disturb his sleep.
Only the mildest of thunder
and lightning will glimmer
against his paper-thin eyelids
and superhero dreams.
Ours is the hearth that will keep
him soothed. The only bandana
he will wear is when playing
pirates, it will not be soaked
in ice-water or sweat, just
little-boy imagination and story.
We will love him and keep him safe.
We will love him as we love each other,
our reach expanding to include him
and all his wishes. The moth flies to
the light; we gently extinguish
that light; we gently pinch quiet
that light, and bring him to us with music.
Thunder
It started yesterday
moss weeping green
curled around viney fingerstumps
crackling like fat on the grill
rain a deep percussion in sky’s orchestra
seizure of drops on leaf, hot pink wall roughs
microscoped blades bend to the will of
insects dancing briefly along their path
wet clings like remembered dreams
the smell
Tobi Cogswell is a two-time
Pushcart nominee. She has been published nationally and internationally. She
has four chapbooks and her full-length poetry collection Poste Restante
is available from Bellowing Ark Press. She is the co-editor of San Pedro
River Review (www.sprreview.com).
Issue 6: Scott T. Starbuck
 |
| by Paula Lietz |
Sign
Deer carcass,
cougar track.
Blue heron feathers,
coyote track.
Shura’s ashes in river,
flowers in stone.
Eagle shadow,
no eagle.
How to fish the wind
You start by listening 40 years
so it can put you through enough
to see if you are worthy
of what it has to say.
Most people can’t listen that long
so they have to get the message
second hand from the trees.
The “Sign” poem is based on Scott T. Starbuck’s
partner, the painter and writer Shura Young, who died on April 27, 2011. Shura Young's paintings are at The Portland Art Museum Rental Sales Gallery. Starbuck’s clay art is at The Spirit of the Salmon Fund, and he maintains a web site and 31-minute interview at Poets &
Writers Directory.
Issue 6: Judith Barrington
 |
| by Paula Lietz |
Almassera
Night
Nightingales fresh from the south flute in the
dark.
We listen weighed down by history from four
until dawn
when the aquaducts thrill to a tentative tinkle,
a sudden gurgle, the headlong tumble of water.
Arab hands shaped and laid out the troughs
and pipes under rock, under sand, along the base
of terraces walled by the Romans—stairs climbing
right to the top of the mountain. The call to
prayer
was smothered by bells and confessions, sinners
on bleeding knees who shuffled uphill
past twelve alcoven stations below the
hermitage.
Moorish ruins burn gold in the amber floodlights
that seep into our room like old beliefs—
like the dregs of a prayer, a trickle of grief
from the earth,
so many ancient sorrows that ought to be gone—
wiped out by the weight of god upon god upon
god.
Judith
Barrington is the author of three poetry collections, most
recently Horses and the Human Soul,
selected by Oregon’s State Library for "150 Books for the
Sesquicentennial". Among her awards are The Dulwich International Poetry
Prize and The Stuart Holbrook Award from Literary Arts. She teaches in the
University of Alaska’s MFA Program.
Issue 6: Scott Owens
 |
| by Paula Lietz |
Beautiful
Tree Poem
Lying in bed I hear voices,
muted, distorted, probably just
the fan, sounding as I heard them once
on bended knees, Lord, forgive me.
Other times troubled, dreaming, uncertain,
He
loves me; he loves me not.
I’ll
be back. I promise. I’ll
never
leave you. Sonofabitch!
How
much more can I take?
What’s
the point in trying?
Sometimes if I listen closely I hear
my grandmother on a good day saying
God
is always listening, saying simply,
How
beautiful the trees are.
Author of seven collections of poetry and over
800 poems published in journals and anthologies, Scott Owens is editor of Wild
Goose Poetry Review, Vice President of the Poetry Council of North
Carolina, and recipient of awards from the Pushcart Prize Anthology, the
Academy of American Poets, the NC Writers’ Network, the NC Poetry Society, and
the Poetry Society of SC. He holds an MFA from UNC Greensboro and currently
teaches at Catawba Valley Community College. He grew up on farms and in mill
villages around Greenwood, SC.
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