Release of the Cabbage Looper Moth

Release of the Cabbage Looper Moth

 

 

It beat its fuzzed breastbone against the taut paper towel ceiling

we had constructed over the glass jar, like a fishbowl in its expanse,

the rubber band snug under the rim. My exacting daughter poked air holes,

jaws jutting at new angles, mandibles clamped around the secret of Six.

For days we had held the cocoon captive. Tacky and transparent,

like a spider’s egg sack, we patrolled the tuft for any sign of change,

no idea who was tucked into that dreaming skin while it clung

to a single dried rose hip, cradled by grass and lemon balm.

 

In the dark, the paper crane mobile taunted in slow swirls.

I pulled the thin quilt up to her chin, covering the tanned, river-smooth chest,

white buttons of her pajama shirt undone and flung, as everything is

which I try to tuck at midnight. Within the soft pink cave of her mouth

teeth shifted within bone like tectonic plates, tremoring with song.

The din of the grating of the world. By morning

I barely recognized this creature that tunneled itself to daylight,

shed meconium from its wings with a Pollack flourish against the glass.

The abandoned cotton molt was impossibly small.

 

Before we could name it and give it purpose, the band broke in the garden.

Over sage, under fir. Last seen, the moth trammeled past

her surprised moon-face – shoulder blades unkitting themselves to reach –

through a netting of needles, a pin-prick, blue-bound.

 

– Thank you, Oregon State Poetry Association, for awarding my lil’ poem 1st Place in Poet’s Choice category! This one is for my little bug guardians, A & J.

Poetry and Prose for the People Reading Series, Oct. 21

Poetry and Prose for the People Reading Series Barnes & Noble Lloyd Center, PDX Third Wednesdays (except holiday months) Hosted by Sage Cohen and Tomas Mattox Wednesday, October 21, 7:00 p.m. Barnes & Noble 1317 Lloyd Center // Gift section Portland, OR 97232 503-249-0800

Presenting poets Judith Arcana, Kristin Berger and Laurel Blossom

Judith Arcana writes poems, stories, essays and books. Her recent chapbook, 4th Period English, reads like a play: poems in the voices of high school students talking about immigration. Among her prose books is Grace Paley’s Life Stories, A Literary Biography. She lives in Portland, Oregon; visit her website: juditharcana.com.

Kristin Berger lives with her family in Portland, Oregon, where she serves as an editorial member of VoiceCatcher. Kristin’s poetry and essays have appeared in Calyx, New Letters, The Pedestal Magazine, and The Wild Goose Poetry Review. She is the author of a poetry chapbook, For the Willing (Finishing Line Press, 2008), an Oregon Book Award nominee. Her non-fiction has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Read more at www.kristinberger.wordpress.com.

Laurel Blossom’s book-length narrative poem, Degrees of Latitude, was published by Four Way Books in November, 2007. Her most recent book of lyric poetry is Wednesday: New and Selected Poems, Ridgeway Press, 2004. Earlier books include The Papers Said (Greenhouse Review Press, 1993), What’s Wrong (Cobham & Hatherton Press, 1987), and Any Minute (Greenhouse Review Press, 1979). Her work has appeared in a number of anthologies, including 180 More: Extraordinary Poems for Every Day, edited by Billy Collins (Random House, 2005), and in national journals including Poetry, The American Poetry Review, Pequod, The Paris Review, The Carolina Quarterly, Deadsnake Apotheosis, Many Mountains Moving, Seneca Review, and Harper’s, among others. Her poetry has been nominated for both the Pushcart Prize and the Elliston Prize. Learn more at www.laurelblossom.com.

Praying to Small Gods

Praying to Small Gods

 

The pose mothers take at the end of the day, in the silence,

cheeks blushed by night light, is the bowing of relief.

Sleep, the current that sways, ready to buoy

children into a kelp forest’s slackened safety,

there, but gone from her.

 

They kneel at the foot of the bed.

 

Between inhale and exhale, between prayer and answer,

they dwell in the pause. They have done everything

they could. They have done nothing much.

She Wants to Taste Everything

She Wants to Taste Everything

 

Strawberries send their sister-shoots

across the gravel path, leading the baby

to each spectacular fruit she can reach,

rain-taut and dimpled,

a connect-the-dot game for the willing.

 

She buries her face in the lavender bush

as content as the morning’s fat bees.

An earthworm entertains her

from my opened palm,

wiggling the Good Earth Dance.

 

She thinks the world is edible.

She wants it all at her lips,

devours milk and sunlight

just sitting in dewed pajamas,

her whole body a taproot.

 

Soon, she will learn to use thumb and finger

to pick her way through her desire.

For now, her fists are berry-stained.

Grass blooms between each knuckle,

the earth, compacted, snug inside.

We all have our berry-eyes on, berry lips, chins, knees. In honor of the soo soo sweet & petite Oregon strawberry, and for the marions, logans, thimbles, salmons, huckles and blues in our pails.

A little late….

Just wanted to share this bit of good news, though a couple of years late!!

Sea Stories nominated my essay “Cascade Head: A Map of Belonging” for a Pushcart Prize back in 2007. Guess I didn’t win, but the honor is still very, very nice!

You can read the piece in their archives (http://www.seastories.org/indexAutmnal07.html) and please check out other issues of this unique journal. Unfortunately, because of financial constraints, they have put a halt on submissions at this time.

June 3 First Wednesdays Reading

Come join me for a night of wine and poetry!

 

Oregon Literary Review co-hosts First Wednesdays, a series of
readings, performances and wine-tasting at the Blackbird Wine Shop,
3519 NE 44th off Fremont, Portland.

On June 3, from 7-9 pm, I’ll be reading with Katharine Salzmann, Judith Barrington, and Mike Daily.

Of Katharine Salzmann’s first book Hemopoiesis (persian
pony press, 1995) the Oregonian said, “Human limitation and the
apparent schism between mind and matter are absent here . . . .
Sensual, sensuous, refusing the either-or categories of Western
rationality, this is a poet who apprehends the world in its wholeness,
its gift, and gives it back in kind.”  Her newest chapbook, Prayer
Ceremony, was published by persian pony press in December 2007. Her
poems have appeared in Windfall, The Santa Fe Literary Review,
Fireweed, Take Out, Sojourner & most recently, the online Salt River
Review. Katharine works as a massage therapist & lives in Portland
with her sweetheart & her beloved daughter.

Judith Barrington is a poet and memoirist who has published three
collections of poetry, a prize-winning memoir, and a text on writing
literary memoir which is used all across the United States and in
Australia and Europe. Her most recent poetry is collected in a
chapbook, Lost Lands, winner of the 2008 Robin Becker Chapbook Award.
Her most recent full length book is Horses and the Human Soul about
which reviewer Barbara Drake, writing in Calyx, said: “These stunning
poems find moral high ground in the world of nature and animals
without falsifying that world.”

Her memoir, Lifesaving, won the Lambda Book Award and was a finalist
for the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for the Art of the Memoir. She is
well known as a writer and much sought-after as a teacher. She is a
faculty member of the low-residency program at the University of
Alaska at Anchorage and a web mentor for the University of Minnesota.
She offers workshops at many conferences and writing events in the
U.S. as well as in England and Spain.

Mike Daily is a novelist and recording artist who occasionally
performs his work in Portland, Oregon. He was vocalist for the
innovative fiction rock band, O’GRADY. His second book ALARM (2007;
issued with two CDs) carries on the first-person narratives of Mick
O’Grady, introduced in Daily’s first published novel, Valley (1998).
Watch YouTube videos from shows at Ash Street Saloon, Disjecta
Gallery, Someday Lounge and other venues, and read the O’GRADY blog at
http://www.mickogrady.blogspot.com. Daily writes a poem a day at http://www.mrvicedhonest.wordpress.com as participant
in TheUndeniables.org writers’ workshop.

Writing the Life Poetic — an interview with Sage Cohen

In honor of National Poetry Month, here’s an interview with poet, essayist and educator, Sage Cohen. Her new book, Writing the Life Poetic, will be available soon (and ready to pre-order now at Amazon). You are invited to her book-release party, May 13 at the Llyod Center Barnes and Noble, in Portland, Oregon!

Q&A with Sage Cohen, Author of

Writing the Life Poetic: An Invitation to Read and Write Poetry

a new book from Writer’s Digest Books

 

 

How does poetry make the world a better place to live?

I think poetry fills the gap left by the so-called objective truth that dominates our media, science and legislation. Many of us want to comprehend and communicate the complexity of human experience on a deeper, more soulful level. Poetry gives us a shared language that is more subtle, more human, and—at its best—more universally “true” than we are capable of achieving with just the facts.

How has integrating the reading and writing of poetry into your life impacted you?

I will risk sounding melodramatic in saying that poetry saved my life. I stumbled into a writing practice at an extremely vulnerable time in my early teenage years. Poetry gave me then, as it does today, a way of giving voice to feelings and ideas that felt too risky and complicated to speak out loud. There was a kind of alchemy in writing through such vulnerabilities…by welcoming them in language, I was able to transform the energies of fear, pain and loneliness into a kind of friendly camaraderie with myself. In a way, I wrote myself into a trust that I belonged in this world. 

 

Do people need an advanced degree in creative writing in order to write poetry?

Absolutely not! Sure, poetry has its place in the classroom; but no one needs an advanced degree in creative writing to reap its rewards. What most people need is simply a proper initiation. I wrote Writing the Life Poetic to offer such an initiation. My goal was that everyone who reads it come away with a sense of how to tune into the world around them through a poetic lens. Once this way of perceiving is awakened, anything is possible!

 

Why did you write Writing the Life Poetic?

While working with writers for the past fifteen years, I have observed that even the most creative people fear that they don’t have what it takes to write and read poetry. I wrote Writing the Life Poetic to put poetry back into the hands of the people––not because they are aspiring to become the poet laureate of the United States––but because poetry is one of the great pleasures in life.”

 

Who is Writing the Life Poetic written for?

Practicing poets, aspiring poets, and teachers of writing in a variety of settings can use Writing the Life Poetic to write, read, and enjoy poems; it works equally well as a self-study companion or as a classroom guide. Both practical and inspirational, it will leave readers with a greater appreciation for the poetry they read and a greater sense of possibility for the poetry they write.

 

What sets Writing the Life Poetic apart from other poetry how-to books?

The craft of poetry has been well documented in a variety of books that offer a valuable service to serious writers striving to become competent poets. Now it’s time for a poetry book that does more than lecture from the front of the classroom. Writing the Life Poetic was written to be a contagiously fun adventure in writing. Through an entertaining mix of insights, exercises, expert guidance and encouragement, I hope to get readers excited about the possibilities of poetry––and engaged in a creative practice. Leonard Cohen says: “Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash.” My goal is that Writing the Life Poetic be the flame fueling the life well lived.

 

What makes a poem a poem?

This is one of my favorite questions! I’ve answered it in my book, but it’s a question that I’m answering anew every day. And that’s what I love about poetry. It’s a realm where invention is not limited entirely by definition; there is room enough for the endless possibilities of the human. Every time we try to draw a line around what a poem is, something spills over into the next frame, shifting the point of view and demanding new names: olive, token, flax, daffodil. A poem is all of these, or none of them, depending on the quality of light and how the blade in the next room stirs the night.

 

What do you think people’s greatest misperceptions are about poetry?

I think the three greatest stereotypes about the writing of poetry are:

 

1.      That one has to be a starving artist or deeply miserable to write great poetry.

2.      That reading and writing poetry are available only to an elite inner circle that shares secret, insider knowledge about the making of poems.

3.      That poetry does not fund prosperity.

 

I hope very much that Writing the Life Poetic helps offer alternatives to some of these attitudes and perceptions.

 

I’d love to conclude with a poem of yours. Would you be willing to share one?

Of course! Happy to!

 

Leaving Buckhorn Springs

By Sage Cohen

 

The farmland was an orchestra,

its ochres holding a baritone below

the soft bells of farmhouses,

altos of shadowed hills,

violins grieving the late

afternoon light. When I saw

the horses, glazed over with rain,

the battered old motorcycle parked

beside them, I pulled my car over

and silenced it on the gravel.

The rain and I were diamonds

displacing appetite with mystery.

As the horses turned toward me,

the centuries poured through

their powerful necks and my body

was the drum receiving the pulse

of history. The skin between me

and the world became the rhythm

of the rain keeping time with the sky

and into the music walked

the smallest of the horses. We stood

for many measures considering

each other, his eyes the quarter notes

of my heart’s staccato.  This symphony

of privacy and silence: this wildness

that the fence between us could not divide.

 

 

 

 

About Sage Cohen

 

Sage Cohen is the author of Writing the Life Poetic: An Invitation to Read and Write Poetry (Writers Digest Books, 2009) and the poetry collection Like the Heart, the World. An award-winning poet, she writes four monthly columns about the craft and business of writing and serves as Poetry Editor for VoiceCatcher 4. Sage co-curates a monthly reading series at Barnes & Noble and teaches the online class Poetry for the People. To learn more, visit www.writingthelifepoetic.com. Drop by and join in the conversation about living and writing a poetic life at www.writingthelifepoetic.typepad.com!

This is Why I Write

This is Why I Write

                       

to save the breath within me

the one that will soon join a company of breaths become

fog voice       robin warble       the blues

sifting through a cracked kitchen window

 

I write to savor the breath that is still mine

but borrowed               who knows

how deep air’s roots tap

who had it before me

who is holding onto the same tether

holding their breath, too

 

will I fail to get it all down        get it all out       exhale to the core

of course I will

 

will I dream by day

above traffic

within the chaos of children circling my shins

like gullible fish

dream by night

                                    the pillow’s slack-spot cradling a brain

that plots too much

 

I cannot help but do it       

like habit                     like a good drug

that sustains me no matter that mostly

my breath hovers above

a blank page.

 

For the VoiceCatcher Collective… for the great creative prompt!

2nd place isn’t so bad!

A couple of nice things to annouce…

The 2008 New Letters Readers Award, runner-up in poetry was given to my poem “Ultrasound.”

And The Edible Communities’ 2009 EDDY Award, runner-up for Best Last Page, went to Edible Portland for my poem “Recipe,” which they printed so sweetly with a sprig of dill behind it.  (“Recipe” was also published in Alimentum).  Edible Portland received 2 first and 6 second place honors… such an amazing and necessary group and publication.

In the Tenth Month

In the Tenth Month

                        for James

 

 

Most everything is clear.

The night’s moon halves

between fir limb and roof pitch

a blue pool spilling

into the steel sink, a shine

that out-weighs street lamps

and my own turning on.

 

Midnight rivers and tributaries

spider down my breasts, down

mountain of baby

covered in parchment,

submerged turtle shell,

to the shadows carried

in the moment’s underbelly.

 

The white kimono

inked in indigo flowers

no longer closes,

the sash atop my ribs

tail of comet

loose end of the script

still spooling over

the page, the quill quivering

before dawn floods

the bearable dark.

 

10 months and 2 years… Happy Birthday, my Crocus Boy!

(from For the Willing, Finishing Line Press, 2008.)