| From and About Limbs of the Pine, Peaks of the Range Poems by Twenty-Six Pacific Northwest Poets | ||
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"114 poems breathed into life by 26 contemporary poets. Innovative. Touching. Thought-provoking. Limbs of the Pine, Peaks of the Range includes a wealth and variety of rhymed metrical and formal verse by accomplished Pacific Northwest writers. This anthology offers truth at every turn. Rich in feeling, profound in insight, these are poems you will remember long after closing the book." —Terry Martin |
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"For more than a decade David D. Horowitz, with his Rose Alley Press, has been on a mission: to create fine books of poetry where the varied music of language matters. Limbs of the Pine, Peaks of the Range features some of the Northwest's best poets working within the tradition. To publish such a book, in this day and age, is something of a radical gesture. For poetry lovers, the book is a treasure." —Mike Dillon |
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THE ANTHOLOGY POETS: Robinson Bolkum David Mason Diana Brement Rebecca Meredith Susan Casey Tatyana Mishel Dennis Caswell Geoff Pope Lyn Coffin J. Andrew Rodriguez Nancy Dahlberg Byron L. Sacre Ellen Elizabeth Randolph Douglas Schuder Victoria Ford Derek Sheffield Julie Gerrard Margaret D. Smith Brenda I. Givens Michael Spence Sharon Hashimoto Joannie Kervran Stangeland Anna Maria Hong Len Tews Donald Kentop Richard Wakefield THE STORM Beneath this fragile calm, I am the rogue horse, a wild mare against the sky, tail streaming, hooves pounding the hours. I thunder through the cluttered alley of shriveled leaves and last week's trash. I am the stubborn south wind blazing through the winter brush, crashing across the passive land. I have chafed at the low-pressure hisses, huffed up a cold sweat of steam. Tight afternoons of routine are stoked by small jibes, near misses, absent fractions that feed the squall until I rage wide open, gallop into this gale. Copyright © 2007 by Joannie Kervran Stangeland THE RAMP I Slowly rolling a steel wheelchair through sawdust, rubber vein pulsing under the skin of his left arm, he watches. Neil hammers, Travis saws, I measure, and nothing, we know, squares in his sight, carpenter, grandfather, white-haired overseer. In back seats on the drive to church, we had heard our fathers tell the stories of the houses he raised, hands scoured and trousers cuffed by dinner. One last shim and we stand in the dust of our sins, watching him steer down our skewed cuts. A little steep but it will do for Sabbath and dialysis. II Neil swings a sledge, Travis stacks the scrap, and I jerk my hammer in reverse, cleats jangling to concrete. From the doorsill, no one reckons our mistakes. Wood wrenches free of wood, and we hear again Save yourself, his wish to see us doused in Christ in the two weeks it took for his blood to poison him. The damned and all but meticulous, we straighten and sweep, lock and leave with the last nails clutched in our hands. Copyright © 2007 by Derek Sheffield THINGS TO DO Walk the piano, mow the groceries, clean out your congressman, empty the cat, learn to speak a foreign vegetable, preserve your mother's habitat, polish the dentist, pay down your gods, take action now, before Al Gore melts. Make a commitment! Ignore everything until you've attended to everything else. Copyright © 2007 by Dennis Caswell ELEGY FOR MINOR VOICES They never gripped the moral sweet spot tight enough to squeeze the juice from it, that round and satisfying taste, like comfort food, or door-slamming thud that loosens the joints and clears the head of doubt in matters right and wrong. They never stood on solid ground, too introspective, slow to act, at ease with ambiguity and paradox; believed in thinking; were inclined to brood then come down squarely in the middle, feet astride the fence; and so they failed to please their enemies and friends. They cried, A pox on both your houses, yet they never laid a pipeline straight to God, or advertised opinion as the truth, or understood the oxymoron holy war, or bombed a town or bus, or used the term crusade, or tried to have your daughter circumcised. Copyright © 2007 by Donald Kentop TI LEAF LEI Under, my aunt insists, always twist under, a green snake coiling from her hands one leaf at a time. I watch her wring the fibers, her strong fingers crushing the blades. Arms stiff, I feel the sticky salts of my body squeezed out of my pores. Is this enough? I ask. The thin line of her mouth steadies her weaving. In reply, the ends shuffle and turn. Chinese doves soar into humidity that weights me to the ground. My fingers learn so slowly. She picks another leaf to braid into the moist chain; knots rising in a pattern. Our heads leaning closer, I want to knead the soreness from my hands. The leis grow towards our feet like roots. Their ends unconnected, they will hang open, heavy and new against our necks. I ask how long should I make this? She answers, As long as you need to. Copyright © 2003 by Sharon Hashimoto
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