where we encourage and support your
trying out new or familiar words in familiar
or new forms—music and prose count as
poetry too, you know—among community
members who are doing pretty much the
same thing: trying to answer Mary Oliver's
question, "what is it you plan to do with
your one wild and precious life?"
Sponsored & Organized by:
Community Literacy Journal
PANK Magazine
Friday April 17th 2009:
National Poetry Month
Keweenaw Poetry Anthology Reading
Community Arts Center, Hancock
6:00-8:00 p.m.
Information:
Michael Moore
mmoore@mtu.edu
(906) 370-0206
Hancock High School, March '09
Photo from Karen Johnson, Finlandia University
Zoe, reading, Vertin
Gallery, September '08
Keweenaw Poetry: Volume I
The Community Poetry Series, in
collaboration with PANK Magazine
and the Community Literacy Journal
invite your submissions for an anthology
of poetry written by Keweenaw poets.
Details here.
Iowa, January
In the long winter nights, a farmer's dreams are narrow.
Over and over, he enters the furrow.
— Robert Hass
From Crow Testament
Crow rides a pale horse
into a crowded powwow
but none of the indians panic.
Damn, says Crow, I guess
they already live near the end of the world.
— Sherman Alexie
Wild Geese
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting--
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
— Mary Oliver
Love Song
You've got nice knees.
Your black shoes shine like taxis.
You are the opposite of
all farting and foulness.
Your exciting hair
is like a special moss,
on your chest are two soft medals
like pink half-crowns under your dress.
Your smell is far beyond
the perfumes at parties,
your eyes nail me
on a cross of waiting. Hard is
the way of the worshipper.
But the heart line on my hand
foretold you:
In your army of lovers
I am a private soldier.
— Gavin
Ewart
Some "Proper Spring"
some "proper spring"
this is!
snow at the gate
— Issa
