~I~RTHAEST,Gp® '5 POETRY G+ NORTHWEST
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%@PLUME XVII •,NVI'ABE@3 • AUTUMN:,,4976:: $);25 ",; ~I~RTHAEST,gP® '5 POETRY g+ NORTHWEST VOLUME SEVENTEEN NUMBER THREE AUTUMN 1976 EDITOR David Wagoner JOHN TAYLOR. Three Poems .. STEPHEN DUNN EDITORIAL CONSULTANTS Three Poems .. Nelson Bentley, William H. Matchett ROBERT HERSHON T wo Poems. ARTHUR OBERG COVER DESIGN T wo Poems. Allen Auvil RICH IVES The Old Woodcarver . 10 JANE HAGE Coverfrom a photograph of thistles, Target Practice . Union Bay Garbage Fill, Seattle. HARRY HUMES Snakeskin in June. 13 RON SLATE The Call 14 PAULA RANKIN To the Ox-cart Driver 15 BOARD OF ADVISERS CARL DENNIS Leonie Adams, Robert Fitzgerald, Robert B. Heilman, Two Poems. 16 Stanley Kunitz, Jackson Mathews, Arnold Stein ANDREW GLAZE Alphabet Soup .. 17 KATHLEENE WEST POETRY NORTHWEST AUTUMN 1976 VOl . UME XVll, NUMBER 3 Two Poems. 18 WILLIAM JOYCE Published quarterly by the University of Washington. Subscriptions and manu scripts should be sent to Poetry Northtuest, 4045 Brooklyn Avenue NE, Univ« Post-mortem for a Car 20 sity of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98105. Not responsible for unsolicited SANDRA M. GILBERT manuscripts; all submissions must be accompanied by a stamped self-addressed Daguerrotype: Widow.. envelope. All manuscripts accepted for publication become the property of the University of Washington. Subscription rate, $4.50 per year; single copies, $1.25. COLLEEN J. McELROY From Memoirs of American Speech 23 © 1976 by the University of Washington MARK HOWELL Where Fire Has Been 24 Distributed by B. DeBoer, 188 High Street, Nutley, N. J. 07110; and in the West by L-S Distributors, 1161 Post Street, San Francisco, Calif. 94109. BARBARA RAS T wo Poems. LEWIS TURCO Two Poems . P O E T R Y N O R T H W E S T BRENDA HILLMAN AU T U M N 1 9 76 Two Poems. 28 ANITA ENDREZZE Seven: Leaving Home . 29 BETH BENTLEY T wo Poems. 30 MARK McCLOSKEY T wo Poems. 32 John Taylor Three Poems MICHAEL HEFFERNAN How the Writer in Residence Rescued His Liberty . THE WOUND KURT BEATTIE Two Poems . 34 No matter what you say or do MILI VE McNIECE You cannot healthe wound you make the world. Waiting When You Don't Come. Untrue, untrue, DAVID BARTON I n the Heron's Sleep. 37 You call the gap: All things to all men! STUART DYBEK Brass Knuckles. The black bullseye that the snow comes from Is silent, foreign GIBBONS RUARK Aubade to the Governor. 39 Over your headlights, knows the best STUART SILVERMAN The Four Canonical Fits Fitted to Defense is no defense, and never answers. "The Day the Martians Landed in the Fields" 40 Your unrest JOSEPH DI PRISCO No More Bleeding Hearts 41 Will last forever, or at least BRENDAN GALVIN Will last as long as you will last. Not long. The world's black yeast . , , . Two Poems.. SHARON BRYAN Three Poems .. 45 Was here before the bread, and will Be here when every crumb is swept away. Galaxies spill Notice to Subscribers Beginning with the Spring 1977 issue (Vol. XVIII, No. I), the subscription price Out of gray Ginnungagap for Poetry Northtoest will be U.S.A., $5.00 a year, single copies $1.50; Canada, To fall until they dwindle in the black $6.00 a year, single copies $1.75 Unfostering lap, Change of Address All your complaining is no use, Notify us promptly when you change your mailing address. Lost in the mothernight. So make your peace Send both the old address and the new — and the ZIP code numbers. Allow us at least six weeks for processing the change. Or truce. "IT IS A FEARFUL THING TO FALL Even Palm Beach. INTO THE HANDS OF THE LIVING GOD" Masked like owls or thrushes, Birds who live in the money tree out of harm's reach, Never to fall is worse. Nested in dollars dense as deep plushes, Or to fall out, or fall into safe hands, That is the curse. They twitter, dropping Each other's names on sight Never be savaged by joy, Of gems familiar as faces, diamonds and emeralds popping Immensity shaking us in beast jaws Like eggs ledged on billowing bosoms, tight That can destroy Corseted trunks Or bless, no guarantee Bulging with bonds. Nearer Which until too late. Never to open, To Fortune's warmer parts, they cling in their cosy ranks Never to see Loving as gilded crablice, but dearer, dearer. Again for the first time When nothing was explained, nothing explained away, Stephee DuNN That fearful prime Three Poems When one's foot and the sun THE MAGICIAN'S DREAM Were the same size, equally wondrous, equally strange, And all one. I pull this from nowhere, from out of the hips of roses, from the scar BAL DE MASQUES AT THE POINCIANA CLUB in the sky. It is this, Old artifex, what I'm holding, what you can't see, Arm me with multiple curses, this lovely piece Hornet-winged, hornet-stinged, venomous to vex, Arrow-sharp, arrow-straight verses of thisness, this body of wild claim I'd like you to care about. So I can skewer Imagine this, for example. This puffpaste of popinjays, This covey of Beautiful People ripe for the connoisseur Or imagine this: earthlight bottled Of the Late Late Potlatch and other such folkways in a factory near Newark and sold to the stars. What I have here All masked and balled Up in fine feathers for a good reason. is the commodity of our time, none Never ask what. The only answer, or so I' ve been told of the above, that which always follows Is that for everything there is a season, simple A, B, C, like cruelty. POETRY NORTHWEST It is none of your business either. T HE GAMBLER AT HOM E That's why there's a possibility you' ll care about it, this shadow Everyone s asleep The heat is off for the time bemg Horses run wearing a cloak in a grey world, this the walls of his house, always self-cancelling mandrake root coming from behind. He pronounces that will not produce their names until they become pure meaningless sound like a prayer a single birth. I hold it up to you now spoken since youth. His information so that you won't see it. is inside. His needs are secrets Look, it's gone he can only share with crowds. And now he feels it again and all this time you haven't left somewhere in his stomach your seat. Confess, All you ever cared about that absence, growing palpable. was me. Ragged zeroes when he smokes. How can his family know THE MAN W H O N E VER LOSES HIS BALANCE when he says the unlit room he means the moment before loss. He walks the high wire in his sleep. Or when he puts his arms around them The tent is blue, it is perpetual he's thinking one less empty space. afternoon. He is walking between It's late and cold and part of him the open legs of his mother knows the world is gorgeous and the grave. Always. The audience knows this in its disregard, but cruel enough is out of their hands. The audience to kiss you now and then. is fathers whose kites are lost, children That part of him would take the kiss who want to be terrified into joy. and run. Never bet again. He is so high above them, so capable That'sa promise, he says, halfway to sleep. (with a single, calculated move ) In the morning he remembers of making them care for him he knows a man that he's sick of the risks who knows a man. he never really takes. The tent is blue. Outside is a world that is blue. Inside him a blueness that could crack like china if he ever hit bottom. Every performance, deep down, he tries one real plunge off to the side, where the net ends. But it never ends. POETRY NORTHWEST Arthur Oberg Two Poems Robert Hershort Two Poems A FTER THE ROYAL PALMS WERE BROUGHT D O W N S ARAH, DO YO U T H I N K I ' M C R A Z YP la high school note) The fishing boats shift their nets, "Sarah pick up and head for better grounds. do you think I'm crazy You ache to be wise, ache because or do you think Jack is a hunkP Nod twice the dark tells you nothing is what if you think I'm crazy all is about; even the child knows Snap your fingers the stone planter of frogs goes if you agree with me" empty one night, for the whole year. Written in a book of There are more idiots upon the town Hemingway short stories than it can hide. Don't mention where the women have no names it, the bank teller cries, the large notes counted out twice. His green THE GREAT BELL RINGS AND eyes, white walls of this house, THE TORTOISES HEAD FOR THE SEA the intricate, dark roses you cut Nobody likes my Quasimodo at dark, all say nada, nada is: i mitation T hat i s they admire it as an art form some of the morning boats come in, but they pull away from fish float in, swim against the tide my tongue's ruined kiss the questions pouring from ELEGY FOR CATHY m y hump I lim p to the bathroom mirror Not oranges or stones, words refuse to bob to watch myself come back until we bow to them, take them up.