POETRY + NORTHWEST VOLUME SIXTEEN NUMBER FOUR EDITOR David Wagoner WINTER 1975-76

THOMAS BRUSH EDITQRIAL CQNsULTANTs Four Poems Nelson Bentley, William Matchett JOHN ALLMAN Three Poems, CovER DEsIGN ALBERT GOLDBARTH Allen Auvil The Chariots /The Gods . KIM STAFFORD historic marker . I l JACK ANDERSON I Faith 12 Cover from a photograph of a Weyerhaeuser Company clear-cut in the W; R. MOSES foothills of the Cascade Mountains by James 0. Sneddon. Three Poems . DONALD A. PETESCH Isadora and the Head from the Feet Manuscript . . 1 7 / I G. E. MURRAY Shopping for Midnight. 18 ARTHUR VOGELSANG BOARD OF ADVISERS ,I Another Fake Love Poem Leonie Adams, Robert Fitzgerald, Robert B. Heilman, 19 Stanley Kunitz,Jackson Mathews, Arnold Stein CHARLES VANDERSEE Sculpture 20 ROBERT PACK POETRY NORTHWEST W I N TER 1975-76 VOLUME XVI, NUMBER 4 Advice to the Traveler . 21 Published quarterly by the University of Washington. Subscriptions and manu­ G. S. SHARAT CHANDRA scripts should be sent to poetry Northwest, 4045 Brooklyn Avenue NE, Univer­ Two Poems. sit y of Washington Seattle Washington,98195. Not responsible for unsolicited 22 manuscripts;all submissions must be accompanied by a stampeded self-addressed JOHN ENGMAN envelope.Subscription rate $4.50 per year; single copies, $1.50. Two Poems. 26 © 1976 bythe University of Washington HENRY CARLILE Butchering Crabs . 27 Distributed by B. DeBoer, 188 High Street, Nutley, N J 07110 and m the NAOMI CLARK West by L-S Distributors, 1161 Post Street, San Francisco, Calif. 9410 Cygnus XI . 29 MARC HUDSON POETRY Village. N ORTH~ E S T ANDREW GROSSBARDT W IN T E R 1 9 7 5 - 7 6 No One Has Done That Before 32 JOHN TAYLOR Fog at the Windows. ROSS TALARICO The Answer SANDRA M. GILBERT Thomas Brush Four Poems Two Poems. E. G. BURROWS THE ONE SONG The Pond RICHARD JACKSON You must have been here a long time sleeping 40 Adrift oA' Wight: Annotation s from a Life of Keats While your lungs performed their windy miracle JAMES RICHARDSON Over and overin the heart Two Poems. 41 Of a moonlessnight or hiding in the ashen room SEAN BENTLEY Of boredom, the small closet of death, not to notice Slideshow 44 The one song drifting through the gray D IANA 0 H E H I R Folds of winter, over the slowly melting Night Train 46 Edge of the earth, which, like these words Or the leaves rotting beneath your still feet, JANE AUGUSTINE 47 Wakes you tothe last white room, Two Poems. Morning and the open mouth THOMAS REITER Of love. Two Poems. 50 HAYDEN CARRUTH 51 Two Poems. B ELIEVING IN DR EAM S GREG KUZMA Three Poems . 52 For everything that has lost Everything, for the derelict's mad smile and the broken shoes In the continual rain Of the alley, for the broken Hips of all my fathers lying alone In the forgotten hotels, for the fresh initials Change of Address On the wandering walls, for the shot and dying Wolves and their last splintered vision Notify us promptly when you change your mailing address. O f the onecold moon, for the first Send both theold address and the new — and the ZIP code numbers. Allow us atleast six weeks for processing the change. Blue fog entering my daughter' s

POETRY NORTHWEST Still lungs, for the burnt and blackened John Allman Three Poems Sides of the sun, for this place And now, I stay THE WEEPER Where I am, believing In dreams. I'm doing it openly at a formica table in Bickford's the waitress gives me hankies the Puerto Rican family is waving & nodding AGAIN my father is the counterman scraping his shoes poor man he steps in everything Though the war has been over for years and my mother the immigrant woman mopping nothing is dropping out the floor I weep into her bucket's milky Of the stone side of the sky to send you back across water 0 look it's never too late mother the nearest border but thebouncer in tuxedo's coming at me Except thebroken promise of snow, slowly filling the square yard In front of you, and the old lies as familiar as books cry he says keep crying out you go you or the weather, drifter who let you in unshaven your feet You stillwon't understand. You see the doors broken open again, poking through sneakerssit up straight The waterblacken and go bad, and children crouched like old men I see my daughter outside dancing for pennies Under treesand bridges. You imagine women in the last sad act I'm knocking onthe window hey you hey you Of war, wandering through the ruins of their lives, my father says close your eyes we' re counting carrying blankets the receipts go to sleep your mother is tired And sacks offood, the men gone, and the tom sheets of flame leaning on the mop 0 it's my sister 0 lucky Over everything. brother don't stuff napkins in your mouth

quick a menu waitress where am I listen here PRAYER I am below theSaturday blue special baked fool with hash-browns & week-old lettuce It is the terrible silence and waiting bring me death & pancakes bring me something For the voicesof storm and wind, hoping beforeit's too late I can weep for at 25c For the lesson of lightning, the shaggy roar it's my wife blowing her nose it's good she says Of squallto be known again, but the weather's animals 0 lucky husband no one but you weeps so well Are more carefulnow. And the day crawls through the grass, come to bed inthe ice days of January in the A dead calm and nothinghappens. Now, you must evening beneath the quilt you can cry into my hair Kneel in the round light Of earth, and the soft light coming down From the longriver of clouds and thunderheads, crossing Miles of open sky, leaving the sharp green stillness Of the dyingstars, coming to You like the season that repeats Itself around you: hope silence a face in the water

POETRY NORTHWEST THE SOUL GROWN LAZY THE KNUCKLER

Dressed in black & We knew your stooped figure in Astoria Park, overweight,her voice damp: knuckle-bailer, your hand slow & disdainful she sighs, telling me of father on the diamond beneath the TriBoro Bridge, ofF on a big job overseas, fingers forking behind your back. Whatever you papa & his brothers. threw wobbled in the air like a soap bubble. I'm showing her the night city, Your mother was the nicest woman in a yard frowsy shops in alleys. fullof cukes & tomatoes. She bought you aquariums, Little boys pick my pockets little oxygen pumps, a Schwinn, blow-ups of father. & signs hang in windows She thought youtoo thin. She bought you huge of restaurants: Credit Good. mittens, big-shoulder coats, while the McDonald No aunts behind us, brothers spit on the metal doors of grocery cellars no Registrar,no mayor dozing where you slipped. Anyone at all could find beneath a floppy hat, just you in Mendel's, at the magazine rack, slipping her loneliness, huge & flabby, girlies between the pages of Sports Illustrated. leaning against me. I feelsweet. I kiss All those years, you waited for a fast sign: the fourth fold of her neck, a wave from theblonde divorcee in her bedroom my hand travels the ring acrossthe driveway. Through Woolworth binoculars, of her waist, I find webbing of blinds, you learned the moles & fine the many paths toher breasts. track of her spine, the rayon slide of her buttocks: She's worrying:what ifwe' re her hands behind her back unhooking a fullness caught what if the police in your head,behind your eyes, in your throwing hand come screaming red-faced that had only a knuckler, only an odd way of holding on. into this alley what if We couldn't hit you at all in those days, she'sreally no good eating the gray & muggy afternoons when the ball should pizza & doughnuts drinking have carriedinto the East River. We popped up, vanilla malteds watching we grounded out,the boys from Seymour's Hardware, TV all day sleeping waking & Baker's Garage, & Queeco's Beer, we whiffed in up eating the blankets filling sunlight, or under cumulus, in the shadow of a long bridge. the tub with ice cream her lips always caked with But she died suddenly, thirty-eight, a bad heart: chocolate frosting will I released from your grip, writhing in a midnight glare. love her will I love her? It was obviouslyyour fault.You stopped going to Mendel' s. Sold your Schwinn. Gave up fishing for minnows inthe bay near La Guardia: that airport built on garbage, carriage wheels, father's shoes.

POETRY NORTHWEST 2. You stopped catching killies in bent window-screens, ***/*** Reports stopped bringingthem home alive in tomatoe cans, & pouring them into the tank with your tropical fish, ***/*** reports their activities like common children among angels, while your guppies include digging, making with thebulbous eyes gave birth & ate their young aggressiveaction among themselves, beneath the25c pink plaster bridges. You took apart marking territory. He posits the pumps. You began to focus on empty windows, sparrows. they may be ourinsides-out All morning, all afternoon, we hit you, 0 we hit you. as indicated by their damp-palmed stroking our snouts, or their kilnwork's accenting our manes, while they have clearly not seen Albert Goldbarth within, how our brains are ethereal gray clouds over sparse landscape THE CHARIOTS/THE GODS and: theirown inverted 1. lupine, canine, breaks barely forth — insignias A's Song Through The Centuries of hairat their sex, or a female squatting: the animal streams out Ty-ty-ty-ty, gold into humus, ivory into the suckled's lips. A cave came down. Ty-ty-ty-ty, 8. A cave came down The Lecture With like-us in. There are stories of angels. Well A pyramid descended. astronauts fly. And this is more A pyramid in the sky reasonablethan, say, two pinions Descended. Thou hast of breath in the lungs, or the infant's skull Messengers amidst us, here, halfway fusing closed in a giving ofl' nimbus. Between our stars and our buried. Of course the Red Sea split! Do you think The shine-condor landed, atomic power, if it could flatten Yes'! Of-another-tribe walked out, Hiroshima, couldn't comb Yes! They held up bowls to their eyes, back water? This would explain the Y es! The bowls made flash,our spirits schisms in the Bible. Are reflected in their waters. Yes. Spiders walk water. You can see the principle. "It burned but was not consumed." "It rained blood." We' re thinking adults here. Use logic. Do I have to explain how it can rain blood.

POETRY NORTHWEST 4. Kim Stag'ord The Sermon There is a story in which a scientist historic marker x-rayed the sky, and what he found was not celestial bones it was here in mid-winter but a plate showing nothing n othing, they paused to ask each that is, cut out to the size of the plate. other the way the t r a il behind filling with snow If this is the plate we passed that broken tree avalanche around atthe service's end, your coins kill do y o u remember would fall forever into the sky l ate summer we s a w and finally be assured of buying the break up twenty feet a word for you at The Ear Of Ears. n ow here at eye level dee p snow bri n g that day back But all we pass is a hat. And what we ask speak are we here is your coins anyway, and the faith in a hat's implying it was here they built a fire a skull. This is the theory warmed theirhands and faces of god, and archaeology. until the embers sank hissed deepin the tunnel 5. of smoke here they turned Goldbarth Writes A Letter to look back with the wind find theirtracks nearly gone Ellen: you said there were bodkisattvas, then set out uphill the people Japanese seraphim. Ina land crossingthe mountains to find where writing is fine as red brambles bitterroot hidden one wealthy day of capillary in the eyelids: in a cave onthe other side maybe. I believe it may be. and here where the wind I believe there are explanations. And if slowed just below the summit the angel who turned Lot's wife they paused to tap out a salt was a Ph.D. in saline physics, song with stifF knuckles that's one way. I hope we never have reason at the base of the last clifF to be sorry when we' re looking back. we are here hun g ry children mountain forget we w i l l remember But if wedo turn around, and know her wind forget fill o u r trail cutting taste, we musn't forget we will remember ava l anche the eyelids.Two wings be patient we w i l l disappear are all a world needs, without your help uplifted in its praise every morning. 10 POETRY NORTHWEST could castout devils speak in tongues i t is here dr iv e r the signs drink deadly poison, and take up serpents. plastered with snow forget And he sworetheir preacher's death wouldn't stop their names but y o u know their drinking of poison or handling of snakes, the road is endless either way for this was their faith and they would stay true to it, your car in its brief life for true faith never failed. will never fail the ra dio sings what your money can buy W. R. Moses Three Poems but driver rec a ll how here they paused t eet h chattering a brief prayer near where BIRCH TABLE you kneel in the snow to put on your chains The tightly packed grain, Birch yellow, birch hard, Pictures the years of tight growing, Wind hardened, cold hardened; Jack Anderson The rightconversion of clean Ram, earth.

FAITH I'm sorry the tree was cut; It was better than my table Then the preacher reached into a box (Though I am no warbler,no vireo and pulledout two rattlesnakes and said, "Praise God!" To have flitted and tabled and letthem crawl about his neck and shoulders. High there) (even though we sat Then the preacher gave copperheads to the faithful, Gut happy, and the faithful played with the copperheads and one woman held acopperhead in her mouth Seven of us once, very young and shook her body until her body was all shakes. And excited to feast in group At that little table) I can p>cture Then the preacher repeated, "Praise God! Have faith!" The table,when certain more years have grouped and opened a bottle of poison and drank it. Strength againstit and me, being Then he fell to the floor, doubled up, gasping, Flung out and the faithfulstared hard, but nobody touched him. At last,he stopped writhing, and someone decided On a dump: it's inconvenient; who to slip away and call the police. Would bother about it? I'd as soon They came toolate: the preacher was dead, Change atoms withthose birch boards, though; leaving behind a wife and six kids.

Then an elderof the church explained that this was a demonstration of their faith, that in their church they believed the faithful NORTHWEST 12 POETRY I think I'd be sooner Take the instruction straight. Justified to the thoughts that flow I am bearing witness. Through the universe I know what I know, what I witness. Master the metaphor, get it right, That way than some. Or — notfor God's sake, not to eat­ Oh, all I really mean Blind, crush, kill; Is that this close fair birch And burst yourheart clutching vacuity Is by God wonderful,not to be demeaned, All the unseen day, all the unfelt night. And it would be a shame, Come death RHAPSODY ON A FOX For it in a dump fire, If it didn't go sheathed in honor. That was no moonlight night So I talk as I talk Too bad for the fox it wasn' t That itmay be, as well as I can manage, honored He might have got a duck at that. On its way tosome fair There weresome on the bay, some bufIleheads, Higher growing. Quite near shore. (Oh, shut The particulars off.) THE GENTLE: A PARABLE Anyhow, he needn't have started The start I saw him start, Golden plume, black-and-white plume, Or wince,maybe, interrupting And the wind rippled them like chivalry. His mere daylight mousing. But this is no tale of chivalry. I calledthe dog; she came. Display of innards: She didn'twant to eat skunk; as for him, Now how to God get excited about beef kidneys? He was glad to go beetling after his beetles. One or another on the meat counter, one or another Mild brown eye, mild reddish eye, no imbecile — What of it? Yen to compete in either of them. That's how I feel about confessional poets. Not hearts, not even hearts, just ridiculous beef kidneys, Later, quail rose out of the brush. Cleaned up at that — except maybe some odor­ It was easyflight, no panic. And ready to wrap in plastic. What was the need of panic? When the dog had trotted close,no rash And here I go confessing, Bravado had heldthem. And no wish Nor do I think this will bring anyone, least of all me, To do what she couldn't made her chase wings. Any blessing. She watched with a kind of general interest As they easeddown from the casual flush.

14 POETRY NORTHWEST So the fox was out daylight mousing, Donald A. Petescb And I saw him, and I would have sent him, If I'd known how, what I thought was a blessing Isadora Duncan had a pianistwhose face was so "ugly" that she forcedhim to sit so that she saw only his back while (Which might have been plastic wrapping, she danced.He played so beautifully, however, that she Yes, I know it); but what he got married him. W as a rippleof shotgun fire Just audibledown from a skeet range ISADORA AND THE HEAD Maybe two miles away; and he winced FROM THE FEET MA N U S C R I PT And slid into the brush; and I lanced My curse at the skeet range. Above the neck the head of the pianist And that swiveled into distances­ — Yes, I know it­ Isadora had found him ugly. May have been plastic wrapping. On the floor Because, Oh blood, those fantasies! feet ban g ing away, Great-grandson ofNatty Bumppo! sweating, (Developed beyond his terrible prose, though.) pushing the globule earth The young blood impervious to cold morning! through the ruins of the spheres. The young reflexesunfooled by the fastest whizzing Duck flight! Up there hea d Press: a trajectory broken; (trailing its foul dimensions Press; another trajectory broken its poor relations of nose — Splash! and mouth and ugly ears) And later, hears drops of notes Some kindly somebody having attended to the bother like stars in honey Of plucking and gutting, hands band sounds The good,rich, greasy, crackle-brown eating! that walk onwater, angels stop Who am I, who am It and armiespause in blood. Now listen: If I can bless — which I don't suppose­ And Isadora I bless that fox. winds her scarves likearms about his holy head and carries it through the astounded air, as she murmurs: allthe secrets of her love, all the mysteries of her holy flying.

16 POETRY NORTHWEST G. E. 1lfurray a fishfound breathing on the beach, harvest of any old night, dampish, twisted, leaving me to decide whether SHOPPING FOR MIDN I GHT to steal,borrow, or merely adore it.

There you go, it's everywhere here, waiting for me at ridiculous prices, the essentialmood — collected Arthur Vogelsang and perfect-bound— hidden, certainly, like the best of bargains, among tampons & pickles& paperwares, ANOTHER FAKE LOVE POEM down these aisles I tour at midnight. Years lateryou are the way you should be, making tidal waves A browser at heart, At meetings, surviving the concussions of your own poems, And making hundreds of dollars a month. I carry no money. It's safer that way, And suddenly youremember it was your fault. as theaverage retailclerk And it wasn't just a crack in the personality crust, will ply me with replicas, expensive It was thestrong, definite beginning of the way you've become. imitations of my prize. And I have beentaken for an easy target before,buying dreams of blood There must bea planet where the people get sad and die When there are no earthquakes, and summer at discount. And when one iscoming they are happy and Go to Italian restaurants all over the planet in their Italy, Once, guilty of wearing an oversized coat to market, a thief, I resisted Their England, their Baltimore, and laugh happily and the sweetcommerce of a career angel, Drink wine and make sweet dirty talk boosting herinstead As magnitudinous tremors pass through their wicker chairs. of hertemporary goods. But shopping She's inCanada now, and once went to China, for thedarkest of bones demands nerve, And when you go toChile to accept the personality­ In-literature prize and to Antarctica to make a speech, a special setting, instinct. There it will be, your fault, waving, roaring, or hurrying near, There are, naturally, no rules of search or purchase; no adequate samples. Way behind, harmless and ugly. The thought ofyourself as an ass makes you happy Not necessary. The time will arrive when I round a corner perfectly But you will get sad and die. and find it, waiting like a mouse, enormous as Canada, theperennial top-shelf item.

It belongssomewhere, and only there,mine to find alone, marked down like contaminated vegetables,

NORTHWEST 18 POETRY 19 Charles Vandersee We were thinking,and we turned to each otherwith sharp desire in the light, and with beautiful care, SCULPTURE as if with clay on our palms and fingertips. While the first winter log burned in the sculpturing yellow fire, we sat on the rug by the oldest chair Robert Pack in the studio, watching each other's lips.

Summer is clay, and winter is marble, ADVICE TO THE TRAVELER she said; it's all the same, I wait atthe oak door that you chose, and say: making things, breathing life "You are still free to go, to choose again." with the fingers. It's being God all day, and then into the night, The shuttered house, scented in moonlight, still Is abandoned; shecannot live there now, as far as you want to go, Nor can sheleave. But if you pause too long, one of the presiding angels, She willfasten you in her stopped shade. Now go, guarding theday's work of God Take a lastturn at the thick hemlock grove againsttigers and vandals and beavers. Beneath the owl's first scream, where my smoke voice You' re absolutely, I said, laughing Circles the snuffed fire, whispering advice. as softly as bulky Michelangelo Repeat these words: "Nothing is real at first." probably never managed,the last, She still recalls you when my shade departs In the hemlock grove asyou move on. Now take the ultimate last romantic. It's the universal redemption, then. An ocean voyage rippling farewell; delay Come, all musicians with scratchy notes, At a round island's name rumbling in vowels; all cooks with rancid broth, be God, Consider settling where the slow wind shufHes and mothers,of course, whose babies The long-plumed birdsand the hot sea sloshes are squirming withwet underpants! Incredible shells. Leave quickly on a whim, As my voice nudges the fruit-cluttered air, Because sheonce believed you when you murmured I looked into her face in the fire, To her hairamong oak-leaves in the moonlight. into the shadows, the surfaces, her eyes sparks of the light. For fear I will posses her if you stay, You are freenow to return. Nothing isreal We stopped shaping heavy words At first.And now she waits, in a breathing house, and touched the virgin silence, Smoothing sheets as the barred owl's echo wails, felt in the rug, knit for us, For you to begin. I have never gone. the bricks, rescued by hands, I am the only life that takes you in. the boards, the beams, the chair, hands, love, creating hands.

20 POETRY NORTHWEST G. S. Sharat Chandra Two Poems Your nephew says if thegovernment cordoned off LETTERS FROM MY FATHER the hungry millions together over aparched field of wheat they'd cry enough to make bread

Dear son, Your nephew is a born cynic he' ll be five Our government consists of three ancestors they allwear the Gandhi cap this Friday The middle man controls law & order the man who comes after controlsthe middle man Son, When the middle man and theone who comes after disagree on the use of the English language Your doctor sister is transferred they go tothe first man she made the deputy minister's wife wait .. who comes and goes before everyone the three never die Son, Today we had no rice so we ate green beans and curd The heat is sacrificial the milkwoman is out looking for a patch of grass the crows have flown it has not rained since 1978 the crickets seem to be screaming

Son, This afternoon my skin hangs heavy on my back Our government hasproclaimed the washerman's donkey hops they will make rain round and round in the alley the eldest son of our chief it isn't convinced is already in America the garbage pail is empty of dinner leaves to ask the President for some clouds No one eatswith leaves anymore This morning your nephew saw it'sfaster from hand to mouth the government on thesecretariat roof. if there'senough to hand looking up t o mouth. . . the middle man held his middle finger accusingly the priests were doing their best in Sanskrit

22 POETRY NORTHWEST IV NAMES OF THE HUNGRY Written after a Bill Moyer report Son, on hunger in Asia. I have a strange feeling their faces buried someone sits in the front room in grass mudcracks fanning the heat from his face to foolthe worms do you think it is Him? to fool the birds perhaps hetook a short cut by drought .. that ate them Isn't the body a wrap within a wrap for glass turd s eed folds of goatskin they' ve swallowed hiding the dark it hides from the sword the dark it will accompany? the swallower his poster the glue that held it the termites the ants Son, Your mother sendsdried camphor long from the feet of the Lord they wrotethe name her eyes still light up at your letters of hunger though she fails on her feet & ate it they'd eatyour pupils So, you look for a third country like the scrawls of my bony hand .. your dentures they'd eat themselves it's not enough to push and pull in your film there should besuperior means of impatience of their names in your pockets Son, they ate your bags If you don'thear from me your camera do not turn pensive your jet at port it only means your name on the list I ' ve run out of ink. . . of passengers?

what then do you have to show me brother who ate w ith them. . .

24 POETRY NORTHWEST 25 John Engman Two Poems like baby powder gratedfrom the moon and sing for you until there is nothing A S ALL THINGS FALL DELIBERATELY AW A Y so vague itresembles me. What an awesome sport to dislodge the few logical hormones I have, She will remember you as a kinkajou snaking from the chandelier who need no compass to the top of the icebox. Snow stings your eyelids, in your small bright house. 0 Lake Calhoun, your watch stops,you are left to ruminate on your chilly no jealous fiorists soak their feet in your perfume, prehensile tail. no saints'beards decay who bathe in you, but oh Even the moon & stars,a parure meant for grabbing: you think of fanning yourself with a chicken wing, oh oh I love the void, it is a neglected getting crisp on a yacht. art form,like love, and easier to keep my mind on. But she will remember you as you are, a duet for So I think ofyou my big green metaphor, inamorato & wheelchair. how I snared asalad from your Hoor The childrenvisit on Sundays. The sugar cookies & blue hankies make you more sureof yourself, Mr. Hornie last August when I was lonely.Your vegetable metaphysic kept me warm knar not me,keep not me from the white leaves, when I lacked every essential human resource. I ask you, the necessary heaven. what is the exotic scent? mud? may I touch your earlobe? Tucked under yourfeet you find a crocheted monkey skull as across the lawn old men carry the rain like a box of nails. 0 Lake Calhoun, do you remember Your bigwhite daughter pushes you into stars at the planetarium. the night I entered you singing: What is this She is marrying an Eguptian. His skin embowed with air bubbles, strange country I must visit naked? and though a pearl in every pock. She will paint herself with cathode rays, the moon shone on the dock the rain never fell so hard. & when darker, suprise you with a snuffbox of myrrh, a kiss, an evening gown.

Henry Curlile POEM AT THO M A S BEACH

0 Lake Calhoun, how often BUTCHERING CRABS I have wanted you inmy arms, more polluted than any woman I know and certainly All day we smashed and swore, more human. filling the brine tanks with twitching claws and legs, Help, I am falling into you again white belly meat, in the middle of winter, at a dinner party: dropping the entrails I lean too far forward into a mirror and deep-dish violet shells and fall off the edge of the earth down a slime hole to the bay. Even Hawk, our best butcher,

26 POETRY NORTHWEST 27 got pinched. Naomi Clark Those claws cut through our heaviestgloves. CYGNUS XI When we broke them off they clamped down tighter. "Next to the kitchen I picture a space," she said. "It's just a space. It "Take that,you bucket head!" haunts me. Why is it there? Where is it going? the shell shattering What could it hold? like crockery. "You' ll never bite another "It's a black hole," she said. "It swallows light. Indian!" Did it implode? Is it so dense a matter it pulls Stabbing his hands everything in? into that cage of maniacs, clattering and seething, "How to look for what is invisible! It's right next bubbling at the mouths, to thekitchen," she said, "But when I search for it I get lost. glare ofstalked eyes, Was it a super-nova? Is this blackness only its inward pulse? claws like open traps, he would snap one up, "I feel it burning," she said, "a black, and in onesmooth movement, dense ballready to burst, a black, dense, pulsating flame, heavy break it over the knife. and massive.

She dips her fork "Somewhere impossible galaxies travel faster than into the cocktail, any light," she said, "expand, contract faster than light­ lifts it to her perfect face unless, being impossible­ and eats. violators, you know, of fundamental law — they' re illusion. Over miles of iohite tablecloth But next to the kitchen I see a space. It pulses. the bits and pieces fall. Faster than illusion.

He lived in a shack "Cygnus, the black swan, came by here one day, with newspaper curtains, on his way south. He drank from a pan, swam drove home each night with the children. Then he flew on south. crabby and skidding. He never saw me. The next year, we were under On the third day a landing pattern; the jets, ubiquitous. they gave me my check: Their thunderand screeching accompany all my songs. "Too slow, sonny." But Hawk was fast, he was faster than life.

28 POETRY NORTHWEST 29 "That space," she said. "It wouldn' t 1lf are Hudson be so bad ifnot right next to the kitchen. It exertsa terrible attraction. Cookies, VILLAGE cucumbers, mops,laundry detergent­ everything flies toward it, everything's swallowed I found myself in a small village, unless I catch it. Momently the cedarsglowing like a hand the field grows. Even in the classroom, raised tothe sun. It was autumn. shopping, at parties, I feel it pull.-No light, Above the pass I'd seen winter, no light! And right next to the kitchen! a still lake in a white cloud, and, lower down, all that was left "Last nightI sat down," she said, "and tried to draw it. of summer, a field of small blue suns. But how do you draw a space that's full of­ nothing: full of the densest matter of all, dense, pulsing, But in the village it was autumn, black nothing. that clear light in which leaves I tore up the paper. But in the night I heard it­ brighten and vanish, that wind pulsing and eating. It eats up light. Einstein heard it: like leaning your back against stone. the dark, imploded masses within their shell chewing. I saw no one, a red shard that was the sun, a heron carved "The little birds that fly under the jets come freely. by wind and rain, nothing All round the house I' ve put shelves and feeders. Jays, sparrows, you could say was human. finches,and mockers, Oregon juncos, even today a dove, in spring I said village for a reason, though; cedar waxwings indroves to the hedge berries, if I closed my eyes to listen even today a princely I stood in a hallway among children. black-hooded stranger with barred wings and They were clappingtheir hands an orange waistcoat. and laughing that a hawk couldn't see. But the blackswan never. Where is he nowt They pointed upwards and I stood in the wind above three valleys, the flint "You must forgive me," she said. "Next to the kitchen of three rivers scraping the talus. I picture a space. It's black. It pulses with music. The small birds know it, and the hares, the turtles. An old man with cricket legs They dance. They are mute. started tosing. He crouched in the meadow Last week alizard returned to our garden. I had crossedthat morning. Last week atoad. And I dreamed a falcon." He sang of berries and snowbanks, masses of larkspur, blue, blue. He scratched it out with those spindly legs, he sang, "You willhave better eyes as a dead man."

30 POETRY NORTHWEST Andreu Grossbardt numbers poured from light filling the pages N O ONE HAS DONE THAT BEFOR E corner to corner in the purest night In 1968 Mrs. Marvina Drew began typing and she kept on until she finishedher project by typing "1,000,000" atthe end of a column Near dawn of numbers. Des 3foines Sunday Register When my husband hears me counting in sleep he must know some of us have parts Another winterday nearly over so private the pale air catches fire a moment no one can touch them in the west the last slivers of sky I want him to come to me die slowly rub salve carefully close like a dark wound into my cramped wrists dig his hard fingers and finally it is done into theknotted now all I have left muscles of my back aside from these papers there are aches so deep are fingers I' ve come to think of them that will never come straight as my own fingers that dance crazily a the least excuse fiashing each bruised tip each broken nail Sometimes when I reach like a badge behind my pillow something stirs what now of my fingers' the hands clasp need to fasten like someone else' s my hands to stretch one morning I will feel for myselfdrop by drop blood by blood Six years they said tendon by tendon I'd never finish hoping they will all add up and though each day and I' ll be gone died its own shiny death no one has done that before I never stopped counting

POETRY NORTHWEST 33 John Taylor Two Poems And rises behind your face, His joyous smile shining behind your frown F OG AT THE WIND O W S Like theworms' loving embrace;

This morning's fog was thick enough At the intime cocktail party To be a great blind eye Over the clattering chatter of twoscore or more Leaning on every windowsill Glib and arty-tarty, And yet I still deny Its empty accusation. Hangs gaunt Burner-of-Cities, Smell ofblood and kumiss on every breath I'm sick of being stared at Of soigne charity committees; By an objective eye, And whether it calls itself YHWH And m the weddmg hush Or science, I deny Counter-of-Months and How-Can-He-Ever Its ready accusation. Wink at the bride's blush,

So go,you foggy stare that makes The groom s dechmng I do My windowpane and eye No, no matterwhat worship you profess, Coequal;glass does not look or see Admit entre nous And I can still deny Its ghostly accusation. That the buzzing, biting, blinding crowd of us, Cloud of usare the sole gods you confess. I love the flesh that blinks at vice And virtue. All my eye. Though fierce, I still can hurt or heal, Ross Talarico Refusing to deny Pain's loving accusation. THE ANSWER

I knew it at birth. FLY-VOICES Blood and wind Passed like rivers and seasons You cannot drive us out. Through the miniaturegeography, You only drive us deeper and deeper in Lost continent, forming Till even whispers shout Somewhere within me.. . All I

Our names: At the funeral Knew, or cared When you sadly mouth lies of sad loss To know Good-Riddance hearsthe call Of this changing earth;

34 POETRY NORTHWEST 35 I began breathing to keep time. Look helplessly Over the bones of his hands A memory formed, Locked forever in prayer, An altar upon which I placed Words too precious to live with. The moment I realize I' ve I can always go back, Come through it all, Utter something A man staking his shadow on a piece of earth, That a child will insert, stupidly, Knowing only myself

Into a song full of instructions. And the warm secret I m keepmg . .

But I don' t. I can' t. Sandra hf. Gilbert Two Poems Instead I wait for miracles, The perfect commercial on T.V., An angelic knock on the door, THE DRESSMAKER'S DUMMY

A glimpse of gut forming a star. In my grandmother'sroom, treasures of old mahogany, intricate & enigmatic as the eighteen-nineties: Tonight, out, away from the three-paned mirror,the great highboy Everything I've turned the world, old sock, with knobs like cabbage roses & expensive brasses, Inside out and into, My eyes fade, as if I' ve made the bed ofgenerations — brown & black, teak & rosewood, inlays older than ever I could be, & a mattress A photograph of myself, after all. soft from half a century of sleepers, So I let my fingers turn & quilts, & goose feathers­

Cool from glass after glass, and cast adrift on the crimson carpet And then run them a dressmaker's dummy, headless, armless,

Over my lips,cheekbones, a barren stork on one steel leg. . . Eyelids... until I know The stork that brought me! — for as I grew it grew with me,

This life, this human being, its plaster hips were padded to mimic mine, The fragile moment when the teeth and when I sproutedbreasts so did the dummy, Touch the edge of glass and as I lengthened it slid up its pole, became lean, And the intestines stifFen in the body's cavity, became bone, became my own self,hardening, final, A word, like a diamond, still buried In the dark cave Where the eyes of the priest

POETRY NORTHWEST and at night, through the shadows, I watched it shine in the mirror, the street lamps casting whiteeyes my infant wit, my cold crown, and seethat I myself am February, on its ludicrous height, white scorn on its hips, its empty neck, its stiff stuck frame: bitter, mean, biting the sky with hard green teeth, and still it's there in my grandmother's room, hungry for everyone's skin, curved like the prow of a ship, cleaving the air waiting not very patiently for some March dumb as a wooden whaler'swife, a hopeless of great white blossoms to begin. image of me,frozen and bare,

sailing forward into the triple mirror, B. G. Burrous wading waistdeep, a dead lady, into the future.

THE POND

FEBRUARY Merely a low place where thefield dips a cup The oak leaves open, bitter, succulent, for runoff where reeds with sharp thin edges keen as tiny teeth­ anchor through March a shallow green lives, alive in the blue smog, ice onlythis hunched green teeth biting the bitter sky. redwing remembers and early stakes out. February already,and a haze portending blossoms thickens the garden air,and I am asked Of an age to doubt to review poems, somebody thinks I might be the inexorability of an authority (does he mean me?) succeeding seasons I question this faith in thaw. so stacksof earnest books lie on my desk Waterbirdyou could be wrong. passive as necks on a chopping-block, We may stay chilled and the crust tender asbaby skin— too vulnerable!— and I begin lock our roots. by sharpening pencils, yawning, breathing slow, Each has done time his own way and then I'm pleased, then angry; breathing fast though I can no longer share I scribble wickedness in margins, fall past the ingrained the instinctual. clumps of words like Satan, Siva, shaking fists, Which is why you wear desiring for myself the tall blue throne, the same scarlet shoulders while I change destroyer, arbiter, myself alone. And then desperate and older. I land in thorny branches, hug

POETRY NORTHWEST 39 Richard Jackson delicate as a ship in a bottle. The bird,in darkness, moves away from ADRIFT OFF WIGHT: its song, and the song spreads. ANNO T A T IONS FROM A LIFE OF KEATS

.. because he|the poet] has no >dent>ty 0 what do you own he is continually in for — and filling some other body —" where across the bay the wharfs have rotted Letterto Woodhouse, 1818 ribs of abandoned barks jut through tide flats (0 what do you own that you are) a firmament refieeted in a sea as the screech of an owl wings its way from a clump ofash above these cliffs Distance, a shark's fin gleams white asa gravestone. (what do you own that you are not) The sea soaks your heart­ leaving a dark body behind lost where these leaves flap forever your words, shadows of fish, already shiftbeyond your reach. silent as tongues in the mouths of mutes The ship's lantern broods in this litter of silences 0 what do you own that across the water. you are not losing forever? Wharfs, dunes, wrecks, the grunt of gulls, you could scrape these months away like scales, you could grip that thin scalpel of the moon. Quietly, the stars James Ri chardson Two Poems break loose from their moorings. DRIVER EDUCATION

no more than, winds and tides When you lose your brakes, he said, You wait in the skeleton of that ship, youou must change your mind about everything. listen as the rats scratch Only what you have nevernoticed through the dark lungs of the hold. will help you. Avoid, at all costs, at There arestories of sea burials, black fingers, faces one cost, the sublimity of oak, wrapped like market fish­ the watchtower boulder,home, What words you own dissolve and signs of all kinds. Above all, on the quiet tides of these nights. do not takethat easy way down. Now, riddled by reefs and shrunken horizons, dreams branching, you hear againthe song of the thrush,

40 POETRY NORTHWEST Head for the inclirie formerly A RANSOM NOTE steep to the point of annoyance, yet too gentle to be impressive. Do not call Do not letyour mind wander. anyone for who deserves to be believed,and haven't you, When your car is a scream since the roads one October blazed swung on a long rope, and the road and fell from their destinations, been trying to explain lets go, aim for the low tenacious weed, what was takenfrom you? No, do not high grass, brittle scrub — in that order. call.

Water will help, if it is shallow enough Do not not to be interesting. Get the sun try to deceive us Vahses at your back.Stay away from bloody withgems, emptiness strung taut clouds, all large animals, friends. will never do. What it hurts to giveis our demand­ When you are finally ready to stop, what no one wants but you, allthat has guided and protected you­ who least of all believe glass, steering wheel, struts, beams in your own pernicious counterfeit of pain. and dials— has decided before you, Do not take and becomes your enemy. Hold us lightly, do not the body back, cursing them be tempted that way: for we know. past redemption. Do not fear That face which almost surfaces their revenge — no one does this twice. in your most paralytic dreams, the cause of theseor those early frosts, the rising edge If you can get out, do so immediately. in thatone's voice, shadows If the car is not burning, burn it across innumerable lives, more darkness with your clothes inside. Change your name, than you would atfirst believe­ though no one will know it. we will show you over and over how it is you. Do not take us lightly. By now it is March, and you will be tempted, butthe smoke Do not hurry. In wailing over the town of your birth no time, asthey say, is not, not really, for you. we will have our due. Kneeling, spend your days in flame. Heap up, with extravagant denial, the ransom. Though of courseit is you we have and it'sover no matter what you bring.

42 POETRY NORTHWEST 43 Sean Bentley and there were; SLIDESHOW (click) spake Let there be fences Click. and canaries, sharp-tipped This is a picture of me and scratchy, and there were; lounging in splendor, Let there be sporophytes the look on my face and anthrax, and there were; like water in a total vacuum. (click) Click. Let there be smut, young and fuzzy Here I am getting an idea. around maypoles!Let there be Check out thosedeepfish eyes. chipping sparrows! Click. And there were. This one is a bit out of focus I commanded Let there be grub but it's me with my fairy dust and there was; and allthat crap, (click) sprinkling it from my fingers. then I commanded Click. Let there be mouths to feed Here is a gargantuan flash. and there were. Click. Click. What do you mean what's this? This is a closeup Here I am creating bushbabies, of my new world. meadow-muffins, Volkswagens, Barren asa fingernail. piecrusts and ozone. Watch. Click. Click. I created high bush cranberries, I commanded, Let there be water dipthongs, I said and there was; Let there be divorce (click) rampant as Queen Anne's Lace Let there be worms and there was; and there were; Let there be Indian corn (click) and deerstalker hats, Let there be sky treespinning the ground for theworms to ignore from the wind, and there was. and there were. Click. Click. Let there be azure socks, I said,Let there be thunderclouds I said, and there were; packing the sky and driving on (click) like spawning salmon Let there be feet, Let there be 44 POETRY NORTHWEST 45 little dog-hair clutchbags, gummed labels, catnip, The woman turns in the dark, touching dry linen. marsupials, and there were. There's a cricket beside the bed; she sees her husband's shadow. Click. The walls of the bedroom are A cricket's cage. Here I am commanding Trainlight measures the sky; cinders are fiery needles, fiery f dreams. Let there be Chick Sales, Let there be shrines and temples, Day comes inhot as a prairie. The trees grow scented and neon crosses. Click. day candles. Here I am againin splendor, Silence covers the sky in blue smoke. watching two ofmy creations Everything signals that night won't come again blow each other to bits with nitro, in my name. Except night's child. Night's favorite child Click. Goes down to the crossing, waves chums at the engineer. She's seeking, still seeking in secret the coal-eyed stranger This is me rumpjumping my created white stallion Who drives his bright hot squawking engine through her dreams. and disappearing over my created horizon Jane Augustine Two Poems into my created sunset. I always wanted to be the hero. from The Woman's Guide to Mountain Climbing Click. Here is a picture of my white hat. V CONTINUING

Diana 0 Hehi r Too far above trees. Too far above the last campsite. Nothing but steepness. NIGHT TRAIN No firewood, nowind-shelter.

Noise loops itself The ridge hides the peak. Must rest Catlike, self-centered, around the walls of her bedroom, every ten steps, fall to elbows & knees A brading thepaper, foraging into her sleep under the minimum needed to survive. For nuggets of love, of wishing. It chews them like bubble gum; it has iron teeth. Only the smallest plants live here. It has ashout that sends metal down into a woman's thighs; Too little air. My eye tries It swaggers, matching its rhythm to the pulse in her neck. to magnify them, tiny bright blue hopes. It says,night after night your escape goes down, Lungs rasp.Shoulder collect knives. You seek the wall to hold its shout. Not strong enough to go on. It says: night's child. But what to do

46 POETRY NORTHWEST I when it'sas hard to climb down ruler of this place, as up? Shove oA' the pack a while. where I'm intruder­ Lie flat.Try to sleep. The moon face oldfears that grow alsosleeps at times. Hides out. in unprotectedwomen Then begins to climb again, the night of violence injury strapped to her spine. Climbs & keeps climbing. who' ll care for me? How shall I get well. VII Helplessness holds me VISITATION tight under cover. (the moon m Sagittarius) When a bear attacks, they say sleeping ten t flap half open play dead. moon on my forehead I hide untilthat ammal rage a woman shrieks far away & again wildcat waking me baffled movesoff willows blacken as I look through the willows out to my doused fire & come awake fullythen night breeds slowly regret creaturesto circle me the chance lost I came from known dangers to stand up living eye to eye into these find it after all ground tremor reaches me merely a white-tailed deer before the sound also terrified­ of hooves on rock here m the courtyard of the moon breath in frenzy snorting why did I fail to trust her? pawing outside I push back the tentflap the tent's back corner­ climb out I'm in his path­ there she rides too terrified to rise high on the mountain's saddle face what Ifear­ helmeted bow d r awn shapeless threat a beast & quiver full of stars

48 POETRY NORTHWEST 49 Thomas Reiter Two Poems Last night, awakened by the stress of legs against leather straps, I found you sleeping THE OUTING with the letter A in your right hand and the letter A in your left hand, My daughter takes mecalling on the snow. the moon inyour window bending close I catch her hands, and we turn to claim as the mirrorin the doctor's headband. the greatwet flakes that touch and combine Were you dreaming your name? A's as they clearthe dark peak of the house. like an alligator's grin, The trick is to look them into our hands, dots swarming from i's, so we call out our choices: the stinging tails of 1's and c's? Daughter, bow tie, spinning wishbone, wing our dreams aregames that hold us to the earth. sailing away from us. We jitter and glide across the lawn, looking for all the world as though we're drawn by a divining rod. Hayden Carruth Two Poems My small panhandler, when a flake lights on the blue veins of your palm, whiteness LATE SONNET winks and goes out, leaving aloose transparency For thatthe sonnet no doubt was my own true to be shaken free. Look: singingand suchlike other song; for that wherever we go we make I gave it up half-coldheartedly to set a kind of dancing in place. my lines in a fashion that proclaimed its virtue originalin young arrogant artificers who had not my genialitynor voice and yet ALPHABET their fashionableness was persuasive to me: what for Alicia shame and sorrow I pay! And that I knew Last night I bound you to the letter A. that beautiful hot old man Sidney Bechet Your spinecurving in the X rays became and heard hismusic often but not what he the stack of blocks I built was saying,that tone, phrasing, and free play spelling your name, a father's wobbly trick of feeling mean more than originality, and hope tohold you, laughing, these being the actual qualities of song. to harnessand frame — your first friend Nor is it essential to be young. among the wooden lettersyou used to smuggle everywhere.(Giving you away, they bulged Y OU MASTERS WHO SAW NO T like extra knees, so we made a game where Ifrisked you You masterswho saw not that the turning gyres and guessed messages, and was always wrong.) can bring nobeauty and no serenity in your enameled bright eternity, 50 POETRY NORTHWEST but only frozen madness; you dear liars We had always wanted it assumed who taught my heart that its enabling fires that we were good men, well fit might wish the turn, as if of my mind's key, for any occasion.But caution opening into lands beyond history got the better of us, and wealth where soul could have its myth of stilled desires, ate us up, and the women we drank with were lonelier than we were. So you I now grown old as you say bluntly, Go, have it. take your placesin time, your storms and fears already crumbling, I am not sorry for you, Now another country looks as good, no longer, o my reverends, poets, seers; tall buildings out of which go do what Iin eagerness must do, we might leapto our deaths burning and sane upon the pyre of years. were not the midnight breezes warm, and on the winds soft music not unlike that which had made Kansas decent.

Greg Kuzma Three Poems T HE GROSS NATIONAL PROD U C T A SALUTE Though you know nothing and should have no The street is on fire. reason to I must dictate this letter from myself Men with hosesgo into barrooms, unto some noble personage of far descent. kiss the maids of honor. Signed what's his name. You write the rest. Police take off their clothes. See they are really all good fellows. Hot day atthe ofFice, everybody The mayor givesa major address stripped down, split to cool like corn on chemotherapy. Retires in out of its husks. applause.Good night from Rio, all you stay at homes. Big contract from the Letter I. Another phone call, through the mini track. The purpose was always to start I hear Miss Blooper's bloopers at thebeginning, as the shark does. scintillate the air. But who will advise us when to stop. I watch herbloopers popping by As is the problem of the shark as well. beneath her blouse. Blood trees sing in the wind, Ah five o' clock, and home again seems a long way off. hour of pizza and pizzazz. There'sa quick image of mother's apron plump with potatoes. Alas, the My father'shouse was Ivy League, good woman is gone, into the my father's father's too. darkened kitchen ofdeath. I used to know your dad himself, but what am I to you?

53 52 POETRY NORTHWEST Hey can you crack a joke? Oh there is a day (and I feel it may be soon) Oh the big buildings of STEEL when we the few stragglers left to house the racks of girlie mags must go down tothe ground below me atthe corner hack. never towalk across the yard again I peerdown from out of my office cubby booth, in theafternoon I notch the Rolls Royce of one Albert Black. never to dress for the party On his way up,perhaps a heart attack. admire ourselves in the mirror never to kiss the sweet mouths The digs ofbusiness never botched of our children a realhe man who eats and sleeps. in the mornings, Sundays, with no work togo to. Pipes, we got em. Tankers rolling belly full of gold. It is said that the dead will awaken They' reyours out in the harbor there. and the living with them Tonight Tangiers,tomorrow Santa Claus. all those among us and including even I smell the liquor of my penthouse flat ourselves on one Miss Mary Sunshinein her black cravat. who have lived our lives as if asleep and all of our eyes will open on the world WHEN WE DEAD AWAKEN and we will gasp at pleasure at the sight and the breath from our lips My father was a blacksmith without a forge. will nearly extinguish the sun He died without a forge, and all life's vanities but having made everything in his life will come to an end with his own hands, but I do not believe it. the earth he went into was like a brother to him, although he was much afraid.

Someday when the dead awaken he will rise with them and they will all come forth to sit at all the chairs and tables they have abandoned, so strong wastheir pain that they had got up from our tables and gone off searching for the end of it.

54 POETRY NORTHWEST 55 About Our Contributors THoMAs BRUsH lives in Issaquah, Washington, and won Poetry Northwest's Young Poet's Prize in 1975. JoHN ALLMAN teaches at Rockland Community College, Suffern, New York. ALBERT GOLUBARTH teaches at Cornell.His last book, Jan. 81, was a 1975 nominee forthe National Book Award. KIM STAFFoRD is agraduate student "working near the University of Oregon." JAcK ANDERsoN, who lives in New York C ity, had two books published during the last year: City Joys (Release Press) and a history of ballet and modern dance called Dance (Newsweek Books). News for Contributors W. R. MosEs teachesat Kansas State University and has published widely. DoNALD A. PETEscH teaches atthe University of Pittsburgh and has appeared to Poetry Northwest'sDonor's Fund in a number of little magazines. G. E. MURRAY's most recent chapbook is Holding Fast (Bonewhistle Press, Brown University, 1973). He lives in Oak Park, Illinois. pOETRY NORTHWESTreminds its readers that it is the recipient of ARTHUR VGGELSANG is an editor of Th e A merican Poetry Reuiew and has published in numerous literary magazines. a $1830 grantfrom the federally sponsored Coordinating Council CHARLEs VANDERBEE grew up in Crown Point, Indiana, and now teaches at of Literary Magazines.Since that amount has been given to us the University of Virginia. He is coeditor of Harvard University Press's authorized edition of the letters of Henry Adams. in the form of matching funds, every tax deductible contribution RoBERT PAcK teaches at Middlebury College, directs the Bread Loaf Writers' in support of Poetry Northfoestfrom you, our readers, will be ' Conference, and has published both criticism and poetry widely. G.S. SHARAT CHANDRAdirects the poetry program at Washington State Univer­ doubled until we reach that figure. The CCLM rules stipulate sity, edits Kamadhenu, and is at work on a novel set in preindependent India. that you should say you intend your gift to apply to the matching­ JoHN ENGMANlives in Richfield, Minnesota. HENRY CARLILE lives in Iowa City. His first book of poems won the Devin Prize. funds grant.We hope for your help. NAGMI CLARK, whose work has appeared in many little magazines, lives in Saratoga, California. MARc HUDSON, a graduate of the University of Washington Writing Program, is now an environmental planner in Washington, D.C. ANDREW GROSSBARDT directs the writing program at N o r theast Missouri State University. JoHN TAYLQR teaches atWashington and Jefferson College and has published poems in many magazines. Ross TALARIco teaches at Loyola University in Chicago. SANDRA M. GiLBERT teaches at the University of California, Davis, and her most recent book is Acts of Attention: The Poems of D. H. Lawrence (Cornell University Press, 1973). E. G. BURRows's most recent book is Man Fishing (Sumac Press, 1970). He lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan. RIcHARD JAcKsoN is a graduate student at Yale and coeditor of The Poetry llfiscellany. JAMEs RIcHARDsoN teaches English at Harvard and has published in many magazines. SEAN BENTLEY is an undergraduate at the University of Washington. DIANA O HEHiR teaches at the University of California, Berkeley. Her poem "Summoned," which appeared originally in Po etry Northutest, won second prize in the Borestone Mountain Poetry Awards for 1974. JANE AUGUSTiNE works for the New York State Poets In the Schools and for Aphra, the feminist literary quarterly. THoMAs REITERteaches at Monmouth College, West Long Branch, New .Jersey. HAYDEN CARRUTH,the distinguished poet and editor, lives in Johnson, Vermont. GREG KUzMA teaches at the University of Nebraska and edits Best Cellar Press. He has won both the Young Poet's Prize (1973) and the Theodore Roethke Prize (1974) of Poetry Northwest. i

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