Rebecca Dunham: "Forgiveness"

The VPR Poem of the Week is Rebecca Dunham�s �Forgiveness,� which appeared in the Spring/Summer 2013 issue (Volume XIV, Number 2) of Valparaiso Poetry Review.
 

Rebecca Dunham is the author of two poetry collections, The Flight Cage and The Miniature Room, and she is an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

 

Tuesday of each week One Poet�s Notes highlights an excellent work by a poet selected from the issues of Valparaiso Poetry Review, except when other posts with news or updates preempt the usual appearance of this item, with the recommendation that readers revisit it.

Photo of the Week: "Secret Retreat"

I remind all interested that my new photographs are available at a daily photo journal blog. I invite everyone to visit the blog for commentary about the photo and to click on the images there to examine them in high resolution or to magnify them for a detailed look.

Oh Dirty River by Helen Lehndorf

The town where I grew up


was small, ugly and smelledlike burning blood.



Most of the dads and


a lot of the mums andheaps of the big brothers and sisters

worked at the Freezing Works.



Thousands of cows and sheep


and even a few hundred pigs

would get trucked in, slaughtered,chopped up and packaged
in cling film each day.



The burning-blood smell

came from the incineratorwhere

Workin'

This would have felt like the longest day no matter what, because I spent seven straight hours of it completing a grant application. But it is the solstice, the literal longest day of sun all year. My hair is also long these days and right now, like a fairy-tale princess, rippled. That's because I tucked it into a bun on Wednesday while it was still soaking wet, where it then stayed for eight hours straight. Because I am Working--and it's been a while since I felt that pressure of must be clean & must look professional. 

Three days a week I am going to my old office to send emails, corral files, and get things in order. A lot (books!) has happened since I last worked there, but the vocabulary of itineraries and rolos remains the same. As of late I have dusted, pitched defunct CD players, and pulled dead leaves off a valiant but struggling purple plant of unknown origin. There's several cabinets of papers to compress and label. There's about a zillion cards and letters to answer. Why is it so satisfying to do these tasks for someone else, these things we eternally put off when it comes to our own lives?


I am profoundly grateful for this opportunity to help out my former employers. We come to working together in a far better and more equitable place than before, at ease with each other's rhythms and idiosyncrasies. And frankly, it feels good to have an hourly wage again, to have stretches when my time is invested in someone else's priorities and creative output. As I type that I look around, worriedly, like someone is going to come and take my "full-time writer" license away. Eh. When I tell students of creative writing to resist falling into the assumption they must primarily teach to support themselves--to choose that path only if it truly appeals--I mean it. But everyone's got to pay the bills. In fact, I would urge those looking for work that dovetails with a writing life to investigate whether their local college has a retiring professor who needs help prepping papers for donation. It can be sneaky, fascinating work, filled with stories.

Is there a job you'd return to, if you could? Knowing what you do now?

The news has been shared elsewhere that a selection from my third collection (in the hands of editors now) has won the 2013 Center for Book Arts chapbook prize, judged by Harryette Mullin and Sharon Dolin, and will be published in a letterpress, limited edition of 100 copies come this fall. Having stood at the Center's table during many an AWP Bookfair, gazing longingly at the array, it's surreal to think my work will soon be among them. The award comes with a bit of money, which gets added to a substantial freelance assignment I'm working on right now, which gets added to my pay from the work described above, which equals a summer's worth of rent. 

The thing is, and it's healthy to be transparent about this, no one of these gigs could be reliably multiplied into "making a living." For the one contest I won, I spent hours and $$$ applying to a half-dozen more (with many of the same poems!) to no effect. Though I expect this freelance essay to run on time, or close to it, there are several more mired in editorial limbo and therefore unpaid. I couldn't and wouldn't return to my old job five days a week; that would minimize the possibility of writing new poems, much less touring to read them. So, I juggle, which is the true task of the full-time writer. It's a Friday night, at 10:30 PM, and here I am trying to rally to get back to work.

This post is not illustrated with me at a desk, or me up to my elbows in dust and bent file folders. Instead I'm sharing snapshots of "The Commission," a one-night art installation in Charlottesville, courtesy of Virginia Center for Creative Arts; a book arts exhibit at the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art in Charleston; a glimpse of the seashore at Folly Beach, from the end of the pier; a glimpse of the marsh (and bordering roses) that line the other side of the island; and below, the set at intermission--waiting for the comedy to commence--of The Shakespeare Theatre's The Winters Tale, which I attended with my dad for Father's Day. 

Not pictured: a sunburned shoulder, NOPA's brussels sprouts, and Star Trek: Into Darkness. These have also been a part of my crazy, busy June. That's the thing about work, though we knock it, though we whine. Work yields play. Wine tastes sweeter after a day of thirst. Let me go test that theory now, and I'll get back to you.

Lightsey Darst: "June"

The VPR Poem of the Week is Lightsey Darst�s �June,� which appeared in the Spring/Summer 2008 issue (Volume IX, Number 1) of Valparaiso Poetry Review.
 

Lightsey Darst received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship for Literature in 2007. Her work has been published in Antioch Review, Gulf Coast, The Literary Review, New Letters, and elsewhere. She is the author of Find the Girl (Coffee House Press, 2010). Also a dancer, she writes about dance for The Huffington Post.

 

Tuesday of each week One Poet�s Notes highlights an excellent work by a poet selected from the issues of Valparaiso Poetry Review, except when other posts with news or updates preempt the usual appearance of this item, with the recommendation that readers revisit it.

Palmy by Jennifer Compton

Some injudicious thoughts about this city. Nothing else
can be written.



I perch in my flat on top of the Square at that dullest
hour before dawn,

wreathed in Happy by Clinique For Men from Farmers in the
Plaza.

I lurk in the mirrored department of luxury and when the
girls go off

to mend their hair and drink tea I spray at random. I love
perfume

but don't want to smell the same night

Photo of the Week: "Weir Bridge in Late Spring"

I remind all interested that my new photographs are available at a daily photo journal blog. I invite everyone to visit the blog for commentary about the photo and to click on the images there to examine them in high resolution or to magnify them for a detailed look.

Donald Stinson: "On Three Hats of My Father's"

The VPR Poem of the Week is Donald Stinson�s �On Three Hats of My Father's,� which appears in the Fall/Winter 2004-2005 issue (Volume VI, Number 1) of Valparaiso Poetry Review.
 

Donald Stinson has had poems published in Briar Cliff Review, Loonfeather, Southwestern American Literature, and Verve.  He teaches writing, literature, and humanities at Northern Oklahoma College.

 

Tuesday of each week One Poet�s Notes highlights an excellent work by a poet selected from the issues of Valparaiso Poetry Review, except when other posts with news or updates preempt the usual appearance of this item, with the recommendation that readers revisit it.

Some Last Things by Sam Rasnake

So many words to say now he'll never say though

he feels their weight in silence, though he needs

their meanings, he knows he won't find them,



still they bite at his tongue � what he once questioned

he knows for fact, what he once believed, he's long since

forgotten or dreamed away � if you whisper your truths,



they'll disappear, he'd say, so he never whispers them �

and when he

Photo of the Week: "Lake Seen Through Trees"

I remind all interested that my new photographs are available at a daily photo journal blog. I invite everyone to visit the blog for commentary about the photo and to click on the images there to examine them in high resolution or to magnify them for a detailed look.

Jeff Knorr: "Alfalfa"

The VPR Poem of the Week is Jeff Knorr�s �Alfalfa,� which appears in the Spring/Summer 2013 issue (Volume XIV, Number 2) of Valparaiso Poetry Review.
 

Jeff Knorr is the author of three books of poetry, The Third Body (Cherry Grove Collections), Keeper (Mammoth Books), and Standing Up to the Day (Pecan Grove Press).  His other works include Mooring Against the Tide: Writing Poetry and Fiction (Prentice Hall); the anthology, A Writer's Country (Prentice Hall); and The River Sings: An Introduction to Poetry (Prentice Hall). Knorr lives in Sacramento, California and is Professor of literature and creative writing at Sacramento City College and is the Poet Laureate of Sacramento.

 

Tuesday of each week One Poet�s Notes highlights an excellent work by a poet selected from the issues of Valparaiso Poetry Review, except when other posts with news or updates preempt the usual appearance of this item, with the recommendation that readers revisit it.

Untitled (If You Have Linen Women) by Robin Hyde

If you have linen
women, raspberry women


Red and thick of the mouth, with dock-leaf women
(Little light foxy spores � mind them, such women,)
If you have green grape women, flour-bin women,
Amber-in-forest, wild-mint-scented women,
Trey-bit in church or drudging kit-bag women,
Little sad bedraggled wind-has-weazened-one women,
White bean women, perhaps anemone women.
And harp-like facing the

Photo of the Week: "Deadwood"

I remind all interested that my new photographs are available at a daily photo journal blog. I invite everyone to visit the blog for commentary about the photo and to click on the images there to examine them in high resolution or to magnify them for a detailed look.