Carolyn Kizer: “Jill’s Toes”
So pensively I watched him / Twist off the little toes, / A momentâs pain / To make you normal
Archives
David Rigsbee: “Still Cool – Re-reading Kizerâs Collected“
Cool, Calm & Collected: Poems 1960-2000 Carolyn Kizer Copper Canyon Press, 2001 When Kizerâs Cool, Calm and Collected: Poems 1960â2000 (Copper Canyon Press, 2001) weighed in at a whopping 400 pages, readers were surprised both at the prolixity and the heft. Organized by decade rather than by publication, Kizerâs book seemed a recognition of the formal unfolding and elemental power of chronological narrative, and was in effect a wager that the justice of time transcended timeâs erosions. Against the calm suggestiveness of classical entablature, framing the caryatids of her youth, there now stands, thanks to the block layout of contents, five decades worth of work, in which spin the demotic rush of particulars, of facts. As if in answer to Robert Lowell, who once wondered why invention had to be seated ahead of âwhat happened,â the march of poems in Kizerâs Collected alternates between lyric and narrative (with the latter seeming to take up more space in later years), dramatizing the most recognizable dynamic in her poems: the actual, remembered past confronts the idealization of …
Four Appreciations of Carolyn Kizer and Her Work
Her work is agile and present, never miserable, lonely, oracular, or visionary, but even in her essay-precise oratory she acknowledges the counter-poetry, listens to it (albeit with a coldness, a Chekhovian coldness that brings me closer as a reader).
In Memory of Carolyn Kizer
We learn this weekend the sad news that Carolyn Kizer, a founding editor of Poetry Northwest, has passed away. She touched many lives as a poet, mentor and friend, and we’d like to share with you a few recent pieces that sing her praises: David Rigsbee recalls one telling moment with his friend and mentor and transforms another. Martha Silano appreciates Kizer’s “Pro Femina” and Katrina Roberts admires her singular voice. Former student Barbara Baldwin remembers her dignity and humor. Our Spring & Summer 2011 print issue was devoted to a collective appreciation of Carolyn Kizer’s life and work, and we will share with you more from its pages here in the coming days. Read the first of these features here.
Patricia Lockwood: “History of the House Where You Were Born”
I was reading some Alice Munro, buzzing out of my mind on P.G. Tips. Alice Munro was describing a woman in an Observation Car looking out at the vast Canadian prairies. “What the heck is an Observation Car,” I said to myself. (I find that as a writer it often helps not to know what anything is or what it looks like, because then you can just imagine whatever you want.) So I pictured a big bovine caboose meandering serenely across the grasses, enormous glass windows for its eyes. “Oh my gosh what would its steaks be like, oh my gosh what would its jerky be like?” I wondered, and pictured the Observation Car shot dead and lying on its side. I’d been thinking a lot about prairie towns and railroad towns and small towns in general, and I’d been thinking a lot too about the concept of specialty stores: model train stores that sell you both the railroad and the small town itself; and frame stores with their hanging disembodied rows of gold and …
J. W. Marshall: “Steilacoom and South”
Late summer, and even the gods need a little R&R.  J. W. Marshall shares a few thoughts on this poem’s experience: I find I’m liking local poems as long as they are not shackled to an incident. And I like experiential poems when the experience happens within the reading/writing of the poem, not when the experience is something the poem points to from a distance. And I like thinking of the poem as an excursion, like a train ride, getting on at the first word and off at the last. Steilacoom and South does report an experience on a Seattle to Portland Amtrak ride but hopefully the ride on the poem is three dimensional, four counting time, in and of itself. — Steilacoom and South We were gods on holiday whoâd stumbled on a local god at work. Until then no one had been loud. Look at that! the boy said and we who swam along with him inside the Amtrak Coach did look. A man stood in a boat as ingenious as a button in a button hole. The sun threw echoes all …
On Kizer: “Her Own Woman”
In recent weeks, we’ve been publishing tributes to Poetry Northwest founding editor, Carolyn Kizer. Weâll post additional material throughout the spring: for additional features in the series, please visit here. Here, we continue with a spirited admiration, by Martha Silano, of Kizer’s ability to express and measure the inadequacy of “man’s / Ingenious constructions.” — I was in my mid-20s, living in Portland, Oregon, and newly enrolled in my first poetry writing workshop at Portland State University. My teacher, the wonderfully avuncular Primus St. John, gently broke the news, with each poem I brought to class, that I wasnât quite yet Sappho. I wasnât titling my poems, claiming I was following in the footsteps of Emily Dickinson, but when Primus shook his head and laughed at this defense, I took his advice. In retrospect, it makes sense that I would be taking my cues from Dickinson. Having just spent four years at a prestigious liberal art college in the Midwest, I received my BA in English without being asked to read or analyze a single …
Spring & Summer 2011 â The Carolyn Kizer Issue
The Spring-Summer 2011 issue is a special one for us. In it we pay tribute to Founding Editor Carolyn Kizer, with previously unpublished material, and commentary honoring her place in American letters. Featuring: David Rigsbee, Daniel Lamberton, Rose Solari, Joelle Biele, and Ed Skoog New Poems: Carolyn Kizer, Mary Jo Salter, Amy Greacen, Matthew Rohrer, Debora Greger, and many others… On Kizer: Katrina Roberts: “The Substance of Song” Martha Silano: “Her Own Woman” A Letter from David Rigsbee Carolyn Kizer: “Jill’s Toes” At Poetry Northwest Community: David Rigsbee: “Zum” A Student’s Loving Portrait
On Kizer: “The Substance of Song”
A series of tributes to Poetry Northwest founding editor, Carolyn Kizer
Martha Silano: âOursâ
Iâm not the first person whoâs longed to write a poem where Earth and its inhabitants are presented to a being who has no clue about us, and for years I thought about letting loose my inner Margaret Mead right here on my own home turf. My initial attempts to create anthropologist-like poems failed, perhaps because while they shared cool stuff about our âlilâ planet, they didnât add up to much. These failed attempts taught me that I needed to push beyond mere pond side/ highway median reportage. As I began âOurs,â I fell into conveying a more furtive stance which quickly became a shaping mechanism for the poemâI was amused and intrigued by our business-as-usual systems of greed, waste, and overconsumption . . . and war-making. Â But more importantly, I was pissed. As I wrote this poem, I was asking myself questions like: when we do find intelligent life forms on some yet-undiscovered exoplanet, will they be torturing each other? Making art? Will they have creation myths? Pilates Nazis? Weâve become fairly accustomed to …