KAREN AN-HWEI LEE Diophantine Love
scarlet or not, shelter or none, / centriole and silk filament,
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Sarah Lindsay Origin
it had little to do but thrive
Timothy Donnelly: “The Earth Itself”
The unstoppable eccentric visionary antiquarian scholar-priest Athanasius Kircher is pretty high on my list of heroes. Born in 1601 outside the city of Fulda, not far from the geographical heart of todayâs Germany, Kircherâs beautifully illustrated books on Egyptology, magnetism, acoustics, Kabbalah, numerology, volcanology and an array of other subjects exuberate over the worldâs inexhaustible complexity, its baroque convolution of matter and spirit, sparing no detail as they reveal how all creation is âbound by secret knots.â In his Turris Babel, a treatise on linguistics by way of a compendium of pre-classical architecture, Kircher crunches all kinds of numbers in order demonstrate how doomed an idea the Tower of Babel was, concluding, among other things, that it would have required no fewer than 374,731,250,000,000,000 bricks to build.
Catherine Wing: “Self-Medication”
I hate New Yearâs Day. Thereâs something dull and numb about itâbeyond the hangoverâthat never fails to feel disheartening. Some years ago, when I was still lucky enough to be living in Seattle, my writing group proposed to meet on New Yearâs Day as an antidote to the annual drear. Even if we had no new work to share we would at least write something and fend off the prevailing sense of the wasted day. So on January 1, 2008, we were somewhere in our pre-writing preamble when my good friend Ariana mentioned that she had decided not to drink for a while. Now, Ariana is no heavy drinker, quite far from it, and she went on to explain that she was doing so to remind herself where her edges wereâbecause alcohol, it seemed to her, is a kind of situational softener, and she wanted to be reminded of her sharper aspects. By which she meant her more difficultâedgierâself. The poem âSelf-Medicationâ was born entirely from this idea. What are we at our edges and …
Vis-Ă -Vis Society: “Scientific Method: Am I In Love?” and “Scientific Method: Noir Sestina”
Editor’s note: Our objective is to determine whether the relationship between poetry and science is field-specific, or something. We hypothesize that a sentence will grow best when infected by the same ideas, images and methods that occur within either field. Preliminary results have been published in the Poetri Dish [experiments in verse] section of Poetry Northwest, Spring & Summer 2012 (v7.n1). Here, doctors Ink and Owning of Vis-Ă -Vis Society offer further findings: — Scientific Method: Am I In Love? Question: Am I in love? Research: I sleep in a bed with another, I have held his breath in my mouth. Hypothesis: If I run away, I will know. Experiment: Fog up the window and see whose name your finger writes. Observation: Made it all the way to Vancouver: wrote one name, smudged it out. Results: It is true, the finger moves. Report: Scientists in their lab coats leap to their feet in applause! +++ Scientific Method: Noir Sestina From a broken phone booth she called our her question, under-eye circles purple as bruises told of …
Amit Majmudar: “On Richness of Metaphor”
When it comes to poetry, metaphor is cake to me, and music is icing. Personal details are sprinkles, and frankly I can do without them. The Furor Poeticus is a lit candle stuck in the cake. Or, in the best cases, a lit stick of dynamite. There are poets out there who think of metaphor as an âornamentâ to poetry. They go for lush descriptions. They go for hushed statements. They go for wry non sequiturs. My eyes glaze over when I read their work. It helps if they rhyme or scan or something, but even then I get bored. Tell me the hailstorm nails a coffin shut on summerâs green shroud, though, and suddenly my mind is a dachshund flushing out the badger of meaning. Iâve noticed that the poets of my generation really love non sequiturs. Straight non sequiturs are easy. Metaphor is the non sequitur that means. English may be rhyme poor (so I am told; this has not been my experience in practice), but all languages are equally metaphor-rich. O my …
Amit Majmudar: “The Tender-Hearted Hard Science”
Editor’s note: Continuing the Science theme of the current print issue (Spring & Summer 2012, v7.n1), Amit Majmudar reflects on the ability of both poetry and science to “isolate and emphasize important information.” — When I tell people I am a doctor and a writer, the reaction usually has two parts. First comes the mild bewilderment about how I find the time. You get this reaction from other doctors and other writers alike: Both groups know how much dedication is required for competence, let alone excellence, in either field. (I donât know how other doctor-writers do it, but I donât sleep much, and when Iâm awake, I donât fool around.) The second part of the reaction is a loss of bewilderment. A little reflection reveals that I am not so special after allâpeople recall just how many of us there have been, both historical (Sir Thomas Browne, Anton Chekhov, William Carlos Williams) and more contemporary (Robin Cook, Khaled Hosseini, and Michael Crichton, who got famous just in time to avoid a residency). There are a …
Spring & Summer 2012 â The Science Issue
As languages approaching the mysteries of existence and advancing the limits of human understanding, poetry and science have more in common than you may think. The Spring & Summer 2012 issue is devoted to the theme of the sciences as poets encounter them, and vice versa. Featuring: Linda Bierds, Alison Hawthorne Deming, Timothy Donnelly, Amy Greacen, Bob Hicok, Richard Kenney, Katherine Larson, Sarah Lindsay, and many more. Subscribe now, and we’ll start you off with the best in left brain/right brain thinking. Meanwhile, catch contributors Linda Bierds and Bob Hicok at The Skagit Valley Poetry Festival, Friday & Saturday, May 18 & 19. We’ll be there too. Stop by our table and say hi!
Bob Hicok
The Fortune Teller
cannot tell me if Americans will come to believe in evolution. “You will get a sliver of cedar in your hand,” she says, kissing my palm where Christ would have had a scab, whose father made everything, including Band-Aids, according to polls. And what about the oceans? Will senators admit we’re breaking them? Her eyes roll to white, a wave of capitalism snaps her flesh to and fro in her chair, “I see a woman telling you not to worry, it happens to all men,” and falls back, arms flung out, panting as if she has just won gold in the hundred meter fly. Can you at least see if we’ll stop beating up nerds in movies? She takes her wig off, her mole, her hooked nose is a prosthetic, her crap teeth are fake, layer by layer she un-uglies herself until I’m looking at a beautiful woman lighting a cigarette and saying, “no one likes the smartest person in the room.” She’s so wise I want to marry her brain and protect it at …
The Science Issue — now available
As languages approaching the mysteries of existence and advancing the limits of human understanding, poetry and science have more in common than you may think. The Spring & Summer 2012 issue is devoted to the theme of the sciences as poets encounter them, and vice versa. Featuring: Linda Bierds, Alison Hawthorne Deming, Timothy Donnelly, Amy Greacen, Bob Hicok, Richard Kenney, Katherine Larson, Sarah Lindsay, and many more. Subscribe now, and we’ll start you off with the best in left brain/right brain thinking. Meanwhile, catch contributors Linda Bierds and Bob Hicok at The Skagit Valley Poetry Festival, Friday & Saturday, May 18 & 19. We’ll be there too. Stop by our table and say hi!