Poem in Your Pocket Day

This is the last day of April, so today's posting was the last NH Poem for this year's celebration.
I hope everyone has enjoyed reading a poem by a NH poet each day this month, I know I have! Today is Poem in your Pocket Day, so you might want to print your favorite of the NH Celebrates Poetry postings and carry it with you for the rest of the day.

Thanks to everyone, especially all the NH poets, who took part in NH Celebrates Poetry 2009!




As we wrap up our National Poetry Month celebration for 2009 I hope you will consider the following:

• poems are a great addition to your day any time of year


• poets always need your support, consider buying a book of poems by a NH poet you discovered (or were reminded about) this month


• the space on your blog or website that has hosted our poetry widget is the perfect place to put the Center for the Book's Book of the Week widget

Survival: A Guide by Cleopatra Mathis

Survival: A Guide

It’s not easy living here, waiting to be charmed
by the first little scribble of green. Even in May
the crows want to own the place, and the heron, old bent thing,
spends hours looking like graying bark,
part of a dead trunk lying over opaque water.
She strikes the pose so long I begin to worry
she’s determined to be something ordinary.
The small lakes continue their slide into bog and muck—
remember when they ran clear, an invisible spring
renewing the water? But the ducks stay longer, amusing
ruffle and chatter. I can be distracted.

If I do catch her move, the heron appears
to have no particular fear or hunger, her gaunt body
hinged haphazardly, a few gears unlocking
one wing, then another. More than a generation here
and every year more drab.
Once I called her blue heron, as in Great Blue,
true to a book—part myth, part childhood’s color.
Older now, I see her plain: a mere surviving
against a weedy bank with fox dens
and the ruthless, overhead patrol.
What blind clockwork keeps her going?

Cleopatra Mathis is the Frederick Sessions Beebe '35 Professor in the Art of Writing at Dartmouth College, where she founded the creative writing program in 1982. Her latest book is White Sea (Sarabande Books, 2005). Here first five books were published by Sheep Meadow Press and are distributed by University Press of New England.

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This poem appeared in Georgia Review, Spring 2009. Poem and image used here with the permission of the poet. All rights reserved.

Robert Frost, NH Poet

Robert Frost lived in New Hampshire at several points in his life. The Robert Frost Farm was home to Robert Frost and his family from 1900-1911. They lived in Franconia, in what is now The Frost Place, full-time from 1915 to 1920 and spent nineteen summers there. He was the first of the five Granite State poets (so far) to serve as our nation's Poet Laureate.

Many of Frost's poems are available on the web including New Hampshire, Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening, and The Gift Outright.

Resources for further reading
Modern American Poetry includes essays on many of Frost's poems.

The Poetry Foundation website includes an extensive Frost bibliography.

Wikipedia has an extensive article on Frost's life and work.
Amherst College (Mass.), where he taught for many years, has a collection of Frost material.

Materials in NH Libraries ABOUT Robert Frost.
Materials in NH Libraries BY Robert Frost.

Magritte's Dog by Deborah Brown

Magritte’s Dog

You don’t want to lose

the last glance you’ll ever have

of a moon milky and deep in the palm of the sky,

and you don’t want to lose

this afternoon of mist and rainbow,

though the shaken glass

ball of this planet swerves closer

to its final ditch.

You don’t want to lose the last word

Magritte’s dog sings when he flies over the roof

with the mourning doves.

You don’t want to miss your own dog’s last cries
before the silencing needle when her weight doubles

and you can barely raise her body up

from the floor to place her in the coffin

you’ve cut and nailed, while night falls

and stars, clouds and sky lie broken.

In Magritte, fronds of ferns sprout

birds’ beaks and trees tumble like clowns.

Your dog is buried beside the garden,

and it’s Magritte’s dog, not yours,

who soars over the housetop and the moon,

who flies backward as Magritte’s dog can.

You don’t want to lose this chance

to paste your hands to the dog’s back, like an apple

painted onto a man’s hat and gather speed,

and you don’t want to lose a last glance back

at your garden. You don’t want to forget

how this planet shakes, a bone in a dog’s mouth.

Deborah Brown is a professor of English at the University of New Hampshire in Manchester where she teaches writing and literature. She is an editor of Lofty Dogmas: Poets on Poetics (Univ. of Arkansas Press, 2005) and a translator of The Last Voyage: The Poems of Giovanni Pascoli, forthcoming from Red Hen Press in 2010. Her poems have appeared in Margie, Rattle, The Alaska Quarterly and others.

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Poem and image used here with the permission of the poet. All rights reserved.

This Weather is No Womb by Parker Towle

This Weather is No Womb

Blowing snow tightens cheeks,

says: you move, get inside,

light a fire, don’t let it go out;

if you lie down, let the fire go out,

you die. This weather is no womb,

no lush jungle, no springy moss;

it’s a slap from the polar ice cap.

Flumes of snow, spume and shift

in cloud drift, like waterfall pouring

off the edge of the mountain ridge.

Why does that waver over ice cliff

speed the heart, light the eye?

These white columns make no sense.

We were born in the sucking sea,

these peaks are where we die;

not where we come from but where we go,

the long journey over rock and snow to the pole.

It is night, but we have come from the sun

and soon now it will rise and light

that great dark beneath the ice.

Parker Towle has published three chapbooks of poetry, an anthology of previously unpublished poems entitled Exquisite Reaction, and his first full-length collection of poems, This Weather Is No Womb,(Antrim House Books, 2007). His poem, "Cases," was read by Garrison Keilor on The Writer's Almanac. As an Associate Editor at The Worcester Review he has edited special editions on the poets, Frank O'Hara and Stanley Kunitz. A member of the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Clinic, Parker Towle teaches and practices neurology in the Upper Valley of New Hampshire and Vermont. He lives in Hanover, New Hampshire and also has a home in Franconia.

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Poem and image are used here with the permission of the poet. All rights reserved.

Waiting Room by Betsy Snider

“I am a room full of light and shadows.”
Blackberries in the Dream House by Diane Frank

Waiting Room

She sits still, wrapped
in light that spills
from windows stained
in red and blue and green.

Quiet fills the hollow spaces
between ribs near her heart,
a dark chamber hidden
in the shadows of her sins.

Her head bows under the weight
of a white cotton veil worn thin
in an unforgiving laundry
where dirt is beaten and beads
are counted in Aves and Paters.

Beneath her blue serge habit,
folded wings await the call,
Hallelujah!

Betsy Snider is a retired attorney who lives on Crescent Lake in Acworth, NH. Her poems have been published in the Cold River Review, Black Magnolias Literary Journal, Lynx Magazine, The 2008 Poet's Guide to New Hampshire, the Anthology of New England Writers 2008 and Love Over 60: 100 Women Poets Over 60. When not swimming or canoeing, she writes poetry and volunteers as a CASA Guardian ad Litem for abused and neglected children.

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Poem is used here with the permission of the poet. All rights reserved.
The picture was provided by the poet and is of Magnificat Chapel, Sisters of the Humility of Mary, Villa Maria, PA. It is the room that inspired this poem.

Haiku by Diane Mayr

spring rain
mallard swims
in the overrun

July afternoon...
heated discussion of
ancient offenses

sleep interrupted
the cry of geese
flying in the dark

no heat...

cats and I share

a smaller space

Diane Mayr describes herself as "first and foremost, a public librarian." She has been at the Nesmith Library in Windham for nearly 23 years, and is currently the Adult Services Librarian/Assistant Director. She is also a writer. Her haiku has been published in the Christian Science Monitor, the Haiku Society of America's annual members' anthologies, and in Stories from Where We Live: the North Atlantic Coast (Milkweed Editions, 2000). Her other writing includes magazine articles, picture books, The Everything Kids' Money Book (Adams Media, 2000), and profiles of women written in conjunction with The Write Sisters for the “America's Notable Women” series published by Apprentice Shop Books.

I asked Diane to explain what haiku is:

"Many people think of haiku as a Japanese poem with “three lines of 5-7-5 syllables.” Sadly, this is the only way it is defined and taught in school. Many people are surprised when I tell them that haiku written in English does not have to have 17
syllables, and, it may be written in one, two, or three lines. It is a plastic form where it is more important to capture the essence of a moment, than it is to write in a rigid form. The subject of haiku is primarily nature or a season. More information about haiku can be found at Jane Reichhold's Aha Poetry page . The Haiku Anthology edited by Cor van den Heuvel (W.W. Norton, 1999) contains more than 800 haiku and senryu (a poem with haiku format, but with human nature as its subject) written in English--I highly recommend it!"

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Haiku and photo are used here with the permission of the poet. All rights reserved.

Notes from Eagle Island by LR Berger

Notes from Eagle Island

(excerpt)

We find what is most urgent
to find in the dream

where you are on your knees
on the beach somewhere behind me

holding up wedges of tumbled sea-glass
as if they were the chipped
points of stars,

worshiping only the light
that passes through them

as I work my way out
to the head of the bluff carrying
nothing but that question—

Who says we’re entitled
to refuge?

Surf smacks the stone face
shattering a clear bottle
into a flume of many-colored pieces.

And, Every loss is not betrayal.

That’s when I let go of the invisible
guardrail, the one I’ve been
gripped to all my life,

edging back with both hands
free to tell you.

L. R. Berger’s collection of poems, The Unexpected Aviary, received the Jane Kenyon Award for Outstanding Book of Poetry. She has been the grateful recipient of fellowships and support from The National Endowment for the Arts, The New Hampshire State Council on the Arts, The PEN New England Discovery Award, The MacDowell Colony, The Appalachia Poetry Prize, Hedgebrook and The American Academy in Rome. Thanks to a grant cosponsored by The Blue Mountain Center and The NH Audubon Society, and to the generosity of Rachel Carson's family, Berger was afforded time to write at Carson's home in Southport, Maine. Her tribute to Carson was published in, In Praise of Nature, an eco-philosophical anthology (Island Press). Berger also assisted in the English translation from the Arabic of Beginnings a book of poems by Adonis (Pyramid Atlantic Press). Her chapbook, Sightings, was published in 2001 by Oyster River Press. She lives in Contoocook.

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"Notes from Eagle Island" is a cycle of 26 poems from, The Unexpected Aviary by
L.R. Berger (Deerbrook Editions). It is used here with the permission of the poet. All rights reserved.

David Macaulay speaking in Hanover

Howe Library, Lebanon Public Libraries, Norwich Public Library (VT) and The Friends of the Dartmouth College Library invite you to attend a public presentation by David Macaulay. The four libraries are cooperating to sponsor this event and to bring together as wide an audience as possible to enjoy David Macaulay’s program.

David Macaulay, MacArthur Fellow, Caldecott Award Medalist, and acclaimed artist and writer will present a public program about his work on Saturday, May 2 at 3:00pm in Alumni Hall, Hopkins Center at Dartmouth College in Hanover. A reception and book signing will follow at the Top of the Hop. This event is free and open to the public. We encourage all librarians, trustees and members of the public to attend. David Macaulay’s books highlight art, architecture, history, engineering and design with a generous measure of humor and have broad appeal for adults and children. His work attracts the curious mind of any age and intrigues those who love to learn and explore. David Macaulay’s modest description of himself as an “explainer” belies the ease with which he conveys complex ideas through his detailed illustrations and precise use of words. Macaulay's most recent book is The Way We Work: Getting to Know the Amazing Human Body. Other well known titles are Cathedral, City, Mosque, Pyramid and The Way Things Work. Mr. Macaulay's work is on exhibit at the Currier Gallery, Manchester through June 14.

Note: Hanover parking garage on Lebanon Street is near the Hopkins Center.

The Webcam Girl by Tom Diegoli

The Webcam Girl

Only the Webcam Girl

is fooled
as she reduces herself
to a series of blurred-edged images

I can hear
her cry for help
in the curl of pubic hair
peeking out from under lace
taste the bile
of her loneliness
in the gentle curves
of her almost-adult breasts

It falls so far short of her erotic intent
my pity is lost on her
an ugly emotion
biting deep but passionless
stale, flat and cold
like ginger ale
left too long in the fridge

Nothing I can say or do
would reach her
deleted responses unread
would not shake the foundations of ego
an earthquake avoided
in a dustcloud of
pink satin and denial

The son of a high school teacher, Tom Diegoli grew up spending his summers in a tent in Conway, on the Saco River. Now he lives a bit farther north in Gorham with his daughter. What The Cat Dragged In is his latest self-published chapbook. Tom’s work has been published recently in The Color Wheel, and the anthology The 2008 Poets Guide to New Hampshire, and can also be found in the online magazine http://www.windinthetimothypress.com/.

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(c) 2008 Thomas J. Diegoli. Poem and photo are used here with the permission of the poet. All rights reserved.

Mount Kearsarge by Donald Hall

Mount Kearsarge

Great blue mountain! Ghost.
I look at you
from the porch of the farmhouse
where I watched you all summer
as a boy. Steep sides, narrow flat
patch on top –
you are clear to me
like the memory of one day.
Blue! Blue!
The top of the mountain floats
in haze.
I will not rock on this porch
when I am old. I turn my back on you,
Kearsarge, I close
my eyes, and you rise inside me,
blue ghost.

Donald Hall's new and selected poems, White Apples and the Taste of Stone, was published by Houghton Mifflin in 2006. He is the author of more than twenty books of poems as well as children's books, anthologies, essay collections, memoirs, et cetera. His most recent book is Unpacking the Boxes. You can listen to this poem read by Donald Hall.

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Poem and photograph are used here with the permission of the poet, all rights reserved.

Book of the Week #16

Strange Terrain: A Poetry Handbook for the Reluctant Reader by Alice B. Fogel (Brookline, NH: Hobblebush Books, 2009)

I have heard from many people recently that they have really enjoyed our online celebration of poetry. However, if you have found the poems more baffling than beautiful, this may be the book for you. Alice B. Fogel, of Acworth, NH, has provided readers with a guidebook to finding your way into the world of poetry.

"It is my belief that everyone can gain from the "news" that poetry brings us. With a bit of instruction, poetry will bring you significant new interactions with the world around you, with ideas and sensations, with yourself and others -- not to mention that it will literally expand your mind: According to a study published in New Scientist, billions of neurons per millisecond light up like Times Square on New Year's Eve whenever we read poetry." (p. 4)

Positano Pantoum by Dianalee Velie

Positano Pantoum

A full moon over Positano lights
the sea. Everywhere the sea glistens,
illuminating lush lemons sparkling
like remote stars, right here in the garden.

The sea, everywhere the sea glistens,
revealing fragrant red bougainvillea
like remote stars, right here in the garden.
Mesmerized by the sea’s royal reflections,

revealing fragrant red bougainvillea,
lovers stop and stare at these enchantments.
Mesmerized by the sea’s royal reflections,
sweet figs ripening in rich abundance,

lovers stop and stare at these enchantments:
pink trumpet flowers cascading down cliffs,
sweet figs ripening in rich abundance,
everything mirrored, doubling this dreamscape.

Pink trumpet flower cascading down cliffs
illuminating lush lemons sparkling,
everything mirrored, doubling this dreamscape:
a full moon over Positano’s lights.

Dianalee Velie lives and writes in Newbury, New Hampshire. She is a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College, and has a Master of Arts in Writing from Manhattanville College, where she has served as faculty advisor of Inkwell: A Literary Magazine. She has taught poetry, memoir, and short story at universities and colleges in New York, Connecticut and New Hampshire and in private workshops throughout the Northeast. Her award-winning poetry and short stories have been published in hundreds of literary journals throughout the USA and Canada. She enjoys traveling to rural school systems in Vermont and New Hampshire teaching poetry for the Children’s Literacy Foundation. Her play, "Mama Says," was directed by Daniel Quinn in a staged reading in New York City. She is the author of three books of poetry: Glass House, First Edition, and The Many Roads to Paradise.

The modern pantoum, of which this is a perfect example, is a poem of any length, composed of four-line stanzas in which the second and fourth lines of each stanza serve as the first and third lines of the next stanza. The last line of a pantoum is often the same as the first.

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Poem and photo used here with the permission of the poet. All rights reserved.

Solstice Sonnet by Dudley Laufman

Solstice Sonnet

December twenty one is winter solstice.
Sometimes tee shirt weather, most times cold.
The strength of winter’s weight is well upon us
as we struggle single file through wind and snow.

Making our way to the distant ancient grove
deep in the forest where the bonfire holds
for the northern conifer Ents to move
around the altar like cowled monks of old.

A cedar smudge is lit and mother nature
trembles in her boots, thinks, Foiled again.
The directions are blessed, the soul, the sky, the earth,
beavers, crows, Percherons and then
an elder lights a wand to torch the pile
and the sun begins to lighten up the sky.

Dudley Laufman was raised in the Boston area. He went to agricultural school, but has spent most of his time as a musician. He & Jacqueline (pictured) live on the edge of the woods in Canterbury, NH and earn their money by playing fiddles for dancing. Laufman is the author of An Orchard & A Garden (William Bauhan Press 1974), Mouth Music (Wind in the Timothy Press 2001), The Stoneman (Shaker Village Inc. 2005), Walking Sticks (Beech River Books 2007), and the chapbooks Smoke Screen and Behind the Beat (Pudding House 2004, 2008), as well as numerous other pamphlets, chapbooks and broadsides. He is the subject of the documentary film The Other Way Back.

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Poem and photo used here with the permission of the poet. All rights reserved.

Celia Thaxter, NH Poet

Born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in 1835, Celia Thaxter grew up on the Isles of Shoals. She "was one of the most popular New England poets of the late nineteenth century, a highly respected writer of prose for adults and children, a talented painter and passionate gardener. It is also fair to say that her image as the enchanting “Island Queen” presiding gracefully and effortlessly over a salon of artistic gentry has persisted for over 100 years, often overshadowing her personal struggles and literary and artistic accomplishments." (Book Notes, Spring 2007)

Many of her poems are available on the web including Three Norwegian Poems, The Sandpiper, The Shag, and Compensation.

Resources for further reading

• SeacoastNH.com has compiled articles and resources about this famous native daughter.
  
• Colby College has a collection of Celia Thaxter materials.
• Digital version of An Island Garden from The Celebration of Women Writers
  
• Materials in NH Libraries ABOUT Celia Thaxter.
• Materials in NH Libraries BY Celia Thaxter.
  

Holsteins and Lightening Bugs by John-Michael Albert

Holsteins and Lightening Bugs

Visiting relatives in the country, we were
sent outdoors. The adults sat in the tubular
aluminum and yellow Formica kitchen,
drank Folgers, smoked Camels, and talked.

We exhausted the afternoon ransacking
the farm. Come twilight, we went to visit

the Holsteins in the field across the road.

We stroked them through the barbed-wire.

To them, we were animated, sweat-and-dirt

covered salt blocks. They raked their rough

tongues over our hands and arms, matching

the tempo of the oncoming summer night,

the slow twinkle of the lightening bugs,

a visitation of languorous yellow stars.

The porch light went on back at the house,

a signal, and we all began to pray:

Oh, Big, Loud People,

suffused in the incense of coffee and tobacco:

do not call us back from this space;

do not make us leave this quiet world

of warm and spotted, milk-giving planets,

of winged and heatless stars.

But it was followed by the terrible, familiar

call to supper. We were compelled to betray

ourselves and go in.

John-Michael Albert is the editor of The 2008 Poets’ Guide to New Hampshire and The 2010 Poets’ Guide to New Hampshire. His published poems (2000-2005) are collected in Two-Ply and Extra Sensitive. Since moving to Dover ten years ago, he has frequently served the New Hampshire poetry community as reader, host, judge, essayist, board member, and ‘poet wrangler.’

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Poem and photo are used here with the permission of the poet. All rights reserved.

Photo by Lisa Nugent, UNH Photo Services.

The Conversation by John Perrault

The Conversation

From my long walk around the point
over the high crags and shingled beaches,
over the slick outer boulders
edging the low-tide lip of the bay,
I hiked back with a pair of cold stones,
one in each of my trouser pockets.

Gray with garnet threads, and worn away
to smoothness by tumbling in the sea for eons,
their surfaces were comforting to touch--
they felt as if made for human hands
to hold, for human palms to weigh them,
warm them, with fingers closing round.

I handed them to her without a word
about our argument--about my taking off;
she placed them on the table by the lamp
and turned away--then she turned again.
We pulled up chairs to study them together.
Waited. And the stones broke the silence.

John Perrault is a poet and balladeer and the author of The Ballad of Louis Wagner and other New England Stories in Verse (Peter Randall Publisher, 2003) and Here Comes the Old Man Now (Oyster River Press, 2005) from which this poem is taken. He lives in North Hampton, NH. You may sample his poems and songs at http://www.johnperrault.com/ .

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"The Conversation" is from Here Comes the Old Man Now, © John Perrault, 2005, published by Oyster River Press. John Perrault has all rights of re-publication. Photo by Kristen Perrault. Used here with the permission of the poet. All rights reserved.

Hurray for library workers!

Tuesday was National Library Workers' Day. Today (April 16th) is National Librarian's Day. Everyone who works in a library makes an important contribution to creating a positive and productive environment for library patrons. Has someone at the library made a difference in your life? Please celebrate National Library Week by taking a moment to thank the people who work at your library. In the interest of practicing what I preach here are a few of the many librarians who have made a difference in my life:

• Carol Fox and Valerie Sussman who were my school librarians in elementary and middle school.
• Arthur Tannenbaum, Librarian for Social Work, New York University Bobst Library who encouraged me to become a librarian.
• Judith Krug, who was an inspiration.
• The staff of the Manchester City Library and the staff of the NHSL, all of whom help me to answer weird questions and keep providing me with books to read (and movies to watch, and music to listen to, and ...)

Thank you!

First Veil by Julia Older

First Veil

I pulled the chador

down over my forehead

and took a step.

It slipped back.

I pulled it down

and tucked the corner

into my waistband.

Again it slipped.

I pulled it down

over my forehead,

pinning it in place

with one palm

under my chin.

It slipped over

one shoulder

showing my dress.

Quickly, I pulled it back.

But it gaped open

and fell down

over one shoulder.

I pulled the chador down

over my forehead.

Holding it down

with one palm

I held the edge

in my teeth.

Thus, I was to speak

to the learnéd men.

Julia Older is wearing her “First Veil” poem on the cover of Tahirih Unveiled (Turning Point Books, 2007), a novel-in-verse about early poet and women’s rights activist Tahirih of Persia. For a collaboration, NH linguist and fabric artist Rachel Lehr took a veil-length piece of her hand-dyed silk and Older’s poem to her Afghan Handwork Collective in Kabul; it returned a masterpiece embroidered in silver and gold. You can hear an audio clip of Julia reading Tahirih” from this award-winning collection (Independent Publisher 2008 Bronze Poetry Medal) and find other books by Older at http://www.appledorebooks.com/. Since Older co-walked and authored her first book about the Appalachian Trail with MacDowell Fellow novelist-photographer Steve Sherman, she has written full time in the foothills of Grand Monadnock.

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Poem appears in Connecticut Review 2004, Tahirih Unveiled (Turning Point Books, 2007.) Poem and photo used here with the permission of the poet. All rights reserved.

Book of the Week # 15

The Archivist's Story: A Novel by Travis Holland. (New York: Dial Press, 2007).

The International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award is the largest and most international prize of its kind. It involves libraries from all corners of the globe, and is open to books written in any language. Since 1999 the New Hampshire State Library has been a nominating agency for this prestigious international literary award. The recently announced 2009 shortlist included this title which was nominated by the New Hampshire Dublin Committee (a committee of the Center for the Book at the NH State Library).

In nominating The Archivist's Story, NH Dublin Committee chair Charles Shipman wrote that this is "A powerful portrayal of the paranoia and claustrophobia of life in Stalinist Russia and an equally powerful tribute to the value of literature. "

The Award is presented annually with the objective of promoting excellence in world literature. It is open to novels written in any language and by authors of any nationality, provided the work has been published in English or English translation in the specified time period as outlined in the rules and conditions for the year. Nominations are submitted by library systems in major cities throughout the world.

Approaching Seventy by Patricia Fargnoli

Approaching Seventy

A spider crawls beneath the screen,
designs a web in the corner and waits
with the patience of a calendar.

This is the end of summer,
scent of decay everywhere in the outside air,

flowers, planted last spring with such
a sense of promise, leaving one by one,
disappearing into the earth.

I think of endings--

final page of a novel
and the characters you've come to love
placed on the shelf,

a wave from a doorway-- those slight
or heavy sadnesses---

friend in Sagaponock the last time I saw her,
waving from the dock as the ferry pulled out
and the wake lengthened between us,

or swells on a stormy crossing,
pine boughs, dark, lifting and falling
in heavy rain, one night of my childhood,

beyond the small stair top bedroom
at my aunt's Vermont inn, as I lay awake--
wood smoke and voices from the lobby below,

a memory of suitcases standing by a farmhouse
front door, milk cans topped with snow, the pale
complexion of my mother who left and didn't return,

memory of lilacs--branches my brother and I used to climb through,
scratching ourselves as we hid from each other--
not long ago, at an airport, we hugged goodbye again--

what I left behind when I moved
to this senior apartment--some feeling of usefulness,
half of my books, most of my clothes.

Sometimes, it feels as if I've said goodbye to everyone.
Through the north window, I watch clouds move off
beyond my vision, and somewhere dissolve into rain.

Patricia Fargnoli of Walpole NH, a former New Hampshire Poet Laureate, is the author of five collections of poetry. Her latest book, Duties of the Spirit (Tupelo Press, 2005) won the Jane Kenyon Literary Award. She's received five Pushcart Prize nominations and been published in such literary journals as Poetry, Ploughshares, The North American Review, and The Massachussetts Review. Her featured poem, "Approaching Seventy" is previously unpublished and is included in her new book Then, Something which will be published by Tupelo Press this coming fall.

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Approaching Seventy is used here with the permission of the poet, all rights reserved.
Photo by John Hession

You Be the Rain by Rick Agran

you be the rain and I’ll be a puddle’s surface

you be the quiet and I’ll be the chickadee at 4 a.m.
a black-capped declaration at dawn

you be the earth and I’ll be the beet glowing in the ground
the ant sowing a thistle seed

you be the wind and I’ll be your hair blowing behind you
the candle ha-ha-ing behind the wavery glass

you be the fire and I’ll be the beech twig, the pine needle
a wisp of perfumed smoke rising

Rick Agran grew up in Brookline, NH. He has worked in the woods and in a lumber mill, sold brass and copper jewelry and vegetables at Seattle's Pike Place Market, taught about nature at Otter Lake Conservation School, washed dishes and cooked fancy soup at the Blue Strawbery, worked as a farmer, and taught lots of people to read and write. His favorite swimming holes are on the Cockermouth River and the East Branch of the Saco. He has written two books: a collection of poems called Crow Milk, and Pumpkin Shivaree, a picture book for children. He co-edited Under the Legislature of Stars: 62 New Hampshire Poets.
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Photo by Raya Bodnarchuk. Poem and photo used with permission of the poet.

Amber by Andrew Periale

AMBER

FOSSILIZED SUNLIGHT
MOSQUITO’S LAST SUPPER
DEATH, HERE IS THY STING

Scratching at crumbly walls of his dark tunnel, a bright circle of earth lit by his headlamp, the amber hunter slows his pace at the first glint of ancient sunlight.

TREES ONCE BLED
LIQUID PRISONS ENGULFING
SPRING-HATCHED INVADERS

In his warm, pine-paneled office at the University of Stockholm, the professor examines his prize through a hand held lens. Extraordinary! Must be a dozen species. Better than dinosaurs, he thinks, imagining giant dragonflies in Siberia, the frozen hills of Greenland covered in palm trees.

SUMMER’S BUZZING STILLED
THE BEST MINDS CALCULATE
COMING EXTINCTIONS

Andrew Periale is the Poet Laureate of Rochester, NH, a member of Portsmouth’s “City Hall Poets,” and has had a career as a puppeteer, playwright, polyglot. He is the founding editor of Puppetry International magazine, which is designed by his wife and puppetry partner, Bonnie at their home in Strafford, NH. His recent poems have appeared in Light Quarterly, Entelechy International, and the 2008 Poets' Guide to New Hampshire.

“Amber” is written in the haibun form, which combines haiku with a very distilled prose.

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Poem and photo are used here with the permission of the poet, all rights reserved.

Easter sunrise service here – six am by Maren Tirabassi

Easter sunrise service here – six am

The sandwich board is just off the highway
as it bends at the old trail head
where the state is widening the road.

People pull off on the shoulder
behind construction equipment –
a couple teenagers with a bag of donuts,
mother with her sleepy six-year old in her arms,
young woman just passing through
New Hampshire on her way to Georgia,
men who stand alone, and
college students awake from last night.

A few know each other – folks from the church
who will invite everyone back for breakfast,
and some will come,
warm their hands on coffee cups,
eat those egg casseroles that
seem to grow in church basements,
and shyly talk about themselves.
Most will drive away – silent as they came
and full of what they needed –

old Easter hymns, an impossibly
hopeful story
about a woman who meets
the man she saw butchered
walking around like nothing so much
as a gardener … maybe
that explains the dirty broken hands,

the prayers of people
up to their ankles in April snow,
up to their lives in hard luck and blessing,
and the sun breaking the tree line
just at the benediction –

which is, of course, mostly for the highway,
those who are passing through,
and the way we try for one another
to make the roads wider.

Maren C. Tirabassi is an ordained minister and a former Portsmouth poet laureate. This poem was inspired by the wonderful folks at Union UCC Church in Madbury, New Hampshire.
Maren has written ten books for Pilgrim Press. The Depth of Wells is poetry from Peter Randall Publishers and – just for fun -- Footlights and Fairy Dust is a children’s book available from Revolution Booksellers.

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Used with the permission of the poet. All rights reserved.
Photo is by Diane Karr and appears here with her permission. All rights reserved.

National Library Week Events for Saturday 4/18/2009

Here is a sampling of events going on in New Hampshire libraries on Saturday, April 18, 2009. Be sure to visit your local library and check out what's happening there!

• Saturday, April 18 at 11am there will be a special children's program in the Concord Public Library Auditorium. Professional marionette puppeteer Charlotte Anne Dore and Rosalita’s Puppets will present Goldilocks and the Three Dragons. Free tickets are required and will be available beginning Wednesday, April 8, while quantities last. For more information please call 225-8670.
  
• Saturday, April 18, 2pm at Dover Public Library there will be a matinee showing of Slumdog Millionaire in the Lecture Hall.
  

April 12-18, 2009 is National Library Week, a national observance sponsored by the American Library Association.

Car Dancing by Scott T. Hutchison

Car Dancing

My wife still drifts with a little shoulder sway
when her car radio lofts out its easy-listening tunes.
Me, I remain loyal and fierce to classic rock, bite into
some of the new alternative. Musically speaking,
we ain’t on the same note. Even so--one of us can’t even
grocery shop without the other, the two-party division
of labor involves reader of the list
and cart driver, and the choice of ice cream flavor
is always a joint decision. One can’t visit
the lumber yard/hardware store
without the other in attendance, hinges
and deck paint that important.

Volvo wagon or tricked-out Ford pickup,
there’s respect for the station
of choice for whoever sits behind the wheel,
and after the years have long ended
for mirror balls and crowded wooden floors,
for graceful nightlife and partyhounding,
after the knees have given way to
gravity and gravelly deposits, both of those cars
keep on rolling, the dial firmly set,
and hands keep sneaking across the seats
to hold the other’s, as base line and timpani
raise the heartrate while a comfortable glance
and the slightest of shimmys lets you know
that yeah, oh yeah, you’re still dancing.


Scott T. Hutchison writes both poetry and fiction, and teaches Creative Writing at Gilford High School. He served as State Director of the NH Young Writers’ Conference for thirteen years, and is on the rotating faculty of the New England Young Writers’ Conference. He was named New England Poet of the Year by the New England Association of Teachers of English in 2001. His book, Reigning In, was published by Black Bird Press in 2003. Hutchison currently resides in Gilford.

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Poem and photo used with the permission of the poet, all rights reserved.)

Clippings from the Blogosphere

• The New York Times had two interesting essays recently, one on the value of memorizing poetry and one on the short story.
• A posting on LISNews about the Edible Book Festival included several links to stories (not including ours) about this multi-venue event.
• A quiz on spring in literature from the UK Guardian.
• The IMPAC Dublin Literary Awards announced their 2009 shortlist. There is a quick post about this on Galleycat.
• From the NY Times: Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism and the Nieman Foundation at Harvard announced the winners of the Lukas Prize Project Awards, given to works of literary nonfiction.
• A video for book loving Star Trek fans.

National Library Week Events for Friday 4/17/2009

Here is a sampling of events going on in New Hampshire libraries on Friday, April 17, 2009. Be sure to visit your local library and check out what's happening there!

• Friday, April 17, at 2:30pm Dover Public Library will host a Teen Area Grand Opening with contest and refreshments.
  
• Friday, April 17th is Patron Appreciation Day at Manchester City Library
  Without your support there would be no library. Light refreshments will be available all day as the library’s way of saying “Thank you.”
  

April 12-18, 2009 is National Library Week, a national observance sponsored by the American Library Association.

Max's Eye by Mimi White

Max’s Eye

And then he opened it the way light opens a meadow
At dawn, though this was an opening deeper and wider
Than the sea. And then his lips fluttered, more a quick
Snort that cows make, heavier lips than his which finally
Settled down into a sweet memory of grass, fragrant late-
In- the- season grass. And then his treble, violet- stemmed
Voice grew back into the tundra, the cold land of his
Ancestors where long sharp barks meant food, shelter,
Ice thawing before its time; danger; a mad scramble
To safety. His paws let loose the snow, the garden’s
Last furrow, spring’s chilled green promise
Which he sniffed and sniffed in his verdant dream.
And his claws dug the sand; skittered across the floor;
Scratched at the spread to come up and sleep by my side.
And then I held him and sang as if he were still mine.
And then the train that had been idling at the depot,
The one that ran through the edge of town, that blew
Its dull whistle at dawn though I slept through it
Till this dawn opened a meadow so wide light
Fell across my eyes and I knew that nothing is
Perfect and that everything is beautiful.


Mimi White, poet and teacher, has been working for more than twenty-five years with students of all ages to help them create original and authentic work, be it poetry, memoir or non fiction writing. She has worked in a variety of settings including schools, libraries, prisons, residencies for the elderly, and universities. Her poems have been published in dozens of journals including Poetry, Harvard Review, West Branch, The Seattle Review, The Worcester Review and Rivendell. She is the author of two collections of poetry, Into The Darkness We Go and the The Singed Horizon, which was selected by Robert Creeley as the recipient of the 2000 Philbrick Poetry Award. She was Poet Laureate of Portsmouth, New Hampshire 2005-2007. Deerbrook Editions published her first full length book, The Last Island, in the spring of 2008.

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Poem is used here with the permission of the poet, all rights reserved.

Book of the Week #14

Spring Goes Squish! written and illustrated by Marty Kelley (Madison, WI: Zino Press, 2008)

A little seasonal reading from New Hampshire's own Marty Kelley who points out that spring is not all tulips and chirping robins.

National Library Week Events for Thursday 4/16/2009

Here is a sampling of events going on in New Hampshire libraries on Thursday, April 16, 2009. Be sure to visit your local library and check out what's happening there!

• Red River Theater (Concord) will be showing The Hollywood Librarian: A Look at Librarians through Film (96 min/Canada/2007) in the Screening Room on Thursday, April 16 at 6:30pm. Following the film, the Concord Public Library Foundation will host an audience discussion with a panel of librarians. Panelists include: Michael York (NH State Librarian); Patricia Immen (Concord Public Library), Nancy Keane (Rundlett Middle School Library); and Stephen Ambra (NH Technical Institute Library).
  
• Thursday, April 16 from 3:30-5pm Paws Party! Join the party in the Children's Room at Concord Public Library where they will honor Lily the Labrador Retriever who is the star of their “Paws for Pages” program. Party guests can meet Lily, read to Lily if they wish,
  and take part in some paws-itively great activities! If they wish, guests may bring stuffed or rubber dog toys or cat toys to be donated to the Concord SPCA.
  
• Thursday, April 16, 4:00 to 5:00 PM, Winchell Room at Manchester City Library
  Book Adventures. This month's featured author will be Lois Ehlert. Join us for an afternoon of activities, crafts and fun based on Lois Ehlert's book Planting a Rainbow. For children in grades K-2. Registration required. For more information, contact 624-6550 ext. 335.
  
• Thursday April 16, 4:00 to 5:00 PM, Hunt Room at Manchester City Library, Camera Club is back! NHIA photography major intern Nathalie will show you how to take really cool pictures with an ordinary camera. Please bring your camera and ideas. For more information, contact Kate at 624-6550 ext. 342.

April 12-18, 2009 is National Library Week, a national observance sponsored by the American Library Association.

Coups de coeur by Patricia Frisella

Coups de coeur
(Wounds to the Heart)

Cardinals at the windows see enemy
black and white newspapers turn to color
reflections or crimson hills and horses
for added effect. There’s a lot of red now, flames,
in the painting on the wall on the other side of
blasts, and plasma. On today’s front page a van ablaze,
the glass between us and them, and wound
soldiers in desert camo hauling a white-haired man,
themselves, struggling against an imaginary foe,
panting, their mouths open, they sprint,
when they run out of real opponents to fight;
two of them hurry this frail being from doom,
I want to save them from each other, save them from
children wounded by bombs, burned,
themselves, from this lust and smudge of feathers,
and a man holding his blood-soaked thigh against pulp,
limp bodies with broken necks. I pull lace
radiating from where legs have been; I want to save them,
curtains shut and they quiet, and singing, begin to gather
from each other. I want to save them from themselves,
horsehair and dry grass for their nests, to plump and to redden.


Pat Frisella, the daughter of a decorated WW II combat vet who received his medals in November of 2001, lives with rescued horses on the side of a high hill surrounded by fields and forests and watched over by one of the few remaining manned fire-towers in NH. At night she can walk up the hill to see the lights of Newington, NH some 40 miles away or stand at the window and listen to owls and coyotes. She has won prizes for her short stories, essays, and poems, most recently the Anthony Piccione Memorial "Poets For Peace" Award. Her work has been published in various literary journals and anthologies. She recently edited the anthology The Other Side of Sorrow, Poets Speak Out about Conflict, War and Peace which won the Independent Publishers Book Award bronze medal in poetry.

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Poem is used here with the permission of the poet, all rights reserved.

National Library Week Events for Wednesday 4/15/2009

Here is a sampling of events going on in New Hampshire libraries on Wednesday, April 15, 2009. Be sure to visit your local library and check out what's happening there!

• Wednesday, April 15 at 10am at the Concord Public Library The Shoestring Puppets will present a special Family Story Hour with a puppet show in the Library Auditorium. The show will feature some favorite stories as well as some little-known surprises!
  
• The Shoestring Puppets will repeat their special National Library Week show at the Penacook Branch of the Concord Public Library on Wednesday, April 15 at 6:30pm for an evening of family fun!
  
• Wednesday, April 15 at 7pm. Banjos, Bones and Ballads, a music program with Jeff Warner in the Concord Public Library Auditorium. Traditional songs, rich in local history and a sense of place, present the latest news from the distant past. They help us to interpret present-day life with an understanding of the working people who built our country. Tavern songs, banjo tunes, 18th century New England hymns, sailor songs, and humorous stories about traditional singers and their songs highlight this informative program.
  
• On Wednesday, April 15 at 7pm at the Merrimack Public Library the Monthly
  Book Group will meet to discuss The Madonnas of Leningrad by Debra Dean. This is the third in a four-part series themed "Family Fiction"
  
• Wednesday April 15, 6:00 to 8:30 PM at Manchester City Library Foundation Spring Fundraiser- Book Launch with Jane Cleland. The seventh annual Spring fundraiser will feature special guest author Jane Cleland. Ms. Cleland will be launching her new book, Killer Keepsakes, the latest Josie Prescott antique mystery set on the seacoast of New Hampshire. The evening will include an interview of Ms. Cleland by Rebecca Rule. Come join us for a lively evening of great food and wine with fellow library supporters. The event is $50 per person and registration begins the week of March 9th. If you cannot attend the event but would still like a signed copy of Ms. Cleland's new book, stop by the information desk at the main library. Killer Keepsakes can be purchased for $24.95. Make checks payable to the Manchester City Library Foundation. You can then pick up your signed copy beginning April 16th.
  
  
• "Tea Talk” @ 4pm on Wednesday, April 15th at Nichols Memorial Library (Kingston) with Brenda Kathleen Ghorashi, from “AntiquiTeas”
  
• On Wednesday, April 15 at 6:30pm the Weeks Public Library (36 Post Road, Greenland, NH) will host Silver Lake Summers: E. E. Cummings Revue. This original presentation explores the life and work of American poet and painter, Edward Estlin Cummings, a lifelong summer resident of Silver Lake in New Hampshire. The largest collection of Cummings’ papers is housed at Harvard University and contains letters, diaries, manuscripts, notebooks, and sketchbooks. These materials. along with his published works, form the basis for Silver Lake Summers. Visual motifs are taken from Cummings’ paintings and the environment at Silver Lake. The structure and tone of the presentation reflect the same inventive and experimental atmosphere of early 20th century literature and art which influenced Cummings himself. Refreshments served. For information on this and all Weeks Library programs, call 603-436-8548.
  

April 12-18, 2009 is National Library Week, a national observance sponsored by the American Library Association.

What to Say If the Birds Ask by Walter Butts

WHAT TO SAY IF THE BIRDS ASK

And if clouds gather now like distant cousins,
it’s because weather is the mother of all things
cyclical. And if, through the afternoon rain,
the mail carrier comes with her armful of bills
and rejection, it’s only to remind us of what
we may have yet to receive. But what unsettles
me this gray morning beneath trill and chatter of birds,
signals of a coming storm in a neighborhood of strangers,
is that first death, polished wood and Uncle’s cold hand
when I was nine, the relatives and friends gone since then,
my futile guilt and anger, the failed language of regret.
But if it’s true some words are, finally, the soul’s
lexicon, then I’ll say this: Once, there was a woman
whose shadow blessed the light of a room in Boston,
a man who filled the glasses of his friends with the best wine,
a child who tasted the soft petals of flowers and spoke
their many colors to swans rippling the summer pond
in a silent lyric. Today, alone by the window, I’ve been
translating the repeated warble of sparrows perched
on the maple’s high branches. “What’s next? What’s next?”
they ask. “Soon,” I whisper. “Soon, we will know.”

W.E. Butts is the recently appointed New Hampshire Poet Laureate. His latest book, Sunday Evening at the Stardust Café (1st World Library, 2006), was selected as a finalist for the 2005 Philip Levine Prize in Poetry, and chosen winner of the 2006 Iowa Source Poetry Book Prize. He currently resides in Manchester, NH.
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“What to Say if the Birds Ask” first appeared in White Pelican Review, and was reprinted in What to Say if the Birds Ask, a chapbook from Pudding House Publications, 2007. Used here with permission of W.E. Butts, all rights reserved.

National Library Week Events for Tuesday 4/14/2009

Here is a sampling of events going on in New Hampshire libraries on Tuesday, April 14, 2009. Be sure to visit your local library and check out what's happening there!

• Tuesday, April 14 from 9-11am the Concord Public Library is having a Public Coffee hosted by the Concord Public Library Foundation. Enjoy some delicious treats at the Library!
  
• Tuesday, April 14, 9:30 to 10:30 AM, Winchell Room at Manchester City Library Preschool Storytime. Language enhancement program. Picture book readings and fingerplays, signing and crafts may be included. For ages 4-5 years old. No registration required. For more information, contact the Children's Room at 624-6550 ext. 314.
  
• Tuesday, April 14, 6:00 to 8:15 PM, Auditorium at Manchester City Library Foreign/Indie Film - The Trap (NR) A modern film noir reflecting the true face of Serbian 'society in transition,' The Trap is a story that could happen to you. An ordinary man is forced to choose between life and death of his own child. This is post-war Serbia in transition, in which there is no more war, only a moral and existential desert in which human life is worth little, and normal life remains almost unreachable. Serbian with English subtitles.
  
• Tuesday, April 14th from 6:30-7:30 come to the Nichols Memorial Library (Kingston) for a lecture on Louis Braille with Cheryl Gannon, M.Ed./COMS.
  
• Tuesday, April 14, 7pm at Dover Public Library UNH Astronomer John Gianforte will lecture on Galileo’s discoveries 400 years ago in a slide program entitled “In the Footsteps of the Master”.

April 12-18, 2009 is National Library Week, a national observance sponsored by the American Library Association.

Jazzmouth is looking for Teen Poets

"JAZZMOUTH”
The Seacoast Poetry and Jazz Festival
“Young Writer’s Beat Night Festival”

Time: Sat April 25th, 11AM-Noon
Location: River Run Books, 20 Congress St. Portsmouth, NH

This event is part of the 5th Annual Jazzmouth Poetry & Jazz Festival, which will take place from April 23-26 at various locations throughout Portsmouth.

"Beat Night" is a series that has been running for 10 years at The Press Room, in Portsmouth. Writers read their work to the accompaniment of live music. As part of the Jazzmouth Festival, there is going to be a “Young Writers Beat Night”. This event is not just a reading but an opportunity for young writers to read their work accompanied by live music. The music will be provided by the Larry Simon ensemble with special guest David Amram. Kids will have the chance to read with world famous musician and composer David Amram. Amram is the person who first started the music and poetry collaborations of the Beat era working with writers, such as Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlingetti and others.

Here are a few things to share with the kids:
The kids should be aware of the format, meaning that they will be working with musicians and they should think in advance of what sort of mood or style, or instrumentation they want (expressed briefly in non -technical terms, e.g. "Can you play something that sounds like Bette Davis in 'Whatever Happened to Baby Jane'?", or " I just want some slow dark bass playing", etc.). We’re planning on having flute, bass, guitar, drums, sax, keyboard and David Amram on assorted world music wind instruments and percussion.

Each writer can read up to 3 minutes (possibly longer depending on how many readers we have).

For more info and to sign up, please email the festival’s artistic director Larry Simon at: groovebacteria@comcast.net. Please put “Jazzmouth Young writers event” in the subject line.

If you forget to sign up in advance, it’s ok, just come down to River Run on 4/25

For up to date info on all Jazzmouth events go to: jazzmouth.org

Pinch Hitter by Neil English

Pinch Hitter

Dressed in a long white lab coat,
the lanky blonde nurse entered the waiting room,
announced in a clear and steady tone,

“Leighton Johnson.”

The elderly man, dressed in blue striped shirt
and baseball cap
rose and replied,
in a resonating radio announcer’s voice,

“Leighton couldn’t make it today.
I’m here to fill in for him. . .”

then slowly followed the nurse down the hall
for blood tests and . . .
more.

And even here, within the confines of
the Oncology/Hematology Pavilion,

humor heals
the afflicted.

Neil English is a Model T truck-driving performance poet. His most recently published work can be found in The 2008 Poets’ Guide to New Hampshire (Poetry Society of NH, edited by John Michael Albert, 2007). Neil currently resides in Epsom, NH.

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Poem and photo are used here with the permission of the poet. All rights reserved.

National Library Week Events for Monday 4/13/2009

Here is a sampling of events going on in New Hampshire libraries on Monday, April 13, 2009. Be sure to visit your local library and check out what's happening there!

• The Boscawen Public Library is having a Poetry Reading/Slam session Monday April 13 at 7pm. People can bring their favorite poems to share or their own original work to be commented on.
  
• Monday, April 13 at 7pm at the Concord Public Library Mysteries on Both Sides of the Pond. A book discussion with leader Professor Suzanne Brown discussing St. Alban’s Fire by Archer Mayor.
  
• Monday, April 13, 6:30pm at Dover Public Library poet Mimi White will read from her new book The Last Island as part of the Dover Adult Learning Center’s “Writers Read” literary series. Monday, April 13 is the last day for students grades K-12 to submit a poem in the Dover Public Library's 7th Annual Poetry Contest.
  
• On Monday, April 13 at 7pm the Merrimack Public Library will host “A Soldier’s Story” with character actress Sharon Woods portraying the mother of a Union soldier who died at the Battle of Gettysburg.
  
• Monday, April 13, 7 to 8:30pm in the Winchell Room at Manchester City Library Grow Your Own Food. Margaret Hagen from the UNH Cooperative Extension will cover the basics necessary to plan and start up a garden to grow food. Participants will learn to answer the questions: Where should the garden be located? How large should it be? What should be grown? How many plants do I really need? Registration required. For more information, contact Yvonne Loomis at 624-6550.
  
• Kick off National Library Week on Monday, April 13th @ 11:00am with a morning social at Nichols Memorial Library (Kingston). Come chat, browse, and check out a book or two.
  

April 12-18, 2009 is National Library Week, a national observance sponsored by the American Library Association.

Doing the Worms' Work by J. Kates

Doing the Worms' Work

The first April I am certain I will die,
the ground too cold, too wet for planting,
the river only a foot down from flood,
the compost heap a contradance of bees,
I need to be looking toward a harvest.

I will turn dirt. Without stooping
to pick rocks, I do the worms' work
for an hour or two, see how I like it,
see how I enjoy the company of worms.
Not bad, they say, not bad for a beginner.

J. Kates is a poet and literary translator who lives in Fitzwilliam, New Hampshire. He is the author of Mappemonde (Oyster River Press, 2001). You can listen to this poem as read by J. Kates.

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This poem was published in The Florida Review and is used here with the permission of the poet, all rights reserved.