For the Sake of the Light

For the Sake of the Light, by Tom Sexton.  In his latest collection former Alaska State Writer Laureate, Sexton deftly guides us through a magical yet familiar landscape, with microscopic attention to detail and imaginative journeys inspired by natural objects. In “Redpolls” we are gripped by the fingers of hoar frost in the coastal forest, pondering snow bound mountains which lead to “endless sky that is… / not a path to that other world / where all is either miracle / or metaphor” but rather the origin of, the “thin-metallic song” of redpolls who descend to forage the snow for alder seeds, “on the breast of each male a bit of pink / like that of a petal glimpsed falling from / a rose. This is where we live, in this small / frenzy of beating hearts.” Sexton’s verse is simple in form, Zen-like in its praise of life’s overlooked pleasures, a bowl of blackberries, an albino deer and the song of tugboat engines as they maneuver a barge against the tide. From Fairbanks to Southeast, Sexton’s verse is as diverse as the Alaskan ecosystems he explores. While the poems of the natural world remain timeless, some revisit characters of the Yukon gold rush, fur trading expeditions in Ontario and childhood summers spent on the Maine coast.

If one poem can be read as a metaphor for Sexton’s careful celebration of simple language, “The Man Who Learned Dena’ina” would work wonderfully. In it, a quiet student, who has spent the winter listening to the songs and stories of the Athabascan elders, is given the opportunity to speak, “to try a few of their words in his throat”. Having done so, the student experiences a transformation of perspective, leaving the classroom and seeing, “that the ice was gone and the lake was covered / with shimmering scales. Dilah Vena, he said, / and it moved its tail. Dilah Vena, Dilah Vena.” In this way, the world according to Sexton leaps from the page, filling not only the eyes, but the ears and mouth of the reader. In Sexton’s world, one cannot help be swept away by the power of a single image, which becomes a poem within the poem, “sitting by the window watching night’s / long limousine drop the stars off one by one” (from “Signs of Spring”).

True to Eastern poetry traditions, the poems capture the often disregarded passing of time and changing of seasons, an essential element to Haiku and other short forms. When gentle rain begins to fall in “Reading Wang Wei” the reader tucks the book of 8th Century Chinese verse into his jacket and re-acquainting his eyes with the surrounding world, notices, “Spiderwebs are on the grass / for the first time this summer. / Highbush cranberries hang / like glowing lanterns on their stems. / For a moment / I’m too insignificant to be unhappy.” Which leaves this reader questioning what could have caused even a threat of unhappiness, perhaps the water stains upon the damp pages of the book or perhaps the rain on a summer’s day? Regardless of this insignificant detail, there are too many revelatory moments collected here that make one rejoice that we can call this land, this Alaska with all its terrible weather, brutal isolation, unique people and resilient plants and animals, our home. For the Sake of the Light will serve as a strong addition to any Alaskan book collection (despite poems collected here set in other locations) and should be prized and carefully studied by any student of poetics.

For the Sake of the Light contains fifty three new poems, each with their fingers tracing the contour of the land as if reading a Braille history of life in places of rugged beauty, like Alaska and Maine. Also included are a fine selection from Sexton’s seven previous collections, making this edition a very practical Sexton Reader and an unrivaled gift for the poet in your life. I leave you with four lines from “A Letter to Tu Fu” from, Autumn in the Alaska Range (2000, Salmon Publishing) and included in For the Sake of the Light. It has been a warm winter even in the valleys. Rain last night and now the willows like a gathering of wine-drunk poets are lifting small white cups to the dawn.

reviewed by Jonas Lamb

In The Stacks

In celebration of National Poetry Month, today’s column highlights works of poetry new to the Juneau Public Libraries.  And if you’ve already got a poem niggling at you, try using Columbia Granger’s World of Poetry, which contains over 50,000 poems available in full-text representing a wealth of supplemental information with over 1,100 commentaries, over 500 biographies, and definitions for 200 poetic terms, to find it.   Head over to JPL Podcasts to hear an audio sampling of some master poets at work.

Behind My Eyes by Li-Young Lee. Lee is the Keynote Speaker at this summer’s Kachemak Bay Writers’ Conference in Homer.  Behind My Eyes, Lee’s fourth critically acclaimed collection, explores identity through family, memory, exile, loss, and questionable virtue.  Lee’s humor is at times subtle, at times sharp as his insight into the unforgettable magic of childhood: “Whenever I talk, my wife falls asleep./ So, now, when she can’t sleep, I talk./ It’s like magic”.  The reader falls into the boring husband’s engrossing conversation with his sleeping wife debating the positioning of lovers in the physical and romantic world; “It isn’t that lovers always speak together in a house by the sea/ or a room/ with shadows of leaves and branches/ on the walls and ceiling/…It’s that such spaces emerge/ out of the listening/ their speaking to each other engenders.”  His style is entirely his own, alternating between narrative quatrains and unrhymed couplets often in the form of lines of dialog or image speak reminiscent of Paz.  It washes over you, leaving you in that blissful moment between sleeping and waking, “What do the past lives of the color blue have to do/ with the fate of words and the future of wishing?”

Seven Notebooks: Poems, by Campbell McGrath. McGrath’s latest collection explores agriculture, civilization, language, luxury and the cosmos.  Ranging in form from haiku to panoramic, in-flight prose observations, McGrath’s verse is rich in texture, historical reflection and careful attention to the unnatural order of human existence invading nature’s myriad disorder.  Set in the agricultural remnants of south Florida, “vanishing order endangered as the legendary panther,” McGrath’s Florida is an Eden-like backdrop full of bloom and rot.   Images linger, in particular from “Time”, an ode to our futile efforts to elude time described as “the match strike / of consciousness enacting its doomed insurgency / against the dark mountain’.  Or the “Ode to a can of Schaefer beer”, which artfully extracts marketing text from the label of a discarded can, “it wears its heart on its sleeve / like a poem / laid out like a poem / with weak line endings and questionable / closure” and leaving on your tongue the distinct flavor of cheep beer, “Thin, rice-sweet, tasting of metal / and crisp water”.

One Secret Thing: Poems, by Sharon Olds. From intense portraits of war taken from unusual perspectives, to judgment and eventual forgiveness of family and their indoctrination, Olds’ latest collection rings out with lyrical precision and energy (light and dark).  Much of the work feels inspired by old photographs, almost an exercise in giving voice to the voiceless, those whose lives were skirted or entirely re-routed by war.   In “Free Shoes” evacuated children prepare to receive new shiny shoes while the old ones are disposed of, the shoes analogous to their new lives away from the war, “This life that has been given them like a task!  This life, this / black bright narrow unbroken-in shoe”.  If you value family, but also value speaking critically about family, you’ll enjoy this collection.  There are some very controversial poems worth checking out, in particular, “Last Words, Death Row, Circa 2030”.

Bikeman: An epic Poem, by Thomas F. Flynn. This collection inspired by 9/11 will leave you squirming, which, depending on your tastes, is either the mark of great poetry or difficult subject matter.  Flynn accurately captures the awkwardness of the subject, “I am witness to this and embarrassed./ I am an intruder on the most private moment/ of her life: her death”.   An award winning television writer/producer, Flynn makes his first foray into poetry in order to document the very personal, yet universal aftermath of the World Trade Towers’ collapse.  Through observations both passive and judgmental, the verse shines when turned upon the arc which the lives of those affected by great loss will travel, “He, a banker from India on a temporary work visa/ is praying for the wife and son/…His widow,/ without a visa, will be deported,/ leaving her New Jersey home for India,/ where she becomes an outcast/ with her fatherless American-born/ baseball-loving blue-jean wearing son”.  The introduction describes the narrator as one who “did not live through it” but “just did not die” alluding to the survivor’s guilt fueling the narrative. Plow through this one in one sitting to avoid 9/11 overload and you’ll walk away with a new perspective on loss and survival.

“Coraline” is coming back to Juneau this week – check the schedule at the Gold Town Nickelodeon for showtimes, and at our blog, for presentation and puppet workshop times and more.

National Poetry Month, part 1

As a poet and librarian, I’m always sad to see April come and go without the world knowing it’s National Poetry Month, so I’ll take a few minutes to share some great poetry resources and events at the Library and in the world at large.  Several more posts will follow this month, including reviews of new poetry works in the JPL collection, poetry podcasts and more.

And because a day should not go by without a poem, take a minute if you haven’t flipped through this collection, to enjoy Poetry 180.  Why 180 and not 365?  Well this program, sponsored by the Library of Congress focuses on high school students gaining an appreciation for poetry, so the 180 is the length of a typical school year, but as Billy Collins (editor and former Poet Laureate) says, “A 180-degree turn implies a turning back — in this case, to poetry”.

I find it comforting and essential to turn back to poetry as a practice in simplifying my life.  I’ll try and stop reading everything else for a week or two and just read poetry and let the stripped down form, the essence of the language, wash over me.  The influence of Zen and Japanese forms on the work of Vermont poet, David Budbill or the poets who have influenced his work like, Han Shan and Ryokan,  are my favorites, and great for spring as we await bursting buds and the greening of the white and brown world.   Try the collection, Mountain Home: Wilderness Poetry of Ancient China, see how through it you can reconnect to the world despite the business and clutter we all encounter.

Last month, Poetry Out Loud, came through Juneau for the Alaska State-finals and  featured Juneau poet, TMHS student, Tyee Dunlap, reciting Jay Wright’s, “The Healing Improvisation of Hair” .  Check out a video of some of the best performances during the contest’s history, here.  

On the local scene, teen poets should get involved with, Lead On! A state-wide poetry contest for youth ages 13-19 sponsored by AWARE.   Click here for the flyer with contest details.  Poems should follow one of two themes, “Where I am from” or “What I dream about” and must be submitted by May 31st.

Head out to the Egan Library at the University of Alaska Southeast  to see their great, “30 Days, 30 Poems” display, featuring a new poem each day, new poetry books to the collection and an interactive “Poet-Tree” on which visitors can add new poems on leaves and help spring up the tree’s branches.   Thanks to Wendy G. for sharing this great Flickr link, Free Verse: Poetry in the Wild

The Actor’s Theater of Louisville was featured recently on National Public Radio for their staging of Kentucky poet, essayist and agrarian activist, Wendell Berry’s environmental poetry as a play, Wild Blessings which debuts April 4th at  the  Humana Festival of New American Plays.

Check out, From the Fishouse,  which features audio of emerging poets reading their work.  “From the Fishouse takes its name, and the spelling of “Fishouse,” from the writing cabin of the late Lawrence Sargent Hall. Hall renovated the former codfish-drying shack and wrote in the space for 50 years. Within the Fishouse, he wrote his Faulkner Award-winning novel, Stowaway, and his O’Henry Award-winning short story, The Ledge, named in 1999 as one of The Best American Short Stories of the Century. The cabin was rediscovered in 2003 on Hall’s property, just as he’d left it when he died ten years earlier, down to the thesaurus and decanters, photo of his dog, Jack, and even firewood for the stove.”  The Fishouse is now used as a recording studio for the project.  Dig. it.

And this post will wrap up with a plug for Orion Magazine which JPL subscribes to at the Downtown Library, all issues except the current month are available to check-out.  The Orion website has a ton of terrfic content, here is a list of all the latest poetry.  Featured in the current issue (March/April 09) is the poem, “Eskimo whizzamajig” by Alaskan poet, Elizabeth Bradfield worth checking out.  You can even hear Bradfield and hte other poets featured in the March/April 09 issue by clicking the media player on the right side of the screen.  A very insightful glimpse and exploration of the foreigness of all things “Alaskan” to those from “down below”.

Poetry Omnibus Awards Ceremony

Saturday March 14, 7pm Downtown Library

Open to the Public, join for a poetry reading, featuring youth and adult poets from the Juneau community reading their prize-winning entries. This is a great  opportunity to hear the poems live before they head off for their one year tour inside Capital Transit buses. Sponsored by JPL, JAHC, Capital Transit and Printing Trade Company. More info: 586-0436.  This event will be recorded for JPL Podcasts.

And if you believe in the power of poetry like I do, be sure to check out Poetry Out Loud: State Finals, Monday March 16 at 4:30 at the Juneau Arts and Culture Center.  Tickets are free, but seating is limited, so get tickets.  Check out this video of the 2008 California State Finals, or a smorgasborg of audio, featuring stellar youth poets.