I’ve always loved fall in West Virginia. The air smells rich and nutty; the chipmunks are out chipping and munking around the stumps and wood stacks, and the birds swoop around in huge flocks practicing their flight south in the most beautiful patterns (except for the crows, which bat around in the most cartoonishly disorganized, loose clumps). The trees turn beautiful reds, rusts, oranges, and golds in rainbows and splotches, and they radiate; they’re so beautiful it seems the sun seeks them out. Of course, other trees don’t celebrate fall; their leaves turn brown and shrivel to the ground or cling to sparse branches until spring. It seems to me that there’s a lesson to be learned from Appalachian fall. That is, I struggle against being like the tree whose leaves brown and shrivel: that kind of John Cusack-character type that mourns losses before they happen. I’m often thinking of the future and its relationship to the present, and that’s important, but not to the point of losing today’s joy. Better to be the tree that glows and celebrates beauty as it bursts forth, to trust that everything’s cyclic as a spiral staircase, and after the leaves are gone and the winter moves through, crocuses will once again poke through the cold soil to purple the ground. And in the meantime, there are some beautiful, golden leaf piles to play in! We have a beautiful mix of mourning and celebration in the Poetry Column this month – a veritable forest of celebratory colors. These poets turn loss, joy, love, pain, and comfort into art.
Karen Skolfield’s poetry is subtle and powerful; it struggles, fights, and hopes; it takes hot cocoa in the kitchen and coffee from the microwave. What I love best about it is the way it remembers – these poems reveal how things feel. I often notice that I remember the way a time or event felt even though I don’t remember the details, and I love these poems for the way they embrace the memory of feelings. This is not to say these poems lack detail; rather, they are packed with wonderful imagery and sounds. And the stories and thoughts she shares in her interview are lovely – I especially like her Halloween snow storm story. I love the recognition that sometimes a little hardship can bring us closer, can be beautiful.
Associate Editor Julie Brooks Barbour brings wonderful poetry to us from two poets this month. Ms Julie writes:
From “a blue mouth, like a mailbox” to the “great blond heads” of sunflowers, I was instantly immersed in the world that Chen Chen’s poems create, a world that merges a dream state with natural imagery, always keeping the poem connected with the earth, but offering more than earth: offering dreams, longing, and light.
Leslie Anne Mcilroy’s poems about heartbreak and commitment take unexpected and surprising turns. “How to get here to there?” she asks, while she guides each poem through powerful imagery: “a heavy yawning yoke” and “the boat full of wild.” She left me haunted and wanting to return.
Editor-at-Large Doug Van Gundy also shares the work of two strong poets with us this month. Doug writes:
Angie Macri’s smart, musical and insightful poems bring physical pleasure, and beg to be read out loud, giving voice to their delightful music. Regard the red, spread / in the garden as open chambers // of the heart. It’s the monarda, / bearing avenues of nectar // for the ruby-throated / hummingbird. As lovely as they are smart, I read them over and over.
I love the clean, inevitable and surprising language of Amorak Huey’s poems - and how each of them come to some deep human truth from an oblique angel. Consider his poem, Mourning. Huey steers clear of the familiar language of elegy – showing us instead the banal details of packing up the detritus of a life. But such details are only banal until the point when, everything in boxes, we are left with only absence.
Associate Editor JP Reese shares with us stunning work by two poets this month. Ms Reese writes:
Sarah Certa’s “Down into the Grass” is a tumbling, running, non-stop interior monologue spoken by a good, healthy neurotic. She knows what she wants, she doesn’t know what she wants, she can, she can’t, she will, she won’t, she does, she doesn’t, and it’s all about love and lust and longing, Italian dinners, and peacock feathers, and horseback riding, and, well, you know, it’s kind of about life. This poem is a delight from its breathless beginning to its surprising end.
Ah, the vicissitudes of familial dysfunction! MK Sukach captures the chaos of addiction in his poem “Family Photo,” as an adult speaker looks back from his inner child’s perspective. The poet uses ironic understatement in a kind of dual narrative, half of which speaks more loudly for its unspoken implication of the damage inflicted on a child by a parent out of control. Those who have lived anywhere near an individual like the father in this poem will understand the necessary distance the speaker takes in using humor to blanket the pain. It’s a wonder the boy did not grow fins, but he did manage to swim to the other shore and escape, though not without scars.
We have three beautiful poems from our friend Judy Kronenfeld this month. What I love most about these poems is how full of love they are. I love that they embrace age, too, and youthful excitement that never really goes away. Love evolves in these poems, leaving beautiful impressions on the heart and providing comfort in anxious moments. It’s wonderful to be moored with someone who will sail in whatever direction you and the wind decide to go.
Come on in, take a walk through our colorful forest. Join our celebration!