A Wilderness Alphabet By Peter Anderson Let their names remind us of our shared inheritance 100 million acres, roadless and wild. From Absaroka to Apache Creek … From Ansel Adams to Allegheny, hallow Black Bear and Great Bear, be a witness for Bald Knob and Big Gum Swamp, in Copper Salmon, swim like one, …
By Craig Nelson In winter, the rocks at the bottom are what we see first, drawing us under the scalloped patterns, then cottonwoods resplendent with fractured light, and lovely breezes, and the water flows timeless past the rail yard littered with rusted iron and coal dust from the days when the mountains swarmed with …
by David J Rothman, Jeffrey R Villines, eds.
ISBN: 978-0-9641454-9-8
Pleiades Press, 2017
$16.00; 201pp.
Reviewed by Eduardo Brummel
David J. Rothman is Director of the Graduate Program in Creative Writing at Gunnison’s Western State Colorado University. He is also, as anyone who’s recently spent time with him already knows, a passionate advocate for Breckenridge-based poet, Belle Turnbull (1881-1970), whom he describes as, “one of the strongest poets yet to emerge in Colorado.”
even now
By Jill Sabella & Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
Lithic Press, 2016
978-0-9962170-9-5; 90 pp.; $20
Reviewed by Lynda La Rocca
It’s called “synergy.”
And it’s a fancy word to describe what happened when Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, Colorado’s Western Slope Poet Laureate, and Snowmass-based visual artist Jill Sabella joined forces to create the poems and drawings of even now, a collection that epitomizes the idea of a whole becoming greater than the sum of its already-lovely parts.
Published by Fruita’s Lithic Press, an independent small press founded by Colorado poet Danny Rosen, this 6×6-inch book, printed on heavy, cream-colored paper, is a collaborative exploration of the concept of “threes.” It pairs 45 three-line poems by Trommer – whimsically referred to as “haikulings” – with an equal number of Sabella’s elegant, Japanese-style, sumi-e black-ink paintings, all executed using just three brush strokes.
Continuing the tripartite theme, even now is divided into three sections subtitled “undoing another button,” “given wings,” and “unruly blossoms,” lines that strike me as a poem in themselves. And, as Trommer and Sabella write in the book’s introduction, this poetic and painterly “journey into three” forms a collection “in which the poem is one piece, and the image is another, and you, dear readers, are the third.”
By Joyce Gregor, Westcliffe, CO The cabin door blew open. I entered, invited by the wind who had forced its way in, through cracks and broken windows. We stood there, the wind and I, engaged in airy chatter. The wind had reveled here before, now it was my turn to view the decor. Breezed through …
By Richard R. Cuyler, Salida CO
The goddamn pigweed’s sprouting everywhere!
I’ve pulled and pulled and pulled and still there’s more.
They’re even more invasive than before
despite deracinations just last year.
What prompted you to begin writing poetry? A mother thwarted in her dream of becoming a surgeon because, although she got accepted into an accelerated high school program in San Francisco in the ‘30s, her alcoholic father beat her if he found her reading or doing homework at home. Running away at 16, she met …
Dry Creek By Cole N. Foster, Alamosa, CO Tic, tic, tic, tic, tic – the mouse trundles his tiny trail Just inches back of my head, on the edge of the crusty canvas wall Of the tent Carroll bargained for at the San Diego Goodwill And the pinpoint raindrops murmur on and on, so gentle …
EEEEEk! By Maria Weber, Buena Vista, CO One group of mice underwent bile duct litigation (BDL), where the bile duct was obstructed to cause an accumulation of bile in order to trigger liver fibrosis. The other group was given carbon tetrachloride, a potent toxin which damaged the liver. Both groups were fed capsaicin (the component …
Dearly Beloved Direct observation along the Arkansas Riverwalk By Doris Dembosky, Westcliffe, CO An old man pushes an elderly woman in a wheelchair. He leans into his task as if into a headwind. His age-spotted hands grip the handles of the chair. He lifts his head to judge the distance along the hard-pack, riverside path. …
Ideas….Matter By David J. Rothman – for Wendy Videlock They scatter and sing their truths, their liberty, and invisibly change everything. Meanwhile, the dust, mostly space, remains a squatter and does nothing except face what it must. David J. Rothman serves as the Director of WSCU’s Graduate Program in Creative Writing, and directs the Poetry …
the calculus of you By Aaron Abeyta, Antonito, CO a balloon is rising at the rate of 5ft/s a boy is cycling along a straight road at a speed of 15ft/s when he passes under the balloon it is 45 ft above him how fast is the distance between the balloon and the boy increasing …
Whose Shoes By Art Goodtimes – for Michael I walk a mile out the Orvis front door before I realize whose shoes are whose Shortly after your unclosed eyes watched, half-dressed as I laced up the wrong boots & chatted you up about everything except the obvious if inadvertent theft
by Laurie James In the early fall of 2000, driving back from a Talking Gourds poetry gathering at Windy Point on the Uncompahgre Plateau, poet Jude Janett proposed that she and I start a poetry festival in Salida. She led a writing circle I had been in for a couple of years and had gotten …
You Don’t Have to Suffer By Craig Nielson You don’t have to suffer like the hungry finches who arrive like Penitentes when the irises first glean themselves into cerulean skies. You don’t have to save the drowning in Bangladesh or stop the soybean plantations from creeping over the volcanic hills. You don’t even have to …
Lolling By Lawton Eddy The whole routine of rise and shine Has me wondering on habits and patterns And locked-in ways Wondering If I must live in a different world to undo it all… this Ferris wheel of expectations Or – could I simply step off Do nothing in the ordinary way Start a salon …
by Nancy Best Warm, welcoming, peaceful, calming – Margery Dorfmeister’s well-appointed home is all these things. It invites you to come in and stop awhile. Leave your cares by the road. Your worries won’t even make it through the front door. When you step in, your eye is captivated by large windows joined to make …
Illusion By Laurie James Illusion wears a fur coat but pulls the wool over my eyes Her stale breath reeks of coffee and bad teeth You can hear those old songs in the back of her throat I ride her piggyback over the pins and needles of the great plateau to where she sleeps on …
Trespass By Lynda LaRocca He was here, eyes reflected in the midnight kitchen window. But those are my eyes, his eyes that he gave to me, that blinked and I was born. On a peg in the hallway for 20 years, I hang his sweater, heavy with dust. The photographs I burned, but I still …
Querencia By Peter Anderson Is the space where we are most at home The sound of the word takes me to water, to the river maybe, the nose of a kayak in the heart of a wave, as it spills over a ledge curls back upstream, crests and falls again crests and falls again and …
by Eduardo Rey Brummel Back in 2003, when Craig Nielson was hosting monthly “P3” (Poetry Prose Performance) evenings at the former Bongo Billy’s Café in Salida, he would occasionally witness ensemble performances, which he had also seen during a local poetry festival named Sparrows. Liking the idea of working with other poets, he conceived of …
Revenant By Joseph Hutchison Colorado Poet Laureate Thin fire flickers in the nest of old news and skeletal sticks in the grate’s cradle, wrestling its own torpor as it strains to lift the flue’s load of year-end cold. You ponder how it dozed in the starter’s flint, then sparked out, unfurling a plume on the …
by Mike Rosso Let me begin by declaring that I am not a poet. My attempts at poetry were limited to bawdy limericks penned in grade school. My college journalism teachers did not cover poetry along with the Five Ws. But I do enjoy the medium. Langston Hughes and Charles Bukowski are among my favorites, …
by John Mattingly I wrote my first poem to Mary Lou in 1955 when I was in second grade. I saw her as an angel with a ponytail, a Venus in pumps and bobby socks, the future mother of my children and recipient of the bacon I would bring home as father of our big …
By Richard R. Cuyler, Salida, Colorado
March and Mountain Bluebirds and nest boxes
with last year’s residue of white and down
and grass. I open one and she commands
the other, the cocked head saying it’s her own.
by Maria Weber I have a fondness for fire, For stew pots with fragrant ingredients, Comfort food that wraps a blanket Around my heart in cold weather. My ancestors came from high frozen mountains With high frozen hearts that needed to thaw. On a beach under the heat of a dead volcano I find my …
By Ed Lambert, Salida, CO
Buried in waist-deep snow,
this century-old, mostly abandoned roadway
is a pleasant cross-country ski among healthy pines
to airy 11,375 feet windblown, old Monarch Pass summit.
Meandering north and south from here,
this twisting ridge of cold granite,
a massive, magnificent swelling of earth,
divides the North American continent,
like God parting, for His chosen, the Red Sea,
splits the pristine, frigid plentiful waters born here,
that then flow great distances east or west,
eventually stirring into salt-water bosom of Atlantic or Pacific.
By Laurie James, Salida, Colorado
A woman I saw yesterday had
small crooked hands that clutched
at her coat to keep the cold out.
Her head was wrapped in scarves,
like snakes ready to strike.
And now it is October in these mountains.
Here and there, a clutch of leaves
keeps glowing burnished gold.
Most blew down in that first storm,
crumpled browner on the earth
than earth that swallows cold, dry bones.
Yet somehow, and who knows just how,
those dead leaves still smell faintly of the spring.
even in Bali ain’t no shootin’ stars like ours striped across the Rocky Mountain flag of a Colorado night sky
I swear
If you took me back
I wouldn’t take even a second for granted
For all we go through in this life
For all the scars you can’t erase
I just can’t understand with a New York Sky above me
– by Magda Sokolowski
Like a jackrabbit the desert reared up
against the high-cold in green-grey clots.
The cheat of grass, the sheen of ice-ground,
dense & the dull straightaway of road,
the welcome turn – sudden & slow
to find them there.
Overgrown by earth
I trust
the wild roses will re-emerge
overwhelm me with their fragrance
and petal pink color
birds nest, bodies pressed,
father ponderosa
your children are all here
on the pin-wheeled edge
of your shadow
you are the idea of creation
before mountains
watching over this town
from your station
on Methodist Mountain
can i say that you are beautiful?
by Celeste Labadie
It’s a conspiracy,
someone said,
but I’ve done this myself.
I’m collecting things.
Drowning in stuff.
Clinging to memories while
packing and repacking what
I’ll surely leave behind
when the big whatever
has its way with this corporeal sensibility.
when your throat is lined
with new confessions
blocked by fear
of repercussions
2007-2009
By Ed Berg
Blurb, Inc: May 2009. $14.95
Reviewed by Eduardo Rey Brummel
The San Luis Valley is a distinctly different world. Perhaps the clearest demonstration of the Valley’s unique nature is the thirty-some square miles of sand dunes serving as foyer for the Sangre de Cristos’ western flank. In the same view, you have Lawrence of Arabia sands foregrounding snow-stippled mountains, with Medano Creek pulsing at your ankles. In his book, Sand, Wind, and Light, author Ed Berg begins where we all do – attempting to reconcile the existence of the Great Sand Dunes:
Dear Editor and Readers,
I write in response to a letter in your May issue penned by Mr. Simon Halburian.
Mr. H. sez… Aspiring writers need to read some of the best poets so they can judge whether their verse compositions, which should never be called poetry, rise to that level.
oh i wish i was the captain
out on the arabian sea
get hassled by some locals
uncle sam gonna rescue me
gonna send some big destroyers
and snipers one two three
gonna poach them hapless people’s fish
and get away scot free
by Jennifer Dempsey
Thirteen years ago, the Academy of American Poets established April as National Poetry Month. During this month,?poets and poetry lovers?everywhere celebrate the art form that, writer David Ignatow claims,?“almost makes up for the estrangement?among the human race.”
Central Colorado is home to hundreds of remarkable poets and in?honor of?National Poetry Month?a few?reveal what makes them tick.?
Brief by Central Staff
Poetry – February 2008 – Colorado Central Magazine
There will be no SPARROWS poetry festival in Salida this year, for reasons that remain unclear.
SPARROWS stood for something like “Songs, Poetry, And Rhymes Raise Our Winter Spirits,” and it was a bright spot during the dark times of late winter, for it was held in February or early March every year since the first one in 2001.
Review by Lynda La Rocca
Poetry – September 2007 – Colorado Central Magazine
The Weight of Dusk: Poems
by Stewart S. Warren
Published in 2007 by Mercury HeartLink
ISBN: 1-4196-6933-8