{"id":19136,"date":"2013-02-24T00:12:11","date_gmt":"2013-02-24T06:12:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=19136"},"modified":"2019-11-11T14:28:44","modified_gmt":"2019-11-11T20:28:44","slug":"sunday-blog-read-katharine-coles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/sunday-blog-read-katharine-coles\/","title":{"rendered":"READ LOCAL First . . . Katharine Coles"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Photo<\/a>

Photo by Kent Miles.<\/p><\/div>\n

Former Utah Poet Laureate and Guggenheim Fellow Katharine Coles is 15 Bytes\u2019<\/em> inaugural Sunday Blog Read<\/b>. Each month we\u2019ll be posting for your reading enjoyment literary works-in-progress\u2026works soon-to-be-published\u2026or, as in the case of today, works recently released.<\/p>\n

The Sunday Blog Read<\/b> is a glimpse into the working minds and hearts of writers with a Utah connection. And we\u2019re pretty confident you\u2019ll be inspired.<\/p>\n

So\u2026curl up on the couch with your favorite cup-a-joe and enjoy!<\/p>\n

\u00a0* * *<\/p>\n

We caught up with Katharine on the eve of the publication of her new collection, \u00a0The Earth is Not Flat <\/i>(Red Hen Press<\/a>), which will launch Friday, March 1 at the King\u2019s English Bookshop<\/a> in Salt Lake City at 7 pm.<\/p>\n

15B:\u00a0 This volume of poetry started with an excursion to Antarctica. I\u2019m sure you had a vision, or notion of what the book might be like before you left.\u00a0 How has that changed now that the book is out?<\/i><\/strong><\/p>\n

KC:\u00a0 I hate to say it, but I don’t think I did have such a vision before I left, which was both frightening and exciting. Really, I was much more accustomed to writing about art, philosophy, and science\/scientific ideas than about raw nature, which is what you are surrounded by down there. I knew, I think, that I was entering a situation and a world that were going to be in some ways completely new to me, and I was hoping against hope that all the advance reading I had done and was doing would somehow come together with and inflect the experience in such a way that (tada!) poems would emerge. Fortunately, the scientists were wonderful guides to and mediators of the world I was encountering, so that helped a lot.<\/p>\n

** *<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

SAILING TO ANTARCTICA<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The problem is the voices<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I can\u2019t get out of my head.\u00a0 On the bridge, the captain\u2019s playing<\/p>\n

\u201cBreak On Through\u201d; he\u2019s been<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Playing \u201cStormy Weather.\u201d\u00a0 Go ahead, Google World\u2019s <\/i><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n

Roughest Crossing.\u00a0 <\/i>Google <\/i><\/p>\n

Shipwreck, <\/i>and Lost at Sea.\u00a0 <\/i>Meanwhile, the ship<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Is tearing itself<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Apart beam by steel beam; the ship is gnawing its own liver<\/p>\n

And the sea is eating<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Its heart out and wants me to sashay right on by and take<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A look.\u00a0 Lean over<\/p>\n

The rail, little one, lean a little farther.\u00a0 \u00a0The problem is the voices.\u00a0 Sea,<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Sea, you\u2019re all foam<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Vanishing, cry of shearwater and albatross wing knitting<\/p>\n

You to sky; you are height<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

And depth and open mouth, and I am barely a morsel.\u00a0 Sea, I can\u2019t get out<\/p>\n

Of my head, or is it you\u2019re<\/p>\n

What I can\u2019t get my poor head around, what I don\u2019t know how to measure\u2014<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A 20-foot sea, a 30-foot sea.\u00a0 \u00a0Not a falling so much as a<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Career, a sinking<\/p>\n

So much as a gulp.\u00a0 Measure from where the surface would be<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

If I could find it, if<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The idea of surface hadn\u2019t become a moving target I plummet<\/p>\n

Past into the trough and know<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

No better on the ride back up into yippee, though on the wave\u2019s crest<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Three days out<\/p>\n

I swear I can see South America.\u00a0 This is the best<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Thing ever, clinging<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

To the rail watching another wave crash all the way over the bow, over<\/p>\n

The captain high<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In his bridge, the captain who will carry us through with his instruments<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

And playlist and steel-hulled<\/p>\n

Gut, though he says everyone has a threshold, even him.\u00a0 Chris and\u00a0Jenny,<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Most of the passengers<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Green in their berths along with half the crew.\u00a0 And me, I am used<\/p>\n

To the world appearing<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

To wish me well.\u00a0 All those summer weeks spent reading in the Jeep<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

While Dad careened us down<\/p>\n

The roughest roads he could find, Mom rigged to some near<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Cliff face by<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Thin rope.\u00a0 Isn\u2019t a mountain a wave moving slow?\u00a0 I am<\/p>\n

Used to the best<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Kind of luck and a stomach that can ride out anything, even<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The swell<\/p>\n

Of my own hubris.\u00a0 All day I stand on deck with the birds<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

And spray, birds<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

That can sail across oceans without moving their wings.\u00a0 Wherever<\/p>\n

I look, infinity\u2019s blue<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

And gray, and I say Okay already, give me all you\u2019ve got<\/i>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

(reprinted with permission of Red Hen Press.\u00a0 First published in <\/em>Virginia Quarterly Review)<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0* * *<\/p>\n

TWO KINDS OF PEOPLE<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Those who love the wind, and.\u00a0 Those<\/p>\n

Who believe in words.\u00a0 Or who believe<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In time as if an instant were something<\/p>\n

Anyone could measure, who believe anything<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Can be divided into two.\u00a0 Or three.\u00a0 And.<\/p>\n

Those who leave all the lights<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Blazing the darkest night of the year; who sit<\/p>\n

Alone under one lamp reading, waiting<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

For the eclipse even if the moon does<\/p>\n

Take all damned night and the sun<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Never sets; who fly<\/p>\n

As far as they must to find\u2014<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Who may, who knows, be the same<\/p>\n

People.\u00a0 Our friend Torsten says there are<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Those who dream of climbing a ladder<\/p>\n

Down any hole in the ice, who would, waving<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Hats overhead, fling themselves into<\/p>\n

Volcano or blizzard, into the sea\u2019s<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Lowest trough and over the next crest, and those<\/p>\n

Like Deb who would say, I support you<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

But what, are you crazy?\u00a0 Who<\/p>\n

Are you?\u00a0 Which am I?\u00a0 One, then<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The other, takes two hearts in hand<\/p>\n

And sails into almost any<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Earthly end, then returns to solid<\/p>\n

Ground rocking, each other\u2019s arms.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

(reprinted with permission of Red Hen Press)<\/em><\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

\"EarthIsNotFlatCVR_HighRes\"<\/a>Katharine Coles\u2019 fifth collection of poems, The Earth Is Not Flat<\/i>, will be published on March 1 by Red Hen Press<\/a>, which will also publish her sixth collection, Flight<\/i>, in 2015. Her poems, stories, and essays have appeared in Poetry<\/i>, The Kenyon Review<\/i>, The Seneca Review<\/i>, Virginia Quarterly Review<\/i>, and The Paris Review<\/i>, among many other journals. In 2009-10, she served as the inaugural director of the Harriet Monroe Poetry Institute for the Poetry Foundation; on stepping down, she traveled to Antarctica to write poems under the auspices of the National Science Foundation\u2019s Antarctic Artists and Writers Program. She is a 2012 Guggenheim Foundation Fellow and a professor of English at the University of Utah, where she also founded and co-directs the Utah Symposium in Science and Literature. She served as the Utah State Poet Laureate from 2006 to 2012.<\/p>\n

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Former Utah Poet Laureate and Guggenheim Fellow Katharine Coles is 15 Bytes\u2019 inaugural Sunday Blog Read. Each month we\u2019ll be posting for your reading enjoyment literary works-in-progress\u2026works soon-to-be-published\u2026or, as in the case of today, works recently released. The Sunday Blog Read is a glimpse into the working minds […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1566,"featured_media":19150,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_piecal_is_event":false,"_piecal_start_date":"","_piecal_end_date":"","_piecal_is_allday":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,2513],"tags":[1299,1294,1296,1297,1295,1298,1300],"class_list":["post-19136","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-literary-arts","category-read-local-first","tag-antarctica","tag-katharine-coles","tag-kings-english-bookshop","tag-red-hen-press","tag-the-earth-is-not-flat","tag-utah-poet-laureate","tag-utah-writers"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/katharine-coles.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-16 12:52:17","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19136","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1566"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19136"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19136\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48062,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19136\/revisions\/48062"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19150"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}