{"id":24706,"date":"2014-01-26T14:35:38","date_gmt":"2014-01-26T20:35:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=24706"},"modified":"2014-01-28T22:05:04","modified_gmt":"2014-01-29T04:05:04","slug":"an-ax-to-the-frozen-sea-within-us-poets-holland-and-szbist-at-weeks-series","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/an-ax-to-the-frozen-sea-within-us-poets-holland-and-szbist-at-weeks-series\/","title":{"rendered":"An “Ax to the frozen sea within us”: Poets Holland and Szybist at Weeks Series"},"content":{"rendered":"

In 1987 poet Scott Cairns, then a teacher of creative writing at Westminster College, organized the first series of poetry readings at the college. Under Cairns\u2019 directorship, followed by Katharine Coles\u2019, and now under that of Natasha Saj\u00e9\u2019s, The Anne Newman Sutton Weeks Poetry Series eventually included such notables as Lithuanian Nobel laureate Czeslaw Milosz, Adrienne Rich and John Ashbery.<\/p>\n

Named (and generously funded ) by Weeks, a lifetime writer and reader of poetry, the series has since leveraged its string of celebrated writers by annually including one of them as director of a semester-long workshop. Portland, Oregon-based poet Andrea Hollander is this year\u2019s guest. Her workshop includes seven people from the community (they applied with writing samples in the fall) and six Westminster students. This opportunity gives adults who love to write but have not yet enrolled in a degree program a chance to develop their art under expert guidance, and it also enhances the experience of the select students who are combined with community members.<\/p>\n

But the core of the series\u2014and what most of us know and love about the Weeks Poetry Series\u2014is itself the readings, most often staged in the college\u2019s Gore School of Business Auditorium. This season includes a stunning array of poets and prose writer–from C.D. Wright, the idiosyncratic and compelling poet who the New York Times<\/i> has hailed as one who \u201cbelongs to a school of exactly one,\u201d (she appeared last September) to the literary renaissance man and former Poet Laureate of California Al Young (Feb. 13). (The series is free and open to the public.)<\/p>\n

Poet Michael McLane, Director of the annual, statewide Utah Humanities Book, says that Weeks series has had a profound effect on the community and upon himself personally. “As a young poet, I was overwhelmed by opportunities to see poets such as Tomasz Salamun, Lucille Clifton, Robert Pinsky, and Andrei Codrescu,” he wrote15 Bytes<\/em> by email. “More recently, Natasha and the Poetry Series have proved a crucial ally for the Utah Humanities Book Festival, and their hosting of poets such as C.D. Wright and Alberto Rios have been highlights of each festival.”<\/p>\n

As the selected poet this year conducting the unique community\/college workshop, Hollander takes a bow January 29th at 7 pm at the series’ 6th<\/sup> event this year along with another Portland-based poet, Mary Szybist. The two will share the stage at the Gore Auditorium. Utah Poet Laureate Lance Larsen who has done his share of appearances around the state and beyond,\u00a0 is, like McLane, a fan of the Weeks series. He quotes Franz Kafka when he refers to literary outings such as these. Like the book, good readings \u201cserve as the ax to the frozen sea within us.\u201d\u00a0 For years, says Larsen, the Westminster events have \u201cfeatured poets of national and international acclaim,\u201d and \u201chave been a fortuitous ax, granting Utahns fresh access to our buried lives.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Andrea<\/a>

Andrea Hollander<\/p><\/div>\n

Hollander is the author of four full-length poetry collections, most recently Landscape with Female Figure: New & Selected Poems, 1982 \u2013 2012<\/i>. Her honors include the Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize, the D. H. Lawrence Fellowship, a Pushcart Prize for prose memoir, and two poetry fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts. For more than 22 years Hollander was the Writer-in-Residence at Lyon College, where she received the Lamar Williamson Prize for Excellence in Teaching. Now a resident of Portland, Oregon, she is the recipient of a 2013 Oregon Literary Fellowship. Of her most recent book, poet Stephen Dunn wrote, \u201cAndrea Hollander knows what to hold back as she lets us in. And so we willingly bring ourselves into her subtly registered emotional world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hollander\u2019s poem \u201cWander,\u201d from the Poetry Daily<\/i> website,\u00a0 is posted below as a preview to the event, along with Szybist\u2019s work \u201cThe Troubadours Etc.\u201d from Incarnadine<\/i>, winner of the 2013 National Book Award for Poetry in 2013.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Mary<\/a>Szybist\u00a0 is also the author of the collection Granted<\/i>, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.\u00a0Her work has been described as having a musical touch, \u201clight and exact enough to catch the weight and grind of love\u2026a hard paradox to master as she does.\u201d\u00a0Szybist is the recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Witter Bynner Fellowship from the Library of Congress, a Pushcart Prize, and a residency from the Rockefeller Foundation\u2019s Bellagio Center.<\/i>\u00a0 She teaches at Lewis & Clark College in Portland and at Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers.<\/p>\n

One of the advantages of attending The Anne Newman Sutton Weeks series is the intimacy of the gatherings often followed by Q&A\u2019s and open receptions where you can talk with the poets at length, buy their books and have them signed. It all happens within a treasured convening of like-minded literary types, facilitated as it is by Saj\u00e9, one of the state\u2019s most erudite and trenchant poets and essayists herself.<\/p>\n

#<\/p>\n

Wander<\/b><\/p>\n

by Andrea Hollander<\/i><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

What we don’t know we don’t know,
\nso accept it. If your mother wandered<\/p>\n

when your father was stationed in France
\nduring the war before you were born,<\/p>\n

before you were even conceived, so be it.
\nNo matter what her sister told you<\/p>\n

years later, after your mother died,
\nwhat does this matter now?<\/p>\n

Your job anyway is to be the daughter,
\nto stay open to where you are,<\/p>\n

your ear toward the glistening insects
\nthat draw your eye to the wild azaleas<\/p>\n

pushing their pale pink selves out of
\nthe limestone ledge just over the edge<\/p>\n

of the bluff where your house sits.
\nWhat you don’t know<\/p>\n

you will never know. Look instead
\nat the fluttering pink blossoms, at the lichen<\/p>\n

stuck to the limestone ledge beneath them.
\nLook at the pale thumbprint of the moon<\/p>\n

in the pale afternoon sky. The house is nearly
\nempty now, nearly no longer yours\u2014<\/p>\n

tables and chairs sold, couches and beds
\ngiven away, trash dumped, books and dishes<\/p>\n

boxed and stacked for the truck
\nthat’s on its way. Everything is somewhere<\/p>\n

else now, intact or scattered. It doesn’t matter.
\nMore than once your father wrote<\/p>\n

from the field hospital about the nurses.
\nWhat was it like to read those letters?<\/p>\n

These insects must be honeybees heavying
\nwith nectar\u2014so many lifting in and out<\/p>\n

of the wild azaleas you can almost smell their
\ndesire. Wild like your mother’s may have been.<\/p>\n

Like your husband’s was. But you don’t know
\nanything. You can sit on the porch<\/p>\n

of this emptying house and think
\nwhatever you think. You never apologized<\/p>\n

for your own lies. Your husband apologized
\ntoo much. Even then the moon slept on its side,<\/p>\n

its good ear deep in its pillow.
\nYour job was to be the wife and mother,<\/p>\n

the daughter. To be whatever you are now.
\nThe moon has its own job. The house<\/p>\n

will fill again. Perhaps you are tired
\nof watching the bees. Of noticing how<\/p>\n

the petals of the azaleas strain upward
\nto right themselves after the bees<\/p>\n

have finished with them. Tired
\nof the questions that repeat themselves<\/p>\n

like the fat predictable moon, and the doubt
\nthat manages, no matter what the truth is,<\/p>\n

to never run out.<\/p>\n

Copyright, Andrea Hollander, 2013.<\/p>\n

Reprinted with permission from the author.\u00a0 From the collection, Landscape with Female Figure: New & Selected Poems, 1982 – 2012 <\/i>(Autumn House Press, 2013).<\/p>\n

\u00a0*<\/p>\n

The Troubadours Etc.<\/strong><\/p>\n

by Mary Szybist<\/i><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Just for this evening, let\u2019s not mock them.<\/p>\n

Not their curtsies or cross-garters<\/p>\n

or ever-recurring pepper trees in their gardens<\/p>\n

promising, promising.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

At least they had ideas about love.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

All day we\u2019ve driven past cornfields, past cows poking their heads<\/p>\n

through metal contraptions to eat.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve followed West 84, and what else?<\/p>\n

Irrigation sprinklers fly past us, huge wooden spools in the fields,<\/p>\n

lounging sheep, telephone wires,<\/p>\n

yellowing flowering shrubs.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Before us, above us, the clouds swell, layers of them,<\/p>\n

the violet underneath of clouds.<\/p>\n

Every idea I have is nostalgia. Look up:<\/p>\n

there is the sky that passenger pigeons darkened and filled\u2014<\/p>\n

darkened for days, eclipsing sun, eclipsing all other sound<\/p>\n

with the thunder of their wings.<\/p>\n

After a while, it must have seemed that they followed<\/p>\n

not instinct or pattern but only<\/p>\n

one another.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

When they stopped, Audubon observed,<\/p>\n

they broke the limbs of stout trees by the weight of the numbers.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

And when we stop we\u2019ll follow\u2014what?<\/p>\n

Our\u00a0hearts?<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The Puritans thought that we are granted the ability to love<\/p>\n

only through miracle,<\/p>\n

but the troubadours knew how to burn themselves through,<\/p>\n

how to make themselves shrines to their own longing.<\/p>\n

The spectacular was never behind them.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Think of days of those scarlet-breasted, blue-winged birds above you.<\/p>\n

Think of me in the garden, humming<\/p>\n

quietly to myself in my blue dress,<\/p>\n

a blue darker than the sky above us, a blue dark enough for storms,<\/p>\n

though cloudless.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

At what point is something gone completely?<\/p>\n

The last of the sunlight is disappearing<\/p>\n

even as it swells\u2014<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Just for this evening, won\u2019t you put me before you<\/p>\n

until I\u2019m far enough away you can<\/p>\n

believe in me?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Then try, try to come closer\u2014<\/p>\n

my wonderful and less than.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

From the collection Incarnadine. <\/i>Copyright \u00a9 2013 by Mary Szybist. Reprinted with the permission of Graywolf Press, Minneapolis, Minnesota, www.graywolfpress.org<\/a><\/p>\n

#<\/p>\n

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