{"id":25581,"date":"2014-05-04T06:00:19","date_gmt":"2014-05-04T12:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=25581"},"modified":"2018-12-10T15:43:46","modified_gmt":"2018-12-10T21:43:46","slug":"sunday-blog-read-nancy-takacs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/sunday-blog-read-nancy-takacs\/","title":{"rendered":"READ LOCAL First: Nancy Takacs"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"FSCN0316\"<\/a>READ LOCAL First<\/strong>\u00a0is your glimpse into the working minds and hearts of Utah\u2019s literary writers.<\/p>\n

Today, 15 Bytes features poet Nancy Takacs<\/strong> whose latest collection Juniper<\/a>, <\/em>a letterpress volume printed in a limited edition of 400 copies, was published in 2010 by Limberlost Press<\/a>.\u00a0 Today she provides four poems, the last one yet-to-be-published.<\/p>\n

Sunday Blog Read<\/strong> continues to collect a distinguished group of established and emerging Utah writers for your review and enjoyment. Past writers have included former and current Utah Poets Laureate Kate Coles and Lance Larsen, poet Michael McLane, short story writer Darrell Spencer, fiction writer Larry Menlove, memoirist Christopher Bigelow, poet Shanan Ballam, speculative fiction writer Steve Proskauer, fiction writer April Wilder, short fiction writer Calvin Haul, poet Joel Long, fiction writer Lynn Kilpatrick, nonfiction writer Phyllis Barber and, last month, poet David Hawkins.<\/p>\n

So curl up with your favorite cup of joe and enjoy the work of Nancy Takacs!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Process<\/i> at the Balance Rock Caf\u00e9<\/strong><\/p>\n

on the painting by David Dornan\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/i><\/p>\n

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

Having written nothing again,<\/p>\n

I take a walk in the junipers,<\/p>\n

surprised by big-horned<\/p>\n

sheep water-falling down<\/p>\n

Steamboat Mountain.<\/p>\n

And now as I open the door<\/p>\n

for today\u2019s tomato bisque,<\/p>\n

there is this:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

a honey-stained dresser,<\/p>\n

life-sized, I could have had as a child,<\/p>\n

its big pulls like buttons,<\/p>\n

top drawer partly open,<\/p>\n

upright cans spilling<\/p>\n

their colors over its wide body<\/p>\n

like someone left his clothes in chaos,<\/p>\n

waves of night lights, a Christmas tree,<\/p>\n

blooming stars in true red and blue<\/p>\n

from a crayon box, not from the artist\u2019s<\/p>\n

language of crimson or cadmium-something.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

On the third drawer, a chamois<\/p>\n

thick with gold and green fingerprints, drapes<\/p>\n

partly lit near a forest for mixing<\/p>\n

on the wall behind the dresser: leaves like kiwi-<\/p>\n

and-sage eyes in a cartoon juniper.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A woman\u2019s neck on the wall to the right<\/p>\n

is phosphorescent like a peacock\u2019s,<\/p>\n

two turtles slipping into the pond of her breast.<\/p>\n

The floor confettis in a loose beach<\/p>\n

for the artist\u2019s bare feet.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Now I know all I really love is color,<\/p>\n

blood in the process, how truth<\/p>\n

comes from the shuffle,<\/p>\n

touched, moved aside, jumbled, left to wait<\/p>\n

by the artist-dresser for his new wearer.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Now I know I need the sudden turquoise ear<\/p>\n

inside the lemon yellow house,<\/p>\n

lavender anemones over corrugated<\/p>\n

ribs, the tin ribs, the bare ribs,<\/p>\n

a whiteness more like a rose-cream,<\/p>\n

orange into fluorescent-orange into red,<\/p>\n

lipped over undercoats of lime, violet, battleship,<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

two mixing sticks with curves of chair legs,<\/p>\n

swirled in milky blossom, left to balance<\/p>\n

on the bottom drawer like whorled tight-ropes.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

— first printed in Clover, a Literary Rag, <\/i>Spring 2013<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Obedience<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I learned the easiest way to work<\/p>\n

was to submit. In Catholic school,<\/p>\n

the same. So I bought a shark,<\/p>\n

a little one for my tank. Cool<\/p>\n

and sharp, he didn\u2019t swim near others.<\/p>\n

I liked to watch his fin, pretend<\/p>\n

in all its yellow-violet flutters<\/p>\n

he was happy, and could fend<\/p>\n

off even the silver angel. It began<\/p>\n

one night, as I ate Special K,<\/p>\n

home late again from work, the bland<\/p>\n

way the tetras nipped at him, tail<\/p>\n

first, his pretty fin, and the next night<\/p>\n

he was gone, as I turned on the light.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

— first printed in Kestrel, <\/i>Spring 2013<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Lotus\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I still want the day to swim<\/p>\n

with blue buntings, my fence<\/p>\n

to cloud with hawkweed,<\/p>\n

the greening field under it to rise<\/p>\n

so the gate will not open.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I want a beard to ache near<\/p>\n

my shoulder with breath<\/p>\n

like long red flannel.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

And sometimes I like being<\/p>\n

alone with wedges of lime,<\/p>\n

coconut milk, mint chutney,<\/p>\n

chopping coriander, putting it<\/p>\n

all in, not having to lie<\/p>\n

about the garlic, folding up<\/p>\n

a spring roll of new gatherings.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I want to ignore the warblers<\/p>\n

warning me near the railroad tracks<\/p>\n

about their nest inside the switch-lights.<\/p>\n

What I want is this one deer<\/p>\n

who yells in my field each night<\/p>\n

for someone to let her out,<\/p>\n

hounding me and my baby bok choy.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

What I need is a good pork satay,<\/p>\n

plain fried rice, and not to be<\/p>\n

interrupted by dreams or secrets<\/p>\n

or a walk in the garden.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I\u2019d like to know how to build<\/p>\n

a nest in April, how waxed wrappers<\/p>\n

are shredded into trails of confetti,<\/p>\n

and where I can find rose foil<\/p>\n

the size of a penny.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know why my pineapple<\/p>\n

curry and fried tofu have an aftertaste<\/p>\n

like a walk after breakfast.<\/p>\n

And I need to live inside lime.<\/i><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I want to hear the unasked questions stir<\/p>\n

instead of a Chihuahua on lambskin<\/p>\n

or a red quilt from Canada<\/p>\n

reviewed as \u201cspicy as Kasmir,<\/p>\n

as colorful as cloisonn\u00e9.\u201d I want<\/p>\n

syrup revised with an attar of roses,<\/p>\n

vanilla and violet in the same milk,<\/p>\n

to feel how the needles<\/p>\n

of hemlock dissolve in a pond,<\/p>\n

and know under the surface<\/p>\n

how long the trail of a rhizome<\/p>\n

can be, for one blossom.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

–first printed in Kestrel, <\/i>Spring 2013<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The Day I Gave Up Ambition<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I felt the way watercolors<\/p>\n

slide across the page,<\/p>\n

an amaryllis unfolds<\/p>\n

when you\u2019re not looking,<\/p>\n

my breath came to me<\/p>\n

in tall cattails<\/p>\n

along our desert ditch bank,<\/p>\n

in stems of asparagus<\/p>\n

saut\u00e9ed with lime and chives<\/p>\n

and butter, the day gave in<\/p>\n

with an afternoon<\/p>\n

that was so clear<\/p>\n

I looked in the mirror<\/p>\n

and saw every<\/p>\n

road in the map<\/p>\n

that had softened<\/p>\n

each time it opened,<\/p>\n

fallen into its creases.<\/p>\n

#<\/p>\n

Copyright, Nancy Takacs, 2014. Reprinted with the author’s permission.<\/p>\n

\"DSCN1015\"<\/a>Nancy Takacs\u00a0lives in Wellington, Utah, and spends summers in Wisconsin on Lake Superior. She\u00a0is the recipient of a 2014 Ucross writing residency, the 2013 Sherwin W. Howard Poetry Prize for \u201cthe best poems\u201d in Weber — the Contemporary West, <\/i>the Nation Discovery Award, and the Kay Saunders Poet Prize from the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets.\u00a0<\/i>A new book is forthcoming from Blue Begonia Press.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

READ LOCAL First\u00a0is your glimpse into the working minds and hearts of Utah\u2019s literary writers. Today, 15 Bytes features poet Nancy Takacs whose latest collection Juniper, a letterpress volume printed in a limited edition of 400 copies, was published in 2010 by Limberlost Press.\u00a0 Today she provides four […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1566,"featured_media":25585,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","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":[1935,1934,1933],"class_list":["post-25581","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-literary-arts","category-read-local-first","tag-juniper","tag-limberlost-press","tag-nancy-takacs"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/FSCN0316.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-16 15:18:02","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\/25581","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=25581"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25581\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41271,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25581\/revisions\/41271"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25585"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25581"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25581"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25581"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}