The poems of My Wilderness often take place on the wooded hillside in Oregon where Maxine Scates has lived since the mid-1970s. They chronicle how the woods, which were once a refuge, have turned into a landscape of change where trees once numerous are now threatened by storm and the presence of the humans who live among them. These poems also engage her partner’s threatening illness, the death of her closest friend, and the death, at age one hundred, of her mother, an indomitable figure who led Scates through a working-class childhood in Los Angeles fraught with domestic violence. Grounded in the shifting borders of migrations and extinctions plant, animal, and human, of memory and grief, My Wilderness inevitably asks us to consider not only our own mortality but also our impact on the world around us. Excerpt from “Dear Maple” Nothing will save you now unless the small branches sprouting like a halo from your eight-foot stump take hold. The young women at the Farmer’s Market are already selling the most beautiful turnips, glowing like pearls, and all spring the swale of camas shone blue in the morning light. How can any of us know what will save us?
Here, available for the first time in an English translation, is The Wilderness by Moritake Takeichi, who is known, along with Iboshi Hokuto and Batchelor Yaeko, as one of the "Three Great Ainu Poets". This seminal work should be considered must reading for anyone interested in Ainu culture and history, and Japanese literature in general. These poems provide an especially poignant insight into the intense pressures experienced by the Ainu people after Hokkaido was annexed by Japan in 1879, when assimilation became synonymous with survival. Moritake, whose Ainu name was Itakunoto was born in the fishing village of Shiraoi in southwestern Hokkaido in 1902, the eldest son of Ehechikari (father) and Otehe (mother). His father passed away when he was still an infant and he grew up in extreme poverty. He started working in the local fishery at the age of 9 to help support his family. His formal education ended in 1915 at the age of 12 when he graduated from elementary school, after which he left Shiraoi to work as a migrant laborer in the herring fisheries at Ishikari, Atsuta, Usuya (Obiracho) and Rumoi. At the age of 20, after a period of intense self-study, he took and passed the exam to become a full-time employee of the National Railway, an astonishing feat for someone with only a primary school education. He gave up this position 1935 to devote himself to the service of his Ainu brethren. Moritake's life spanned a period of rapid and intense change. A few decades before his birth Japan was still run by samurai warriors. Within the period of his lifetime Japan transformed itself from an isolated collection of feudal states into a modern industrial nation. Great progress was achieved, but for the Ainu in particular this progress came at great cost. As one reads this collection of poems one is struck by the uninhibited and eclectic nature of his work. The first section of the book consists of verse poems in a variety of metrical styles. Some, influenced by classical Chinese patterns, are reminiscent of western romantic poetry in their use of figures such as nymphs and naiads to convey a wistful view of traditional Ainu life in ancient times, while others paint a brutally realistic picture of the desperate challenges that faced the new generation of Ainu in his day. Moritake, in the preface to this volume, described his work as follows: "Nowadays the Ainu people have the opportunity to receive a proper education, and their religious beliefs are gradually becoming modernized. Their sensibilities are being refined through exposure to newspapers, magazines and all the other instruments of modern civilization, and the old religious ceremonies and legends that have been passed on by word of mouth since time immemorial are being forgotten. Once the elders living today have passed from this world, many of the elements of our ancient heritage will be lost forever. As one who was born during this period of transition, on the one hand I am excited when I think of the opportunities for progress that assimilation into Japanese society will bring, but on the other I find myself overwhelmed by an indescribable sense of loss. It was nostalgia for this ancient heritage that inspired me to begin visiting the elders from time to time. I listened to them tell the old stories, and asked them about the ways of life, manners and customs of the Ainu in the old days. I made sure to participate in all of the old ceremonies so that I could experience them for myself, and in this collection of poems I have tried not only to describe these more traditional aspects of Ainu life, but I have also attempted to paint a frank and unvarnished picture of the feelings and experiences of the younger generation of Ainu, surrounded, as they are, by the excitement and distractions of modern society." (1937) A facsimile bilingual version is available from Rose Books.
For every day from Shrove Tuesday to Easter Day, the bestselling poet Malcolm Guite chooses a favourite poem from across the Christian spiritual and English literary traditions and offers incisive reflections on it. A scholar of poetry and a renowned poet himself, his knowledge is deep and wide and he offers readers a soul-food feast for Lent.
Since the publication of the bestselling Sounding the Seasons, Malcolm Guite has repeatedly been asked for more sonnets. This new collection offers a sequence of 50 sonnets that focus on many passages in the Gospels: the Beatitudes, parables and miracles, teachings on the Kingdom, and the ‘hard sayings’ - Jesus’ challenging demands with which we wrestle. In addition this collection includes: •A sequence of seven sonnets on 'The Wilderness', exploring mysterious stories of divine encounter such as Jacob’s wrestling with the angel. •Poetic reflections on music, hospitality and ecology. •Seven short poems celebrating the days of creation. •A biblical index pairing the poems with scripture readings for use in worship.
Winner of the 2013 Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize Mark Doty, Judge "It's a joy. . .to come nearer to a realm of experience little explored in American poetry, the lives of those who are engaged in the complex project of transforming their own gender... Oliver Bendorf writes from a paradoxical, new-world position: the adult voice of a man who has just appeared in the world. A man emergent, a man in love, alive in the fluid instability of any category." --Mark Doty, from the Foreword "Bendorf's collection indeed opens the door to a spectral wilderness, an otherworldly pastoral, a queer ecology endlessly transformed by possibility, grief, and the unruly wanting of our names and bodies. Stunningly lyrical and beautifully theoretical, The Spectral Wilderness is an invitation one cannot turn down; the book calls us to travel with Bendorf, to study the topography of becoming because "what we used to be matters" in the way that language matters--however fleeting, however mistaken, however contradictory it might be." --Stacey Waite, author of Butch Geography "What gorgeous and ravenous rackets Oliver Bendorf's poems are made of; what a yearning and beautiful heart. 'Lift a geode from the ground and crack me open, ' he writes, which is more or less what these poems do for me: break me open to what might sparkle and blaze, what might glisten and burn inside. The Spectral Wilderness is a wonderful book." --Ross Gay, author of Against Which and Bringing the Shovel Down
With the author's self-portrait sketch on the cover, ""A Word With Wilderness: Poems Inspired by American Nature? is a collection of soulful nature poems accompanied by her elegant and delightful hand-drawn sketches. The gifted poet's subtle yet innocent, and often spiritual way of looking at nature's wonders makes her poetry a joy for any true nature lover - in America or any other part of the world. NOTE: This paperback edition has BLACK & WHITE INTERIOR featuring the illustrations in classic monochrome style. The preview may show color. Gyaneshwari Dave is a writer/poet, illustrator, nature photographer and the founder of www.pineconedream.com.
In Vis à Vis, Don McKay charts a vision of poetics that keeps its feet on the ground and its eyes on the horizon. As one of Canada's leading poets, McKay has long been known for his passionate engagement with his natural surroundings. This book collects three essays on this relationship, together with new and previously published poems that further demonstrate these ideas. Using bushtits, baler twine, Heidegger and Levinas, McKay sets out to explore some of the almost unspeakable concepts driving the use of language particular to poets, and the arguably skewed relationship human beings have with their natural surroundings. In a book the Globe & Mail calls "stylishly constructed" and "impeccably casual," one of Canada's best-loved writers offers his own sense of poetics.
"The (Soma)tic Exercises are innovative and crucial to our art form. . . . Conrad must be one of the most original practitioners of poetry forging new territory."—The Rumpus "There was a time some of us believed poetry and poets could save the world; CAConrad never stopped believing it."—The Huffington Post From "M.I.A. ESCALATOR": The ultrasound machine gives the parents the ability to talk to the unborn by their gender, taking the intersexed nine-month conversation away from the child. The opportunities limit us in our new world. Encourage parents to not know, encourage parents to allow anticipation on either end. Escalators are a nice ride, slowly rising and falling, writing while riding, notes for the poem, meeting new people at either end, "Excuse me, EXCUSE ME. . . ." My escalator notes became a poem. CAConrad's ECODEVIANCE contains twenty-three new (Soma)tic writing exercises and their resulting poems, in which he pushes his political and ecological efforts even further. These exercises, unorthodox steps in the writing process, work to break the reader and writer out of the quotidian and into a more politically and physically aware present. In performing these rituals, CAConrad looks through a sharper lens and confirms the necessity of poetry and politics. CAConrad is the author of several books of poetry and essays. A 2014 Lannan Fellow, a 2013 MacDowell Fellow, and a 2011 Pew Fellow, he also conducts workshops on (Soma)tic poetry and Ecopoetics.
The effort to create a serious Hebrew literature in the United States in the years around World War I is one of the best kept secrets of American Jewish history. Hebrew had been revived as a modern literary language in nineteenth-century Russia and then taken to Palestine as part of the Zionist revolution. But the overwhelming majority of Jewish emigrants from Eastern Europe settled in America, and a passionate kernel among them believed that Hebrew provided the vehicle for modernizing the Jewish people while maintaining their connection to Zion. These American Hebraists created schools, journals, newspapers, and, most of all, a high literary culture focused on producing poetry. Sanctuary in the Wilderness is a critical introduction to American Hebrew poetry, focusing on a dozen key poets. This secular poetry began with a preoccupation with the situation of the individual in a disenchanted world and then moved outward to engage American vistas and Jewish fate and hope in midcentury. American Hebrew poets hoped to be read in both Palestine and America, but were disappointed on both scores. Several moved to Israel and connected with the vital literary scene there, but most stayed and persisted in the cause of American Hebraism.
