Plum Blossom Wine

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PLUM BLOSSOM WINE, Poems by Li Qingzhao, trans. by Sibyl James and Kang Xuepei (Empty Bowl Press, 2024).

I had a hectic week, but this morning—with no where to go, no errands, no doctor appointments—I decided to read a book of poems. I cheated, perhaps, by picking up a small book.

But, oh my. Mostly I am here to tell you how exquisite and inspiring I found this “small” —only 30 poems, printed in a 7 X 5 inch format—but powerful book, produced by Empty Bowl Press. The original Chinese of the poems written by Li Qingzhao, a Song dynasty poet (1084-1151) faces the English translation by Sibyl James and Kang Xuepei. I don’t read Chinese, and have, really, not a clue about it, but there’s something about seeing (and almost feeling) the weight of the original characters that deepens the experience.

I remember the January day when I picked this up, from a book display at Book Tree in Kirkland. Despite my resolution to buy fewer books, I couldn’t resist it. (Just look at that cover!)

James and Xuepei explain in the introduction how in their partnership they tried to honor the original spareness and artistry of the poems. They do a brilliant job. They add titles to the poems, but preserve the poet’s habit of naming the song each poem honors. (Alas, the music is lost.)

Their introduction also succeeds in briefly sketching for us the life of Li Qingzhao, a rare woman poet of her time, lucky enough to be educated, and to have married a husband (also a poet) who valued her voice. When exiled during a time of war, she lost almost everything, including her husband. Her poetry persists. Even writing of despair, her lines sing.

Just to Console Myself

To the tune of “Washing by the Stream”

Healed again, but my temples suddenly gray.
From bed, I watch the thinning moon
climb my screen, drink cups of cardamom
steeped like tea.

Good to lie reading in bed, loving
the look of rain outside my door.
All day beside me one consoling friend,
Osmanthus, the sweet olive.

—Li Qingzhao

It was a lucky way to spend my time.

Kang Xuepei is a Chinese translator with three other books. Sibyl James is a Seattle native, though she lived and worked in China for a year; this is her fourteenth book (or fifteenth?). You can learn more about Plum Blossom Wine at its page at Empty Bowl Press.

Apple blossoms from my morning walk

Susan Rich: Blue Atlas

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I really would like to post 30 times about 30 different poets during National Poetry Month, but — let me admit up front — I’m lowering thresholds all over the place. Soon I’ll be lying inert in the doorway and you’ll have to step over me. But not today! Today, we get a poem from Seattle poet, editor, and teacher Susan Rich.

It’s a book that needs to come with a trigger warning — a young woman, a forced abortion. In the words of Diane Seuss the poems of Blue Atlas (Red Hen Press, 2024), “chart an expansive life which spins around an epicenter of loss,” and transform “anger into amber.”

The long poem “How did I love him — ” with lines like “West African highlife beat,” and “his baritone psalms, his siren pleas” — I just don’t know where to begin. I think of my young adult daughters, and my heart breaks.

But here’s one poem, from the section, “The Decision”:

Your Still Life Builds a Home Inside My Head

In the late afternoon we lose an f-stop
as light bleeds out of the bandaged sky

and like phantom detectives with wide-brimmed hats

we reexamine the compass, the passport,
the magnetized color of four o’clock air.

In this woman-made harbor, we rearrange

pipe stands and glass slides. We multitask wicker stands
where objects could topple at any time —

let them topple! 

Here in the land of deferred decisions,
a hand-painted garden ball reflects on a floating scroll.

In this alchemical mirror, in this ark of a studio —

built on instinct and breath, through windows
clouded and smeared,

under the sign of the light meter

I’ll meet you here. A bright space to hold inside my head,
an open country — another life still new.

— Susan Rich

It’s a book and a life “cracked open” (“Once Mother and Father Were Buried”), and the poems crack open the subject matter — Sylvia Plath and Elizabeth Bishop make appearances, as do images from pop culture, and the world of music. My introduction to Blue Atlas arrived via a Zoom with Olympia Poetry Network (OPN), and hearing Rich’s remarkable, memorable presentation made the book stick in my mind. I had to get my hands on it and read the poems for myself. Given the recent attack on Roe vs. Wade, I kept thinking of that oft-quoted passage from William Carlos Williams:

It is hard to get the news from poetry, yet men [women! people!] die miserably every day for lack of what is found there.

These are honest, difficult, and necessary poems. To paraphrase what Rich wrote about June Jordan in a recent Substack Post, These are poems we need right now.

You can learn more about the book at Red Hen Press: https://redhen.org/book/blue-atlas/.

Click THIS LINK to find Rich’s Substack (and information about Poets on the Coast), and here’s a “real” review of Blue Atlas from Tinderbox:

Review of Blue Atlas by Susan Rich

NPM #2: Oubliettes of Light

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OUBLIETTES OF LIGHT, Lisa Ashley. MoonPath Press, P.O. Box 445, Tillamook, OR 27142, 2025, 73 pages, $17.99, paper, http://MoonPathPress.com.

What a pleasure for me to begin National Poetry Month with a blog-review of Lisa Ashley’s debut book of poetry, Oubliettes of Light.

An oubliette is a secret dungeon, accessible only through a trapdoor at the top. In these poems, we encounter multiple trapdoors, and we drop through them into dark, painful histories: the Armenian genocide, fragmented stories of violence handed down through the generations (along with family recipes, and a thirst for survival). A father provides for his family, and bullies and abuses his wife and children. A mother escapes into her flower garden, and into a bottle of Scotch. Lisa Ashley, the middle child of seven, escapes the family home in rural New York State, makes her way West, finds love and motherhood, becomes a chaplain working with incarcerated youth.

And, lucky for us, she eventually finds her way to poetry.

In my attempt to capture Ashley’s book in a quick paragraph, I had to ask myself, what makes me love this book? Why would I call it a pleasure? Why will anyone else love these poems? Let me walk you through my thought process. Consider these lines opening the first poem, “Grandmother’s Story Stone”:

I know no Armenian, she no English.
Like a pupil at attention, she sits
in her straight chair by the cookstove,
shuffles pages back to front
in her Armenian Bible. She mutters,
gnarled fingers rowing.

Several lines later we get our first glimpse of the poet: “I whisper behind my hand / scubbity, scubbity, scubbity.” How else to translate an incomprehensible past? What do you hear: scubbity. What do you see: “cotton stockings [as they] sloop / into ankle bracelets.” What do you smell: “garlic, olive oil, mint, her perfume.”

Above all, these are poems of witness. Necessary to the times we live in.

But, importantly, the poems in Oubliettes of Light are not trapdoors one falls through into darkness, they are not about trauma. These poems are about healing from trauma. They are about the solace one finds in a well-lived maturity. Not dungeons, but the unexpected doors opening above us into light. A child and a young adult taking in all that happens around her and processing it; a woman on a spiritual path of awareness and reclamation.

I Went Out to Hear

after Leila Chatti

I went out to hear
birdsong. Layered
in springtime air like icing
on cake sweet
clamor of joy,
praise song to life.
I hear the undertow of bees,
find one dancing
on the poppy’s green ball
in the arms of ivory pistils,
lavender petals ten times the bee’s size
wave a Victorian fan flirtation.
Standing stock still, eyes locked,
knees heavy with pollen, I’m lost,
beat fevered wings
willing to work
this singular moment forever.

—Lisa Ashley

Years of work—personal work on herself, and work on the poetry—went into the making of this book. It shows on every page. Because I know how late she came to poetry, and how seriously she has taken it, I asked Lisa to describe her writing journey. This is what she wrote back (with her permission, I have lightly edited and shortened it) — it’s a blueprint for the later-in-life poet:

I was 60 years old when I crossed the threshold from prose writing (journalism, marketing, academic papers, sermons) to poetry writing. I was an absolute neophyte. My fundamental love of learning was my ally. It was like finding a secret, enormous treasure trove. I had never studied poetry in college. I had never read poetry in any serious way. I was familiar with Mary Oliver’s work because her poems were used so often in Unitarian Universalist services that folks in the congregations referred to themselves as the “Church of Mary Oliver.” I liked her work and the few poets I had come across in the past: Robert Frost, Emily Dickinson, Shakespeare. I had no grounding in how to read and appreciate poetry, although I felt drawn to it. In 2014, after a sermon, a congregant invited me to come to her writing group. I knew her to be a kind person so I went. From there I began to take online classes and workshops, taught by excellent poets including Ellen Bass, Jane Hirshfield, Dorianne Laux, James Crews and Danusha Laméris. I joined a newly formed workshop group on Bainbridge and subscribed to on-line poetry venues that delivered a poem daily to my inbox. I was eager to learn as much as I could. I wrote many poems and began to submit to journals. I published my first poem in 2019. In May 2024 I submitted my manuscript to MoonPath Press, to the Sally Albiso Award contest. I was a finalist and was chosen for publication. I continue to read poetry every day, listen to poetry podcasts, and have committed to writing a poem a day for National Poetry Month. You could say I approach poetry as an immersive experience, and write poems to explore who I am, and to heal.

In closing, this is an inspiring book, open-hearted and encouraging.

You can find Oubliettes of Light at MoonPath, or through Bookshop.org. To see Lisa’s brand new (and lovely) web site, follow this link: https://www.lisaashleypoet.com.

Last Call of the Dark

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My review of Mary Crane’s Last Call of the Dark just went up today, on-line at Raven Chronicles. Follow the link to read the full review!

As a bonus for reading my blog, here’s a poem – about spring, which cannot get here fast enough for me.

Hazel Catkin

I greeted the first spring-like day
with exhaustion, no appreciation
of a small portion of sun
in gray mosaic, and a stiff wind.
I was tired. The retreating season
offered no space for my small needs,
as the world iced over in suspicion
and decent people passed away.

I once fell in love with a hazel catkin –
heads drawn together, breath quickened,
we gazed into its bright red styles
instead of one another’s animated faces.
I don’t need to recreate the love
but the fall – the descent into desire
as the buds swell up, the body warms,
and a blush reawakens into life.

—Mary Eliza Crane

Crane is a western Washington poet who has resided in the hills above the Snoqualmie Valley for nearly four decades. Our paths have crossed at poetry open mics in Kirkland’s Book Tree and at Easy Speak in Wedgewood (Seattle); she is a co-host of her local poetry night in Duvall. To learn more about Last Call of the Dark, see my review (of course), or visit Cirque Press.

And if you are looking for an open mic, you can find it here: Western Washington Poets Network.