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Chris Dahl’s NOT NOW BUT SOON

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I’m pleased to let you know that my review of Chris Dahl’s Not Now But Soon, winner of the 2025 Concrete Wolf Louis Award, is now posted at Escape Into Life. (Be sure to explore the links!) Chris is one of the mainstays of Olympia Poetry Network (OPN); no matter where you live, they welcome new members, and have terrific Zoom readings in addition to their in-person readings and workshops.

I wanted to share a full-length poem here, and as I happen to also be reading The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning, by Margareta Magnusson, this poem especially appealed to me. It’s perfect for this dark time of year (sunset today at 4:19 p.m.).

Aware of the Season’s Pivot

We come to the time of the year when we wake in the dark.
No shine appears on the water; the surface smothers
any reflection. We have lost our easy ways
of gauging depth.

Some years, when I head south I have asked my mother
to take my orchids for the winter. They’re a gift—
she could keep them, but she always gives them back,
afraid they’ll die. When I return, I take them home
and immediately they bloom. If only she would wait
for the cycle to complete.

Now, at her house, we talk in whispers. She’s already
organized her files and affairs, insistent
she can take care of things, even after she’s gone.
I’m all worn out with worry, she says. Now
I’m the one without faith
that the cycle will continue.

Yesterday I took the wilted flowers from the funeral
bouquet and rearranged what was left. Amazing how
certain species go on delighting with their fragile beauty,
alstroemerias, and even some chrysanthemums,
challenging us to find the language
that describes the pull of time, its
relentless gravity.

These are night thoughts, of course, but then
we have so much more night, now.

—Chris Dahl

Photo by Hiếu Hoàng: https://www.pexels.com/photo/purple-and-pink-moth-orchids-closeup-photo-1038003/

A Couple of New Things

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Thanks to a submission push I did last fall, I have a new piece up at Afterimages, which is definitely a substack  you want to check out. Click on this link to go directly to “Photographic Evidence of My Mother’s Childhood.”

And I have a new book review, posted today, at Escape Into Life.

Bird Ornaments by Angel T. Dionne

There was such a great turnout for the reading at Edmonds Bookshop last night — and I came away with renewed friendships and new books. Really glad I made the effort to be there. Really grateful to my daughter Emma for having dinner with her dad.

More soon,

Bethany

 

 

Sarah Kain Gutowski: THE FAMILIAR

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THE FAMILIAR: POEMS, Sarah Kain Gutowski. Texas Review Press, Huntsville, TX 77341, 2024, 94 pages, $21.95, paper, texasreviewpress.org.

I reviewed this book at Escape Into Life (EIL), but now that the hard copy has arrived I’m dipping into its pages again, still feeling astounded by its chutzpah.

From the cover:

Gutowski’s poems are breathtakingly smart—controlled, precise and exquisite as diamonds—and yet they vibrate dangerously from within, as if anticipating, as she writes in one poem, “so much broken glass.” –Amber Sparks, author of And I Do Not Forgive You

You can visit EIL (see link below) to read more about what I find fascinating about the story-in-poems of one woman’s prism of selves (Ordinary Self and Extraordinary Self are the main characters). Here, one poem in its entirety:

Recurring Catastrophes

My ordinary self is not great at networking.
Her conversation’s void of art and humor, not
because she doesn’t know what to say but rather

her dearth of interest. She won’t respond to emails,
schedule dinner dates, return phone calls—all gestures
other ordinary people make to stay connected

and maintain relationships. My ordinary self runs
a little warm when asked about her lack of friends.
If I become distracted by other people and their

other problems, she once said, how can I focus on ours?
At this point in our life, she is correct—fires keep
erupting at home, and spread to school, to work,

and on the flat, dry road to the grocery. Everywhere, smoke
and heat and the need to escape. My extraordinary self
is never around for these recurring catastrophes

but my ordinary self and I can feel her like the tremor
underfoot when a house folds its charred frame to the ground:
somewhere, she’s smiling, her eyes hot and gray as ash.

—Sarah Kain Gutowski, The Familiar

Gutowski is also the author of Fabulous Beast: Poems, which won the 14th annual National Indies Excellence Award for Poetry. In addition to checking out my review at EIL, you can learn more about the poet at her page at Texas Review Press, and at her personal website.

 

Sati Mookherjee

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WAYS OF BEING, Sati Mookherjee. MoonPath Press, PO Box 445, Tillamook, OR 97141, 73 pages, $16 paper, http://MoonPathPress.com.

I am writing a “real” review of this book—Mookerjee’s second, and the winner of the 2023 Sally Albiso Award—to be posted at Escape Into Life (EIL) on May 5, 2023, its release date. So consider this a preview, my quick appreciation and shout-out to a stirring collection.

Washington State Book Award winner Sharon Hashimoto says in her cover blurb:

Rhythms, images and juxtapositions in these poems flow like waves filling and emptying, from past to present to what might be—all while glorying in occlusions. Sati Mookherjee’s lively word play questions our definitions, boundaries around spaces, and leads to fresh and original epiphanies…

“Occlusion,” a fine old word meaning “the blockage or closing of an opening, blood vessel, or hollow organ,” often used in a medical context. In these poems, where Salish Sea, tideflats, “the great lung of bay,” are loved, and desecrated like human bodies, the word is completely appropriate.

I’ll get carried away if I go on (and I want to save that for the review), so I’ll offer this short poem (some are quite long), as a teaser:

Ground

Lay your warm body on the warm earth
and sense how deep the roots go, the roots

we can’t see, think of the acres
of hot black lightless matter under your body.

I think the past is a perfectly fine place to live.
Why not be native to it, visit the present

as necessary, a tourist, in transit, on a brief journey.
I can see you’re dying. This terrarium,

even with its carefully laid nests of leaves and grass
and twigs, can’t keep you, I don’t want to keep you,

go home, back to where you need to be.

—Sati Mookherjee

I’m not sure “Ground” is the right choice—so many of the poems are grounded (deeply) in the present. These are poems of witness. A lifelong resident of the Pacific Northwest, Mookherjee enjoins us to treasure our time here, on earth, adjacent to water.

Ways of Being is available now for presale. Visit MoonPathPress.com for more information. I’ll update the links when the full-length review is posted.

[Update 4.28.23] Mookherjee’s book launch is this coming Sunday in Bellingham, and you can reserve your seat now: https://www.villagebooks.com/event/litlive-sati-mookherkee-043023 

My review of Ways of Being can be found here: https://www.escapeintolife.com/book-reviews/book-review-ways-of-being-by-sati-mookherjee/