Adrienne Rich (1929-2012)

 

The Poetry Box honors the life of poet Adrienne Rich (1929-2012), who so eloquently dedicated her life and work to justice, love, and beauty. Upon learning of Rich’s death on March 28, Stegner Fellow David Biespiel called Rich, “The greatest American political poet since Walt Whitman.”

Rich was awarded the National Medal of Arts in 1997, but she declined to accept, saying, “I could not accept such an award from President Clinton or this White House because the very meaning of art, as I understand it, is incompatible with the cynical politics of this administration...[Art] means nothing if it simply decorates the dinner table of the power which holds it hostage.”

POWER

Living            in the earth-deposits     of our history

Today a backhoe divulged     out of a crumbling flank of earth

one bottle     amber     perfect     a hundred-year-old

cure for fever    or melancholy     a tonic

for living on this earth     in the winters of this climate

Today I was reading about Marie Curie:

she must have known she suffered     from radiation sickness

her body bombarded for years    by the element

she had purified

It seems she denied to the end

the source of the cataracts on her eyes

the cracked and suppurating skin     of her finger-ends

till she could no longer hold     a test-tube or a pencil

She died     a famous woman      denying

her wounds

denying

her wounds     came     from the same source as her power,

-Adrienne Rich, 1974

Waking Up

Look if you like, but you will have to leap. – Auden

In waiting there is hope—there is hope,

and dread: both somehow preferable

to certainty, if outwardly appropriate,

that may scathe. You are due your ineffable

deliberation, but I’ll concede

in the flash of my waking (in guilt

you hadn’t let me drive,

                                                you fetched a quilt,

                                                            closed

your eyes—

morning caught us hungover and clothed

though no accountability exists,

no reason to diminish, fear, or forgo

this                        ) I was happy. Yeah, I said so.

-by Jen Coleman

Jen Coleman is from Lynchburg, Virginia, where she dropped out of high school. She received a fellowship from the MFA program at Hollins University. “Waking Up” is featured in the Fall 2011 edition of Jackson Hole Review, www.jhreview.com.

Destiny Is a Red

Light filters through a crystal glass of red

Wine smoky and pure merlot

shines a color down to your very soul.

Heart red sounds a pure note

like a Flugel horn from a deep canyon

quiet, then suddenly full of chesty call.

In these passing storms of love,

one minute drenched, the next thundering dry,

A note echoes—in white porticoes

whose columns frame winsome gestures

of tender touch enfolding a young face

in time’s winnowing hand-held by some design.

In these corridors, where destiny walks naked

for all to see, hang ornate tapestries of time

scriven on by human multitudes unguided

save for some design because destiny dances

to a far off horn, blushing the color of dawn’s

light through a crystal glass of red.

-by Monte Rosen

Monte Rosen is the assistant facilities manager at the Center for the Arts. His poetry has been published in Birdcage Review, Dakota Home Journal, and other publications. He lives in Victor, Idaho.

Kicking Cairns

Nothing recommends this boulder

over the ten thousand others

in the field, except that

someone else, as lost as you,

thought to pile some stones here.

The chaos that confronts you

will evolve into a pattern

that bigger things broke into.

The freedom measured by each fall:

No one knows where you are.

It’s easy to make a statement out of

stones piled up within arm’s reach:

Here I have been; harder to know

which of the piles you come upon

you should kick down.

-by Rick Kempa

Rick Kempa lives in Rock Springs, Wyoming, where he teaches writing and philosophy at Western Wyoming College. “Kicking Cairns” is featured in the Fall 2011 edition of Jackson Hole Review, www.jhreview.com.

The Choice

My body and soul are entwined,

chained unto yours

until the mental sword releases us.

What then…?

Will my heart be finally silenced,

or will it quicken and bloom again?

Is there a spark in these dying embers –

one to allow mending, to reweave the chains,

transforming them into golden threads of an

exquisite tapestry – a design woven to flow

from me to you and back again,

devoid of the strangling tentacles.

The essence of that choice

hangs in the air like smoke from burning incense,

            and yet

I cannot choose, oh God…

            not yet…

-by Claudia Gillette

Claudia Gillette lives in Jackson, Wyoming.

Whole list teabags dance on desks

                            Bones of the dresser sound elegant

ability, drag and sweep stairs. Far farm studio shakes all

different nuts to chew loud pieces.    

Paramedics save energy laughing all over the country. 

Worse than plans in glass “won’t recognize me the street

started fishing well, frozen pond. A long time remembered

emergency room.

Huggy people erase the legs of a chair and all this paper. 

Daughters came in fear of lunch pitied by Geppetto’s

forceful finish. Stealing across the square,

the legs of The Wooden Chair. Fell dogs fuss perfectly mountains of

confetti on the tongue. Bench journals lunch. James Page mittens documentary.

The poor don’t want, are happy only earthlight weaves to the spot,

moves on to the best received innocence written on tables,

enwreathed in ghosts.

I’ll disappear if one were to ask how erasing any awkwardness

candles in the street. Angles bend the line fish a busy room full of

shoes need repair.

Deep peg grocery bags change his sign to closed.

Guests arrive having picked the familiar face  I ‘ m  s u p p o s e d  t o 

think is insistent upon the faith of a trombone someone plays.

In the flash of a cackle, she warns, like me, the morning will capture,

needs to be praised.

-by Hanz Olson

Hanz Olson is currently a writer of poetry living in Casper, Wyoming after finishing school in Laramie. His poems have been selected for publication and appeared in Expression Literary and Arts Magazine, Open Window Literary Magazine, and Haggard and Halloo Publications.

Enormous gentle beasts

Speaking and recognizing more than humans know

Cooperating and following one another until death

A female at the stern, milk from her belly

Living almost as long as we, yet in harmony

Posing a threat only in defense, using their size only as deterrent

When they could control and cause infinitely more destruction

They are more keen to mourn loss, greet one another in celebration

And move on toward the next watering hole

Their wrinkled thick skin effective for sun and heat

Beauty more deeply expressed through intelligence and remembering

Survival depending on knowledge and community

Lessons cultivated over 25 million years evolution

Better equipped are they than us in so many ways and on all levels

Communities strong, traveling far distances together, for food, for water

And for love and family, mating a celebration of a continuum, not competition

Among these female giant gentle beasts of plain and jungle

-by Laura Garrard

Laura Garrard is an artist, editor, nationally certified massage therapist, certified lymphatic therapist and Reiki master teacher who lives in Jackson, Wyoming.