June 14, 2009
Anne Gorrick & Deborah Woodard
Sunday, June 147:30 pm
Concordia Coffee House
2909 NE Alberta
$5.00 suggested donation
Anne Gorrick's first book, Kyotologic, was published in 2008 by Shearsman Books. Collaborating with artist Cynthia Winika, she produced a limited edition artist's book, "Swans, the ice," she said, with grants through the Women's Studio Workshop in Rosendale, NY, and the New York Foundation for the Arts. She also curates the reading series Cadmium Text, which focuses on innovative writing in and around the Hudson Valley.
Deborah Woodard has published three chapbooks of poetry, The Orphan Conducts the Dovehouse Orchestra (Bear Star Press), The Book of Riddles (Boxcar Press), and Hunter Mnemonics (hemel press). Her first full-length collection, Plato's Bad Horse, was published by Bear Star in 2006. The Dragonfly, her translation (with Giuseppe Leporace) of the poetry of Amelia Rosselli, was just published by Chelsea Editions. She teaches at the Richard Hugo House, a community literary center in Seattle.
In March:
not Celadon or Rain
for the Levins
In the alm mill
vellum advances
rhinestone revise
harm
in the method-cell, a meal
bella, mine
Ravel's methanol remarks
pieces of rice
Ella dressed in rice-lace
marc, ave, vin
marsh to vine
through the name mill
and out its sleeve
Anne Gorrick
from Hunter Mnemonics
1
When I was little, I didn't understand why wax paper rustling in some corner
made me fix upon the town like a glint of water or the muffled barking of a dog.
It was quiet here, a silence blunt and practical that tied its laces. And Al's
was no name but a joke the trapper painted across the cover of the well.
I found tin cans and a pair of antlers that almost brought back the tang of your shot,
the monotony of its tuft of smoke. When we got in the clear, we'd reach the cabin.
I imagined red plaid beckoning us forward, milkweed's limbs akimbo.
But I didn't understand why Jerusalem was just a few miles up the road,
or why the town was weaker than its well. So I drew down a flap of the grey sky.
Behind barred windows hunters rested quietly, made for themselves
a different stillness: the woods could never close over these few. I strained
my likeness from them — peeling wax paper from a corner pocked with leave —
the way I strained to protect Jerusalem as I thought through the town.
When I was little, I didn't understand and stood like the cabin unlaced and cold.
A sheet of wax paper rustled inside the cover of the well. I tied my laces.
Deborah Woodard
