Reading Local Seattle

[ Hill Poems: A Collection of Capitol Hill Poetry | Jacob Brooke Press ]

{ Hill }

All of the collected poems in this slender anthology are by local poets and take as their topic the Seattle neighborhood of Capitol Hill. Or as Poets West put it in a Metblog entry from last April, this collection is “about Capitol Hill’s degradation into a yuppie hell and the conversion of apartments to condos and the effect on the community”. Even as a fairly late transplant to the Seattle area I can sympathize with this sentiment. My own neighborhood of Ballard, while admittedly historically more staid than Capitol Hill, has suffered a similar fate over the last eight years. Single-family homes have been sold, torn down, and replaced by cookie-cutter town homes and condos. I hardly recognize my own street anymore.

I like the physical feel of this collection. It contains black and white photos of the Capitol Hill area (Dick’s Drive-In, Broadway Rite Aid, night-lit streets slick with rain) alongside the poetry. The overall effect is to bring to mind a half-mad guerrilla poet xeroxing pages of poems to hand out on the street at 2 a.m., and this has always secretly been my (perhaps overly-romanticized) impression of Capitol Hill.

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[ Floating Bridge Review: Numbers 1 & 2 | Floating Bridge Press | $10] If you’re a poet who lives and writes in Washington State there’s a good chance you’re familiar with Floating Bridge Press. Each year this press holds a poetry chapbook contest and—along with the winning manuscript—publishes Pontoon, an anthology of poems selected from the submitted manuscripts. At least that’s what used to happen. In 2008, the editors decided to mix things up a bit; now, in addition to the winning chapbook, they publish an annual literary journal, Floating Bridge Review. Half of the journal will still be dedicated to the Pontoon anthology, but the other half will be “re-imagined with each issue”. The new section will allow the editors to “experiment and expand” what they’re publishing. They intend to explore new genres and new writers (who won’t necessarily be required to live within our state’s borders).

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Delightfully horrific

[ Finding Water, Holding Stone | James Bertolino | Cherry Grove Collections | Paperback $18 ] Initially, I imagined James Bertolino’s Finding Water, Holding Stone would dovetail all too neatly with my preconceptions about “poetry of the Pacific Northwest”. There is nature here, elemental imagery like…well, water and stone. There is ice and sand; there are blackbirds and wrens, crabs, caterpillars, lupine and saplings, clay, and an unwavering attention to darkness and light. There are the overtures toward the spiritual tropes that these iconic symbols suggest.

However, I found myself surprised by these poems time and again.

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Determined by Aperture by Shannon Tharp (Fewer & Further Press)

Language can hamper a poet as much as it can aid her. Words can be both positive and  negative instruments. In her chapbook, Determined by Aperture, Shannon Tharp wields the minimum amount of language necessary for reference, but also withholds with surgical skill. Structurally her poems are small: each line contains just a few words; each poem unfolds as a slender column down the page; and the pages themselves are diminutive (measuring in at 7″ x 4 1/4″). However, the architecture—the economy—of the poems generates many meanings. The poems point to something bigger than the physical spaces that contain them.

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