Fantasy Poetry Team

Fall is fast approaching, which means football, network television, blathering about new sitcoms! What a great reason to turn that TV off! Oh wait, we mean turn off your already turned off televisions, you wordy readers!

While seemingly every guy out there is busy following his fantasy football team, we’ve been busy drafting a fantasy team of own — made up entirely of poets…

Let’s begin with Mary Ruefle, who we envision would play Strong Safety. We’re not positioning Mary in the backfield because she writes prose poems, which are often considered a safe form, but because her Terry Tempest Williams-like approach to the natural universe makes us feel like we’re in a shaded canopy of trees — protection and bliss all at once. We love her poem Timberland, which is included in Selected Poems, her new book from Wave Books.

Timberland

Paul’s Fish Fry in Bennington, Vermont, is no longer
Closed for the Season Reason Freezin. The umbrellas
have opened over the picnic tables and the bees are
beginning to annoy the french fries, the thick shakes
and real malts of my past.

I am thirteen thousand miles removed, on the delta
of the Pearl River, eating a litchi. Its translucent flesh just
burst in my mouth; shreds of it glitter between my teeth.
I smile but the fruit seller is sour. In fact, he is so sour
the only man on earth he resembles is Paul. But the litchi …

Actually none of this has happened yet. I am nineteen
years old. I am riding in the boxcar of a freight train
hurtling toward Pocatello, Idaho. In a very dangerous move
I maneuver my way back to the car behind me, an open gondola
carrying two tons of timberland eastward out of Oregon:

it is here I will lie all night, my head against the logs,
watching the stars. No one knows where I am. My mother thinks
I am asleep in my bed. My friends, having heard of a derailment
at ninety miles an hour on the eastbound freight, think I am
dead. But I’m here, hurtling across the continent with un-

believable speed. We are red-hot and we go, the steel track
with its imperceptible bounce allows us to go, our circuitous
silhouette against the great Blue Mountains and my head in a
thrill watching the stars: I am not yet at a point in my life
where I am able to name them, but there are so many and they
++++are

so white! I’m hurtling toward work at Paul’s, toward the litchi-
bite in Guangzhou, toward the day of my death all right, but all
I can say is I am happyhappyhappy to be here with the stars
++++and
the logs, with my head thrown back and then pitched forward
in tears. And the litchi! it’s like swallowing a pearl.

At Fullback, we’re hoping to recruit Michael Earl Craig (another Wave Books poet). Ever hear the notion that poetry happens behind the lines? Well, in language poetry so much of the action is happening in and on behalf of the lines, but Craig’s poetry, especially the poem below, has the telltale signs of a burgeoning Fullback. We love this light versed, thick-feathered nocturnal poem. It takes us away from a dim, text-on-the-screen light and into a memorable vision.

Night Visit

I’m awakened at 3 a.m. to the sound of an owl.
It takes me a minute to find my glasses.
I press my face to the window.
A silver flash crosses the yard.
It settles into an owl shape on a nearby post.
My nose and eyes are stinging.
A stinging behind my face.
Like some kind of problem behind a billboard.
Why would a man look at an owl and start to cry?
My body is trying to reject something.
I have no idea what that is.
The owl is sitting in the moonlight.
The yard is completely still.

Now we’re on to Noseguard. A poet who writes short, tough poems, right?

That’s easy.

How about Michael Shenoda? Take a look at “Schism,” put out last year by BOA Editions:

Schism

One man dreams
Of fire
But cannot strike
Two sticks

Together

One man strikes
Two sticks
But cannot dream
Of fire

That there’s some good noseguarding!

At Center, Jean Valentine. She’s been keeping it real, writing poems that “perform all the normal blocking functions.”

(It’s easy to feel blocked when you don’t understand her heavily-loaded catchphrase lines, but read them again and watch how she keeps all those catchphrases in line. Oh, snap!)

Valentine has a brand new collection coming out later this month from Copper Canyon Press. Here, enjoy her handiwork:

The Whitewashed Walls

The whitewashed walls, the chair
Were we nursed by the same wet-nurse?

The cups of tea undrunk
The crumb of tobacco on your lip

The poems in our speckled notebooks
where we warmed our hands

over the quick fire

Long before the woodstove’s wood and coal
shifted and settled and warmed us

Even months before
Even from miles away…

Dean Young would make a fine quarterback, don’t you think? After all, he can take a snap from most any position.

Oh yeah, that’s right!

His poems are crazy inventive and amusing. Totally readable. And he’s even got a rather new book of essays out from Graywolf Press.

The title? The Art of Recklessness.

Now, we don’t want a reckless quarterback, you follow? But if anyone can throw a tight-spiraled party on the field, it’s Mr. Dean Young.

Finally, let’s consider Sid Miller, editor of the Burnside Review. His new book, Dot-to-Dot, is now out from Ooligan Press. It’s no surprise we’re keen on a book of poems spurred by various road trips throughout the beautiful Northwest. And then there’s that title. Hell, it sounds like it comes from an all-over-the-place speedy pass-catching expert!

Hey, Wide Receiver Sid! Wanna play for us?

– Lori Huskey

Video: Sid Miller on Outlook Portland