Enter Invisible

Congrats to Catherine Wing, former fellow-writing group member (who has since moved on to better things), for her book Enter Invisible, recently published by Sarabande, and featured on Garrison Keillor's The Writer's Almanac today. Here's a poem Keillor is reading:


A Small Psalm

Sorrow be gone, be a goner, be forsooth un-sooth, make like a
suit and beat it, vamoose from the heavy heavy, be out from
under the night's crawlspace, call not for another stone, more
weight more weight, be extinguished, extinguish, the dark,
that which is deep and hollow, that which presses from all
sides, that which squeezes your heart into an artichoke-heart
jar and forbids it breathe, that which is measured by an
unbalanced scale, banish the broken, the unfixable, the
shattered, the cried-over, the cursed, the cursers, the curses—
curse them, the stone from the stone fruit, let it be fruit, the
pit from the pitted, the pock from the pocked, the rot from the
rotten, tarry not at the door, jam not the door's jamb, don't
look back, throw nothing over your shoulder, not a word, not
a word's edge, vowel, consonant, but run out, run out like the
end of a cold wind, end of season, and in me be replaced
with a breath of light, a jack-o'-lantern, a flood lamp or fuse
box, a simple match or I would even take a turn signal, traffic
light, if it would beat beat and flash flood like the moon at
high tide, let it, let it, let it flare like the firefly, let it spark and
flash, kindle and smoke, let it twilight and sunlight, and
sunlight and moonlight, and when it is done with its lighting
let it fly, will'-o-the-wisp, to heaven.


Nice work, Catherine! The word play goes straight to my heart. And congrats also to other members of the two Seattle writing groups I participate in, who have books recent and/or forthcoming. You rock:

Kathleen Flenniken, Famous, winner of the 2005 Prairie Schooner book award
Rebecca Loudon, Tarantella and now Radish King, forthcoming from Ravenna Press
Ron Starr, a chapbook, forthcoming from Ravenna Press
Jeannine Hall Gailey (new member) Female Comic Book Superheroes (chapbook) and Becoming the Villainess, forthcoming from Steel Toe Press.
Susan Rich, The Cartographer's Tongue and now Cures Include Travel, forthcoming from White Pine Press
Lillias Bever (new member), Bellini In Istanbul, winner of the 2004 Tupelo Press book award
Jeff Crandall, The Grief Pool, Firestorm Press
Ted McMahon, The Uses of Imperfection, Cat 'n' Dog Press
Linda Greenmun, Wheel of Days, Floating Bridge Press
Gary Winans, Across the Smooth Lens of the Lake, Pudding House