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go there ... "Apologies to the Cockroaches" by Robert Judge Woerheide Kat Miner, Featured Photographer A quick Q and A. A closer look at poet Joanne Lowery Biographical information, and an artist's statement. read it .. read it ... |
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| "With a gun barrel between your teeth, you speak only in vowels" Narrator, "Fight Club" |
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| Joanne Lowery, Poet Seven Misters Ordering Details Poems that Work and Sweat Ordering Details |
| Artist's Statement: Writing poetry is the ultimate conjurer's trick: how to replicate the life of the mind within the confines of language. Though the general public persists in thinking that poetry is about "feelings," I would argue that it's much more about thinking, verbal craft, and the ways each of us processes experience. From all that swirls inside any person's mind, some things rise to the top, link up with kindred or alien ideas and mental pictures, then find their distinctive vocabulary. For me, this means I have to do a lot of reading (most of it not poetry but fiction and history) looking for details and images that snag my interest. For example, the scene in "Hunt, 1831" (see poems below, and in the poetry section of this issue of Perigee) came to me from reading a book about the Santa Fe Trail, though my imagination added the antelope and embellished the setting. I especially like to write in different voices, such as the flip tone of "Clark Gable as Muse," (again, see below) and in historical contexts, exploring aspects of incongruity, sometimes in multi-poem series as variations on themes. There's a famous quote by Williams about how people die miserably every day from a lack of what is found in poetry. I'm not sure that's literally true, though of course we all know people who seem to have no imaginative life or understanding of life's quintessential mystery. Poetry is so very much inside the poet's head (and secondarily in the reader's) that it may not be doing much good in terms of rescuing us from day-to-day frustrations or global problems. But poetry is something many of us certainly need, as basic to our human nature as storytelling, religion, and the desire for intimacy. Writing poems gives me tremendous pleasure, and I think of it as having made my life much more interesting than it would otherwise be. If other people find pleasure in my poems, so much the better. |
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| Hunt, 1831 |
| Jeremiah rode out to hunt antelope along the Santa Fe Trail and ended up dead. Black Feather rode out to hunt antelope in what is now western Kansas and ended up dead. What is the I.Q. of an antelope? If only a human can contemplate its future death, why do antelope run? The rising moon skidded to a stop above the running antelope. It leaped over two limbed logs of differing colors. The antelope had the same thoughts as the moon. See the moon light the antelope for future guns and disappearing arrows. See Diana pull her bow across the historical sky. |