PINYON REVIEW #18, FALL 2020

I wish that Gary Entsminger, former editor and publisher of Pinyon Publishing, had lived to see Pinyon Review #18, the journal he and his wife Susan birthed during his lifetime. This latest special journal with hand sewn Japanese Stab Binding on Mohawk Loop Inkwell Vellum EcoWhite Paper is a limited edition dedicated to Stuart Friebert. The work of Friebert, poet and translator of international fame, first appeared in Pinyon Publishing’s inventory with the award-winning book, Floating Heart, and his work remained a constant contribution to the publications of Pinyon until his death this year.

Susan Entsminger, now editor and publisher of Pinyon Review, introduced this special edition with a brief poem of her own entitled “Perspective,” and voiced the lament that the “sequences” in her life, “which had become as sacred as ritual” are no longer (referring, perhaps, to the sudden death of her beloved husband, Gary.) However, she also speaks of “staying suspended in the universe,” a phrase attributed to the poet, XIA Haitao, whose work appears in this issue of Pinyon Review.

Some of the outstanding authors who have appeared in former issues of Pinyon and whose books have been published by this independent press include Chuck Taylor, Luci Shaw, Martha McFerren, and Neil Harrison. However, more recent poets such as XIA Haitao will transport readers into vistas overlooking the sea from the summit of Mount Tai in China and from which Susan Entsminger derived the line, “Only when you stay suspended in the universe,” in her introduction to this issue of Pinyon Review. During this time of Covid-19, the particular line that resonated with me and inspired me to read further was XIA Haitao’s long poem covering almost ten pages about a mountain that “has been standing/ since 2.4 billion years ago/in silence as if nothing has ever happened/to him.” It’s a tribute poem that illustrates the lastingness of both geographical formations and poetry, and the appearance of Chinese script, side by side with the poem enhances the format of the translation and contributes to the international flavor of this artistic journal published in southern Colorado.

I loved the imagery about a Religious figure in Mark Mitchell’s “Past,” in lines like “…Relics lack/substance, but they can grow real again. She/kept holy cloths handy in case someone/happened past her room — they must never see/through the spells she’d been taught by evil nuns…” The imagery reminded me of supernatural inhabitants in the works of New Orleans author Anne Rice’s works about other world spirits. Mitchell’s poem is brief but is a powerful evocation of the “also world,” which a Religious friend calls the afterlife.

Maria Roca’s contribution of “It’s Always Windy in Portbou,” translated from the Catalan by Sonia Alland and formatted side by side with the Portuguese version, features more of Susan’s placement of multilingual renditions and is a gusty lyric that “pushes a train car over and it falls on the tracks like an enormous dead animal…blows with sudden blasts…everyone tousled with hair blown backwards or forwards…” The poem will remind Louisiana readers of the furious hurricanes that beset Acadian residents in Louisiana each year. Powerful phrasing that describes“windows trembling and beds shaking," may be traumatic for southern Louisianans, but the translation redeems itself with the line that concludes “everything [is] purified by the wind.” However, as a part-time Louisiana resident, I would venture that we’d rather not experience that form of redemption,

A special section by Richard Kent is another example of Pinyon’s photographic surprises. Kent introduces ‘Lessons in Recursion’ in which a recursive image of a scene captured in photography may alter a viewer’s perspective of an ordinary landscape. When Kent encounters blank wooden signs in which messages have been erased by wear and time, he creates “recursive progressions” or transformations of place by photographing landscape scenes and placing the images on blank signs, some of which might startle viewers as they travel through various states. Seven signs showcase his complex photographic representations, several of which are attached to trees throughout the US.

As usual, this Pinyon Review #18 is a small masterpiece, a volume that will invite new readers and delight old ones as well. This edition is a wonderful tribute to Stuart Friebert and to the Entsmingers for preserving outstanding literary and artistic contributions. It contains some of the creative output of our country’s best word and visual artists.

Copies available through links above or snail mail from Pinyon Publishing, 23847 V66 Trail, Montrose, CO 81403.

 

A SALUTE TO STUART FRIEBERT AND LISTENING ALL NIGHT TO THE RAIN

Although my blogging has suffered a gradual demise, when notable books and events cause a stir in this isolated household, I feel an old impulse to write a few lines as I am doing this morning after receiving Pinyon Publishing’s latest book of poetry, Listening All Night to the Rain by Su Dongpo (Su Shi) and translated by Jiann I. Li and David Young.  This collection of poems arrived the same day as I received notice that a friend and “comrade in words” (as Stuart Friebert inscribed one of his books to me) had died. The Pinyon publication, Listening All Night to the Rain is a translated book of poetry from one of Friebert’s colleagues at Oberlin College where Friebert formed the Oberlin Creative Writing program and co-founded Oberlin College Press.

Friebert was a poetry pen pal of mine who endorsed several of my books and who was a master of poetic translations. He not only inspired poets and translators, he wrote precise and extraordinary poetry and prose and received The Ohioana Book Award for his book of poetry, Floating Heart published by Pinyon in 2014. In that collection of poems, he wrote about his own “Eve of the End:” “No one told us anything about/ this before we started out. When we’re out/of sight, you may go back to your reading,/but expect a bright light,/your eyes to blink.” I think he wrote his own wry epitaph. A man who loved word play, Friebert often sent e-mails to me that showed his playful and endearing personality. I valued his insights about writing poetry (“learn to be lightning”) and his willingness to be audacious about whatever vocation a person pursues in life. 

Jiann I. Lin and David Young, who translated Listening All Night to the Rain, must have pleased Friebert with their choice of poems from Su Dongpo that “combine simplicity with universality” David Young writes in the Introduction to this volume. According to Young, Taoism and Zen Buddhism helped show the 11th-century poet Su Dongpo the way to wonder and delight and reinforced his poetic sensibilities. Readers can visualize him wandering through remote Chinese provinces, living through exiles because of his political affiliations and writing quatrains about his excursions, sometimes involving heavy drinking during his explorations.

Su Dongpo’s brother, Su Zhe, was also a poet, and Su Dongpo exchanged poems, as well as gossip, with him in deeply emotional poems using brief and beautiful imagery that characterizes Chinese poetry: “The lamp drops cinders/the darkening candle wick/hangs down/I poke the ashes in the stove/over and over/sniffing the last fragrance…across the sea between us/the moon shies clear as crystal/I share it with him now.”

I enjoyed many of the temple poems; e.g., “At a temple, asked to help name a pavilion:” “Glory will flourish and decay/as transitory/as any wind or thunder./What lasts can be/as simple as/red blooming flowers./The master priest sits quietly/watching an empty shelf/thinking about a name,/observing the concept of ‘real’/and also the concept of ‘nothingness’/because they’re both the same.” Like most of the lyrics in this collection, this collection reflects the economy of Oriental poetry; but the compression still conveys time and place without exaggerated documentation.

The wandering and exposure to rain, snow, and seasonal changes sometimes troubles this vagabond poet, and he often expresses a weariness with which aging readers can identify: From “A Weary night”: “In this lonely village/one dog barks all night/the moon wanes/few people on the road/my thinning hair /has turned bright white/my years of travel have taught me/how to be homesick/out in the empty fields/spinster cicadas are buzzing/nothing to show for their labor/nothing accomplished.” 

For readers who’re drawn to Oriental poetry, Su Dongpo offers eloquent and peaceful reading during this time of stress and isolation due to disease and political upheaval in our country. The book is one that expresses the poet’s enduring spirit through adversities where he endures punishments for his political associations. In “At Spirit Mountain, touring with friends in rain,” he thumbs his nose at bureaucrats “off duty,” “…I’ve spent the day/ strolling around/with my two friends/here in the rain and mist/big magpies soar/rising up and diving down/while travelers cross/appearing and disappearing/among the groves of trees.”

Listening All Night to the Rain contains the Chinese version of all poems on opposite pages from the English version pages, and a look at the enchanting symbols made me wish that I’d learned another language to translate as Stuart Friebert once urged me to do.

The book could be viewed as another tribute to the master translator, Friebert. It’s a wonderful collection by Jiann I. Lin and David Young and emerges as another of Pinyon Publishing’s remarkable publications. Kudos to Susan Entsminger, who continues to carry the tradition of excellent literature established by her and her deceased husband, Gary Entsminger.

Copies available at Pinyon Publishing, 23847 V66 Trail, Montrose, CO 81403

A DOUBLE LIFE

A Double Life: In Poetry and Translation by Stuart Friebert, one of the last books Gary Entsminger, editor and publisher of Pinyon Publishing, worked on before he died last month, appeared on Pinyon’s publishing list this past week. Susan Entsminger, co-editor and publisher of Pinyon, never missed a beat as she carried on the press’s work, executing Gary’s wish to publish the work of distinguished Stuart Friebert, a poet translator and co-founder of the Field Translation Series, Oberlin College Press, and Field Magazine. Friebert’s credentials are formidable, and this collection of memoirs and “late poetry” give the reader double magic in Friebert’s encounters with famous writers; e.g., Gunter Grass, Maya Angelou, Hilde Domin, Michael Mann, and other literary noteworthies. 

A touch of Friebert’s wry sensibilities introduce this volume as he recounts his experiences in an MI (military intelligence unit) in which he is left standing alone when every man receives a sharpshooter medal except him, and a man in another unit shreds the human hand holding a stick at which the sharpshooters fire when it strays above the sight line. Friebert follows this accessible essay with more solemn interviews about his visits to German poets when he receives a grant to publish poets in a textbook containing the poetry of Gunter Grass, Paul Celan, Karl Krolow, Hilde Domin and other authors who he writes were on their way to illustrious careers. The textbook never materialized, but Friebert’s narration of his encounters with these renowned German writers constitute legendary material.

During Friebert’s interview with Hilde Domin, readers share his enjoyment of her pot of tea and ginger cake before hearing her recite her famous “Only A Rose For Support,” which Friebert describes as a poem without metaphor and written in plainspoken diction. The poem begins with the lines: “I make myself a room in the air/among the acrobats and birds/my bed on the trapeze of feelings/like a nest in the wind/on the outermost tip of the branch…” Domin’s poetry reflects an immediacy indicative of several other poets Friebert has translated during his career as a translator: Karl Krolow and the Romanian poet, Marin Sorescu.

Friebert relates that although he and David Young never got around to publishing the aforementioned textbook on which they had based their grant application, “other fruits were harvested”: many translations the Field Translation Series published and the actual stimuli to publish that was engendered through interviews with imminent German poets.

Friebert’s interview with Gunter Grass in Berlin included Grass’s approval of the poems Friebert and Young had chosen to translate, via a donation of cognac and cigars from the interviewers and Grass making sure they understood his poems, “stopping painfully short of suggesting we were dumbing them down,” Friebert relates. Later, in the 90’s, when Friebert revisits Germany to work with Karl Krolow on translations of his poetry, he reads that Grass is having a noon reading in Reichelsheim and attends the event, after which Friebert joins a line of congratulators and is crushed when Grass doesn’t remember him or the cigars and cognac he and Young had provided the writer. Friebert’s wit forms the tone of this essay, as is manifested in many of his narratives.

The above is only a peek into Friebert’s encounters before he concludes with a “how-to-teach” essay on literary translations, followed by a section of Friebert’s late poetry. As I am reading Michael Cunningham’s The Hours alongside A Double Life, I was drawn to the introductory verses of Friebert’s “Cowbelly”: “Look it up: ‘Patches of superfine silt/in the slowest part of rivers.’ Can’t help/thinking Virginia’s last step might have/sunk pleasurably and brought her to/a stop till the stones pressed against/a hip, jolting her on down to the bed./A life spent looking at things less simply/than the rest of us, once tuned up won’t /stop playing…” For me, this is Friebert at his most reflective best, written with his typical spirit of irony.

Friebert creates humorous visual images in “Universal Rights,” relating his discovery of a live mike in a gazebo on the town square where he warbles “The longer you live, the sooner you’ll bloody well die,” an Irish ballad that draws an audience of an albino squirrel, tourists, and a cop who asks ‘Are you all right buddy? Need me to call your wife to pick you up?’” That’s Friebert — lively, outrageously authentic, magical, and engaging.

Readers can double their reading pleasure with this volume that Gary and Susan Entsminger produced — one of Gary’s many legacies, carried on by Susan, where they “glide on thermals /for hours, nary a flap, mated for life.” (from Friebert’s “For Life” at the conclusion of A Double Life.

Order from Pinyon Publishing, 23847 V66 Trail, Montrose, CO 81403. 

PINYON REVIEW #15

Approximately nine years ago, I met a handsome black Labrador Retriever through photographs with accompanying text by Gary and Susan Entsminger, co-publishers of Pinyon Publishing in Montrose, Colorado. The Entsmingers sent me pictures of this lovely dog perched on mountain slopes and rocky ledges and standing in fields of wildflowers. One cover of Pinyon Review showed Garcia dressed in red jacket and matching red collar in a forest of yellow-leafed aspens, his head turned as if looking back toward his admiring owners. He was the dog of a breed I wish I could own but because of allergies to animal dander, cannot. So I owned Garcia vicariously and felt deep loss when he recently died during a harsh winter.

Three photographs of Garcia taken by Susan Entsminger appear in the latest issue of Pinyon Review, along with several poems featuring him; e.g., “Afterglow:” in which Susan describes her fondness for this canine companion that climbed mountain trails with her and Gary: “If I can I will/criss-cross those snowy woods/for eternity with you…walking into low late-day winter sun/maybe that’s what the light of afterlife feels like /blinding brightness soothing dreamy eyes/[I] felt I could walk straight into it/drawing us up the gentle slope to the cabin/slowly to coax our breathing calm/still you’d gallop in the last/to Gary waiting with a treat/three proud hearts bursting/like a flash of summer sun/sparking the heart of winter.”

Almost at Garcia’s heels in this fifteenth issue, photographs of Mark Sanders’ work of oils on canvas at Blue Creek in Nebraska appear. They represent artwork that Sanders rendered of the Nebraska Sandhills. Also, an oil on gesso over plywood entitled “Fireflies” shows Sanders’ range of painting talent — not to be eclipsed by his writing — his non-fiction biography, The Weight of the Weather: Regarding the Poetry of Ted Kooser, won the 2018 Nebraska Book Award. Sanders’ use of orange, yellow and blue color combinations feature brush strokes reminiscent of Van Gogh — he appears to use palette knives in his depictions of the harsh faces of both winter and spring in Nebraska. 

As I have been reading and observing the ballooning egos of artists and writers in our present culture, the poem of Scott Wiggerman in “Self Portrait As Collage,” spoke to my feelings about the narcissism rampant in the so-called “Academy of Poets” today: “You are still stuck on being an I,/as I was before I lost myself. Can/you hear how I am barely a murmur/of my former self? I, torn and broken,/in hundreds of pieces, learned to master/the art of assemblage. Like all art, it/was the stuff of trial and effort; it was/a matter of rearranging the no-longer I.” This brief but cogent verse is a brilliant assessment of practicing the art of egolessness.

Robert Elliott continues his work restoring and archiving glass plate photographic images of Yosemite National Park and California Missions from the early 20th century. In this issue of Pinyon Review, he and Susan Entsminger contributed photographs of Harold Taylor’s “Meeting of the Waters” featuring digital scans of the glass plates of Overhanging Rock, Half Dome Overlooking Tenaya Canyon, Mt. Lyell, and Vernal Fall below Emerald Pool. Taylor’s sister, Winifred, hand-painted prints made from his glass plate negatives. This restoration work by Elliott, who lived near Yosemite for over 45 years, is also featured in 5 x 7 greeting cards published by Pinyon Publishing. The legend on one of Elliott’s reproductions relates how Taylor walked all the trails carrying an 8 x 10 camera, tripod, and glass plates “and would often outwalk the mules.”

Luci Shaw’s many readers will welcome a return of her poetry in this issue of Pinyon Review. “Incoming Tides” focuses on the act of writing and ends in an evaluation struggling poets often make of their poetic contributions: “…By beauty/we may not mean perfection.” In “Rhythms,” she speaks of the balance we strive to achieve as we grow older, sharing the wisdom that overarches most of her work: “We need this steadiness, this/faithfulness, in realities we/have learned to welcome. Like rains/in a dry season. Like the way/every night we are content,/eager to creep/under the fringes of sleep.” Shaw, an accomplished poet and essayist, is Writer-in-Residence at Regent College, Vancouver and received the 2013 Denise Levertov Award for Creative Writing.

Gary Entsminger focuses on feet in “Sandals” that carry “waves of energy” [that] rise from the ground/into the soles/of our feet/a friendly charge/ from Gaia/but we usually retreat/into hard resistance/shoes that neutralize/the vibrations…[but]Indians knew/to walk in harmony/in moccasins/letting the vibrations/from their feet/alert the snakes/to slither elsewhere/feel the earth/from the soles/into the soul…” As a hiker and a mountain climber, Entsminger knows how to care for his feet so that he can achieve those peak moments while ascending rocky ground — fodder for his philosophy, poetry, and artwork. He's presently working on another book of poetry, and I’d put money on the fact that he’s probably working sans shoes of any kind this moment.

Of interest to followers of Stuart Friebert is a paper he presented at AWP Panel in Portland, Oregon this spring, celebrating an anniversary of Field magazine of which he was a founding editor at Oberlin College, Ohio. The Field magazine has featured such notables as Anne Sexton and Denise Levertov, and under Friebert’s guidance, The Field Translation Series developed. Friebert produced 14 volumes of translations in this series. His paper about the inception of Field magazine will be followed by a forthcoming article concerning the birth of the translation series. In Pinyon Review #15, Friebert also writes a memoir about his association with Michael Mann, son of the famed German author, Thomas Mann. A prolific writer who owes allegiance to no genre of literature, his eclectic work is often showcased in Pinyon Review.

Self translations of work by Chinese poets Ye Rugang, Yin Xiaoyuan, and Lang Tianya, and other international writers are included in this latest issue of Pinyon Review. 

Order this fulsome literary journal of high quality work from Pinyon Publishing, 23847 V66 Trail, Montrose, CO 81403.

THE OLD COASTLINE

Nobel prize winner, Shirin Ebadi of Iran, has said that in order to have understanding of and peace in the world, we must read each other’s literature. I’d add that the emissaries of that mission are translators: think of Coleman Barks translating the Persian poet Mowlavi (Rumi); Jane Kenyon translating the work of the Russian poet, Akhmatova, Stuart Friebert translating the German poet, Karl Krolow…Think also of the independent press, Pinyon Publishing in Colorado, which often publishes international poetry translations, such as its recent release: a volume of selected poetry by M. Vasalis (1909-1998), a Dutch psychiatrist who specialized in treating children and whose work has been translated by Fred Lessing and David Young.

In the introduction to this volume, translators Lessing and Young emphasize that the poet Vasalis had little interest in promoting her work but that her poems “come out of her life, her experience of the natural world, her professional practice, and her family relations, arising from the press of occasion and necessity rather than from an ambition to originality or greatness…” That description alone impressed me because I admire the qualities of humility and modesty that inhere in a writer’s life mission.

Vasalis’s immediacy and simplicity in “Spring,” a poem describing the spring season readers in the northern hemisphere are presently experiencing, resonated with me early in the volume and is perhaps the most whimsical one in The Old Coastline: “The light gusts across the land in spurts,/waking the hard, brief glitter/of the blue, wind-ruffled ditches and canals;/the grass lights up, dims down, goes dark./Two newborn lambs next to a grizzled sheep/stand white, printing youth’s picture against grass./I had forgotten how this was, and that/the spring is not a quiet blossoming,/dreaming softly but a violent growing,/a pure and passionate beginning,/jumping up out of a deep sleep,/and dancing away without a thought.” Although Vasalis has been likened to the American poet, Elizabeth Bishop, I hear the voice of Emily Dickinson in this selection the translators included from her first book, Parks and Deserts (1940). 

A reading of selections from her third book, Vistas and Visages, published posthumously in 1954, reveals more serious poetic treatments as Vasalis probes the deeper subjects of suffering and loss arising from Vasalis’s own tragic loss of a child who lived only a year and a half. The imagery in “Star” carries this message of loss in a departure from any formalism and pivots on the figure of her lost child, then concludes in a pastoral scene featuring a cow, a powerful entry into the natural world. “Tonight I saw a star for the first time./He stood alone, he did not quiver./Instantly, he pierced me through./I saw a star, he stood alone, belief/made out of light: so young and from a time/before there was such a thing as grief./The meadows lie unspoken in the light./The cows, so often painted,/restrain, with a young wet eye,/any account of their warm mystery.” That one verse , so much akin to Japanese haiku, underlines the beautiful simplicity of Vasalis’s oeuvre.

In the same volume, Vistas and Visages, Vasalis reveals her love and appreciation of children and her journey as a psychiatrist dealing with youth. “Children Coming Home” evokes strong emotions in those of us who parented young offspring and welcomed them as they returned home from an all-day absence. Her description of them as “big flowers” coming out of the gathering dark, “the chilly evening air/that lightly drapes their cheeks and hair/they are so warm!” is neither Elizabeth Bishop nor Emily Dickinson but simply a mother experiencing intimacy with her young in an intense immediacy. Further, she writes: “Clasped/in the strong clamp of their soft arms/I glimpse the love, shadowless and full./ [not yet exposed to Jungian psychology about shadows that will beset them later] that lives at the bottom of their penetrating eyes,/It is not mixed with pity, which comes later,/and has its reasons — and its boundaries.” It is Vasalis who has the penetrating eyes and appears watchful about the boundaries of innocent children.

In The Old Coastline (2002), readers will enjoy some of Vasalis’s poems about older relationships; i.e., a poignant characterization of her grandmother, a cherished member of the poet’s family constellation in “Old Age”: “Grandmother/snow-white-lace on/her calm sweet, white-satin head/carried when she was in Holland, at home,/the smallest muff in the whole world:/inside a tiny bottle, no bigger/than an ampule./ There was just room/for her hands. Plus one child's hand,/oh, what a delicious nest of fur and/the very softest satin lining/…Her eyes were a constantly changing blue;/you could look into them as long as you liked:/as if you were seeing, through two small openings,/the calm sea on a summer day.” That intimate tribute is both exacting and graceful, two recurring components of the selections chosen by Vasalis’s translators.

Vasalis also gives readers a glimpse of her own ideas about mortality, one with which most of us in our eighties can identify: “I practice like a young bird on the edge/of the nest I must soon forsake/in little faltering flights/and open my beak.”

This translated work by Vasalis is a powerful addition to the canon of international expression and vision.Translator Fred Lessing, a Holocaust survivor, psychotherapist, and retired professor of philosophy, retained his native Dutch language after moving to America at age 12. His fellow translator, David Young, is a poet (Field of Light and Shadow, 2010) an editor of Field magazine, Oberlin College Press, and a translator who enjoys collaborative work with his long-time friend, Fred Lessing.

Thank you Gary and Susan for contributing to the mission of sharing international literature through expert translations! The Old Coastline is another occasion for celebration. 

Order from Pinyon Publishing, 23847 V66 Trail, Montrose, CO 81403.

PINYON REVIEW #14

Cover of Pinyon Review #14 by Susan Entsminger

A few nights ago as I watched the PBS News Hour, I was pleasantly surprised to see a female poet appear in the last segment of the news. Ada Limon spoke passionately about the radical hope of poetry as an effective way of communicating and touted that people today are reading more and more poetry, exploring the nuance and mystery of it, as well as using it as a way to express rage. Limon also pointed out that poetry was a place where we admit to the unknown and sometimes practice beauty, make music from specificity and empathy. I was inwardly applauding her comments during the entire segment.

Gary and Susan Entsminger, editors and publishers of Pinyon Review, a magazine that features poetry, fiction, art, and photography, have been doing their share of touting the effectiveness of poetry for almost a decade in the pages of a literary journal that showcases the talents of a diverse group of artists from throughout the U.S. and abroad. In the latest issue showing the cover art of “Limes and Leaves” rendered by Susan Entsminger, the editors have chosen to include the translated work of several Chinese poets and a deceased Dutch poet, M. Vasalis, billed in her country as the “Dutch Elizabeth Bishop.” 

Although the work of other poets: Stuart Friebert, Neil Harrison, Gary Entsminger, Scott Davidson, to name a few, contributed highly notable work, I chose to showcase the Oriental poets who take readers farther afield to explore the “nuance and mystery” of Chinese poets the Muse inspires. Also impressive: “To A Tree,” a poem by the deceased Dutch poet, M. Vasalis, translated by Fred Lessing and David Young, which quickly sets the tone of international sharing on the opening pages of this issue of Pinyon Review.

As I’m a tree hugger, I appreciated the poet’s plea for trees not to move, “… for who could bear it if a tree pulled up its roots/and danced away?…” Vasalis muses on the eternal qualities of trees that [are not] “made to move,/in lengthy lines, like steady music, simple,/and then again stand still, a slender temple…I stood there in the wet and heavy grass/and felt that I had drifted into paradise…” Gary and Susan plan to publish a career-spanning selection of Vasalis’s poems in 2019. Interestingly, she was a Dutch psychiatrist who specialized in the treatment of children and was recognized as the most widely read and admired poet of her country.

In a long poem entitled “Crossing Lop Nor,” the Chinese poet Wang Ziliang, translated from the Chinese by Ajiu X. LI, divides the poem into sunset, land, sky wind, high wind, and ear into a medley that ends with a humorous musing about the ear; e.g., “It is said that Lop Nor/has the shape of an ear,/though never used to listen… Lop Nor, a metaphor about listening./A metaphor about sound and its fading… This ear/emblems how the gods achieved immortality/through enormous silence.” In this poem, as in many Oriental writings, nature offers specific philosophical commentary through “the sensual beauty of the land.” 

A self-translated poem by Langji Tianya, another Chinese poet featured in this issue, offers readers a meditation entitled “Like Calcium,” in which he “settles in a mountain pasture,/His meditation slides on a slope, the mass rises in a curved manner./The dead leaves cover themselves, the weeds go home/The fresh footprints on the piles of rocks will find the way of release.” Like Haiku, the featured poems by Chinese poets in this issue, aren’t understood quickly and include lines for the process of meditation. As Limon said in her broadcast, in poetry “we admit to the unknown.”

In this 14th edition, an intriguing article, “The Studio of The Three Arrows,” by Robert Elliott and Susan Entsminger features photography by 20th century photographer Harold A. Taylor who in his early 20’s hiked through Yosemite National Park to photograph its valley — “massive rocks, waterfalls, sequoias…” partnering with Eugene Hallett to open the Studio of the Three Arrows, so named for the Yosemite Miwok Indians and the English-born Taylor’s family crest. The photographs, as explained by Susan Entsminger and Robert Elliott, were created by using dry glass plates that produced sharp images and beautiful contrast. Susan’s grandfather, William T. Elliott, acquired the glass plate negatives when Taylor retired as he and Taylor had been in a photography business together. Elliott gave his son, R. Elliott, the Yosemite and California Missions Collection, which he is digitizing and archiving. The arresting photograph of “Wawona With Coach,” is a digital scan of one of Taylor’s beautiful glass plates. Photographs in this article provided by father and daughter make this 14th edition a real collector’s piece. 

Along with the Oriental poems, I couldn’t resist including the haiku of award-winning Gary Hotham who lives in Maryland; e.g., “outside the lines/our grandson includes more/with one crayon”… and “mixing with the afternoon sky/a lifetime of clouds/disappear.” Hotham has won first place in the Harold G. Henderson Memorial Haiku Awards and second place in the San Francisco International Haiku Competition. Pinyon published his Stone’s Throw, described as a book echoing the Japanese masters.

Pinyon Publishing just celebrated its tenth year as a publisher of quality literature and art in book form. Pinyon Review, a journal of the arts and sciences, is one of the few journals that has kept its mission of featuring emerging and well-known poets, fiction writers, translators, artists, and photographers. The magazine is produced in a log cabin on a plateau in southern Colorado where Gary and Susan share a life devoted to the cause of sustainability and quality publishing. On a personal note, they have consistently featured and supported my writing and reviewing of other writers’ work. Thank you, Pinyon, from all of your writers, photographers, and artists.

Available from Pinyon Publishing, 23847 V66 Trail, Montrose, CO 81403.

ALL LOVE,

Border Press Books, Sewanee, TN, announces the publication of All Love, by Diane Marquart Moore, a volume of poems about relatives and relationships, death and dying, illness and recovery, and includes a special section about a three-week sojourn in Mexico. Also featured are prose poems and excerpts from “Everyday Journal IV” about ordinary and extraordinary daily happenings, as well as observations about present-day social issues.

Reviewers celebrate Moore’s new book:

“Mindful of Diane Moore’s ‘other life’ as a Deacon in the Episcopal Church, ‘It is truly right and just’ to celebrate these poems that beat with such a steady pulse our hearts, and by extension, our spirits flourish. Deeply faith-based in her own way but accessible to all of ‘other’ or indeed those of no faiths at all, her words ‘extend to infinity’ (see title poem, which, as all good poems strive to do, means much with fewest means employed), help us negotiate ‘the boundary between twilight and dark,’ and are a sturdy ‘cane’ to rely on as we wend our way through the challenging landscape of this tome.” 

- Stuart Friebert, author of Decanting: Selected and New Poems, founder and director of the Oberlin Creative Writing Program and co-founder of Field Magazine, the Field Translation Series, and the Oberlin College Press.-

“In the epigraph for her poem ‘Music,’ modern mystic Diane Moore cites a line from Rumi. ‘Music’ is a lyric poem celebrating love in the sound of a wren’s singing, the sun’s laughter, and a loved one’s voice. Narrative poems convey Moore’s gift for agape: an Amish woman selling corn and flowers recognizes the poet as ‘a good little lady,’ a child necklace dealer in Mexico, ‘Christ’s vendor,’ displays ‘Jesus on a black string’ with a peephole revealing Christo Rey 'who takes away…all the sins in the world,’ as well as ‘my pesos at the rate of 20 a day’… In ‘A field of Battered Weed,’ Moore reveals the reality of long-lasting love through a thistle, ‘an ancient symbol of both pain and pleasure.’ 

-Kathleen Hamman, editor, Plateau Books, Sewanee, Tennessee.-

Diane Marquart Moore is a retired archdeacon of the Episcopal Diocese of Western Louisiana, poet, writer, and journalist who lives part of the year in New Iberia, Louisiana, and part of the year in Sewanee, Tennessee. She publishes “A Words Worth” blog at revmoore.blogspot monthly.

The beautiful cover photograph is Karen Bourque’s glass adaptation of a lotus appearing in Why Water Plants Don’t Drown as illustrated by Susan Entsminger and authored by Victoria I. Sullivan. Cover design of All Love, by Martin Romero.

All Love, as well as 49 other titles by Moore, are available through Border Press Books, P.O. Box 3124, Sewanee, TN and amazon.com.

BETWEEN QUESTION AND ANSWER

A copy of Pinyon Publishing’s latest publication, Between Question and Answer, Selected Poems of Ute von Funcke (translated from the German by Stuart Friebert) was in my mailbox upon my return to New Iberia, Louisiana two days ago. I placed it on my bedside table, knowing that a review of this book of poetry would require quiet reading time as it reflects the author’s deep interest in philosophy, psychology, and mythical writing. I don’t think that I can offer a more profound review than the one Christiane Wyrwa achieves in the Introduction to this volume, but I feel the power of the poetry demands many readers’ voices acknowledging Ute von Funcke’s artistry and Friebert’s expert translations.

Between Question and Answer includes selections from four of Ute von Funcke’s books of poetry, as well as new, unpublished poems. A poet who writes with the knowledge that poetry and politics are compatible, she is not shy about expressing man’s inhumanity to man in her work; however, she also voices hope for correcting the injustices that exist in societies worldwide. Between Question and Answer is divided into four sections of vibrant poetry and transposed into American English by Friebert who is described by reviewer Wyrwa as a translator who disproves Robert Frost’s pronouncement that “poetry is what gets lost in translation.”

In the first section of Between Question and Answer, the poem “Disturbing, Disrupting Incident,” impressed me with the emotional depth in the sensory, household chore of drying clothes in the outdoors. “On the clothes-line between/apple tree and summer house/fluttering forms of man and woman/many-colored almanac of the everyday/in the sun’s energy in overdrive/pants and shirts flying dolphins/memories washed by the sea/revived by drying…I like the smell/of fresh laundry/its tidings in the basket/and your blue shirt.” The poem evokes memories in readers who grew up during the era of outdoor clothes drying through such simple tableaus as the end phrase, “your blue shirt,” a “yesterday” evocation of my own childhood.

Ute von Funcke introduces the second section, “Into the Dark,” with a succinct poem entitled “Nightbook,” taking the reader into a world of terror and violence that prevailed during World War II Berlin: “Night wrote pages/day doesn’t want to read/kiss the early bird and ride/the yellow horse of daybreak/then read day/in the pages of night.” She writes of a childhood during post World War II, a time when her family sustained strict moral values and possessed a strong sense of justice — factors that influenced her postwar experiences in a country that had been under the “black flag of terror.”

In the second section I was also moved by two “homeless” poems; one about “the old man in the dense/hedgerows of the subway-jungle” and another brief one entitled “Isolated Incident": "In the act of night/the last fellow traveler/at the last terminal/I see him run in a straight line/an old fox without a burrow/behind the pillars/no air stirs/his no man’s land.” The metaphorical power in this poem presents a true picture of lost street people anywhere in the world and also elucidates Ute von Funcke’s feelings for marginalized persons.

Literary characters appear in “Other Worlds,” the third section of Between Question and Answer and expand the reader’s knowledge of ancient times; e.g. “Ulysses Returns,” is based on the Greek legend about Ulysses returning home to his wife Penelope after ten years fighting for the city of Troy: “The bed/in the olive tree/her tears on your hand, Ulysses/a bough touches/withering skin/Penelope’s breath/rests heavy on you/fog over/the late field/in the depths/of night/your doubts/lurking hyenas.” I love the stark and simple imagery in this moving poem, particularly the last verse: “your doubts/lurking hyenas.”

The fourth section, “Forget, Darling,” contains love poems, one of which suggests “Omens” that predict separation and departure of two beloveds: “She knows feathers/will grow/out of her old skin/invisible at first/the delicate plumage/wordless omens/he will see them/touch their quills/read them before her flight.” 

Rich phrasing dominates the work of this German poet, and Friebert faithfully translates the striking work of Ute von Funcke in accessible renditions of American English. Ute von Funcke lives in Munich, Germany and has taught languages, ethics, and acting at secondary schools. She has also trained adults in theatre, body work, Quigong and dance, written plays for children and has produced four volumes of poetry in German: Songs from the Furnace, Night Book, Woman Taking Flight, and In the Fissures of Time.

Stuart Friebert is the founder of the Creative Writing Program at Oberlin College, Ohio, co-founded Field Magazine, the Field Translation Series, and Oberlin Press. He won the 2015 Ohioana Poetry Award and has published 15 books of poems, as well as 15 volumes of translations, anthologies, and prose.

Another mover and shaker for Pinyon Publishing, 23847 V66 Trail, Montrose, CO 81403. Kudoes Gary and Susan! 

PINYON REVIEW #13

Today is Friday the 13th, good fortune day, and good fortune appeared in the mail this morning — the 13th issue of Pinyon Review published by Gary and Susan Entsminger in Montrose, Colorado. 

The work of the Friebert family, (Steve, Eddie, and Stuart) is featured in both original and translated poetry, highlighted by the wonderful cover and title page art by Steve Friebert — an arresting piece called “Moon Art.” The royal blue background with scattered small red splashes in the design is accentuated by a moon with black branches overlaying it and, at first glimpse, I thought I was looking at the crown of thorns of the Crucifixion. I’ve looked at the work at least five times and still perceive the work as having spiritual form.

However, not to be eclipsed by Steve Friebert, Stuart Friebert offers another of his translations of German poets: that of Ute Von Funcke’s poem entitled “Twilight,” a succinct poem of five couplets: “the small horse/of twilight/day’s waning/in its mane/it paws at the/sills of night/atremble, its play of muscles/cuts a hole in the fence rails of time/night’s already resting/in the saddle of silence.” Ute Von Funcke wrote plays for children before her debut as a poet and has now published four collections of poems. For me, the minimalist style reflects her background as a children’s playwright and is also reminiscent of poems recently published in Bayou Song by Margaret Simon, a book by a New Iberia, Louisiana writer I recently reviewed this month that reflects Simon’s background of working with gifted children in Louisiana.

Fabric Poussin, a writer and photographer, whose work has appeared in more than 200 art and literary magazines in the U.S. and abroad, contributes a three-page display of “Frozen Dreams,” which includes an impressive piece, “Next Creation.” The artwork contains two open books that suggest Scripture is being re-created against the backdrop of a paintbrush and vivid patches of color — an unusual still-life that conveys the idea of co-creation.

Michael Miller, the new bard of Amherst, reminds me of Emily Dickinson, minus the dashes, and with usual self-awareness, he speaks of aging and dying in his concise style. In his poem, “Seven in the Morning,” he writes of blurred vision and cataracts where “Reality draws me/to diminishment…With my fountain pen/I draw a feather for you./I might never see/A bluebird again.” Pinyon has published two of Miller’s books of poetry: Lifelines and In the Mirror; his work is also reminiscent of W. H. Auden’s direct style and suggests ease within his language — watchful and re-envisioned.

Gary and Susan Entsminger, publishers and editors of Pinyon Review, have added a further dimension to their journal with poems that feature mixing guns and whiskey… “how suddenly the world/changes with a shot…” (Gary’s “Counter-Intuitive”) and a train ride through “wide white mountains stretch[ing] like taffy/round the high horizon,” (Susan’s “Zephyr”). An artistic team, the Entsmingers write, mountain climb, garden, compose and play music, draw, paint, and are dedicated to promoting writers and artists who often deluge them with works that “celebrate the arts and sciences.” 

Charles Cantrell’s work, twice-nominated for a Pushcart Prize in poetry, attracted my interest with his quote by Charles Simic, one of my favorite poets: “Infinity yawns and keeps yawning.” “Infinity Blues” refers to Simic’s use of the word “infinity,” and Cantrell pens a verse, a la Simic style: “At one edge of the paper, nothing/but the black of space, and past that,/deeper space. And past that?/True to form, the poet always juxtaposes/something clear and solid with any abstraction/like infinity or eternity…” 

Two of my poems appear in Pinyon Review # 13, and I’m always honored to be included among the many award-winning poets and artists in this artistically created journal. Outstanding writers also featured: Rob Walton, Rebekah Bloyd, Debra Bacharach, Neil Harrison, John Miller, Bruce Lader, Edward J. Rielly, John Abbott, Ed Meek, Thomas Els-on… and artist Sharon Johnson. 

Pinyon Review #13 is a thought-provoking compendium of poetic voices and forms — a tour de force and a joy to read. I’ve been connected with the Entsmingers on this literary journey for nine years and am always amazed at the excellent quality of their productions. 

Pinyon Review is available from Pinyon Publishing, 23847 V66 Trail, Montrose, CO 81403