A Blog of Seattle Arts & Lectures
By Rebecca Hoogs, SAL Associate Director Born and raised in Seattle, Paisley Rekdal went to school at the University of Washington before continuing her studies at the University of Michigan and University of Toronto. She is now a professor at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, where it is surely sunnier and drier […]
This essay is part of a series in which Poetry Northwest partners with Seattle Arts & Lectures to present reflections on visiting writers from the SAL Poetry Series. At 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, February 6, Paisley Rekdal will read at Hugo House. Tickets are still available! By Bill Carty, Senior Editor at Poetry Northwest Pythagoras’s greatest influence upon his […]
By Bianca Glinskas As an emerging poet, I’ve been a bit clueless when it comes to considering how profoundly my writing process affects my work. I type in front of screens in noisy cafes. I am guilty of planning my poems out before I write them. For me, this has served as a sort of […]
By Rebecca Hoogs, SAL Associate Director Twenty-five years ago, I jumped into a pool in Switzerland and when I got out of the pool, I went about my business, i.e. my life for a while—maybe a half hour?—before I realized everything was blurry. I’d jumped in with my glasses on and when I went back, […]
Extinguish larynx, strung down neck & plucked from voice box, pulling out a sharp snap; I holler to the kingbird out of loneliness. Feathered body & beak yellowed with age, sleek wings broken in by many winters, his dead eyes, refusing to acknowledge. Measurements of clawed feet, the push of the scalpel into his full […]
On Thursday, November 21, 2019, Seattle Arts & Lectures will present a reading with Mary Ruefle at Broadway Performance Hall in Capitol Hill. Mary Ruefle has published over ten collections of poetry. Below, local writer Bianca Glinskas reveals three favorite Ruefle poems and what they tell us about the reader and the writer. By Bianca Glinskas […]
Cinnamon O, cinnamon Soft but sharp quiet but demanding You are the tall red spruces old as time cutting the sky and stretching beyond You are clouds who knit together casting a blanket of gray swallowing the earth and casting soft raindrops You are the bear prowling through the forest lumbering paws slapping the mud […]
By Rebecca Hoogs, SAL Associate Director Twenty years ago this fall, I walked into the deep time of Richard Kenney’s classroom at the University of Washington. I was young and dumb—and by dumb I mean dumb but also quiet—painfully shy and silent, writing an all-thumbs poetry. I can’t blame Professor Kenney for making me older—we […]
This essay is part of a series in which Poetry Northwest partners with Seattle Arts & Lectures to present reflections on visiting writers from SAL’s Poetry Series. At 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, October 17, Richard Kenney will read at Seattle Central Community College—Broadway Performance Hall. Tickets are still available! By Jason Whitmarsh In 1997, I moved from […]
Words by Danielle Palmer-Friedman, illustration by Madeline Kernan “Everything is always bits and pieces,” Naomi Shihab Nye writes in I’ll Ask You Three Times: Are You OK? As soon as I saw that sentence, I stopped what I was doing and started reading. It’s a beautiful thing when an author’s words succinctly express a feeling […]