Striking work by local writers to mark National Poetry Month

Tulips and azaleas coming into bloom?

Check.

Iffy weather making weekend plans ... iffy?

Check.

Poetry pouring on in every front?

You bet.

It must be April — and therefore National Poetry Month. As we did last year, we've perused a stack of collections and chapbooks by local poets, looking for five striking pieces of work. And here are the results.

Two deal with humble details of daily life: an awkward sidewalk encounter (J.W. Marshall's "This Is a Crime Watch Neighborhood"), a move into a house in need of some repair work (Molly Tenenbaum's "My New Life Comes with").

Music and memory power Marvin Bell's "Doo-Wop," chosen in part for its lovely, rueful line, "He regrets he was / lashed to the mast when the sirens called." Isn't there always a lingering teen impulse in us that wishes we'd taken a reckless plunge into total experience when we had the opportunity?

Nance Van Winckel and Richard Kenney offer harder nuts to crack. "We Fall in Behind" and "Things" both question how we experience experience itself. Is it an active or a passive process? Does it have more to do with how we later remember a moment than how we register it as it's occurring?

Five poems — five very different voices. Enjoy.

"Things"

by Richard Kenney

The scent of soap
As she went by
Lent me hope;
I can't say why.

And the little laugh
In the young man's eye
Was fully half
Of the blue of the sky.

Are these things things,
Or nothing at all?
What's a thing?
What it recalls?

Richard Kenney lives in Port Townsend, is a professor of English at the University of Washington and in 1987 won a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellowship. "Things" comes from his new collection, "The One-Strand River."

"This Is a Crime Watch Neighborhood"

by J.W. Marshall

It's lawful to walk
through this neighborhood
just like it's

lawful to page through a copy of LifeStyle
in the magazine stand at the Market while
fish stink and

junkies watch the tourists' wallets.
But this is
the neighborhood of subscribers.

And here came one
like a pair of scissors down
her pansy-ribboned path.

Tired of walking's how I replied
to her question how you doing?
Walking's good for you

she said with two meanings.
What hundred block is this
I asked as though something nearby might

be waiting for me.
Sixteen hundred she said.
Same as the century.

Then was around to her door.
Left me alone with
an eye on a phone pole.

Be legal
I heard but it could have been
somebody calling a dog.

J.W. Marshall is co-owner of Wallingford's Open Books: A Poetry Emporium. His new book, "Meaning a Cloud," from which "This Is a Crime Watch Neighborhood" is taken, won the 2007 FIELD Poetry Prize.

"My New Life Comes with"

by Molly Tenenbaum

a bearded Doug fir,
a shadowed back fence,
a tree-dusted ivy

in humps over what
might be flaked bricks,
beer bottles, or boards;

comes with earth-wood contact,
with stick, leaf, and sod piles
of previous owners;

since weather blows from the south and needles drift
all year, comes with sweeping the roof
often;

doesn't come with a stiff-bristled broom,

but with Sparky and Spanky, neighbor dogs,
who bark out of love
and can sort from matched syllables
each his own name;

comes with not one
outlet grounded,
and with inspector's notes
Dig out from the wall to twelve inches
lay gravel pull grass
from this stringer don't want it to rot whoever
vented the bathroom
fan to the attic was
well fix that immediately;

and with fog like a bath towel
draping the railing, with junk from the sky
clotting black on the fiberglass awning,
a thug of a vine
that will eat the whole porch
if I don't slash it
now, the flower
not yet seen.

Molly Tenenbaum won the 2007 Dorothy Brunsman Poetry Prize for "Now," the collection from which "My New Life Comes with" is taken. She teaches at North Seattle Community College, and plays with the string bands Dram County and The Queen City Bulldogs.

"Doo-Wop"

by Marvin Bell

He believes the tar pits hold bones but preserve
no emotions, and he believes space is matter.
He still thinks a kiss with full lips transformative,
the hope of a country boy with an uncultivated
heart, from the era of doo-wop and secret sex,
when the music was corny, clichéd and desperate
like teenage love. Who now will admit that poetry
got its start there, in the loneliness that made love
from a song on red wax, from falsetto nonsense.
Who does not know that time passing passes on
sadness? A splinter of a song lyric triggers shards
of memory and knots in his gut. He regrets he was
lashed to the mast when the sirens called. He
believes the sea is not what sank or what washes
up. There are nights the moon scares him.

Marvin Bell divides his time between Port Townsend and Iowa City, Iowa, where for 40 years he was on the faculty of the Iowa Writers' Workshop. "Doo-Wop" comes from his latest collection, "Mars Being Red."

"We Fall in Behind"

by Nance Van Winckel

The Line Starts Here. You take a ticket
and wait. The Line wends through chasms,
gulleys, fissures. Between boxed-up provisions
of fruit and flowers. You have many lives
and while one may be for speedy departures
and another for false arrivals, one is always for
The Line, for taking a turn singing ...
something without gist or consequence.

Watch the big man when he's called. The Line
coughs him forward. His proud belly just
ahead. He passes through the arch of questions
into salt air, breezes, and more questions. We fall in
behind — in step and on time. It's
the nature of the beast that is The Line
to make us believe in wait ... crumpets
proffered on a crystal plate. The Line keeps us
going where it goes, arriving
where it's been. The Line costs us, ages us,
leads us up from the underworld
and one day straight back in.

Nance Van Winckel teaches at Eastern Washington University and Vermont College. Her collection, "After a Spell," won the Washington State Governor's Award for poetry. "We Fall in Behind" comes from her newest book, "No Starling."