Poet’s Choice – M. E. Hope, Judge

1st Place: “A Week’s Pay Lost at the Lizard Fight” by Armin Tolentino, Portland

2nd Place: “A Homeless Lady Speaks” by Hannah Thomassen, Cottage Grove

3rd Place: “Dog Tags” by Toni Hanner, Eugene

4th Place: “Moon As Shadow” by Sam Roderick Roxas-Chua, Eugene

1st Honorable Mention: “What We Give Up” by Laura LeHew, Eugene

2nd Honorable Mention: “Late Summer Tomatoes” by Alida Rol, Portland

3rd Honorable Mention: “Pursued by Mortal Fears I Lose My Way” by Sabel Ketler, Lake Oswego

4th Honorable Mention: “whether one” by Liz Robinson, Phoenix

5th Honorable Mention: “Sargasso Sea” by Nancy Flynn, Portland

Free Verse – Nancy Carol Moody, Judge

1st Place: “Meridian” by Nancy Flynn, Portland

2nd Place: “Standing Naked in the Forest at the Height of Mosquito Season” by Armin Tolentino, Portland

3rd Place: “Just After, ” by Marjorie Power, Corvallis

1st Honorable Mention: “The buzz this week” by Katy Rossing, Portland

2nd Honorable Mention: “Pox” by Laura LeHew, Eugene

3rd Honorable Mention: “Monday” by M. Michael Hanner, Eugene

4th Honorable Mention: “Domino” by Charlotte Abernathy, Ashland

5th Honorable Mention: “We Know the Moon Has Edges” by John Sibley Williams, Milwaukie

Form: Sestina – David Alpaugh, Judge

1st Place: “Interval” by Ann Sinclair, Portland

2nd Place: “Model Safeway” by Charles Dallmann, Alsea

3rd Place: “Best of Breed” by David Hedges, West Linn

1st Honorable Mention: “Have We Lost Our Way” by Carol Ann Lantz, Corvallis

2nd Honorable Mention: “Six and Twenty Blackbirds” by Kelly Eastlund, Springfield

3rd Honorable Mention: “Dragon Scrimshaw” by Armin Tolentino, Portland

4th Honorable Mention: “Bentley’s Sestina” by Sheryl Clough, Clinton, WA

5th Honorable Mention: “Sister Island Sestina” by Carol Leavitt Altieri, Madison, CT

Theme: Art or Music, in Memory of Virginia Corrie-Cozart – Carol Frith, Judge

1st Place: “Sound” by Liz Robinson, Phoenix

2nd Place: “Fanga” by Judith Massee, Portland

3rd Place: “For Barry” by Linda Barnes, Medford

1st Honorable Mention: “Shawl” by Marjorie Power, Corvallis

2nd Honorable Mention: “Dancing to Mendelssohn’s ‘Venetian Gondola’” by Linda Ferguson, Portland

3rd Honorable Mention: “Three and One-Half” by M K Moen, Portland

4th Honorable Mention: “Monday Afternoon” by M. Michael Hanner, Eugene

5th Honorable Mention: “At the Concertgebouw” by Toni Hanner, Eugene

Members Only – Chris Anderson, Judge

1st Place: “Thoughts About My Father in the Great Basin” by Pepper Trail, Ashland

2nd Place: “Truth” by Laura LeHew, Eugene

3rd Place: “Rutherford Discovers His Own Hollowness” by Armin Tolentino, Portland

1st Honorable Mention: “Turning the Boats Over” by M. Michael Hanner, Eugene

2nd Honorable Mention: “Love Outlives Us” by A. Molotkov, Portland

3rd Honorable Mention: “Ranch Wife” by Patricia Baldwin Escamilla, Klamath Falls

4th Honorable Mention: “Boxes” by Toni Hanner, Eugene

5th Honorable Mention: “Flauta” by Steve Jones, Corvallis

New Poets – Patty Wixon, Judge

1st Place: “Taming Chaos in Terza Rima” by Alida Rol, Portland

2nd Place: “Late Summer Hits North Salem” by Mike McFetridge, Salem

3rd Place: “Riparian Rap” by Patricia Barnhart, Lakeview

1st Honorable Mention: “concrete layers” by Nancy Davis Rosback, Newberg

2nd Honorable Mention: “Tomato Festival, Ridgefield, Washington” by Stella Jeng Guillory, Washougal, WA

3rd Honorable Mention: “Alfred Alred” by KatSue Grant, Roseburg

4th Honorable Mention: “3:00 AM Insomnia” by Teena Seckler, Springfield

5th Honorable Mention: “Telephone Connection: Information Please” by Cynthia Jacobi, Newport

Not local, but from Canada:  the Vehicule Poets (7 poets from Montreal, including yours truly) have spruced up their website.  For bios/poems/photos/news clippings/interviews/reviews go to www.vehiculepoets.com.  I included my review of ORIGINAL WEATHER.  Click on individual poet photos to go to each one’s info.

Wikipedia also has a brief, dry blurb on us now.

Howard Robertson’s seventh book of poems, titled The Green Force of Spring, will be published by Publication Studio on April 5, 2013.  Copies of the book will be available at Howard’s reading at Tsunami Books on April 20 at 5 p.m.

River Walker — Poems by Scott T. Starbuck, Mountains & Rivers Press, Eugene, OR, 2012 – ISBN: 978-0-9793204 ($12.00)

by Anita Sullivan

In November after most of the leaves have fallen from the trees here in Western Oregon, and the winter rains have reliably begun, an enormous mulching process goes into full production. Relentlessly these leaves are stretched, soaked, shredded, tromped upon and ultimately drawn back by earth and water – into earth and water, to make new life. I like to call it a “logging” process, since the dry leaves that clog the rivers, streams and pathways become, “water-logged,” or “mud-logged.”

River Walker by Scott T. Starbuck is about this kind of logging  – the endless, magnificently slow wheelings and dealings between earth, air, fire and water, which keep producing the essential muck we humans require to stay alive. Mostly, we don’t pay attention to these lower and slower workings of the world, nor do most poets. But Starbuck is a patient listener. His poem How to Fish the Wind says:

You start by listening 40 years

so it can put you through enough

to see if you are worthy

of what it has to say.

Most people can’t listen that long

so they have to get the message

secondhand from trees.

As a fisherman, Starbuck has spent many hours with at least the bottom third of his body immersed in water. As a ceramic artist, he has spent many hours mucking about with wet clay. From this, he seems to have drawn a quiet body-wisdom that he spins out in his poetry, sometimes with tongue in cheek, as in the lines from Glacial River Poem:

Without glacial water

there are no apples, pears, or cherries

near Hood River

he begins, innocuously enough, but then raises the bar:

There are no rowboats or campfires

at Olallie or Timothy Lakes,

no skiers or snowboarders

at Timberline or Meadows.

And finally:

All around the mountain,

bankers, mayors, sheriffs

believed they were in charge.

They were wrong.

It was clouds that fed

the glaciers.

Starbuck’s poems go back and forth between the human and the natural worlds, but always his antennae are tuned into the geologic rather than the historic timeline:

Ordinary Grass on Cascade Head

is extraordinary when one considers pre-Earth emptiness

followed by wood flute music, stone carvings

watercolor meadows, shell and bone sculptures.

Closer, a child lifts a hand-drawn rainbow shirt

over a branch.

His title poem is a kind of whimsical dialogue between two different versions of how the Columbia Gorge was carved: either by Coyote and Beaver, or by glaciers. When people show up in his poems, they are often outsiders like himself: wounded war veterans, renegade salmon poachers, unemployed fishermen, or the ancient Kalapooya of the Oregon river valleys, dying off from the white man’s fevers.

The entire collection fills 39 pages, which makes it a kind of hybrid between “chapbook” and

“full-length” (the arid border region between 35 and 48 pages that used to distinguish these categories, seems to have been fully breached, and the barbed wire taken down, plants growing there. . . .) With the exception of a few weaker poems (notably the final one), the collection is a credit to Mountains & Rivers Press, consistent with its own preference for poetry that comes out of the spare, meditative Haiku tradition. The fine cover art by Jennifer Williams, fully within this tradition too, tells an enormous story in itself without a single drop of water out of place.

My poem “Cake and Bread” has been included in the latest issue of Conversations Across Borders.

Blue River poet Terry Brix has recently had two poems published: “Previews of Coming Attractions” in Prairie Wolf Press http://prairiewolfpress.com/issue_iv_fall_2012 and ”Mickey’s Hot Springs” in Cirque: a Literary Journal for the North Pacific Rim http://www.cirquejournal.com/ . His forthcoming publications are ”288 Months Pregnant” in Iodine Poetry Journal and “Brandings” in The Comstock Review.

We’re proud to present a new addition to the Windfall Reading Series website. We have added a MEDIA section with links to recorded readings since 2012. That’s right! Listen to readings you might have missed or relive the magic once again in the comfort of your home!

2012
September  – Sharon Munson and Toni Hanner
October – M and Steve Williams
November – Emily Chenoweth and Jon Raymond

2013
January 2013 – Sam Roderick Roxas-Chua and Stephanie Lenox

Click here to listen and choose from our growing list of readers!

Our next Windfall Reading is on February 19, 2013 @ 5:30PM. We will feature Eliot Treichel and José Angél Araguz. See you there!

Thanks!
Windfall Reading Series Team