Northwest by No Northwest

I've been fortunate enough here at RBP to recently publish a few poetry books by a pair of writers whose work I believe merits serious praise.

While not being one to limit writing or writers to their regional qualities, I'll indulge those who worry about such matters by allowing this--K.C. Bacon and Charles Deemer are Northwest writers who have earned their regional merit badges.

Neither was born in this part of the U.S. (I was, and believe me--I am nothing like these guys, who are driven, determined, and obsessed with their work. I am laid back, lazy, cynical, and so "Oregon" that you would have a tough time distinguishing me from a dead, old Douglas fir were you to come across us in the Oregon Cascades).

As late-comers, K.C. and Charles earned their badges by living in the Northwest for many years and paying attention to and absorbing the qualities that comprise the Northwestern milieu. They have done so while filtering this place through much more sophisticated worldviews than are usually noticed in average Northwesterners. They have also, to some extent, left it all behind them as dust in their careers.

Still, in my pantheon, they are linked to Snyder, who was born here and moved away; Kesey, who mainly stuck around; Roethke, who lived and worked in Seattle for many years; and Carver, who roamed the West Coast as a vagabond storyteller.

Which tells me they have absorbed those artists' work in deliberate consideration of where they are and what it meant to be transplanted into this unique place long ago, even if they have more recently heard the sirens of else and other.

They caught the Northwest vibe years ago (I've been fighting the chill of the backwoods hick's voice my entire life, which may make me seem like a phony at times as I beckon the urban muses).

Interestingly, both Bacon and Deemer were Navy brats, which is hardly a strictly Northwest consideration, discounting the Puget Sound area. They haven't anything of the logger and woodsman in them, which was my milieu for better or worse, and which is dying even as I type this, though pockets of resistance may be found in the hinterlands.

Enough! Praise the poets!


Here is a poem from K.C. Bacon's Morandi's Bottles, published in April by Round Bend Press.


LEAF


An unexpected sight
Is sometimes all it takes
To see right sense in things.

And so it was today
When I saw, tumbling down,
A leaf ahead of winter’s brink

With a pale halo of life
Fluttering its red edges,
Disposed of by its tree.

In that alone moment
The almanac of time
Read true. All things shall die.

Such for you, such for me.
For we shall, too, find fall
At some last lasting place,

In our crimson tatters
And deciduous dreams,
Completed, at rest

In the dirt and the moss,
Caught in the limbs of that
Generous azalea.

And only then shall we find
The harmony and grace
That is final provenance.

Before my life is
Downed like this fallen leaf,
I repeat this now to you:

I saw your face once first.
It endures with me.
Life was not love til now.

K.C. Bacon


And this, from Charles Deemer's June, 2011 RBP release In My Old Age.

Sometimes I Awake

sometimes I awake
feeling like a character
in a Kafka novel
life imprisonment
without a charge

sometimes I awake
and feel instant disappointment
not another day

sometimes I awake
my head filled
with Mulligan riffs
let's boogie!

sometimes I awake
and I am younger
and she is younger
and we are younger

sometimes I awake
the dog licking my face
we have to stop
meeting like this

sometimes I awake
a moment of panic
where am I?
who am I?

sometimes I awake
but only for a moment
a return to sleep
as silent as prayer

sometimes I awake
at the end of a speech
to great applause
an award I think
but maybe not

sometimes I awake
feeling like myself

I ache therefore I am

Charles Deemer


TS