Long Journey: Contemporary Northwest Poets
Is poetry alive in the Pacific Northwest? Well...it's complicated.
December 3rd, 2008
Counter Culture Ronault L.S. Catalani | The immigrant life, with a side of toast.0 comments
November 26th, 2008
Q & A • Philip Gourevitch The Paris Review | On writers, ghosts and Abu Ghraib.0 comments
November 19th, 2008
Is It Just Me Or Is Everything Shit? | Steve Lowe and Alan Mcarthur with Brendan Hay0 comments
November 12th, 2008
WEB Exclusive • Dangerous Women at In Other Words Saturday, Nov. 15. | Female stereotypes confirmed! Gypsy music to soundtrack.2 comments
October 15th, 2008
David Mura: Famous Suicides of the Japanese Empire | Love and loss in Chicago—and ancient Japan.0 comments
October 8th, 2008
Sarah Vowell. The Wordy Shipmates. | Of buckles and corn and hacked-off body parts.0 comments
September 24th, 2008
McCain’s Promise. David Foster Wallace | Saying farewell to ideals.1 comment
September 24th, 2008
Stephen Baker. The Numerati | Smile, you’re on PC.0 comments
September 17th, 2008
Chuck Klosterman. Downtown Owl | Gonna die in this small town/ And that’s probably where they’ll bury me. 0 comments
September 17th, 2008
Paul Auster. Man in the Dark | Paul Auster builds an elaborate fantasy to reflect on real-life loss.0 comments
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[November 8th, 2006] David Biespiel challenges provincialism—namely, that this corner of the country is too isolated from the centers of literary life to produce art that matters. Editor of the literary magazine Poetry Northwest and current director and writer-in-residence of local writer's workshop the Attic (see story, page 27), Biespiel's latest project is Long Journey: Contemporary Northwest Poets (OSU Press, 320 pages, $22.95), an anthology of works by over 80 poets living in the Pacific Northwest, including Ursula K. Le Guin and Reed College professor Lisa M. Steinman. We sat down with him to wax poetic on the PacNW.
WW: What is regional writing, and why can't poetry be regional?
David Biespiel: If you look at someone who identifies with a region's landscapes, subjects, political concerns, civic interest—like someone who is writing about trout fishing but they're also writing about the Pacific dams—that's a regional subject. It's not that poets' interests are wider, but they can't be pinned down. Or it's unfair to pin them down. So many of the poets who are in this book aren't really from here. To read them fairly, you have to read them more broadly.
Gary Gilder's poem "Cleaning a Rainbow" mentions "the pursy fir tree and lean young alders"; Michele Glazer writes about a historic house in Astoria. Does using Northwest images differ from writing Northwest poetry?
Just because they write about Astoria, it doesn't make them automatically a Northwest poet or not a Northwest poet. Michele's poem is about a memory. Trout fishing [in Gilder's poem] is a quintessential Northwest sort of thing. But take out your knowledge of the Northwest, and what is it about?
What is poetry's place in the literary world these days?
If I went around this room here and asked every person to name a poem that mattered to them, they could. Something they learned as a child, something a friend gave them, something seriously sentimental they got as a high-school student from a boy. But that will matter to them.
What makes Portland a place for poets?
Whatever it is, we need another one. You want to open a coffee shop—why not? This city can support it. But as much as it's a city of readers, it's not a literary city. It's not a publishing center. On the other hand, the center of literary life is where you make it...I'm all for people getting together in their living room and singing or banging instruments or reading their books. But that singing and playing—that should be good. Why not make it good? And long-lasting. And permanent.
RECENT COMMENTS ON “Long Journey: Contemporary Northwest Poets”
Paige -
Great question.
Portland is a literary city. Just happens that the lit has gone digital...
Wifi makes/will make this a city for poets...
I believe Kathleen Halme will be reading that night as well.
Portland may not be a publishing center per se but the Northwest (the anthology's working theme) is actually remarkable for the number of its publishing outfits, though not NY City type monoliths are ...










