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"Avoid Self-Pity Like the Plague"
for Nelson Bentley
by Joannie Stangeland

Light climbed the stairs to Parrington Hall
when the June sun stretched evening
into a second chance as I walked

into that classroom so close to Roethke's
greenhouses and my own ghosts were ushered
out the window, across the green campus

and Nelson welcomed all of us like a big bear
from Michigan, summoned the muse
and all her gods, "Evoke, evoke, evoke."

I didn't glean nearly as much as I could have--
young and honing in on less than half of it--but
I heard about Hugo, and the Sol Duc and Bogachiel
rivering toward La Push, anointing their own hallowed grounds,
about mystic visions, myth's care and feeding.
I learned about sestinas,
I learned that a poem could stand
on its own iambic feet without whining,
learned that no hoity-toity
East Coast upper-echelon elite could revoke
my pen, my voice, my place to learn
that a poem could be a home I'd walk into,
that a poem could use some sweat,
serious elbow grease--and then it might need more.

Summer slid into September, then rain's season
flooded the gutters past cheap pizza joints,
a city-bred image of the post-apocalyptic Hoh.

And when I think of the rainforest shouldering
moss-thick up to the Pacific's mist-winged shores
I picture Nixon on a flying elephant
with a Budweiser. Maybe it was Ted.
I'll have to read the poem again, right now, track
its angels, beer and debate--and maybe
take a ferry West, stand on the shrouded beach
and listen for what falls from the sky.

 


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