Rope
by Alison Hawthorne Deming

From the publisher:

Alison Hawthorne Deming’s fourth collection of poems follows the paths of imagination into meditations on salt, love, Hurricane Katrina, Greek myth, an experimental forest, and the search for extraterrestrial life. These disparate interests are linked by the poet’s faith in art as an instrument for creating meaning, beauty, and continuity — virtues diminished by the velocity and violence of our historical moment. The final long poem, “The Flight,” inspired by the inclusive poems of A.R. Ammons, is a 21st century epic poised on the verge or our discovering life beyond Earth.

Quoth Christopher Cokinos, editor of Isotope and writer of poetry and prose:

“Alison Deming seems in this book like a poetic delta in which run the rivers of Walt Whitman, Muriel Rukeyser, May Swenson, and Frank O’Hara. This book pitches into chant, slides into talk, candles the self and finds the solitary paths we’re all on. ‘Mercy was a skill my hands would have to learn,’ she says — and poetry this fine is a form of mercy too, I think, an act of compassion, a gift.”

Sample poems (with audio):

Read (and listen to Alison Deming read) three poems from Rope also in the current issue of Terrain.org:

“Pandora on Prozac”
“Specimens Collected at the Clearcut”
“Glooscap in Wolfville”

Terrain.org micro review:

As the old adage goes, we live in interesting times — we always do, of course, and yet doesn’t it seem that with technology’s exponential growth, global climate change, globalization in general, and the profusion of literature and art that in fact we do live in the most interesting of times?  Literature and art, in fact, may be the best indicators, and if so, then Alison Deming’s newest collection of poems, Rope, is a bellwether.

Rope not only brings together an amazing array of topics — the publisher’s summary above points those out — but weaves those topics into politics, passion, and perspective wholly uniqe and yet universal. Folks who have read Deming’s poetry (or prose) know of her curiosity for and allegiance to the workings of our natural world, and beyond. What makes Rope so delightful, and so important, is how Deming crafts that curiosity: there’s both caution and candor, verve and nuance — always elegant, often pointed.

I think this is particularly true with Deming’s longer poems — “Definition of Disaster,” which takes a sort of artist/scientist systems approach to the after-effects of Hurricane Katrina; “The Andrews Forest Quintet,” a series of five poems written while at the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest; and perhaps most surprisingly (and stunningly) “Works and Days,” a 45-part prose poem that ranges as only a true artist’s mind can.

The worry with such a far-ranging collection is that it could come across as scattershot — too much of everything, not enough of anything. But that’s not the case with Rope, because even the shorter poems fit like a cog into the larger system of the book. And the longer poems help bound the overall set, so that reading Rope is like following a pathway that meanders but maintains direction. The direction is not just forward but up — the mountains, the sky, the stars.

If we live in interesting times — and we certainly do — then Rope is a worthy and essential guide.

We were hoping that Alison Hawthorne Deming, who also has poems in this issue, would be able to join us.  But alas, she couldn’t make it. I think they’d get along splendidly — they have a lot in common. And that strikes me as true of many poets who likewise write of science and environment. What is it that draws us together? Ideology, passion, scientific understanding, constant pursuit of truth and justice, a love for art and an acknowledgement that art and science are fundamentally linked? That’s why Terrain.org resounds, I think. It’s about nexus. In this case, the nexus between art and science, environment and humanity — the places real and virtual we all coexist, even if we don’t completely understand them.

Poetry – “A Short History of Falling” by Pamela Uschuk

Nonfiction - “Positioning” by J. David Bell

Nonfiction - “Lee’s Ferry” by Ben Quick

Congratulations to these authors and all of the wonderful contributors to the new issue of Terrain.org.

And look for our 2010 Puschart Prize nominations to be announced soon, as well.

We’ve just added an image gallery and mp3 of the full reading at the new Terrain.org Events section of the website.

We had a great turnout, and thank the Poetry Center and Center for Biological Diversity for sponsoring the event, the readers for such wonderful performances, and the audience. View the image gallery and listen to the full performance now.

Our largest issue yet, interactive contributions include a guest editorial by U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords, Agritopia as the UnSprawl case study, a long lost interview with poet A. R. Ammons, new poetry features (translations and our first online chapbook, with audio), essays by Christopher Cokinos and Mark Tredinnick, articles on the silence of owls and severing the U.S.-Mexico borderlands, plus new fiction, poetry, nonfiction, reviews, and more.

Check it out now at www.terrain.org — and be sure to add to the conversation with Terrain.org’s new commenting tool for contributions. And then join us at 8 p.m. on September 24^th at the University of Arizona Poetry Center in Tucson for the Issue Launch & Reading, featuring David Rothenberg, Pamela Uschuk, Christopher Cokinos, and Deborah Fries.

Specifically, Issue No. 24 includes:

Columns

• Guest editorial by Gabrielle Giffords, U.S. Representative, Arizona’s 8^th Congressional District : Solar is the Bridge to Our Future
• Columns by regular contributors Simmons Buntin, Deborah Fries, David Rothenberg (with image gallery), and Lauret Savoy

Interview

• Philip Fried interviews poet A. R. Ammons (1926-2001); an interview dating back to 1980 yet as timely today as it was 29 years ago

UnSprawl Case Study

• Agritopia in Gilbert, Arizona — Crafted with a sort of evangelical “New Ruralism,” the 166-acre Agritopia neighborhood east of Phoenix mixes gardens, pastures, orchards, restaurants, lush trails, and more with historically inspired homes designed to bring neighbors together.

Essays

• “Night at the World’s Largest Atomic Cannon” by Christopher Cokinos, with audio
• “Body Exposed in the Golden Wind” by Florence Caplow
• “Positioning” by J. David Bell
• “Lee’s Ferry” by Ben Quick
• “Mustering the Sky” by Mark Tredinnick

Articles

• “To Wit, to Woo: The Silence of Owls” by Kathryn Miles
• “Ken Wu and the Fight for Canada’s Remaining Pacific Coast Old-Growth,” with online slideshow, by Joan Maloof and Rick Maloof
• “A Hole in Time” by John Lane
• “A Region of Wounds: Severing the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands” by Tom Leskiw

ARTerrain Gallery

• Four series of impromptu sculptures-in-the-wild and studio sculptures by R. L. Croft

Poetry

• Borderland Translations: Tedi Lopéz Mills, translated by Wendy Burk — poems in English and Spanish with audio
• God, Seed: Online chapbook of poetry and images by Rebecca Foust and Lorna Stevens, with audio
• Other poetry (and audio, too) by Pamela Uschuk, Jessica Weintraub, Polly Brown, Linda Parsons Marion, Jenn Blair, Laura Sobbot Ross, J. P. Dancing Bear, Beth Winegarner, Peter Huggins, Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, George Moore, Eva Hooker, Scott Edward Anderson, Alison Hawthorne Deming, William Keener, Brett Foster, Thorpe Moeckel, Joe Wilkins, and Sue Swartz

Fiction

• “The Hank Williams Dialogues” by Andrew Wingfield
• “The Garden” by Jaren Watson
• “Stones” by Jeffrey Stevenson

Reviews of…

• A Conservationist Manifesto by Scott Russell Sanders
• The Trouble with Black Boys and Other Reflections on Race, Equity, and the Future of Public Education by Pedro A. Noguera
• Unexpected Light, poems by C. E. Chaffin
• Crazy Love: New Poems by Pamela Uschuk

• A long interview by Philip Fried with the poet A. R. Ammons
• Essays on the world’s largest atomic cannon, suicide off the Golden Gate Bridge, traveling by GPS, being a single father in the West, and the Australian pastoral
• Articles on the sudden increase in daytime owl sightings, Ken Wu and the fight for Canada’s remaining Pacific Coast old-growth (with online slideshow), archaeology in South Carolina, and U.S.-Mexico border woes
• Our most comprehensive poetry issue yet, featuring our first online chapbook (poems and images), our first translations (Wendy Burk translates Tedi Lopez Mills), and poetry by Pamela Uschuk, Alison Hawthorne Deming, J. P. Dancing Bear, Peter Huggins, Jessica Weintraub, and many others
• Fiction by Andrew Wingfield, Jaren Watson, and Jeffrey Stevenson
• And much more!

So tune in, and stay tuned, at http://www.terrain.org.