A Bride of Narrow Escape by
Paulann Petersen
Praise for A Bride of Narrow Escape:
"After the erotic poems of The Wild Awake and the exotic
Turkish poems of Blood Silk, Paulann Petersen gives us A Bride of Narrow
Escape. The
poems of this "retrospective narrative" open with the final illness
of the father, then that of the mother. This section, in particular, contains
stunning poems, intimate and deeply tender. From there, we move to the story
of the author's growing up, as luck would have it, the only grandchild of a
furrier. This places her in an environment rich in occasions and linguistic
opportunities for poems. We follow the childhood and the teen years with their
drama of sexual awakening into the final section where poems return to the
late present and the ongoing romance of married love."
Madeline DeFrees
"A Bride of Narrow Escape is gorgeous, much like the mysterious
migration of clouds moving over scarp and basin, between dream and reality,
slowly rising,
drifting like shades across inner and outer boundaries. This is a wonderful
book, one of the very few I have read through, then immediately returned
to the beginning and started again."
David Lee
"The poems of Paulann Petersen brim with the brilliance
of discovery. She ventures into the recesses of memory; she explores the
complexity of nature and human
nature; she brings forth the exquisite, lyrical yield. Hers is a poetry of
revelation and wonder."
Lawson Inada
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Paulann Petersen is a former Stegner Fellow at Stanford University whose
poems have appeared in many publications including Poetry, The New Republic,
Prairie Schooner, and Wilderness Magazine. She has three chapbooks (Under
the Sign of a Neon Wolf, The Animal Bride, and Fabrication). Her first
full-length collection of poems, The Wild Awake, was published by Confluence
Press in 2002. A second, Blood-Silk, poems about Turkey, was published
by Quiet Lion Press of Portland in 2004. Another, A Bride of Narrow Escape
will be published by Cloudbank Books as part of its Northwest Poetry Series
in 2005.
Her work has been selected
for Poetry Daily on the Internet, and for Poetry in Motion, which puts
poems on busses and light rail cars in
the Portland metropolitan area. The winner of two Carolyn Kizer
Awards, she has been on the faculty for the Creative Arts Community at
Menucha,
and has given workshops for Oregon Writers Workshop, Oregon State
Poetry Association, and Mountain Writers Series. She serves on the board
for Friends
of William Stafford, organizing the annual January William Stafford
Birthday Events.
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Miracle
The wonder isn't that lightning
strikes where it does, but that it doesn't
strike everywhere. Specifically me.
It isn't the frequency of car crashes,
but their infrequency. Traffic flicks along
in its speed and perplexity, each move,
each surge a potential disaster.
The heart beats out its strange
litany of the enormously possible,
never excluding disease and stricture.
Why does my blood run so easy and warm?
This is the wonder: me approaching
the traffic light just turned yellow,
my foot pressing my trust down
into the brake, the car in agreement
coming steady steady to a stop.
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A
Sacrament
Become that high priest,
the bee. Drone your way
from one fragrant
temple to another, nosing
into each altar. Drink
what’s divine—
and while you’re there,
let some of the sacred
cling to your limbs.
Wherever you go
leave a small trail
of its golden crumbs.
In your wake
the world unfolds
its rapture, the fruit
of its blooming.
Rooms in your house
fill with that sweetness
your body both
makes and eats.
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