Peter Pereira's Poem on Verse Daily (From Crab Creek Review, 2010 Vol.2)

Peter Pereira's poem, "Magnolia Blossom," from Crab Creek Review 2010 Vol.2 is featured on Verse Daily today: http://www.versedaily.org/2011/magnoliablossom.shtml "Magnolia Blossom" is part of 2010 Vol.2's special Ekphrastic Section, guest edited by Susan Rich, who put out a call for poems inspired by other art forms. Peter's poem is inspired by Imogen Cunningham's 1925 photograph, Magnolia Blossom.

About his poem, Peter writes, “Magnolia Blossom” was written for the Seattle Art Museum’s monthly reading series SAM-Word, for which I was asked to respond to an exhibit of Imogen Cunningham’s photography. She was part of a group of photographers called Group f/64. The term f/64 refers to the smallest aperture setting on a large format camera. It allows for maximum depth of field, rendering a photograph evenly sharp from foreground to background. These photographs possess an amazing purity of image, and clarity of detail. In an interview Imogen Cunningham gave before her death, referring to her work she said, “In order to make a good photograph you have to be enthusiastic, that is you have to think about it, like a poet would . . .” I hope Imogen would like what this poet thought about, responding to her images.

Peter Pereira’s most recent books are What’s Written on the Body (Copper Canyon 2007) and Saying the World (Copper Canyon 2003).  Recent poems have appeared in New England Review, Prairie Schooner, and the anthology Looking Together: Writers on Art. Peter is also on the Advisory Board of Crab Creek Review.

Crab Creek Review on NewPages.com

Crab Creek Review has been reviewed by David Morck for NewPages.com. It's a fantastic review of our journal! Thank you, NewPages! http://www.newpages.com/literary-magazine-reviews/2011-01-15/

Crab Creek Review
Volume 23 Number 2 2010
Biannual  

Review by David Morck

After winning a year’s subscription during last year’s National Poetry Day, I discovered the joy of the Crab Creek Review. What had drawn me into past issues was the range of voices, both from experienced writers and fresh, emerging writers. There has always been a certain charm to the pieces selected, whether their tone leans towards the more serious or whimsical, and this issue is no exception.

The biggest standout in the second issue for 2010 is the section entitled Beyond Ekphrasis: Poems of the Musical, Mathematical, and Visual in which Crab Creek Review’s first guest editor Susan Rich pulled from “over fifteen hundred poems submitted by more than four hundred poets from three different continents,” “work inspired by photography, sculpture, music, film and even a mathematical equation.” One of the exceptional pieces inspired by art in this section is a poem called “The Plague Doctor” by Peter Pereira based on a 1656 engraving entitled “Doktor Schabel von Rom” by Paul Fürst. The engraving is included above the poem and lends itself to the poem’s dark and mystical force. The poem begins:

Brow shadowed by a black
wide-brimmed hat, he swings
his wooden cane to part the swarm
of flies crawling your motionless body,
prods you with the cane’s tip
to measure your response.

The word choice in the poem is exquisitely brutal, offering images of “erupting pustules”, “flea-infested straw”, “pungence repelling pungence,” and the pitch-perfect ending leaves an enduring image of:

Its two oval sockets lensed in red glass
as if to warn you—how scavenger birds
always begin with the eyes.

Other poems that are worthy of mention within the section on ekphrasis are “Prelude” by Valerie Nieman, based on a photograph of Rosa Parks getting her fingerprints taken, and a heart-rending look at youth and strength in “Patrick Swayze” by Casey Fuller, highlighting the promise of Hollywood vigor, about the actor, who unfortunately fell victim to cancer last year.

For those that are animal aficionados, there seems to be a strong motif of animals throughout many of this issue’s poems. One particularly enjoyable poem, although perhaps light in its content, is Anita K. Boyle’s “Time with Cats,” which is a very charming piece, and echoes the epigraph from Colette, “Time with cats is never wasted,” in its ending:

The cats have fallen asleep.
One is upside down.
It begins to purr.
This is a day not wasted.

Another enjoyable piece is “My Pet Chicken” by James Bertolino, in which there is a recall of having a pet chicken killed because of fencing that was:

…high enough
to keep my chicken in, but not
strong enough to keep the neighbor’s
German Shepherd from knocking
them down

The reflection in the ending of this carefully constructed piece is beautifully done:

…Disappointed
I hadn’t built a better pen for my bird,
I didn’t blame that dog, and decided
to try pigeons next. I knew they could fly
away when molested.

There is no lack of truly well-constructed poetry within this issue, and as well the fiction is strong, especially Midge Raymond’s “Two Lies and a Truth,” which plays off of the game of telling someone two lies and one truth, then guessing which is which, and speaks deeply to the nature of friendship and what truth really entails.

Overall, this issue of Crab Creek Review is successful in capturing your attention, interest, and imagination, and is a worthy addition to anyone’s reading schedule.

[www.crabcreekreview.org/]

Crab Creek Review 2010 Vol.2 Now Available!

2010 Vol.2 features new work from John M. Anderson, Deborah Bauer, James Bertolino, Anita K. Boyle, John Davis, Tracy DeBrincat, Alice Derry, Hilary Vaughn Dobel, Paul Fisher, Rebecca J. Foust, Matthew Guenette, Joe Haferbecker, Jeff Hardin, Michael Kriesel, Joanne Lowery, John McKay, Kevin Miller, Matt Mulder, Fernando Perez, Midge Raymond, Michael Schmeltzer, Tina Schumann, Britton Shurley, Martha Silano, Ann Spiers, David Stallings, Joannie Kervran Stangeland, Sara Tracey, James Valvis, Rebecca van Laer, Laura Van Prooyen, David Wagoner, Laura Maylene Walter, and Yim Tan Wong.
2010 Vol.2 also features a special section of poetry, Beyond Ekphrasis, guest edited by Susan Rich. Beyond Ekphrasis contains poems based on other art forms and features new work from Lavonne J. Adams, Emily Bedard, Patricia Fargnoli, Kerri French, Casey Fuller, Erin Malone, Anne McDuffie, Valerie Nieman, Mary Peelen, Peter Pereira, Ellie Rogers, and Ann Teplick.
Cover Art: See Food? by Joanne Schoener Scott.
An excerpt from our Editors' Note:
It is late October here, writes Britton Shurley in his poem, “To James Wright” (p.54). It is late October here on Puget Sound, and though the big leaf maples are turning brown, we haven’t had our first, hard frost, yet. Welcome to Crab Creek Review, 2010 Vol. 2, an issue which several of our editors have described as “quirky,” “dark and light” and “ultimately life affirming.” This past year we have had a noticeable increase in submissions, and for our editorial staff this has brought excitement and some late nights. The poetry and fiction in this issue is both captivating and unique and these particular submissions jumped out at us from the bundles of strong writing that we received...
Order 2010 Vol.2 here and consider subscribing to Crab Creek Review!

Crab Creek Review Reading at Elliott Bay Book Co., Seattle

Please join us on Saturday, Nov. 20th at 3 p.m. for our 2010 Vol.2 launch at Elliott Bay Book Co. in Seattle. The featured readers are well known Seattle area poets whose work appears in our new issue: Erin Malone, Kevin Miller, Peter Pereira, Michael Schmeltzer, and Martha Silano.
Special thanks to Elliott Bay Book Co. for hosting our reading at their new location: 1521 10th Avenue, Seattle, WA.

Hope to see you there for an afternoon of terrific poetry!
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