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About The daily Astorian. (Astoria, Or.) 1961-current | View Entire Issue (June 8, 2017)
22 // COASTWEEKEND.COM BOOK SHELF // GLIMPSE // WILDLIFE // POP CULTURE // WORDS // Q&A // FOOD // FUN BOOKMONGER Two views of life from Bellingham This week, let’s see how two poets living in the same mid-sized town in the Pacif- ic Northwest tackle some of life’s intangibles and try to make them somewhat more effable. We’ll join them in combing through the woolly tangle of love, dreams, privilege, malady, morality and moods. MoonPath Press, which recently relocated from the Puget Sound region to Tillamook, has just pub- lished “Patriarchy Blues,” by Lummi tribal member and Bellingham-based poet Rena Priest. Dedicating this collection of poetry to the “subterra- nean homesick matriarchy,” Priest juxtaposes safety with risk, fl uidity with stability, and the stinging pink of a slapped cheek with someone who’s feeling blue. The very fi rst poem, “Toward a Beautiful Flare of Ruin,” suggests that there are no pat answers. Priest considers self-control against pursuit of one’s crav- ings — and fi nds that each pathway has its perils. As we’re well into the 21st century, we might have hoped that all of that Freud- 5:00 pm Downtown Astoria Every month, year ‘round! ian hooey about the Madon- na-Whore Complex could have been ditched by now, but Priest’s work suggests that our society is still im- pacted by those archetypes. Her poems like “Mrs.” and “Faithful” nibble away at conventional expecta- tions of marriage and the construct of the wife as a “faithful household angel.” Contemplations of desire — both succumbed to and thwarted — carry on in poems titled “Lament for the Love of Bunny,” “Pink Frosted Cake” and “Desire is a Scissor” (“unraveled into a dazzle”). Meanwhile, “Billboard Dream Girl’s Waking Life,” “Window Dressings” and “Nail Salon” provide searing critiques of our society’s most cynical commodifi ca- tions of desire. Pungent observations and skillful use of language abound in “Patriarchy Blues.” But it may be one of Priest’s shortest poems — “Pruning the Wilderness” — that best crystalizes the conundrum as she sees it: “Nature makes you pay/ for wanting something easy./ The trick, you see, is/ you have to conquer your mind.” Another Bellingham poet, Rick Hermann, has self-pub- lished “Nooksack,” a modest book that fi ts pleasingly within one’s hands. Hermann’s perspectives are shaped by his gender, his generation, and his diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease. Like Rena Priest, he also grap- ples with mind games that can bedevil one’s sense of purpose and well-being. The fi rst section of his book, called “Good Reasons To Stay Alive,” includes a journal entry from a day when he was feeling sickly and discouraged, and shows the way he wrote himself into a better frame of mind. “Being awake to the breath we are taking or let- ting go of is a good practice. And not too scary, after all,” NW 1. to cast a magic spell or curse upon someone; to bewitch word nerd BY RYAN HUME June 10 th Visit Downtown Astoria on the 2nd Saturday of every month for art, music, and general merriment! Presented by the Astoria Downtown Historic District Association astoriadowntown.com facebook/astoriadowntown.com FOR COAST WEEKEND Hex [hɛks] noun 1. a magic spell or curse that has been placed upon someone 2. obsolete. a witch 3. an extraordinary run of bad luck verb (used with object) Origin: Hex emerges from the Pennsylvanian German immigrants as hexe from the German verb hexen; the noun form is also “Hexe,” and the German word means the same thing. This comes from the Middle German “hecse.” As a verb, its roots can be traced back in use to the mid-19 century. This is unrelated to the prefi x hexa-, which comes from the an- cient Greek word for “six.” MOONPATHPRESS.COM Rena Priest, author of “Patriar- chy Blues” THEPOETRYDEPARTMENT. WORDPRESS.COM Patriarchy Blues – Rena Priest MoonPath Press – 66 pp - $10 Nooksack – Rick Hermann 94 pp - $9.95 he counsels himself. Poems that follow in- clude one on “Breathwork,” another on “Night Airs” and a joyful and hilarious “Ode to Geese.” With the 50th annu- al Astoria Scandinavian Midsummer Festival coming up, know that the Finnish has many words for “a hex” or “to hex,” including the nouns noita, taika and loitsu, and the verbs kirota and loit- sia, while the Norwegians have forhekse among others. “Miss Denmark Meisha Boettcher was crowned Miss Scandinavia 2015 on Friday. Following the coronation ceremony, she led the Torch- light Parade to the bonfi re where festival-goers threw straw hexes into the fi re. The Other sections focus on dreams and mortality — a mix of free verse and rhym- ing poems — there’s even a ditty about life-prolonging medical intervention. This may be more of a grab bag than you would fi nd in most books, but when you are your own publisher, you can do what you wish! The Bookmonger is Bar- bara Lloyd McMichael, who writes this weekly column focusing on the books, au- thors and publishers of the Pacifi c Northwest. Contact her at bkmonger@nwlink. com tradition symbolizes getting rid of bad luck for the year.” — Joshua Bessex, “Mid- summer fun and folklore: Scandinavian Fest crowns a new queen, honors tradi- tions,” The Daily Astorian, June 22, 2015 “A hex-making event for the Scandinavian Mid- summer Festival has been rescheduled for 5 tonight. It will be held at the First Congregational Church, 820 Alameda Ave.” — “Festival helpers to make hexes,” The Daily Astorian, March 24, 2003
