Paulann Petersen, Oregon’s Poet Laureate
We feel very honored to have Oregon’s Poet Laureate Paulann Petersen’s poetry grace our gallery this month. Come join us as we celebrate the launch of Dark River of Stars a limited-edition artist book produced in collaboration with printmaker, Barbara Mason and bookbinder, Laurie Weiss.
Poems collected in this volume were gifts the poet sent out individually each Valentine’s Day to friends and family over a period of nine years. The book’s title is taken from a line in one of the poems; it’s a metaphor for a signature, for the uniqueness of each human sensibility. The book and it’s accompanying broadsides will be on display in the gallery through March 10, 2012.
Another Paulann work we have in stock is a lovely letterpress broadside titled Use, designed and printed by Joseph Green of Peasandcues Press in Longview, Washington. This is a brand new edition that will appeal to bird lovers and letterpress fans as well as Paulann’s loyal poetry fans. (Read the poem below.)
Preview Use here on the brand new 23 Sandy online gallery.
Oregon’s sixth Poet Laureate, Paulann Petersen has five full-length books of poetry: The Wild Awake, Blood-Silk, A Bride of Narrow Escape, Kindle, and The Voluptuary, published by Lost Horse Press in 2010. She was a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, and the recipient of the 2006 Holbrook Award from Oregon Literary Arts. A current Associate Fellow at the Attic Institute, she serves on the board of Friends of William Stafford, organizing the January Stafford Birthday Events.
Use
A bird’s beak. Recurved,
decurved, serrate, hooked.
Each to its purpose.
Dark, pale, honeyed, dun,
of use. Stabbing, probing, it keeps
its size, its shape, by balancing
constant growth and constant use.
A small and honed proof.
Onward it grows, fed by a heart’s
swift little engine that’s fed by
what the beak can dislodge.
Outward—against grit or bark—
it wears away as much of itself
as it adds. The use of use: to keep
a beak as beak, exactly.
Worn to perfection.
—Paulann Petersen
The Bellingham Review, Spring 2010
The Voluptuary, Lost Horse Press, 2010
