Issue 2.1
Winter 2022
Alice B Fogel
Reflection
I’m fascinated by how language, the line, and the negative spaces in the breath and on the page, can be malleable and multiply perceived realities and readings. I love that the momentum of syntax and sound can transport imagery through layers of possible sense. I aim to ride that Magic Schoolbus through the space-time continuum till I become permeable, thin-skinned, borderless.
Parallax
What compass? What rose
layered and complex with bloom and opening? I'll fold
the cardinal directions into my bones,
take turns facing thirty-two points of grief petaling
one by one up the ladder of thorns that spirals through links
in the fence. If I could I would
ship out slowly overnight, rearrange the magnetic
variations of ever: Stay: Go: Both: So movement scents the sails
as they skim the half-winds and fix stars.
By our old beliefs, a history of bridges and burnings:
Moving: A memory of place erasing elsewhere.
What vine would double back and unclasp the light
when the red crested bird
flies true north? What bittersweet? What beacon? What relief.
Alice B Fogel served as the New Hampshire poet laureate from 2104 through 2019. Her latest poetry collection is Nothing But, a series of poems considering Abstract Expressionist art and its effect on our consciousness. Two of her previous books are A Doubtful House and Interval: Poems Based on Bach’s “Goldberg Variations,” which won the Nicholas Schaffner Award for Music in Literature and the 2016 NH Literary Award in Poetry. A recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, she is also the author of Strange Terrain, on how to appreciate poetry even if you don’t “get” it. She works one-on-one with students with learning differences at Landmark College in Putney, VT.
Alice's Book Recommendations
Matt Haig: The Humans (novel)
Benjamin Labatut: When We Cease to Understand the World
Tamsyn Muir: Gideon the Ninth and Harrow the Ninth
Colson Whitehead: The Underground Railroad
Sophie Ward: Love and Other Thought Experiments