MOST RECENT OPA NEWS
Cascadia Student Contest Deadline Coming Up
For the students and teachers in your life: The Cascadia student contest closes December 31st (postmark deadline). Check here for details.
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MEMBER NEWS
- Posted: November 3, 2018
The Bob Sterry School of Burglary published at last.
Over the last thirty days I am happy to say that the Kickstarter crowdfunding program to support the publication of my book, ‘The Bob Sterry School of Burglary’ ran successfully, and the book of poetry, vignettes, and essays is now available online from Amazon and Powell’s books, or if you ...
LATEST BOOK REVIEW (EXCERPT)
Before Dreaming: Poems by Arn Strasser, reviewed by Gigi Cooper
Before Dreaming
by Arn Strasser
Budding Branch Books, an imprint of Asher & Merriman Publishers
ISBN# 978-0-9841874-1-6
2015, 89 pp., $19.95
www.buddingbranchbooks.com
Before Dreaming almost is correct; Between Dreaming would be accurate. Arn Strasser’s collection investigates the interaction between the dream state and wakefulness. He approaches the enigma of the dream world with both wonder and dread, exploring the boundaries between living and dead, youth and age, adventure and solace. Without magniloquence, he takes the reader on a journey from as close as the dining room and sofa to the markets and shores of Sardinia.
For Strasser, sleep is not a separate condition, but a way to access both memories and the future. Dream and memory inextricably intertwine in the book, most literally in the penultimate set of poems
called “The Wanderers.”
- Night
… so we may wander
the landscapes
of our dreams … .
these constellations of our
desires, a twilight of
remembrances.
- Awakening
… Do you hear
voices
of the dead,
who speak in memory … .
In ... Read all of this item.
MOST RECENT POET’S SPOTLIGHT
2018 Fall Contest, Theme – Harvest, 1st Place Winner
November 20, 2018the mountain in the evening
by Brad Canfieldmy grandfather had a black mountain and he picked asparagus in his garden just in front of the mountain he pulled each stalk from the dirt with his thick dirty fingers and dropped it gently into an old coffee can shunk. shunk. shunk. each stalk was a like piece of the evening because the sky grew darker as he picked and i think he looked like he was coming up out of the soil while he picked and i also think he looked like he was growing out of the soil and into a mountain
Judge’s comments
In three readings of this set of poems, my first choice never changed. The winner, “the mountain in the evening,” caught me with its simplicity, brevity, and a powerful transformative metaphor balanced on the word because. This in a five-line prose poem with the moody feel of ... Read all of this item.