This quarterly journal never fails to surprise. It always offers a mix of new work by renown poets and the lesser known, as well as visual art. In this issue, the celebrated Ted Kooser has a poem called “Ohio Blue Tip,” which couldn’t help but remind me of my favorite movie, Paterson, which features a different poem about the same kind of match; and Marge Piercy has two poems, “I Observe the Climate Change and Complain” and “An Argument of Crows.”) Also, in this issue, I was so excited to see two poems by a poet friend from Winona, Minnesota, Scott Lowery. I was especially taken with his “Going Smaller.” Scott tells me that he will have a poem in the next issue as well. I don’t know the poet Laszlo Slomovits before, but I was moved to tears by the beauty of his “My 97 Year Old Aunt Ami.” I will look out for his work from now on. This issue contains dozens and dozens of other fine and surprising poems, and also features the winners of Third Wednesday’s recent One Sentence Poetry Contest. Now that I have seen what is possible, I might hazard a poem the next time it is announced.!

If you would like to see within the journal for yourself, here is a link to the Third Wednesday site where you can order a digital or paper subscription, and take a look at their blog.

As for my own poems, “In the Produce Aisle” had its first public reading at last winter’s Writer’s Night. Last April, I recorded “In the Produce Aisle” as part of a National Poetry Month podcast for my former employer, Just Food Coop. (Regular readers might recall the post about that event. If you would like another listen, there is a link in this short post from last April.)

Here is a photograph of the very produce aisle that inspired the poem:

(Note Tim in the back row of this shot–far right–of the new Co-op Board of Directors!)

As for “Cezanne: ‘House of the Hanged Man,'” this poem was inspired by a painting I saw some years ago when Julia and I traveled with a friend to Paris and visited the Musée d’Orsay. I bought a postcard of it then, and kept thinking about it.

Here is another digital rendering of the painting from www. paulcezanne. If you visit this site, you’ll find some interesting facts about the colors in this work of art.

Colors–paint or produce–how we need them on these grey days of winter!      Leslie