very happy to report as the academic year starts back up that i’ve got a number of small pomes up at _the anchorite_ in the second issue.
i’m particularly pleased that they took my two-liner on winter tire tracks!
have a look, and at the other folks’ too. the first issue has poets i dig in it as well.
the arbor ridge segment of the ice age trail (wisconsin’s state-wide trail more or less along the terminal moraine of the wisconsin glacier) goes thru my hometown of janesville. found out a few years ago that the ‘arbor ridge’ segment runs thru land that used to belong to my wife’s great grandfather. they used to run cattle there.
a beautiful walk on easter, tho the rain started coming down pretty good about half-way thru. can tell they didn’t plough due to the rue anemones all over–though i suppose you’d know from the steep ravine anyway. first id of carolina wren, and fun to realize that her great grandfather knew these trees (at least one massively old oak) and marsh creek.
a.
rue anemones
in full bloom
while the others rest
b.
carolina wren
singing out
beyond the railroad
driving back from mineral point and cave of the mounds, we saw this dramatic bedrock hill that was fairly recently acquired for the wisconsin ice age trail. (would guess the bedrock is st. peter sandstone here, but couldn’t confirm.) this is just west of the johnstown moraine, where the wisconsin glacier stopped and retreated.
a nice and muddy circumambulation of the hill with remnant prairie on it set between farm fields. a bit of a bummer not to be able to climb up and see the surrounding terrain, but signs posted that they’re doing restoration work, so we celebrated being able to help support lots of other creatures having some space instead.
a.
no climbing today
but will care
for lives we don’t know
b.
redwings by the creek
past burned out
stumps and turkey tails
on my spring break we headed west. not too far west, but over past the johnstown moraine that marks where the last glacier stopped, into what we call round these parts the drifltess area.
lit out to mineral point and merry christmas mine, where early wisconsin settlers mined galena (a lead mineral) and dug the holes in the side of the hill to live in. this led to our nickname as “the badger state,” b/c they lived like badgers in holes in the ground, for a while at least. the depression in the picture above is an example of what’s left of them.
nice stop, lots of fun. hadn’t sat under the sun surrounded by plants (dead or alive) for a few months, so no complaints here. sandhill cranes coming back over head.
a.
merry christmas mine
at high noon
walking on spring’s cusp
b.
my daughter sketching
a new life
on the fallen grass
c.
oak buds releasing
their fluid
in light march breezes
hey folks—my interview for the new collection, Be Radiant, was posted today.
thanks to aaron lelito for the fun conversation! we talk kerouac and ginsberg, burning adolescent poems, old english as mother tongue, scholarship and art, earth and epistemology, and the artistic process.
after my second collection went to the publisher i’ve turned my eye toward finishing a couple other book projects, so not as much poetry writing of late, but the dry spell is broken momentarily as the new verse review just put out my translation of a fragmentary versification of the ‘christ and the samaritan woman’ scene from the gospels worked up in old high german verse likely in the 9th century. the general dialect (alemanic) is the same as where one of my maternal ancestral lines is from.
the meter has internal rhyme, which felt very clunky to me at first, but it’s grown on me somewhat. it was weirder when i found out about b/c my years of learning about dead germanic languages tended to assert that any rhyme in this literature was an import or quirky experiment. but plenty of old high german is written in this way, and before latin started rhyming regularly. huh.
anyway, maybe you’ll enjoy it. 🙂
hey folks: it’s been a busy day, but i wanted to get this out before i retire for the evening. because today my second poetry collection, be radiant: a sonata pome, has been published by fernwood press!
this collection is everything from right before the pandemic to about a year ago, including some prints i’ve made for illustrations (was very pleased fernwood allowed me to get some visual work in the collection too). my copies are still en route, so i haven’t yet seen and held it, but today is the official release.
readers of this blog will see familiar material in a whole section of the collection devoted to the state natural area poems. 🙂
the blurbs (from very gracious fellow poets) are below, and you can order a copy here if you like and want to support my work. wishing everyone a peaceful night!
Faced by the specter of eco-catastrophe, what can we do to ward off anxiety and paralysis? We can contemplate and celebrate, as Jacob Riyeff does in this volume, that patch of the Earth which is our patrimony. Microscopically observed and lovingly curated, these lyrics articulate, layer by layer, a Midwestern landscape and time-scape radiant with the often-hidden beauty of life. Archaeology, geology, and botany fuse in a poetry that invites readers to unearth and reverence their own inheritance in our anything but common, Common Home.
–Laurentia Johns OSB, Stanbrook Abbey, England
Jacob Riyeff’s Be Radiant does precisely what it proclaims. Riyeff’s poetry comes in a variety of styles and forms, but each poem radiates with a sense of time and place. Riyeff, like the fungi he loves so much, is a poet rooted in place. His poems reflect this rootedness. Riyeff, as a scholar, is also rooted in the English language. He weds these two in poems like “The Ruin,” which is a translation of an Old English poem, and yet Riyeff places it before a burial mound in his home of Milwaukee. Consume these poems, and you will find yourself radiant as well.
–David Russell Mosely, poet and theologian
“Adaming creation beyond the Fall,” Jacob Riyeff-a Blakean hybrid of poet, mystic, and illuminator-brings us a new collection that visits “Paul the hermit in the desert”-but still has time to paddle his daughter out past the breakers under an afternoon sun. We see touches of earthy Kerouac, of nature-loving Wordsworth, all against a soaring, ancient spirituality. In “Spring Ephemerals,” he records, with telegraphic, haiku-like focus, intricate images of the damaged Wisconsin wilderness-dovetailing, later, with his translation of the Old English poem “The Ruin.” The sequence “Leads and Diggings” excavates his own family history through voice and narrative-and extends its core sample through the strata of geologic time. This poet is a hybrid of many pasts and worlds-in other words, an American original.
–Amit Majmudar, author of Twin A and What He Did in Solitary
well, we’ve crossed the line over 150 state natural areas visited. hadn’t thought we’d get here when this began, especially when this project started slowing down after things picked up once the worst of the pandemic was behind us. but here we are. a trip to door cty last week put us across the 150 line.
north bay sna in door cty is a varied site with undeveloped shoreline on lake michigan (rare in door cty), wetlands, springs and seeps, mesic and boreal forest. i only walked thru the coniferous woods at the beginning of the site from the dead end road, but was pleasantly surprised by the variety of plant life, club moss, et alia. got some weird vibes about a half hour in and trusted it since i was alone and turned round, but a fine afternoon jaunt nonetheless.
first id of pearly everlasting, spurred gentian, northern bugleweed, and red baneberry!
a.
so many ferns here
too few names
birch limbs all around
b.
this lune is for you,
dear lorine—
everlasting bracts
c.
how to put in words
the texture
of club moss and fir?
d.
such small minutemen
on cypress
is bear lurking near?
first day of the new academic year, here i come.
as a follow-up to our independence day hike, we stopped at two spots for some walks on our way to pick up the kids in the rock river valley. first up was the sprawling (in a good way) whitnall park in mke cty—prairie, woods, pond, so many plants—then newark road prairie sna as we got to the rock. good day.
first id’s of american germander, tall hairy agrimony, black cohosh, leafcup, broadleaf enchanter’s nightshade, queen of the prairie. (!)
at newark road prairie sna (entry a while back) saw some other first id’s: prairie woundwort, spotted joe-pye weed, virginia mountain mint, michigan lily, and eastern prairie fringed orchid(! again). aside from disturbing a redwing blackbird family, a brilliant short stop.
a.
from a sun-soaked snag
a clear call
indigo bunting
b.
forming culver’s root
pentangles
walking with my wife
c.
in late morning sun
the year’s first
goldenrod blooming
d.
goldfinches calling
by swaying
queen of the prairie
been a while. but after a visit with family, me and the kids headed west to this dry mesic prairie remnant just past the terminal moraine in the driftless area (where the last glaciation didn’t touch). mostly situated on a dramatic hill, this prairie was grazed but not plowed, according to the wdnr’s website. lots of native species still inhabiting, a small oak proudly taking up the hill’s crest as its home.
many first time id’s and a few old friends hanging out. first id’s of wood lily, seneca snakeroot, blue-eyed grass, flowering spurge, prairie phlox.
first day that a walk in the sun got uncomfortably hot this year. could have sat on the hilltop all day long.
a.
bright lamp of the hill
bolt upright
in dane cty breeze
b.
above the valley
delicate
puccoon blossom stands
Jacob Riyeff 