Wilderness Interface Zone

As everyone probably knows, the winner of the Spring Poetry Runoff’s Most Popular Vote Award is Karen Kelsay for her poem, “Waiting for Spring.”  In fact, Karen’s fans filled the top three spots with her poems, all of which, as I’ve noted before, have lovely minstrel qualities.  “Waiting for Spring” exhibits not only Karen’s trademark engaging musical properties but also its visual images are intensely toned.  Congratulations, Karen, for winning and also for having a bevy of happily supportive friends.  Karen refrained from choosing between the two books of poetry offered as prizes—Mapping the Bones of the World and Backyard Alchemy—saying, “Surprise me.”  So I will.   Thank you for your generous participation, Karen, and well done, fans of Karen!

The winner of the Spring Poetry Runoff’s Admin Award is Gabriel Aresti Jr. (aka Ángel Chapparo Sainz) for his poem, “Nospringland.” For his prize, he chose to receive Warren Hatch’s Mapping the Bones of the World.

All the poems submitted to the Spring Poetry Runoff form a stunning garden of springtime delights and more than fulfill the celebration’s intent to welcome spring via communal voice.   The fine language of many of the poems attracts my attention sharply.  But I had to choose one.  I chose “Nospringland” for the Admin Award for its heart, its sentiment, and—against all its appearances of being a simple poem in language and form—the intricate way it threads into a complex tapestry—the Basque separatist movement in the poet’s homeland.  “Homeland,” of course, is the matter the conflict holds in question.  Also at the heart of the conflict—preservation of the unique Basque language.  The poet’s choice to write and send an English-language poem reflecting the conflict’s effects upon him personally is itself a complex act, not the least of it being the sharing of heartfelt experience with an English-speaking audience.  Furthermore, given the Basque language’s importance to the decades-long conflict and to the poet’s identity, seemingly obvious lines such as “There is no more poetry for your fight” acquire iceberg-like ironic depth and weight.  As I mentioned in the comments on that poem, the use of punctuation—another seemingly simple pattern of choices—also intrigues me for the effects it exerts on the poem’s tone.

While “Nospringland” ran counter-clockwise to the general tone of the Spring Poetry Runoff, I found the poem’s language a deeply moving and necessary reminder that spring does not appear the same to all eyes.  What I might take for granted as a season to gather in communal festivities can in another invoke, in the changing of light and flowering of warmth and spring colors and in shared language, painful ironies of separation and the continued intrusion of the killing season into a celebrated time of rebirth.  Thanks, Ángel, for sending that poem.