A Mormon literary backcountry where words and place come together.

 

 

 

 

Consider Christ our Saviour by Jonathon Penny

Thursday, January 12th, 2012

Consider Christ our Saviour: an Eventual Pastoral
Divine in nature, nurtured in a crèche
Born to woman, subject to the flesh
In parts and passions ever one of us
Slow to anger, angered nonetheless
Meek and mighty, normal to behold
Man of sorrows, joy of fallen worlds
Bread of life, made hungry by the lack
Twice-crossed Lamb, and bridger of doom’s crack
He is [...]

WIZ call for submissions

Tuesday, July 12th, 2011

While WIZ loves poetry and heartily encourages poets to continue sending their nature-romancing verse, it’s perhaps time to follow nature’s own example of protean morphologies and bring more rhetorical diversity to the site.  Hence, WIZ is issuing a call for short, creative non-fiction and fiction pieces.   If you have a nature-oriented essay or field notes [...]

Dialogue Summer 2011 issue has some WIZards

Monday, June 6th, 2011

Coming soon to a mailbox (or computer) near you: Dialogue’s environmental issue.  Several Wilderness Interface Zone contributors are included therein–congratulations, friends! Frequent WIZ contributor Steven Peck guest edited this issue.
Table of contents:
Page     Author     Title
Mary Toscano     Front Cover
Inside Cover, Title Page
v     Edwin Firmage, Jr.     Letters
1     Steven L. Peck     Why [...]

Thank you, LONNOL participants!

Tuesday, March 1st, 2011

Wilderness Interface Zone would like to thank participants who made our Love of Nature, Nature of Love Month such a pretty thing this time around.  The list includes:
Karen Kelsay
Jonathon Penny
Tyler Chadwick
Lou Davies James
Judith Curtis
Michael Lee Johnson
You all helped WIZ celebrate love and nature with heart and high style.  Thanks so much.
Also, thanks go to our [...]

Bird’s Eye by Jonathon Penny

Tuesday, February 22nd, 2011

It’s funny how things look
From however many thousand feet
One has to be to sail on clouds and see no birds.
And when the clouds burn off, I find a charm in streets—
Their random pass, the patchwork of man’s world,
The green and brown space, the plaid or checkered shirt,
The crawl of hills as if topography encroached on [...]

Desert Song by Jonathon Penny

Wednesday, February 16th, 2011

Remember wild, ungardened greens?
Dark mulchy woods of unkempt trees?
That broad, telestial paradise
Of birds and bugs and field mice?
Remember snows of varied hues?
High drifts? spring thaws? fat summer dews?
And fragrant, flatland buzzing air?
Paint-palette, musty harvest fare?
We’ve none of those in this dry place
Where seasons are a figment of degrees
And landmarks fickle as a ninja bride:
Trembling within, [...]

Time for Love of Nature, Nature of Love Month on WIZ

Tuesday, February 1st, 2011

For the second year, we’re making February “Love of Nature, Nature of Love” month on Wilderness Interface Zone.  To celebrate Valentine’s Day, all month long we’ll publish poetry, essays, blocks of fiction, art, music (mp3s), video or other media that address the subject of love while making references to nature.  Or [...]

Winterscape: Prairie by Jonathon Penny

Thursday, January 13th, 2011

Fallow soil, windblown, is a rigid latticework
Pressed hard against patchwork fields etched with snow.
A river, drawn amblingly, God’s Hancock doodle,
Flows its cursive way across the whole.
Jealous of its motion, frozen lakes and ponds
Lie low and sullen in their teardrop bowls.
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More from Jonathon here and here.

WIZ’s Spring Poetry Runoff Winds Down

Thursday, April 29th, 2010

In one of my favorite haunts, Crossfire Canyon, the creek is flooding as at the lake upstream water jets from the dam’s spillway for the first time ever.   The spring runoff is not even halfway through as a record snowpack melts from the Abajo Mountains upstream and runs down into the desert.
But here at WIZ, [...]

“Winter Relapse” by Alan Mitchell

Wednesday, April 28th, 2010

A solitary hawk beneath
a sky of lavender and gold,
assumed the vantage of a tree
and there reconnaissanced the cold.
Once-melting drifts of speckled snow
grew stiff against the freezing ground.
The humid gusts abandoned hope
and left the air without a sound.
What once was flowing now was tamed;
the rivulets, muddy and curled
lost strength and stream, as puddles became
glass windows to [...]