RSSPining Away: Kathleene West
Apr 09
Poetry, Reading, Writing bones and the music they make, Kathleene West, national poetry month, poets who write you, Water Witching Comments Off
I can’t remember how I discovered Kathleene West, but I do know when: not long after I moved to New Mexico. I ordered two of her books, used copies, the kind that come with other people’s receipts, bookmarks, and photos* tucked away in them, forgotten. And I remember reading her books on Saturday mornings (that was my ritual then; I got up early, got a cup of tea, and read and wrote away my weekends), and feeling like she had written me. Hers were words I could identify with; her emotions her the same ones I felt.
I’ll be the first to tell you that beautiful language is to be cherished in and of itself, but what makes poetry truly wonderful is when you find a piece of yourself in the writing; when the poet puts down something you’ve thought or felt but in a way you could never have come up with. That’s one of the reasons poets do what they do: they want to express something common in a new and beautiful way, with words that surprise and delight themselves and their readers.
Here are a few lines from Kathleene West that still strike me as much as they did then:
I waste, like paper, in your absence,
insistent ribs and blades
straining toward the surface.
You could label me like a skeleton
on bones pale and lingering
as a street light…
~from “Pining Away as an Erotic Activity” in Water Witching
I can’t find much about Kathleene online, but I did find out that she has a Facebook profile. And that she lives in New Mexico and teaches (or did) at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces. This site has a brief bio and a couple more of her poems.
*No kidding, I found this photo Christmas card squirreled away in the back of her other book, Land Bound:
Gotta love random finds of awkward photos.