Bristol Bay: And Other Poems
Bristol Bay is the easternmost part of the Bering Sea and the site of the largest Salmon run in the world. It is also home to some of the highest tides and roughest water on the planet. In winter, ice storms freeze the riggings of fishing boats and the added weight of the ice, if not chipped off and thrown overboard, is sufficient to sink all but the largest of boats. The working conditions are brutal and the Bay itself as unforgiving as it is lovely. If it were a town, its name would be Deadwood or Tombstone, a place where life is measured in sunrises, not years. The title poem, "Bristol Bay," is autobiographical. Much of what is described in the poem is true and not hyperbole or metaphor. The author worked two seasons on the 420 foot floating processor, the All Alaskan, now a partially submerged wreck outside of Kodiak, Alaska, and the poem speaks to that almost apocalyptic experience. The poems in this book are thematically aligned with the title poem in that they share a willingness to explore the potentially fatal, often unknown body of the individual. Homelessness, war, the blue collar work ethic, the love of all things opposed by the hatred of one thing--mothers and fathers--all of these become touchstones through which greater awareness may be experienced as a spiritual participation in building and sustaining human communities.
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Gary Lemons' new collection of poems, "Bristol Bay", is a brilliant coming-together of formal experience of lyric poetry and all the surprising voices that have scored his work over the years. Often my sense of this poetry is that it fearlessly goes out to meet the previously unattempted--that strange telegraphing that has spooked this nation's verse since Emily Dickinson. --Norman Dubie
From the back-breaking physical demands of blue-collar life on the seas and in the forests of the Pacific Northwest, and from the heartbreaking work of facing the realities of an exploited, endangered planet, Gary Lemons has carved these poems not of mere intelligence and compassion which are abundantly self-evident but of absolute necessity, and of genuine, hard-earned wisdom. Sam Hamill"
Gary Lemons' new collection of poems, "Bristol Bay," is a brilliant coming-together of formal experience of lyric poetry and all the surprising voices that have scored his work over the years. Often my sense of this poetry is that it fearlessly goes out to meet the previously unattempted that strange telegraphing that has spooked this nation's verse since Emily Dickinson. Norman Dubie"
From the back-breaking physical demands of blue-collar life on the seas and in the forests of the Pacific Northwest, and from the heartbreaking work of facing the realities of an exploited, endangered planet, Gary Lemons has carved these poems not of mere intelligence and compassion which are abundantly self-evident but of absolute necessity, and of genuine, hard-earned wisdom. Sam Hamill
"Gary Lemons' new collection of poems, Bristol Bay, is a brilliant coming-together of formal experience of lyric poetry and all the surprising voices that have scored his work over the years. Often my sense of this poetry is that it fearlessly goes out to meet the previously unattempted that strange telegraphing that has spooked this nation's verse since Emily Dickinson. Norman Dubie
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