“and in bad moments/ when I walk the beach I claim the crabs complain”

(Newsletter #2, with a little help from Richard Hugo)

I have two favorite trees in Port Townsend, Washington. They are both specific madronas. One is in the middle of the walk from Fort Worden to North Beach, after you pass the campground, the row of invasive blackberry and later, through the deepgreen and needlestrewn footpath, past the row of tall grass, thistle, and poison hemlock—where the trail re-joins another winding down from the military ruins above—the madrona’s bright bark singing. The other grows alone, above the bluff where the fort meets the road to town, a small tree, its top gray deadwood and its lower trunk a struggle of peel and rust and taupe against a wind.

I don’t need to explain to you, if you are treepeople, how a relationship with a stalwart and still evergreen can feel more grounding than some human partnerships—trees just last longer, and as I said to a friend as we drove the winding roads and bridges up the Peninsula yesterday, so we could sit in this house with our tea and our books and write—I have never felt lonely for people, but sometimes I really miss trees.

Where we live is closer to desert, just past the scablands, edging toward the Selkirk range, and back home it is snowing—last night our houses each got five inches. Here, we are surrounded in gray. Richard Hugo wrote in “Letter to Wagoner From Port Townsend,”

Dear Dave: Rain five days and I love it. A relief

from sandy arroyos, buzzards and buttes, and a growing season

consisting strictly of June. Here, the grass explodes and trees

rage black green deep as the distance they rage in. I suppose

all said, this is my soul, the salmon rolling in the strait

and salt air loaded with cream for our breathing.

I told Sharma yesterday as we crossed the Tacoma Narrows that this is my soul, and it is—the closer and closer we got to the tangle of thorn and fern and the surf roiling up on rocks with its bull kelp bulbs animating themselves, and I didn’t even know at the time I was paraphrasing Hugo, but of course I was. And those madrona’s flowers have been described as “urn shaped,” which I love, and which is also like the inside of my soul—something beautiful but carrying death in it, or something brief with a sacred mission. Oh, the self-flattery we allow ourselves in letters and poems. Really, I said, I feel lately more like half an octopus. Flailing.

NEWS!

The botanists or maybe the poets are going to be mad at me for mixing my metaphors but I have some spore-ish news!, which is the conceit to which I feel I should return in a newsletter (and while some Orange, false man-playing-god tries to make our poisoned nation “great” again, news has felt these last two months like a bad bad word, hasn’t it?). But it is important to find the insides of our souls, and feed them, so they can feel through the murk to fight—as Plath wrote, “Soft fists insist on/Heaving the needles,” and we will, we do, through art and science, which both are real and available ways we can continue to heave the needles.

My news! Is that! Last year, when I was revising my memoir, I also contracted with AdventureKEEN (a press specializing in nature and the outdoors) to collaborate with the watercolor artist Jenny deFouw Geuder on a book on Mushrooms!

The Wonder of Mushrooms: The Mysterious World of Fungi will be out in September 2025 (and you can preorder it here!). It was an absolute blast to research and compose, and though I do not consider myself to be a mycologist (more later on the list of gratitude for help with this book), I did enjoy making this prose: which I wrote in short, lyric paragraphs, not lines, but had fun with music and image and color, as I do with poems. The sample found at the link above includes some versification –my prose, chunked into smaller bits and lines by an editorial team doing the gorgeous layout with art and language— that will likely continue morphing as we proof the book, but more importantly, LOOK.at.that.art. What luck, to be yoked (by Editor extraordinaire Brett Ortler) with an illustrator who sees the whimsy in the woods as much as I do.

And so, into the woods I go. Hello tree. Hello lichen, salal, moss, and bracken fern. Hello seagull and on the beach below, the crabs roll over in the surf, the beach is strewn in rockweed, bull kelp, bladder wrack. Listen: this bull kelp sings, as it does in this exhibit, Being With Kelp, by Shawna Marie Franklin, which I stumbled across in Northwind Art Gallery, one of my favorites on the Peninsula for its own merging of science, joy, art, and letters. Look at that kelp light up. It hushes for a moment my complaining.

“and that’s

as rich as I’ll ever get. We are called human. C’iao.”

Maya

[image: “Where It All Began,” oil on canvas, Shawna Marie Franklin]

P.s.—and now, a few roundups and a writing exercise, if you’re inclined.

WASHINGTON BOOKSTORES I LOVE

One thing we can all do to fight the good fight is to find books from indie shops. My list would have been too long if I’d allowed myself to keep going, so I’m focusing on Washington (and a single exception just across the Columbia!):

William James Books (Port Townsend)

Yesterday, I wandered into William James Books and bought Toni Jensen’s Carry and a third copy of Jamaal May’s HUM, which I intend to give away to a student. I shop William James whenever I’m in town—they have a great selection of titles from Copper Canyon Press, a small press section, and rare books, too.

Imprint Books (Port Townsend)

I hear Imprint has new owners! Congrats to John and Garrett; I admire already that you share a list of local mutual aid orgs on your website, that you gathered a sonnet’s worth of local writers for an alt-Inauguration/ pro-MLK Day celebration of art and ideas; and I look forward to your newsletter to hear what new plans you have for events and community-gathering.

Winter Texts (Port Townsend)

I think since we’re in PT, I also must shout out this amazing press-store combo upstairs from Aldrich’s in Uptown. Conner Bouchard-Roberts started it with his reprints of Ursula LeGuin titles, and I hear Rikki Ducornet likes to write in the mezzanine just outside . . .

Port Book and News (Port Angeles)

When I lived in PA, this was my home store—and where I went for journals, gifts for students, and a weekend browse.

Open Books: A Poem Emporium (Seattle)

Open Books has long been on my list of favorite Seattle gems, from back when John and Christine owned it through Billie’s work with social media (hi Gabby) and the store’s relocation to Pioneer Square. If you adore all things poetry and poetics, you have to visit Open Books.

Elliott Bay Book Company (Seattle)

I appreciate EBB’s dreamy downstairs reading space, the way upstairs you can wander shelves and still spy on others wandering shelves, and that they have a café.

Arundel Books (Seattle)

You can’t beat the architecture of Arundel Books in Seattle—with those roaming arches and the way the store has curated, thoughtful sections to match the aesthetic of the building.

Henderson’s (Bellingham)

Walking around Henderson’s is like being inside a ship, but lined with books—and even better, they’re used, so I always leave with an armload I didn’t even expect.

Village Books (Bellingham)

VB was my first bookstore when I was in college—I bought my first copies of full-length poetry volumes here, starting with Connie Voisine’s Cathedral of the North (which I write about in the title essay of Raised by Ferns), and early copies of Alice Walker and Raymond Carver.

Pearl Street Books (Ellensburg)

In the summer, this shop is adorned in flower baskets and a bench for sitting outside. And year round it has that vibey feeling of joy in a good immersive escape. Plus, Henry the cat lives there!

Auntie’s Books (Spokane)

A mainstay of the city literati, this is where most folks launch new books and where many of us purchase our holiday lists. Plus they have a rad social media presence and invite local authors to staff tables for Small Business Saturday each November.

Wishing Tree (Spokane)

A purple house on a hill is home to a range of children’s titles and many shelves full of local authors, and sometimes Janelle hosts events under a backyard cherry tree.

Cannon Beach Book Company

You know I was born a few miles from here, right? And, when attempting a hike a few years ago in the woods nearby, I met the owners of this bookstore (. . . my mother was crawling under a sign gating off a nearby trail, and my children were photographing her upraised behind, uproariously laughing!, and a man washing the windows of his truck accused us of having too much fun. We ended up chatting with him and his wife for an hour!—found out they owned CBB, and that THEY KNEW THE GAS STATION where I was born, which burned to the ground in 1981(?)). Anyway, this lovely couple owns Cannon Beach Book Company, which any of you who vacation on the Oregon Coast likely know. Consider buying a book or two or ordering directly from their website.

WRITING PROMPTS – “I don’t need/any guide but the one I’ve got”

It’s a bit of a rerun, but if you’re still feeling epistolary, keep it up. Take a look at Hugo’s works in 31 Letters and 13 Dreams for inspo, and try a letter from where you are to someone whose work you love (and if you’re feeling brave, mail it!). A friend of mine recently told my class at Western Colorado University’s low-res MFA that if you love an author’s book, for the love of god write to them and say so!, and he’s doing just that with this series of epistolary prose poem reviews of Dalkey Archive titles he’s aspiring to read in the catalog’s entirety.

If you write a prose letter-poem, include: at least six to ten sensory, concrete images of where you are, with active and snappy verbs, something about the state of your self, intimate images / references you know only that listener will understand, and a descriptor of something natural merged with a descriptor that should be for human constructs (e.g, the “democratice sea”).

If you write a dream, or epistolary review, use the second person, and tell us where we are (see Hugo for examples, or Remedios Varo, or some other Surrealist). Include images and happenings from your own dreams (and maybe your subconscious, shadow-selves—as Carl Jung would have you).

UPCOMING EVENTS

Tuesday, February 18, I’ll visit Kelly Magee’s Living Writers Class at Western Washington University in Bellingham, where I’ll talk to them about hybrid work, autofiction, an essay from my memoir in which teenage Maya brings blaze to a field; and I’ll probably give a writing exercise.

Thursday, March 13th: 7:00pm

Visiting Author, The Reading Series @RMC

Rocky Mountain College, Billings, MT

Friday, March 28, 1:30 pm

“Out Takes/Glove Box: A Signing and Ask Me”

Booth 722, Association of Writers and Writing Programs Conference

Los Angeles, CA