Passion
You are the apprentice: strap
blades to your feet. Try the ice.
At dawn, at two, at eight, strike
out from lake-edge, body prowed
into wind’s scour. Unweight
the right blade. The left. Press
palm to brushburned cheek:
last night’s snowy nick and skid,
twenty feet, brinked up
by shattered alder stump at shore.
Now crouch: read the scored
peel of shaved line
as though it were your palm’s.
Tighten laces. Rise.
Set blades’ compass north.
Shoot for the distant bank
where ice skims thin,
black water licks underfoot.
Some, they say, have shattered through,
drowned deep as night.
Remember,
there will be no moon. Strike
two matches: one
to hand, one to heart’s tinder.
Begin. See how close
the blade can burn.
[First published in Passion]
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The 2005-6 Scholar in Residence was Judith H. Montgomery who served the year as Poet in Residence. She holds a Ph.D. in American Literature from Syracuse University. She has many poems published and has received two Oregon Literary Arts fellowships. She used her Library office as a place to work on new collection of poems for her latest fellowship. Her first full length book, Red Jess was published this past spring.
While Poet in Residence, Judith organized the first Word Cafes - poetry readings in the Library’s Oregon Rooms, Poet-is-IN writing workshops for faculty and students, and some larger poetry readings in the Library Rotunda. She made presentations in several classes during the year. She met individually with many students, faculty and community members and assisted them in their writing projects.
Biographical Information
Judith H. Montgomery
email: jhmontgomery@cocc.edu
Phone: 383-7700 ex. 2566
Judith Montgomery’s poems appear in literary journals such as The Southern Review, Gulf Coast, The Bellingham Review, The Formalist, Poet Lore, and The Clackamas Literary Review; online at Poetry Daily; and in several anthologies, including Boomer Girls: Women Poets from the Baby Boom (University of Iowa, 1999), Essential Love (Grayson Press 2000), Proposing on the Brooklyn Bridge (Grayson Press, 2003), Mercy of Tides (Salt Marsh Pottery Press, 2003), In a Fine Frenzy: Poems Inspired by Shakespeare (University of Iowa Press, 2005), Sonnets: 150 Contemporary Sonnets (University of Evansville Press, 2005) and Regrets Only (Little Pear Press, forthcoming 2006).
Her work has received the Americas Review, National Writers Union, Portland Pen, Red Rock, Chaffin Journal, and 49th Parallel poetry prizes; her work has also been recognized with finalist/honorable mention for the Howard Nemerov Sonnet Award, the Randall Jarrell Poetry Award, the Muriel Craft Bailey Award, the Willamette Award in Poetry, the Sow’s Ear Review Poetry Prize, the Dogwood Poetry Prize, and, most recently, the Marjorie J. Wilson Poetry Award. Four of her poems have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
Her chapbook, Passion, was written with the aid of an Oregon Literary Arts fellowship, and was awarded the 1999 Defined Providence Chapbook Prize (selected by Mark Doty) and the 2000 Oregon Book Award for Poetry (Charles Simic). The title poem appeared on public transportation in Portland, Oregon, as part of the national Poetry in Motion project. She has been a resident at Caldera and Soapstone, and has conducted poetry workshops and readings throughout Oregon. Her first full-length book, Red Jess, will appear from Cherry Grove Collections in late winter 2006. In June 2005, she was one of three writers awarded an Individual Artist Fellowship from the Oregon Arts Commission, to continue work on her next book.
Outside the world of poetry, she has been a free-lance scientific and business writer/editor for many years, working primarily in environmental and public policy arenas. She holds a Ph.D. in American Literature from Syracuse University.
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