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Peaches & Bats is a hand-bound poetry journal produced semiannually by Portland’s own Sam Lohmann. The latest issue includes work by Emily Kendal Frey, Sheila Murphy, Allison Cobb, Robert Kelly, and many others–all for the low, low price of five bucks. You can pick up Peaches & Bats issue 5 from the journal website or from Powell’s.
But what will that five bucks get you? Good question. We took a look at some of what you’ll find in the latest issue.
Click through to read more about the latest issue of Peaches & Bats.
First: a disclaimer. I’m not a poet, and Peaches & Bats is a poetry journal. But poetry’s not just for poets, so I’m gonna do my best.
Second: Peaches & Bats is lovely. It’s not just a poetry journal, it’s a lovingly-crafted, hand-sewn, letterpress poetry journal with red spine stitching and cobalt blue end papers–a delight to hold and a pleasure to read. I understand that the good folks at IPRC have helped support the creation of P&B, so a big tip of the hat to them.
The general tendency of the poems is toward the avant garde, the post-modern, and (dare I say?) the language poetry end of the spectrum. There’s a touch of the confessional, but not much of the sentimental lyric. Several of the poems are clearly rooted in a place or a time–downtown Portland, or autumn–while others totally ditch the petty sidecar of narrative and coast along on other strengths. For non-poets, this kind of poetry can be difficult at first, even intimidating, like walking into a dark alley and seeing Frank O’Hara and Lyn Hejinian slouched against a Dumpster, rolling toothpicks in the corners of their mouths. Take heart, non-poets! Peaches & Bats comes in peace.
Maybe the most accessible poem for the non-poet is Allison Cobb’s “From Green-Wood,” a poetic meditation on a Victorian cemetery in Brooklyn, NY. In short paragraphs interspersed with ghostly, italicized fragments and quotations, Cobb travels a series of paths between death, burial, and cremation; our toxic relationship with the natural world; the gendered study of botany in the 19th century; and the narrator’s painful series of fertility treatments. The result is a complex, heavily end-noted garland of words and ideas, encompassing both hope and grief.
In a poem titled “February,” Derek Henderson take a sidelong look at a scene that winter Portlanders know well–the chilly house, the bare foot and the bathrobe–before veering away into the mysterious, corporeal language of sacrament and sacrifice.
Deigning to robe, to cover the ribs
of a person, all
in conspicuous place.
Sensing heat in the vents on pruny callouses
I pad in on tiptoes—
veins writing curls through my body,
direct—
blush is a red word
at last—passage of time at once,
the fact of a metric heartsuch sounding
Emily Kendal Frey’s poems are little chunks of repressed pain, disappointment, and the sure expectation of more of the same. Taken from a collection titled The Pain Archivist, they reveal a homely, suburban misery: the pain of everyday tragedy and loss. In “Waiting,” she writes,
At the party they are going to hand out babies.
There’s some mingling and the lawn is wet.
We get in line.
I know they’re not going to give me a baby.
This must be what love is.
Waiting for what you won’t get with your whale arms at your sides.
Matthew Hattie Hein prefaces his poems with Dante, and then doubles us through the cold night streets to Holocene and the riverside on New Year’s Eve. His lines are cheerful, almost haphazard, as apparently unplanned and eventful as a twenty-one year-old’s night out with friends.
I bike across the bridge, to meet Eric Rider
with his pocketful of tips. “Sometimes God
really won’t leave you alone. Like a leaking hole
in the basement? You can’t not see the symbolism in that.”
I have no clue what he means; we hug and he drives off.
Sheila Murphy and James Yeary both contribute poems with images. Yeary’s are disarticulated, hieroglyphic words crumbling off the page, and Murphy’s is a high-contrast photo of a sprawling plant, the leaves shining white as the folded wings of butterflies or moths at first glance.
Hard work and love went into the making of this collection, and it calls for careful reading. For my part, I felt the shift when it happened, as if my brain’s engine had finally dropped into gear. Reading the more difficult poems, I stopped asking myself “what does this mean?” and instead I found that I was gathering meaning as I went. That, I think, is the sign of a poem reaching its reader–or maybe a reader finally making it into the poem.
Upshot: Peaches & Bats 5 is a great read, and you should get a copy.
NB: You can Emily Kendal Frey reading next Monday night (Jan 25) at Three Friends Coffeehouse. See our weekly events listing for all the details.
ETA: Sam Lohmann provides a correction in comments: the image facing Sheila Murphy’s poem is not hers, but an uncredited insertion by the publisher. Thanks, Sam!
