Molly Tenenbaum
Molly Tenenbaum is the author of four previous books of poems: Mytheria (Two Sylvias, 2017); The Cupboard Artist (Floating Bridge, 2012); Now (Bear Star, 2007); and By a Thread (Van West & Co., 2000). Her chapbook/artist book, Exercises to Free the Tongue (2014), a collaboration with artist Ellen Ziegler, combines poems with archival materials about her grandparents, ventriloquists on the vaudeville circuit. Her poems have appeared in The Alaska Quarterly Review, The Beloit Poetry Journal, Best American Poetry, New England Review, the North American Review, Poetry, Poetry Northwest, Prairie Schooner , and elsewhere.
She grew up in Los Angeles, influenced by the Pacific Ocean, English-major parents, Westland School, the Mulholland chapparal, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; by folk music events of the region: The UCLA Folk Festival, The San Diego Folk Festival, The Topanga Canyon Banjo and Fiddle Contest; and by the concerts, lessons, and community at McCabe’s Guitar Shop. Moving northward, she earned a BA from the Hutchins School of Liberal Studies at Sonoma State University and an MFA at the University of Washington.
Her recordings of old-time Appalachian banjo are The Hillsides Are All Covered with Cakes, Instead of a Pony and Goose & Gander. She lives in Seattle, having taught English at North Seattle College for 30+ years, currently teaching music in the living room and at Dusty Strings Music School. Find her at mollytenenbaum.com and at mollytenenbaum.bandcamp.com.
Molly reading from The Arborists (with Ronda Piszk Broatch)
|
|
|
Poem from The Arborists
I NEED A HUMMINGBIRD
A whirring bright and a quick sharp right here, right here, a fist of hunger, here gold and neon, need something small eighty times a second, a blur that flies backwards, a shimmer at once green and vermilion. Need what may be desperation, can’t tell by looking, may be color and sugar. I need something from the beginning, continuously starving to death. Please, a glow, here, and here, a nest of fine spider hair. Need a dip, a bead, repeated prickings, a series of clicks by which like can find like. Need something, something, a thing that moves. A burr in the air, a flame, a little light, something going going breakfast lunch dinner lunch dinner lunch dinner all over. I need a species I can’t read and its entire survival kit: a sky, a plume puckering red nectar lips. Need a beak that fits. Need what I haven’t invented. Please, I need leaving alone, I need pure food in a thin enough mixture. I need something almost transparent, right here, that you see and I don’t, you calling Come quick while I’m in the bathroom endlessly spitting and brushing.
