Lawrence Matsuda and Tess Gallagher: Pow! Pow! Shalazam!

About the work:

In the late summer of 2011 Tess Gallagher and Lawrence Matsuda were e-mailing each other while she was in her cottage in Ireland and he was at home in Seattle. The exchanges evolved into a series of nine poems.  The collaboration was like a poetry jam session where they traded and borrowed images, ran riffs on each other’s poems in a responsive, competitive, and lighthearted way.

 

Lawrence Matsuda:

Tess and I were sending e-mails in the summer of 2011 when she was in Sligo County Ireland and I was in Seattle.  It occurred to me that twenty years from now no one would find our e-mails tucked away in a dusty attic box since electronic e-mails largely disappear into the ether. After seeing her book about kisses at Elliot Bay Books, I thought I would be a wise guy and challenge her to a poetic duel.  So I sent her “Kisses” and her response was like a tennis slam.  I was stunned and responded with humor since something serious would have surely been deadly. That reply begat another response and another.  The exchange was like the karate pupil challenging the teacher—Daniel and Mr. Miyagi from the Karate Kid.  I wondered, “As a challenger did I have the chops to go five rounds with Tess the champion?”

 

Tess Gallagher:

I have always been fascinated by reciprocality–that is, the way one thing happens and then responsiveness gets going that would never have occurred without that initial stimulation.  In this I think Larry is responsible for getting things going.  Without really proposing an exchange, he presented a very tasty poem that was invitation enough.  I suddenly seemed only able to speak back to him in “poem”.

Writing towards Larry’s poems was not like writing to Larry.  It was also beyond Larry.  Although I know many things Larry likes–such as Marilyn Monroe and salmon fishing–I also seemed to be trolling for things I didn’t know about him.  We both love salmon fishing and I go with my brother Tom each summer and fall and catch silvers & kings for my winter food in the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

I hadn’t fully realized, however, Larry’s love of comics, but the poems discovered that.  Anyhow, there was a snap crackle and pop to these exchanges.  I felt faster and smarter than I know myself to be when writing towards Larry.

About Larry and me,  we became friends through a mutual friend, the painter Alfredo Arreguin.  I visited Alfredo and he handed me a manuscript Larry had left for him to show me.  It was all about Minidoka, the internment camp in Idaho,…and how having been born there affected Larry and his family.  I was so moved by those poems I physically could not move.  Alfredo kept passing me at the table and saying: “That’s okay Tess.  You don’t have to read every poem.  Just read some so I can tell Larry you looked at it.”  So our relationship actually began in paralysis.  Poems that made me unable to put them down.

I thought of what we did in our exchange, which happened from Seattle to Ireland and back (I was in my cottage in Co. Sligo), as more freeing and playful and giddy even.  Like a brother and a sister playing tag or daring each other. In any case, I loved every morning getting up and finding a new poem from Larry on my computer and composing right onto the computer, which I never do.  Larry caused that as you just wanted to answer him as quickly as possible despite the 8 hour time difference. Because I was on the computer I started looking for information about Marilyn Monroe that might delight him and also about cars for which there is really a lot of lovely language.  The poems compounded like a snow-woman, aggregations of crystals and melt-downs and freeze ups.  They felt kind of hip and comic-book and jangly but also prickly with antennae, open to so much that I hadn’t known might be there.  Mainly I’d say it was really a lot of fun.  Poetry can get so serious, plodding around about death and lost love and failed this and that.  Maybe what this sequence says is: Go out and play!”

 

 

Pow! Pow! Shalazam!

(The Challenge from Lawrence to Tess)

~ Kisses

 

          for Tess after finding her book

 

Between “F” and “H”

at Elliot Bay Books

I discover your

57 poems about kisses.

 

Were you on the book cover

in a 1955 Ford convertible

locked in a front seat embrace?

For an instant I become a voyeur–

 

Woman thrown back

in his arms,

skirt hiked up

where little buttons

snap elastic to nylons.

Half eaten popcorn bag askew

between the couple in

an American drive-in theatre,

stock image your editor picked.

 

The photo is the click-click

of dial phones, whacking

typewriter keys,

scent of goopy white-out,

and spinning vinyl LPs—

drive-in theatres with squirming lovers

in convertibles populate

American elephant graveyards.

 

Did the universe feel the void

of kisses as each screen

was eaten by tractors,

like fields of stars banished

from a torn down sky?

 

 

(Response from Tess)

~ What They Missed

 

was not the movie flickering

across rabbits and night-incubating

golf balls flown in from the course nearby, but

time’s inter-splicing of trespass ennobling

the shortcomings of clothing as a dampening

effect on teenage ardor.  What were they

thinking of, parents, to allow that side-door

into a car-seat bedroom, their children all knees and

buttocks and vibratory interstices as they glanced

off and on like a porch light with a necessary short in it

struck against eternity? The movie,

its embryonic miasma surrounding them like

jealous twins, allowed their sensing of the greater room

of universe, invited punching holes in make-believe

with patent leather shoes sparking off car lights

as some drivers left for darker zones.

 

But to answer your question: I chose that cover,

no interloping editor, its lovers glared up

out of their daring-dark by someone’s camera snap

whilst kisses gouged black holes

into their heads and less distant galaxies. It had

something to do with a sepia photo

of my mother, head back, drinking a coke while

leaning against a WWII tank, one leg extended flirtatiously

like a ramp to her private Berlin. Never having

seen her like that meant “the past” was orbiting

just out of reach, sloppily like a moth testing the scald

of a light bulb.  Who was she, anyway?

Someone not wishing to be ravished, but showing

that fringe of self-possessed delight, her high heeled shoe also not

meant for ease in walking on any earth.

 

Did she dance all night?

Was the night also barefooted under its high heeled

cave-ins?  No silk like stockings making legs more skin.

We were lion tamers then, women who squirmed

virginity back into its coin purse with the moon

slamming us on our backs.  And as with these photos

I would tell you more if memory weren’t a deflecting

of my pre-dawn hours where I rove in the dream-lush

against faces big as houses and the gangsters

of the heart never run out of bullets.

 

 

(Response from Lawrence)

~ Fifteen Love, the Bloop-Shot Return

 

I barely crack Tess’s e-mail door,

her words and images thunder  past

like Road Runner and Wily Coyote

zipping down a canyon.

I am taken by a whirlwind,

twist like a Saturday morning cartoon tornado,

search for an salmon net racket

to return what must be the fifteen-love ace shot,

on one knee I  try a volleyball dig.

 

Slip-stream vapor trails appear,

vacuum me like a Hoover upright

going sixty on a tight-weave carpet,

rip tides push flotsam.

Moses parts the Red Sea,

chance to catch the dervish of kisses

while her red babushka flaps,

cruising top down on a zig zag street

after her slam.

 

I am a gangster in a double breasted

suit with white wing tip shoes,

I call her “Doll”, this

horned rimmed woman

who loves popcorn,

especially old maids

she cracks like Wrigley’s gum.

 

We crumple and fall into

each other.  We are a half eaten bag,

butter stains upholstery and each other

as if we were sixteen forever.

 

 

(Response from Tess)

~ A Dervish of Kisses

 

is served only when a dearth occurs

such as befell the wedding party in whose

invitation an “r” had been left out,

changing the prospects

entirely from dearth to death.

It was more than careless of

the printers and of course nobody

came, at which time, the band struck up

and the dancing inhabited us not

through the feet but smackingly

lip to lip as in those cartoons

where the lips suction the kissers

like toilet plungers and when they part

each is propelled Frisbee style into some

lost hotel of the mind where

they meet again as divorcees and have

a lot more fun cheating on their former

selves.  He calls her “Doll-face” and

she calls him “Buster” and pushes

a rose bud into his double-breasted

lapel.  It’s a far cry from being out

to dinner these times in a one horse town

and getting called “Baby Cakes”

by the waitress, which thing did actually

happen to me and though, meant to fatten

her tip, had the opposite effect.  Meanwhile

Doll-face has smooched Chinese Red lipstick

onto his white neck-collar and Buster is

not worrying past the next foxtrot notion

of where this is heading, as the firmament

roils above them Van Gogh style and they r

dancing r deathling into each other as darlings

without benefit of clegy yes clegy. Ah daling daling r’nt

she sweet? I ask you, r’nt she tweet?

 

 

(Response from Lawrence)

~ Even Gangsters Need “R”s

 

Adjectives are the pimples

of the English language.

Nelson Bentley, Seattle poet

 

Like Vatican priests excommunicating

bad letters with a touch, a wedding invitation

without an “R” and the band plays

to grazing cattle and sheep.

 

Printers are mischievous gnomes

with clip-on ties and ink streaked aprons,

who toil in two dimensions,

like kisses on a flat silver screen.

 

Without “R’s what would

Baby Cakes call my black shirt

and white tie? Unceremoniously

I become Lay,  transformed

from a proper noun into a verb,

not passive or present perfect.

I rejoice at not becoming a pimple.

 

Moll-doll knows the difference

between me, Lie and Lay.

 

On slick naugahyde,

we conjugate verbs,

yogic tantric vocabulary builders

until flickers end and candy apple red

Chevy Bel Airs and baby blue

Ford Crown Victorias

sidle home under the orange August moon.

 

Between swaying arms of wheat,

I feel the hubcaps of my soul turning.

I yearn to glide across America’s

neon heartland,  visit every drive-in

before snow piles heavy

and only icy speakers hang

like the last sentinels of

midnight kisses.

 

 

(Response from Tess)

~ When Cars Were Bedrooms

 

we did not worry our verbs over

vinyl seat covers in the dead-ends

of small town streets, but luxuriated if

the wing-backed Buick’s back seat was couch enough

for dreaming into each other, one of the pair tilted

on an elbow, gazing up into the kissing-moon

which always seemed to be shining those nights.  What

 

happened to smooching? that edgy, pretend-it’s-nothing art

of leading and leading past any culminating

action.  For invitations did crave us.  The blur of

stop signs would do. Or,  maybe an opposite hunger,

our feet on virtual gas pedals as we sped across four-ways

and star-fall, train crossings and comet-sizzle

into the oncoming of dawn cow muzzles at

the windows, licking salt from the glassy day.

 

Thinking now of the 1929 Buick Master Six Sedan

Model 47 that could seat five passengers and boasted “full

vanity case equipment”, (bumpers and spare tire

extra.) That gangster look, mob-comfort-sheen.  Remembering

Ray excited about his 1983 Turbo-Jet Mercedes, his wanting

there to be something especially for me, brightening over

it’s light-up mirror, its forehead hyphen of surreal doubling,

letting me put my eyebrows right

 

in a pinch. The boxy look of its style

come into fashion after his death so strangers

interested in purchase leave cards tucked into

its windshield. A snowfall of calling cards on the 1962 Buick Wildcat

owned by a friend, touted as the “new torrid luxury

sports car” always speeding down our minds in “stiff crosswinds.

Pancake-flat cornering on curves. Front bucket seats

divided by a console with tachometer and Turbine Drive

stick shift.”

 

Tell me language doesn’t

overwhelm the lay of any land! No wonder the word hubcabs

can tempt us into soul when we need to glide. Speech can be

more than wildcat as Einstein knew, practicing

as a boy every sentence in a whisper before saying

it aloud, that difference between thought and saying something intimate

to another,  the difference between lovers

on a speeding train kissing and the mere thought of waving goodbye

with nothing but a mind whistling through

the closed interior of a sigh.

 

 

(Response from Lawrence)

~ Wisp of a Gal

 

Sun blazes on a September afternoon.

I perch cool in a pear tree

above zucchinis and cherry tomatoes,

study the world like a crouching ninja.

A vision appears:

aerodynamic fins, wrap-around windshield

and jet air craft grill on a 51 Buick Le Sabre

idling at a stoplight, hubcaps spin,

my eyes whirl—kaleidoscope colored chunks

slide and twist until images click into focus.   I see

 

Tess styling in a faux fur coat

and Dr. Zhivago Russian winter hat

hiding a short bob. With perfect eyebrows,

thin and clean and eyeglasses dangling from a chain,

she chauffeurs me in Ray’s gun metal gray Mercedes

through  downtown Port Angeles,

former bustling hub of boat builders with leather aprons

and wool shirted lumberjacks.  Town

weathered and shop-worn by salty winds that

rise off the Straits of Juan deFuca.

 

Her Irish brogue rolls like tapioca pearls,

mellifluous melodies and rhythms

that remind me of cigars and a squeeze box

harmonica player who cradles Irish whiskey bottles,

stomps his boots on stage while rosy cheeked women

bust a lusty river dance jig on a warehouse floor.

 

I hear horses clopping as a wisp of a girl,

Tess, with long brown hair,

a young Lady Godiva in overalls gallops

past the Deer Park drive-in theatre,

hive where she and her high school

sweetheart smooch behind steamy windows

like a stack of pancakes hot off the griddle.

 

Cinema’s hour-glass queen of cleavage, lips and kisses

incinerates the big screen:  Marilyn Monroe wiggles,

raises one leg at the knee, flipping up her skirt

with a high heel kick, her gluteus is maximus,

like pears hostage under a tight red sheen,

twenty pounds of rice in a ten pound bag.

 

I stretch for one more juicy treasure,

another sensual teardrop,

anticipate holding the pulsating oblong orb

of erotic and earthy fire overflowing

with so much ripeness that the tree

can not hold it another instant.

 

Vertigo spins me upside down.

I am a teenage Icarus with aerodynamic fins,

wrap-around windshield, embracing the wind like

a young girl fluttering with billowing brown hair

away, away on horseback

 

 

(Response from Tess)

~ Epona Meets X-Men

 

Dressed as Epona for LIFE MAGAZINE in a long

strapless sequined gown, I recline on a cushy borrowed horse

named Butterscotch. My elbow-length black

gloves and plumed eye-mask purchased in New Orleans tunnel

a mystery corridor back to first century Rome.  Celtic goddess,

protector of horses, donkeys and mules,  astride a horse,

with her animals beside her,  leaders of the soul in the after-life ride.

Prior to the photo I had just been thrown from

“Snow Heart”, a horse named after a poem, when

the woman holding the bridle ducked her head out of the wind

to light a cigarette.  Life is salted down

 

by inadvertent hinges where one motion triggers

another, like the simulated wind whirling up Marilyn Monroe’s

skirt, ignited from a real moment of wind on 23rd Street

in New York City in 1901 from a short film “depicting Florence Georgie

walking over a grate, hot air lifting her skirt”. Camera clatter

like a Tommy Gun leading to 1955 and Marilyn’s thigh-high echo

in “The Seven Year Itch” still a kick into the future with Kelly LeBrock

whose skirt wafts up in “The Woman in Red.”  I dust myself off from

“Snow Heart” and wriggle like a seal in a blanket onto Butterscotch

like nothing happened,  resume goddess-lounge position encased

in silver sequins while Annie Leibowitz squares in on me, snapping

 

her mad-turtle lens like a drill bit through centuries.   Marilyn’s iconic

ivory pleated dress at auction selling for more than 5.6 million gives

a wink to the one on her statue at the Women’s Museum in Dallas

whose flare has been captured pre-or-post-flare.  Joe Dimagio, reported to

hate the dress, smiles and lords it over years of voyeurs, having

been at leisure with those thighs.  Fashion carries skirts away

and gives us leggings so there is all the thigh one could want, but

sans the flesh, giving new meaning to ‘skin-tight’. Jubilee revels

in her Jackie Chan kick, unaware of the real flesh space

between her high top boots and her snug blue shorts,

shouting: “Eat your heart out!”

 

ZZZRRRK is the sound Storm makes when she leaps

her comic book power-leap.  With her we trade dizzy blonde

for steely white eye-sockets and snaking white hair, silver

body armor and curvaceous conical breasts rebounding light-clang.

Her lift-the-world shoulders mean she can handle it,  would snigger

at a remark by my Irish visitor: “I was so happy I could have snogged the face

off him.”  No wind up her skirt!  When she loses power and falls

into the sea she rates a SPLUSH, then crawls drenched to the nearest

boulder to stare up defiantly at the enormous Sentinel sent

to yo-yo her back to captivity on Genosha, a false utopia. Thrown

into THE BOX her last cry is: SKREEK! Not HEEEEERE! Jubalee, her mutant

sidekick, plazma-blasts a wire to pick her cell lock.

All routine for kidnapped mutants on holiday.  GIMME A BREAK!

Jubalee cries as I shower them with sequins,

gallop past Marilyn and plunge into the spirit world

on Butterscotch.

 

 

(Response from Lawrence—End of the Challenge)

~ Starlings

 

Before Jackie Chan is the prince

of  chop-socky, we rope Bruce Lee,

master of lightning attacks–

tear your nose off with two fingers or pop your eye out

fanatic into a game of pinochle at the UW cafeteria,

he plays without heart, mentally on his knees,

card games are mock combat that drain his chi.

 

I recall a party at his studio on the Ave.,

Hong Kong Cha Cha champ is quiet,

rock music plays and three Everlast punching and speed bags dangle.

At a glance they look like abandoned dance partners,

drooping shopworn with no Celtic gods to protect them

unless Epona has pity on leather goods

along with Donkeys and horses with

chestnut-sized eyes. At the Island County state fair I stare

deeply into Equine windows and find

poking fingers  are edible.   In spite of grand names—

Valkyrie and King with golden trophies and blue ribbons,

they dwell in sadness with flies in eyes amid dung piles.

 

Unlike Tess with a Mardi Gras mask and her Butterscotch,

I once witnessed a vision galloping straight from

the Conan the Barbarian comic book sans thunder

and lightning, one of the four horsemen rampaging.

Magnificent Artemis, Greek warrior goddess

in black leather boots and body armor with a breastplate

and swirls, raising a standard of fierce human scalps.

Ulating, her eyes flame atop a stallion as large as the Trojan horse

with a magnificent curved neck, Clydesdale hoofs,

and nostrils blasting steam, beast spawned from hell.

 

Villagers in a two-dimensional comic book world

will turn their eyes to a red August sky

when Tess’s curious three dimensional face emerges

in their  X-Man world,  first appearing as a round speck

growing into an oblong nose,  with lips appearing

below until both unite into one huge oval exiting like an iris closing.

Philosophers and soothsayers will ponder the meaning,

stir ashes and examine tea leaves

for hints about the three apocalyptic mysteries witnessed.

 

In a 3-D feeding frenzy starlings scream and strip my fig tree,

black birds perch on the wire—hooded anarchists

dive and riot in the treetops pecking plump orbs.

I yearn to bake 50 in a pie instead of vainly throwing

tennis balls and dirt clumps.

Like the Luftwaffe they blitzkrieg in waves

bombing and strafing my precious London.

 

I will not crawl into a bomb shelter

but shake my fist like Churchill, cigar in hand,

and tie reflective ribbons that tinkle,

dangle and flash—things most birds dislike,

except, it turns out, starlings.

 

Agent Starling, Jody Foster in Silence of the Lambs,

her namesakes sporting pointy beaks, beady eyes

and unglamorous dark suits— everything except the lisp.

Would Hannibal Lector savor them with

a little Chianti and fava beans?

 

Comforted in newspaper wrappings, I fortify figs,  staple,

duct tape, and clip corners creating “strange fruit” under attack

on the tree, a merry-go-round without

cotton candy, full of paper nests

next to a catty-whumpus scarecrow.

 

After the Civil War ends, dead black men twist

in Southern trees like clothes bags, Billie Holliday’s song

protesting the “strange fruit” of their sacrificial lives.

Starlings, those battalions of shameless pillagers,

avoid my garden like Missouri homesteaders

stumbling upon an Indian graveyard.  They

feel my savage eyes.

 

I mark my turf like a wild-eyed barbarian,

itch to scrape away civilization’s veneer and ponder

dead starlings with “X”s in their eyes,

designs cartoonists bestow on the dearly departed.

 

 

Notes on Salmon Dream, Three Poems by Lawrence Matsuda

 

Lawrence Matsuda:

When I first met Tess, I thought she might have been Japanese in a past life since we both were tied closely to Japan through friends and experiences.  Because Japan was a harsh land, the people had to rely on the sea to provide a large measure of sustenance.  As a result, fish was almost an object to be worshipped.  Even today, Japan has the largest fish markets in the world, and restaurants prepare fish as if it were an art.

In the Pacific Northwest salmon is the premier fish. It has sustained Northwest Natives and commerce for centuries.  Today when Seattle is featured in the media, images of Pike Place Market fishmongers throwing salmon are a staple.  Tess and I both fish for salmon which is an act that embraces a Pacific Northwest mystique involving natural cycles of life, finding home after a several thousand mile journey, and connecting to salmon energy, as we touch their life cycles.

 

 

Salmon Dreams  I—The Priest

 

King salmon breaks water,

shakes, rips line. Silver flashes race

through Point Defiance green waters

until a speckled tail slaps the deck.

I grab the “Priest”, bloodstained deliverer,

gnarly knot of absolution.

 

At the office I am a lump in a cubicle

staring at e-mail strings

framed by pea-green institutional walls

under a florescent glow.

On the water life and death

are in my hands —a thump,

scales fly helter-skelter.

 

I strip orange egg-skeins,

cradle them on ice.

Slice red flesh from bones

and toss innards to gulls.

 

I savor and taste the fight again.

Primordial energies

transport me to the first

native who pulls

a salmon to shore.

 

I am a boxer after 12 rounds,

imagine crowds standing and cheering,

ride their shoulders, after victory.

My hands shake,

adrenaline pumps

until juices wear off.

 

My arrogance ebbs.

Is gratitude enough

for taking a life?

Why do I believe Salmon

desire death by my hands?

Pride is the sin of angels

and fishermen.

 

 

Salmon Dreams II- The Haunting

 

Without brakes squealing

or horns honking, a humpback

smashes our stern. We swirl,

and tip side to side –

flee the cabin like drunks

from a long night’s ravage.

 

Clutching the “priest” I rip open

a life vest and flail

like a cartoon rag doll

tossed rail to rail.

 

Rising from the chaos,

Ahab’s spirit beckons

from a nimbus of snarled ropes,

tangled harpoons.

Deliver me home, he calls,

I am ashes in the sea.

 

Horizon disappears

as we dive into the trough,

reappear at the crest.

Salt water spray cascades,

the “priest” tumbles,

from the ice chest into the mist.

 

Captain Lou cracks the cabin door,

scans the deck to see if

I am a popsicle bobbing in whitecaps.

Up north an Eskimo villager

falls through ice last year, certain

death for most.  I wonder

what he thinks to keep

from freezing as hours pass until

his rescue.

 

One summer I jump into

the Tokeen, Alaska bay.

Icy waters take my breath,

cold so intense my ancestors scream.

 

I imagine Japanese adventurers

shuffling straw slippers over snowy trails

crossing the land bridge thousands of years ago.

 

Unfortunates starve and freeze

on Alaskan glaciers like the Donner party

traveling the Oregon Trail.

Japanese concentration camp pioneers

ride the Trail in 1942,

pass memorials where early emigrants die.

Near the Craters of the Moon Japanese

in reverse migration push

on to Minidoka without mules,

oxen,  great white whale, Ahab,

or gnarly priest to grant absolution.

 

What did they have?  Each other

and Father Tibesar ‘s Catholic Mass,

Reverend Andrew and his faithful “Blue Box” van

that logs over 56 round trips hauling internee boxes

from the Seattle Japanese Baptist church

to camp, and also the Woodwards  whose

Bainbridge Island Review newspaper

valiantly reports on daily camp lives.

 

They had each other.  Men and women

with strong backs who raised children

and transformed desert

into sugar beet and potato fields.

 

They had each other until barracks are shuttered,

electricity disconnected, windows boarded

one by one and Minidoka is plowed under

as a misbegotten footnote in American history.

 

My 5^th grade spirits rose and crashed

when the national “Weekly Reader”

newspaper features the camps.

America, it reports, rationed necessities like

butter, gasoline, and meat during war—

internment was the Japanese patriotic sacrifice.

 

 

Salmon Dreams III- Salmon Rise

Under an Alaskan full moon,

thousands of silver mantles flash,

armored predators

navigate by stars, taste

streambeds of home,

fresh ribbons trickle

into the Pacific.

 

Those that slip hooks

live to twist in shallows.

Instinct electrifies

withering muscles,

defend encapsulated progeny.

 

Gravel boils and sprays.

Symphonic melodies,

photographic negative, an impression

etched in limbic memories,

once in a lifetime dance.

 

What guides my path—

Minidoka past,

free will, or fate?

I fight upstream, hand to hand

or should I wait on the beach?

 

Words and images are my arrows,

ability to change my shield.

Under the sign of two fish

facing opposite directions,

I walk the road home alone.

And it is sweet to say “home”

even as I swim past myself

resting in swirling deep pools.

 

 

Lawrence Matsuda was born in the Minidoka, Idaho, World War II Relocation Center.  He was among the approximately 120,000 Japanese Americans who were held without due process, some for three or more years.  Matsuda has a Ph.D. in education and was a visiting professor at Seattle University. In 2005 he and two colleagues co-edited the book Community and difference: teaching, pluralism and social justice, Peter Lang Publishing, New York.  It won the 2006 National Association of Multicultural Education Phillip Chinn Book Award.  In 2010 Black Lawrence Press published his first book of poetry entitled A Cold Wind from Idaho.  His essay “Minidoka Fences” is also available from Cerise Press, Spring 2010, Vol. 1 Issue 3.

Tess Gallagher’s newest book, Midnight Lantern: New and Selected Poems (Graywolf), was released 27 September, 2011.  Graywolf also has Dear Ghosts and Moon Crossing Bridge, as well as other works by the author. Her Selected Stories The Man from Kinvara and her books of essays, A Concert Of Tenses and Soul Barnacles, are also available.