 Thank you, reviewer Mary Cisper and publisher Simmons Buntin, for this insightful and thought-provoking review of The Constellation of Extinct Stars and Other Poems. Please click on Terrain.org, or the above link, for the review, and please support this fine journal!
 Thank you all, for the successful 2016-17 reading tour!
Stay tuned for more events in the Fall of 2017 and 2018. Oregon April 18, Tuesday at 7:00 pm Scot Siegel and Paulann Petersen Lake Oswego Library National Poetry Month, Honoring William Stafford Washington May 21, Sunday at 7:00 pm (workshop 4:30 pm - 6:00 pm) Scot Siegel and Ann Tweedy Book Tree Bookstore 609 Market St. Kirkland, WA 98033 ~ May 23, Tuesday at 7:00 PM Vancouver Barnes & Noble Vancouver Plaza 7700 NE Fourth Plain Blvd Vancouver, WA 98662 ////////Past Events ///////// Eastern Oregon Feb. 13, 2017. Thursday at 7:00 pm Pendleton Center for the Arts - First Draft Writers' Series 214 N. Main Pendleton, OR 97801 http://pendletonarts.org/index_files/first_draft.htm Arizona Oct. 27, Thursday at 7:00 pm Four Chambers Literary Series The Coronado, Phx 2201 N 7th Ave, Phoenix, AZ 85006 Oct. 28, 2016, Friday at 5:30 pm Hosted by: Terrain.org. Sponsored by UofA English Dept. & Institute for the Environment Earth & Environmental Science Bldg., Rm S225 1177 E. Fourth St. Tucson, AZ 85719 Portland Aug 14., 2016, Sunday at 7:00 pm With Steve Williams Stonehenge Studio - Studio Series 3508 SW Corbett Ave. Portland, OR 97239 http://leahstenson.com/studio-series-at-stonehenge-studios/ Sept. 15, 2016, Thursday at 7:00 pm Broadway Books - Comma Series 1714 NE Broadway Portland, OR 97232 http://www.broadwaybooks.net October 16, 2016, Sunday at 3:00 pm Peregrine Literary Series Mary's Woods-Holy Names Heritage Center 17425 Holy Names Drive Lake Oswego, OR 97034 Hillsboro Nov. 28, 2016, Monday at 7:00 pm Conversations With Writers Reedville Presbyterian Church 2785 SW 209th Ave Aloha, OR 97124 Willamette Valley Oct. 10, 2016. Monday at 7:00 pm Grass Roots Bookstore 227 SW Second St. Corvallis, OR http://www.grassrootsbookstore.com # Please join me Wednesday, June 1, at 7:00 pm, as I launch my third full length book, "The Constellation of Extinct Stars, and Other Poems." The Oswego Heritage Council is hosting the reading and talk as part of their First Wednesday Series, in Lake Oswego, Oregon. Doors open at 6:30 pm, and refreshments will be served.
Lake Oswego (Launch) June 1, 2016, Wednesday at 7:00 pm Oswego Heritage Council, Heritage House 398 10th Street Lake Oswego, OR 97034 http://www.oswegoheritage.org/first-wednesday-series-1/ I hope you can make it, but if not other readings are being scheduled (click 'Read More', below) and you can always invite me to come to your town :)
Sample PoemsFebruary 14 No Valentine. Though Windy took me to the Grange last night. Mrs Foster frowns when that cowboy whistles. Lucky for me, all the girls like to dance. Wind from the northwest, cold and thick. Snow by dusk. Storms approach like flocks of swords. Summer Lake, an open wound. The wind never lets up. Last night, I tossed and turned. Tried not to touch myself when the sleet came. But June, ranch hand from Silver Lake, fine red hair and gentle hands… She found me in a sweat, entered my shack through a trapdoor to a feverish dream. Good Bones I want a home with good bones, a bungalow from the 1920s with mahogany columns and beaded wainscoting in the parlor. I want maple floors well worn from years of children’s slippers, lath plaster, and an attic where boys hid airline liquor and pinups. I want a home with catacombs for walls, where the man of the house once stashed his mistress’s many perfumed letters. I want an oak front door with leaded glass transom, and a warped front porch, which when walked across feels like sailing drunk. I want hand-hewn siding and a porch swing with braided ropes that creak to the cadence of my daydreams. I’d swing there for hours, Sipping bourbon, spitting tobacco, squinting across the way toward the neighbor lady’s upstairs bedroom window-- Then I’d raise my glass, the sun sinking through it, and watch the last of the day slowly undress those whitewashed spindles-- The afterglow of history gently revealed on the many fine weather-worn bones of my good home. June 3 Full Lunar Eclipse, 1928 Windy left without a wink. His truck snaked north along the stage route, left pumice stains, red plumes on the bruised horizon. Hell-bent for a girl in Bend whose father owns a mill, June says… I scrub the griddle with Borax and gravel, so hard my knuckles bleed. Beyond this hovel, dust devils drill the onion flats, and the last of the geese lift off from what’s left of Summer Lake. Crazy-cracks riddle the playa. A drought they say. All the women, but the sharecroppers’ daughters, and a few teachers who’ve found better jobs, will be wives by July. What am I going to do? June leans forward, touches my wrist, says, Follow your heart.
Words In Praise of "The Constellation of Extinct Stars and Other Poems," due out Spring 20161/17/2016  Cover art by David Carmack Lewis In this book, Scot Siegel’s poems have an ambidextrous quality, ready to pivot deftly from history to imagined history, from biography to prophecy. His is a voice rinsed clear by desert winds, ready to enter any story and make it first person – for the writer, for the reader. He can claim at one point “no pretense...no history, no trajectory...,” and yet his imagination honors history, invents history, and makes history matter, gives it important work to do. “I want to go down in history and bring back a future worth remembering.” These poems will convey you to resonant places in your life.
—Kim Stafford, Lewis and Clark College; Oregon Book Award recipient for 100 Tricks Every Boy Can Do: How My Brother Disappeared |
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