'SILK WEATHER': POEMS BY ALAN NASLUND

Alan Naslund's first book of poetry took him nearly 25 years to finish. To paraphrase a show tune, he had some living to do.

Two divorces, a third marriage, children, stepchildren, and teaching writing and literature in Japan, Korea and in prisons along with a few American universities are all it took to compose "Silk Weather."

The earliest poem, "Gooseberries," was written in 1976. The poem that ends the book, "Swain's Late Birthday-House Poem," is built around the Victorian house he and and his wife, Sarah Riley, share with her children William and Elizabeth.

Ten of the nearly 50 poems already have appeared in literary journals. His editor provided the book's structure.

"It's a progression from a kind of country innocence to experience and accommodation," Naslund says.

The forward movement is from poems about the natural world for his native Montana to poems about turbulent relationships and God.

The painting on the cover, "Tswyo, Okayama City," is by Riley, an art professor at Southeast. Tswyo is a Japanese word meaning "rainy season." It's the title Naslund wanted to use for his book but his editor chose "Silk Weather," the words that begin his love poem "White Lipstick."

"They are the same thing," he says, shrugging.

"Silk Weather" is dedicated to Naslund's daughters: 34-year-old Andra, 19-year-old Flora and 12-year-old stepdaughter Elizabeth. Some of the poems reflect the aftermath of the divorces, and one is addressed to a daughter he has become alienated from.

"I readily admit trying to make art out of loss," he says.

"Elegy for a Woman Who died in a Tractor Accident," a poem that won a national award in 1979, is another example. "I wanted to celebrate her. I knew her, visited her day by day .... She had given me vegetables from her garden. That's what people in the country do."

This siren reeling drunkenly

from town is late.

The air

already accepted.

Already the sky,

the dancing sharp tops

of yellow-leached corn

midsummer high.

Naslund's oblique sense of humor comes through in many of the poems as well. (See accompanying poem.)

The poetry is autobiographical, but Naslund says "Every poem is a fiction," backing up the assertion with scholarly references to Yeats.

He has a poem "My Sister in Japan," for instance, but has no sister in Japan.

Writing is a compulsion for him, Naslund says. Often at his computer he breezes on by the 250 words a day Hemingway prescribed for himself. He also has periods when he doesn't write at all.

What provokes poetry in him? "It's not just beauty or love," he says. "You can have an inner experience that seems inexpressible to you and think it would be great to express that."

Poetry is always about emotion, he says.

One of the review blurbs on the back cover says Naslund "mixes love and terror afresh."

The book was published by Fleur-de-Lis Press, a small press that spun off from the Louisville Review. Naslund is the Louisville Review's former poetry editor. He received his Ph.D. in English language and literature from the University of Louisville in 1982.

This semester he is teaching business writing at Southeast. And he is at work turning his dissertation, a collection of short stories called "The Montana Face," into a pair of novels.

"With the publication of this book, I'm looking at exploiting it a little," he said. "If it doesn't work out I will sink back into the mire of wannabe."

Naslund will sign copies of his book Jan. 8 at Hastings Book Music and Video in the Town Plaza Shopping Center. "Silk Weather" also is available at Barnes & Noble Booksellers and the Southeast Bookstore.

Rocking the Pelvis

you say how come we stand straight

with ease and not by practice while you

and your progeny stoop at the shoulder.

I say you are heavy breasted, and you

say what about my son? and I have

to say horses, yes, the music of them.

but you say I rarely rode, and then I

confess it was every day and when

you put one foot in and swung up that

way symphony music comes from that,

camber in back's small, the lumbar

music we got from horses who rocked

the pelvis. you have seen Whitman

in his favorite photos: one of the roughs.

maybe. but one hip is thrown out that

way we do. we rode them, and when

on the ground again, the hip wants to

go out that way nonchalantly: here I

am, but I was there, swept away once

by horses, and learned from horseflesh

that muscle tone is muscle tune, love's

everyday work.

-- Alan Naslund