Featured Poet: Rodger Martin, Hancock

I am pleased this time, to showcase a poem by Rodger Martin. It was Rodger (along with Martha Carlson-Bradley) who first welcomed me into this supportive New Hampshire Poetry Community. He has been immensely (and unselfishly) supportive of both poets and poetry here....perhaps especially his work with the NH Young Writer's Conference, as an organizer of the DelRossi's poetry series and writing workshop and, this year, with the National Poets Out Loud Project.

-- Pat Fargnoli

Rodger Martin has published poetry and fiction in journals throughout the U.S. His sonnet "Mask" was nominated for a Pushcart Prize by Entelechy International. He's been awarded a New Hampshire State Council on the Arts Fellowship for Fiction, an Appalachia prize for poetry, and fellowships by the National Endowment for the Humanities. He is the managing editor for The Worcester Review, teaches journalism at Keene State College, and is The New Hampshire State Coordinator for the Poetry Out Loud Project. In China, he has been published as a member of The Monadnock New Pastoral Poets and writes a bimonthly anecdotal poetry column or The Yangtze River Journal.


Rodger writes:  "This poem is from a 14-poem sequence called The Blue Moon Series, one each for the fourteen full moons in a lunar cycle which unlike the solar cycle of twelve months, takes thirteen months to complete.  Because the lunar orbit is elliptical, the anomalistic moon would be the moon closest to the earth and therefore appearing much larger than other full moons. The tone of the poem had its genesis after one of the recent fall elections where it appears a majority of Americans are more than willing to give away their common wealth, rights, and futures to corporate and religious zealots who will promise, say, and do anything to get their hands on that birthright.  I chose what I call a modified sonnet form because the more out of control and extreme the subject, the more it demands a formal framing."

The Anomalistic Moon  -- December

Crotched Knob

Across the valley-- a bright orange surge
rising like an orb of Eckleberg--
a carnal ball that paints the mountain's face
and surveys the patriotic ash. Its glow
gropes the icy slopes as if a virgin
breast while all about the naked base 
Christmeisters, bellies jiggling coin, let holler,
"Give me your pennies; I've got your dollar."

Finally, like a chastened child, the winter wind
sulks into background leaving the sky a-glisten
with diamonds. Snow guns, shooting streams of white
up like fountains, salute in silence beneath
the mercury lamps for the lost children's flight
on crystal heath who yearn for a home that night.