Helen Wickes was born on a farm in Pennsylvania. She lives and writes in Oakland, California, where for many years she worked as a psychotherapist. Helen has an MFA from the Bennington Writers’ Seminars. In Search of Landscape is her first collection of poems. It was published in 2007 by Sixteen Rivers Press, a shared work, non-profit, […]
I was born in the year of the rat, under the archer’s constellation, in a house on a hill, the river down below, and a meadow full of horses, to which, despite distance and time, I go tethered my live-long days, fire blessed, metal weakened, my temperament’s curse— once called the black bile— fear death […]
Sometimes the words appear singly, or in severals, thrilled to be invited. They leap toward one another with abandon but once on the page they stare blankly into space, where they’re from, or where they’d like to be. The herd of actual horses stays bunched in the trees. There are muffled sounds and little puffs […]
Once I used to be and desperately wanted, but in the beginning I wondered, though once upon a time I secretly knew. At first I declared; then I believed. After a while I noticed, but not enough. In the end I still wanted. In the middle I was lost, very lost. In the meantime I […]
The setting forth The crumpled map The grumble followed by sulk The nerves, the nerves The heat, the dust, the light Sudden exhilaration The unnameable lily The unwrapping of tiny candies The weirdness of having a body The inexplicable sorrow The pettiness of taxonomy Ecstasy of paper and pen Nothing at the core The peevish […]
1 So. They’re gone now, my dam and my only brother. Taken from me. Into the unliving, I guess. We are frightened by night, so no wonder we frequent the far-off castle, lit from within. (Lit, I suspect, by sunshine, which humans have taken hostage, and subdued there.) Pulled as we are to mead-halls, Mother […]
Helen Wickes, author of In Search of Landscape, talks about determining the form of her poem Narrativity.
Helen Wickes, author of In Search of Landscape, talks about the formal structure of her poem Cheerful Defense of the Realm.