Deborah Akers
partly fallen
The poems in Deborah Akers’ partly fallen reside quietly, yet not quite in peace. They summon a natural world that is unsentimental yet bound to the dearly flawed human arc. These spare lyrics reach for the essence of what we know as sensory beings, and perhaps what we can dream beyond the senses. Reading partly fallen, the reader walks a narrow yet deeply rendered path into the world’s broken heart.
Cover design: Beth Ford
ISBN: 978-0-9895799-1-9
Paperback: $15
Publication date: October 1, 2015
Deborah Akers is the author of a collection of poems, backward pilgrim (I-Beam Books 2013). Her poems have appeared in many journals, including The Beloit Poetry Review, Chicago Review, Yellow Silk, Hubbub, Voiceweavers, and Writers Almanac, and she has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Deborah and her husband live in the green embrace of Portland, Oregon. She makes her living as an educational editor and writer.
Praise for partly fallen
“In partly fallen, each poem is an act of divining—a deeply lyric dowsing for what is elemental. With taut and resonant metaphors, Deborah Akers calls us to see the world beneath surfaces, a world wherein a rainbow is a ‘spectral bruise,’ wherein a ‘ragged crow/ appears newly spat/ from an earth god’s maw.’ Richly and subtly musical, Akers’ work brings us compelling messages from our own depths. Each poem reveals the poet’s fierce willingness to delve. Each offers us the chance to accompany her as she plunges “into original substance.”
—Paulann Petersen, Oregon Poet Laureate Emerita
“Deborah Akers’ partly fallen is a superbly realized, significant book, a worthy addition to Airlie Press’s fine series. ‘entering the dense/family-silence of trees/my steps arouse/wings, which wake…’/ ‘the flock rises/pulsing like an organ gone/ adrift from its body…’ Again and again, partly fallen vividly evokes moments of experience in which discord prevails, and again and again the poems evoke a return to harmony. ‘all too soon you will breach/the ocean’s embrace/face your journey’s/blank horizon// but tonight you drift/in the black waves/fallen stars/ wrecked and drowsing/ lit with the soft remnants/of radiance’.”
—Ralph Salisbury, Pulitzer nominee, C.E.S. Wood Award Recipient, Winner of Riverteeth Book Prize and Rockefeller Bellagio Award, two-time Oregon Book Award Finalist
“In Deborah Akers’ partly fallen, being open to the world is a constant prayer as she celebrates the persistence of nature in an imperfect world. These poems will gently lead you to a quiet but inspired place where salmon live ‘a solitary life’ until they are called home, a murmuration of starlings rising above the Astoria bridge pulses like a giant heart, and even stale sunflower seeds tossed out to feed common sparrows signal intimations of Wordsworthian transcendence.”
—Barbara Drake, author of Morning Light, Peace at Heart, Driving One Hundred, and other works of prose and poetry
Excerpts from partly fallen
compost: a marriage
spent chard, carrot greens
all manner of peels
failed fruit
daily coffee grounds
eggshells, grass
gathered with intent
set out to patiently
stink in the heat
reek in endless rain
a shovel turn reveals
hundreds of small worms
flipping in panic—this is a good sign
their deep hunger not to be
disturbed
miracle, if you think
of the multitude
layers – dead fibers
formerly bitter, dense
sweet, grainy
tasteless, all giving way
slowly wedded
slowly, into new-made
fragments of this black
and fragrant earth
this morning
frays and snarls, refusing
the simplest weave
vivaldi lends a suggestion
the blinds request to be cleaned
recipes unfurl assurance
in the sequence of things
the slow daily list¬–
tasks assembling until at last
a fabric emerges
adequate to dress
dawn’s blister
though by now the day’s first wound
is long pierced
pain worn
nearly threadbare
ordinary as noon
about ripeness
after Rilke
even the foolish can know ripeness–
ballast of orange
slight give of peach
tight shine of apple peel
scent deep in the navel of melon
bodies, too, can reach a place
where heft of thigh
and unruly hip swell
satisfy
a brief balance
between flesh and the rigors
of imagination
joined in a moment of rest:
sky holding light, even
blackened
with the certainty
of rain clouds
the span coiled
between hawk’s
barbed call
high in fir
and the waiting feast below
blind creatures rising
to catch a breath
from the drenched soil
crossing
freighters list
on the night current
bows lifted or low-bellied
depending on their burden
it matters little
whether laden with noble goods
or frivolous trade —
all must wait
for the pilot ships
those nimble advocates
tasked with blazing
through the river’s bar
its battering maze
all too soon you will breach
the ocean’s embrace
face your journey’s
blank horizon
but tonight you drift
in the black waves
fallen stars
wrecked and drowsing
lit with soft remnants
of radiance
---for my dad
Limited-edition Broadside
In celebration of the publication of partly fallen, Airlie Press has commissioned a limited-edition letterpress broadside of one of Deborah Akers’s poems. Signed and numbered by the author.
