| Featured Poet: Juli Nunlist, Lebanon
In the spirit of honoring the wisdom of our elders, I’ve chosen as the first poet, Juli Nunlist of Lebanon, NH. and the title poem from her just-published first book, Viewpoint (Hobblebush Press 2006). Juli, who is 89 years old, has been a composer, musician and poet. A graduate of Barnard College and the Manhattan School of Music, she’s composed chamber music, a one-act opera and songs in 3 languages. The founder of the Princeton, MA Writer’s Workshop, her poems have been published in many journals such as: Field, The Comstock Review, Beloit Poetry Journal.
What I love in her poem, “Viewpoint” is the way it’s pared down to absolute essentials, the impeccable line-breaks, the lilt of its language and the twist of perception it contains, how it turns the world inside-out and makes me see and think differently.
-- Pat Fargnoli
Viewpoint
Juli Nunlist
If you look
this way and that
you will see things
differently. This way
you see the fisherman
in the blue cap
is holding a net,
in fact he is
mending it,
retying a knot
that has come undone
at one corner.
You imagine the net tonight
filled with the silver gleam
of fish scales
as his boat bumps
against the dock, its deck
luminous with his catch.
But if you look that way,
you see the fisherman is holding
an enormous number
of holes tied together
with string,
and he is trying,
by knotting the corner
to keep one of the holes
from escaping.
Juli Nunlist Links:
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