An anthology compiled by Molly Porter

Introduction

Grey is the price

of neighboring with eagles, of knowing

a mountain's vast presence, seen or unseen.

—Denise Levertov, on “Settling” in Seattle

I live in an incredibly poetic place. Shrouded in midst, humbled by volcanic peaks, flooded in water, and dramatically intensified by techie villains, the Puget Sound demands to be narrativized. Like Melville’s Ishmael, I sought to come to the “watery part of the world” in part to broaden my literary imagination: as Moby Dick shows, “meditation and water are wedded for ever.” But, compared with illustrious locations of New York, London, Venice, the highlands the region of the Puget Sound remains largely unstoried in the public imagination (with a couple of exceptions, like Raymond Carver short stories and Fleet Foxes songs). My anthology seeks to remedy this in making digitally accessible some public domain works of poetry about my region found in the University of Washington Special Collections. My interest is determined by both thematic similarities (surrounding literature and environment) and tied material conditions, like similar geographical location (in part because it’s what UW Special Collections has a wealth of, in part because of my interest in place-based writing) and similar publication dates (pre 1928 largely for copyright reasons, and also my prior of research). But, while united in period and location, my texts range in topic, from seduction humor, hiking exultation, and and professional ennui. They also have a variety of interesting forms I’m interested to explore—scribbled on paper, typed by typewriter, pasted into scrapbook (with accompanying leaves), etc.

My (growing) anthology includes the following: "A Klondiker's Dream," written anonymously between 1896 and 1899 (which includes discussion of Lake Washington). I will also feature the typed manuscript poem "Anaesthesia" by Alice M Smith (1907) which draws connections between the author’s medical profession and (I think) our foggy environment. Next, I’ll include the 1920 mountaineering poem "The Trails End" by Betty Lilly which displays women’s early hiking experience and has a fascinating material presentation in a hiking scrapbook. And in an irreverent epilogue, I will include include the hilarious anonymous scribbled poem "Idaho,"which was discovered late at night in Odegaard Undergraduate Library on our campus at UW.

My own edition seeks to bring these vivacious, unpublished texts out of the corners of the archive to the public. Hopefully, these texts and my theoretical framing will expand others’ poetic, place-based imagination, and to learn more about the history of our dynamic region. In that second effort, I have chosen to present texts as they are, with no changed spelling, punctuation, or polishing of the text of this world, but with some romanticized framing which you see above to reflect my poetic engagement with my own region. And in the digital affordances of my edition, I will also supplement these written texts with music, photography, cartography, and links to other resources to showcase our region’s glories and horrors (including one of my writer’s use of blackface). So without further ado, let us begin our journey to the watery part of the world with "A Klondiker's Dream" of Lake Washington. Can you locate it on the interactive map below?