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 Therése
Halscheid was awarded a 2003 Fellowship for poetry from New
Jersey State Council on the Arts. Her writings - poetry and
prose - have appeared in numerous magazines, among them Rhino,
Karamu, Kalliope, The Midwest Quarterly. She has three poetry
collections, Powertalk (1995) and Without Home (Kells, 2001) and
Uncommon Geography (Carpenter Gothic, 2006). Uncommon Geography
recently received a Finalist Award for the Paterson Poetry
Prize.
She teaches creative writing in varied settings, including
Atlantic Cape Community College, New Jersey, as well as being a
visiting writer in schools for NJ State Council on the Arts.
For the past decade she has been house-sitting, while traveling
widely to write. This mobility, along with simple living, has
helped her to sustain her writing life. Many poems chronicle her
travels across varied terrain, beginning with local settings,
then moving to sacred environments as far as New Mexico and
beyond including South Africa, New Zealand, Australia, and the
Ural Mountains of Russia, where she has taught. June 2005, she
received a Dodge Fellowship to Vermont Studio Center.
See Website for features, credits, photography, poems.
ThereseHalscheid.com
In Seclusion
house-sitting in the pinelands
When, finally,
I learned how to not be in the world,
the earth turned trusting
the forest began sharing
its old rhythms
gradually I wore less
until it was
that I stood unclothed
on the deck each night,
glad for the beginning of fur
on my body.
And my own sound came
from me then
that primal noise I had,
for years, swallowed.
That noise, the slow starting of fur,
was there for
what darkness allowed
that soft opening below,
of the dirt breaking
for when the flesh springs.
[“In Seclusion” first appeared in Reed Magazine and is
included in Uncommon Geography (Carpenter Gothic, 2006) ]
Ancient Wealth
Pueblos of New Mexico
Before machines and even
tame animals
they lived in absolute favor
of the round god
who yellowed the sky
so that no act
was useless to it
nothing could stop
the morning praise
of their hands,
aimed high
nothing controlled
where they leapt barefoot
going perfectly
from cliff to rock
to rock
and
what occurred
in fashioning
a stone tool,
that reverence alone
could imbue it with power.
And in honoring,
all prospered
through days of their creating.
How their intent
must have looked then
from above —
imagine that gold
light, and the way
the warm god
came always pleased
across where everything
mattered.
["Ancient Wealth" first appeared in
Emrys Journal and is included in the
poet's book Uncommon Geography (Carpenter Gothic, 2006].
Peasants Around Small Fires
along the Volga River, Russia just after Communism
flames orange their eyes
the life inside
worn faces
one, cooking slim fish,
manages a silenced name
God
he says
with frightened pleasure
God and again
God
like so, like that
while waters came
the current language of water there
at their boats
moored
to the trees
by the banks of Yaroslavl
God, with winds letting loose
against evening
pushing
a slow mist upon everything
God he continues
God
until they stand, they all sing
barely seen
unsecreting
the new sound of their bodies.
["Peasants Around Small Fires" first
appeared in Sojourner and is included in the poet's book Without
Home (Kells].
1143 Mt. Vernon Ave.
Haddonfield, NJ 08033
1-609-238-2155
thalscheid@cs.com
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