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Contributions by Elizabeth Terhune:

“Summer Nocturne” (Terhune & Goedker)

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Collaborators’ Q&A

Poet Ash Goedker: Elizabeth Terhune’s piece hones in on the importance of the kid in this poem, who is in her own earthly heaven. I guess it surprised me that none of the other objects came through visually, but I’m grateful for this specific silhouette Artist Elizabeth Terhune: I found it full of images and confounding.  And there’s a teeter-totter between playfulness and anxiousness.

Elizabeth Terhune paints in watercolor and oil.  She teaches in-person and remote classes through the 92Y in NYC. Ash Goedker‘s poems have appeared in Great Lakes Review, Indiana Review, Third Point Press and others. She lives in New Orleans and teaches at Nicholls State University.

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“Lament in Iron”

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Collaborators Q&A: Poet Molly Bess Rector: I think it would be really cool to see this poem in a breakroom at a factory or in another space that sort of by nature bends toward efficiency, rather than making room for the messiness of personhood. Artist Elizabeth Terhune: The opening line of this sad, haunting poem appealed to me. And the poem is beautifully taut.

Poet Molly Bess Rector lives in Fayetteville, Arkansas where she cocurates the Open Mouth Literary Center. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Prairie Schooner, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and Best New Poets 2019. Artist Elizabeth Terhune paints, in watercolor and oil, landscapes that assume reinvention.  She teaches in-person and remote classes through the 92Y in NYC. www.elizabethterhune.com

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“Ghost Mantis”

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Collaborators’ Q&A: Artist Elizabeth Terhune: Inspiration. First, mantis.  Drawn up short, abruptly, thought’s space interrupted, invaded, to fixed attention, hearing: mantis.  Synonym: mystery. Ghost Mantis.  Doubles that.  Poet Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello: I’ve always thought of this poem as a bit scrappy, but when I saw the precisely smudged and veined edging of the mantis shape, I couldn’t help thinking of that last line as empowering and beautiful for both the mantis and the reader.

Collaborators:  Poet Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello is the author of Hour of the Ox (University of Pittsburgh, 2016), winner of the AWP Donald Hall Prize for Poetry. Artist Elizabeth Terhune is a painter. She works in oil and watercolor and makes drawings in ink and pencil.

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“Lighthouse”

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Collaborators’ Q&A: Poet Rosalynde Vas Dias: I realized that there’s a confusion of interiority/exteriority or a kind of lack of boundaries with my lighthouse. The two images of the lighthouse balancing each other at the ends of the broadside really made that leap out at me. Artist Elizabeth Terhune: I was probably focused initially on the rock foot and the fire running through cracks—so I think I verged on misinterpreting the poem, or actually did misinterpret it—opting for an almost volcanic scenario. But the poem really is more complex and lovely—there is softness, the whelk, and the ensuing paradox of her polished absence; there is the spiral staircase and cracked walls. So many images involving circle and cracks, emptiness and darkness with light thrown around.

Poet Rosalynde Vas Dias earned an MFA in Poetry from Warren Wilson College’s Low Residency Program for Writers. Her first book, Only Blue Body, was winner of the 2011 Robert Dana Award offered by Anhinga Press. She lives in Providence, Rhode Island. Artist Elizabeth Terhune has exhibited widely throughout the United States. She teaches painting and drawing at the 92nd Street Y and at NYU’s School of Continuing and Professional Studies in New York City.

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“Station”

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Collaborators’ Q&A: Artist Elizabeth Terhune: I find I carry this poem with me as one would a stone in the pocket. I am deeply grateful to Maria Hummel for articulating the world and space of this poem. Poet Maria Hummel: …That’s the thing about a terrific image: it can create a reality and transcend it at the same time.

Poet Maria Hummel is the author of the poetry collection House and Fire, winner of the 2013 APR/Honickman First Book Prize, and two novels: Motherland (Counterpoint, 2014) and Wilderness Run (St. Martin’s, 2003). Artist Elizabeth Terhune has exhibited widely throughout the United States. She teaches painting and drawing at the 92nd Street Y and at NYU’s School of Continuing and Professional Studies in New York City.

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“Harvest City”

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Collaborators’ Q&A: Artist Elizabeth Terhune: … the poem addresses silence and then sound, and time, and aging, changing, and motion, falling, streaming, burst glass. It has a kind of wound-up quality. I am continually surprised by the ending. Poet Andy Stallings: Can a lemon be upside-down? I see it upside-down in this painting, and that’s both surprising and wonderful to me. My sense of the entire scene is inverted by my perception of the lemon as inverted.

Poet Andy Stallingslives in New Orleans with his wife, Melissa Dickey, and their children, Esme and Curran. He teaches creative writing at Tulane University, and edits Thermos Magazine. Artist Elizabeth Terhune received her MFA from Hunter College and her BA from Oberlin College. She teaches painting and drawing at the 92nd Street Y and at NYU’s School of Continuing and Professional Studies in New York City.

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“It was not Death, for I stood up”

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Collaborators’ Q&A: Artist Elizabeth Terhune: Many things strike me about this poem. The inverted checklist structure (it was not this, because . . .). The slow pace. Her brilliant language, “for all the Bells/put out their Tongues, for Noon.” The stunning conclusion: “Chaos — stopless — cool” always shocks me.

Artist Elizabeth Terhune has exhibited widely throughout the United States. Her most recent shows include a two-person show at Feast Gallery in Saratoga Springs, NY, a four-person show at Metaphor Contemporary Art in Brooklyn, NY, and a one-person exhibition at the Lake George Arts Project, Lake George, NY.

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“I never hear the word ‘escape'”

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Collaborators’ Q&A: Artist Elizabeth Terhune: Like many people, I respond to Dickinson’s incredible compression, her inventiveness. In this case, I particularly liked how the poem opens up at the end (by quieting down a bit?). Also, her wildly fun sense of image and language…It is both intensely personal, her vulnerability is felt, but also, with the reference to “prisons broad,” connects to circumstances beyond herself. It’s a wonderful poem to have in one’s head.

Artist Elizabeth Terhune has exhibited widely throughout the United States. Her most recent shows include a two-person show at Feast Gallery in Saratoga Springs, NY, a four-person show at Metaphor Contemporary Art in Brooklyn, NY, and a one-person exhibition at the Lake George Arts Project, Lake George, NY.

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“As Any Approaching Might Smile and Stop” (Savich & Terhune)

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Collaborators’ Q&A: Artist Elizabeth Terhune: The poem has a straightforward, direct quality. The language seems plain, quiet actually. Yet it navigates through a difficult experience. Writer Zach Savich: …Elizabeth Terhune showed me the situation as simultaneously airy residue and posed solidity, lyric gasp and narrative oomph. In hers, I can see the central arm as coming from either figure, then I look closer—it is clear whose arm that is. This happens to me all of the time and is in the poem and it breaks my heart.

Writer Zach Savichis the author of three full-length collections of poetry—Full Catastrophe Living, Annulments, and The Firestorm—as well as a lyric memoir, Events Film Cannot Withstand, that is forthcoming from Rescue Press. Artist Elizabeth Terhune’s  most recent shows include a two-person show at Feast Gallery in Saratoga Springs, NY, a four-person show at Metaphor Contemporary Art in Brooklyn, NY, and a one-person exhibition at the Lake George Arts Project, Lake George, NY.

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“Wreckage: By Sea (i)”

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Collaborators’ Q&A: Artist Elizabeth Terhune: …As a visual artist, the outrageous number of image possibilities (maps, compasses, vermilion roses, gales, webbing, tattoos, coastlines, etc.) immediately appealed to me. Poet Gretchen E. Henderson: Her palpable capture of the corporeal caused me pause—in the best sense. She rendered the map as a living, breathing creature… moved and moving, able to be haunted and to haunt.

Poet Gretchen E. Henderson’s genre-bending writing was awarded the 2010 Madeleine P. Plonsker Prize, with recent work published in Black Warrior Review, Witness, New American Writing, Mantis, Caketrain, and Double Room, among other journals. Artist Elizabeth Terhune has exhibited widely throughout the United States and recently had a one-person exhibition at the Lake George Arts Project, Lake George, NY.

 

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“In Our Time”

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Collaborators’ Q&A: Poet Ilya Kaminsky: My response is: gratitude. I think she did a marvelous job. Artist Elizabeth Terhune: Ultimately arriving at the grace of thankfulness, I think the poem tilts into balance through honesty. Laughter is both a dilution of despair and a poverty.

Poet Ilya Kaminsky is the author of Dancing In Odessa which won Whiting Writers Award, American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Metcalf Award, Dorset Prize, Ruth Lilly Fellowship from Poetry magazine. Artist Elizabeth Terhune was the recipient of a Yaddo Fellowship in 1998. She has exhibited widely throughout the United States and recently had a one-person exhibition at the Lake George Arts Project, Lake George, NY.

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“Among Trees” / “The Heart is a Bee Hive”

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Collaborators’ Q&A: Artist Elizabeth Terhune: It surprised me that the poet would pair that kind of force with a drawing that I think of as essentially lyric. I find the combination really exciting. Poet Cindy St. John: I’m always attracted to beauty in violence, or violence in beauty. This piece has an ethereal movement to it, in the paint itself and in the winged creatures hovering around the imprint of a gun. I felt connected to that tension.

Artist Elizabeth Terhune received her MFA from Hunter College and her BA from Oberlin College. She has exhibited widely throughout the United States and recently had a one-person exhibition at the Lake George Arts Project, Lake George, NY. Poet Cindy St. Johnis a native Texan currently living in Kalamazoo, MI, where she is completing her MFA in creative writing.

 

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“The Prosthetic”

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Collaborators’ Q&A: Artist Elizabeth Terhune: …But this poem is a nugget of feeling and image and it stayed with me. I was particularly taken with its modesty and its quietness. It seemed to favor and respect a kind of anonymity, saying that life is deeply felt, but mostly privately so. Poet Joy Icayan: The feeling of oneness of the hand and leg. They were done in the same color and same strokes that you can almost feel they’re part of the same entity. I was really pleased by this.

Poet Joy Icayan works as project assistant for a government agency. She lives and writes in the Philippines. She has a degree in psychology and does freelance writing and research for several companies. Artist Elizabeth Terhune has exhibited widely throughout the United States and recently had a one-person exhibition at the Lake George Arts Project, Lake George, NY.

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“Snow Over Shavers Fork”

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Collaborators’ Q&A: Artist Elizabeth Terhune: The world of “Snow Over Shavers’ Fork” is the quiet blurry obfuscated world of snow falling, of graying weather enveloping the visual field. It is a world of disappearance, soft edges, only peculiar details remain. By definition, this is not a graphic world.

Poet Brian Barker‘s first book of poems, The Animal Gospels, won the Tupelo Press Editors’ Prize. His poems, reviews, and interviews have appeared in such journals as Poetry, Agni, Quarterly West, American Book Review, The Writer’s Chronicle, The Indiana Review, Blackbird, Sou’wester, and River Styx. Artist Elizabeth Terhune received her MFA from Hunter College and her BA from Oberlin College. She was the recipient of a Yaddo Fellowship in 1998. She has exhibited widely throughout the United States and recently had a one-person exhibition at the Lake George Arts Project, Lake George, NY.

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“Mahogany”

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Poet Leslie LaChance lives in West Tennessee, where she spends time admiring how the sky comes down like that over the cotton fields. Her poems and articles have appeared recently in The Birmingham Poetry Review, Iris, Chronogram, Now & Then, Appalachian Journal, and Dance Teacher.

Artist Elizabeth Terhune received her MFA from Hunter College and her BA from Oberlin College. She was the recipient of a Yaddo Fellowship in 1998. She has exhibited widely throughout the United States and recently had a one-person exhibition at the Lake George Arts Project, Lake George, NY.

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