Framed Broadside of Poem by Ann Staley

The framed broadside is titled “Instructions for the Wishing Light”  and it is also  the title poem for Ann Staley's third collection of poems published in 2017 and printed by Fanklin Press here in Corvallis. The poem is a “list poem.”  

Ann Staley, who was twice nominated for Oregon Poet Laureate, was born and raised in the Keystone State, arrived in the Beaver State after a two-year stint as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Brazil. She has five published collections of poetry, most recently, Fire In The Desert, Franklin Press, 2020. Ann has taught for 40 years in Oregon, high schools, community colleges, at public and private universities. She attended the first workshops honoring Peter Elbow's processes of coming to writing and the Oregon Writing Project beginning 1980, in Ashland OR. Ann was the co-editor of Fireweed, Journal of Oregon Poetry Ann retired from public school teaching at Philomath HS where she was chosen by the Oregon Council Teachers of English (OCTE) award for Excellence in Teaching Writing.  She worked at Lewis and Clark's Northwest Writing Institute for two decades and has been nominated for an Oregon Book Award and twice nominated for Oregon Poet Laureate. Like all writers, she is most comfortable with a pen in her (left) hand.

The Poem

“Instructions for the Wishing Light”

 Wishing light rose slowly the sky

                        do not forget wishing oh

 This line is pure poetry, with a logic all its own.

 The Dadaists did no better than the Chinese translator for the Wishing Light.

Neither did Allen Ginsburg howling his way through pages

of fragmented dreams and day-dreams.

This is assuredly the way I sounded speaking Portuguese

after six weeks of language instruction.

It’s a fan with a blade missing, a kite minus a string,

a night light missing the night or a bulb.

Georgia O’Keefe’s eighty foot long painting of clouds in a blue sky.

The fireside aquarium with the gold fish which has leapt into the fire.

 Ann Staley