Poems
Selected Online Poems:
“Winter Trees,” Up the Staircase Quarterly
“Anniversary,” Tupelo Quarterly
“Thinking About Why Sylvia Didn’t Tell the Hunter About the Nest,” River Heron Review
“This Bird Has Flown” & “The Mousetrap,” Ilanot Review
“The Swing Set Refuses Blame for the Wasps’ Offense,” 3Elements Review
“The Whale,” SWWIM Every Day
“On Mothering, Mortality, and the Wankel T. rex” & “Telling the Bees,” On the Seawall
“Wycinanki,” Hayden’s Ferry Review “Tiny Architectures” issue
“Fifteen” & “As Bees,” Jet Fuel Review “Golden Shovel” issue
“Wrecked, Off Pavilion Beach,” Crab Creek Review
“Golden Shovel Full of Darkness, Southern Flowers, and Moondust,” Tinderbox Poetry Journal
“Goldilocks,” MockingHeart Review
“Wellfleet,” Parks & Points
“What the Digital Sign Flashed at Me as I Drove Downtown,” Literary Mama
“Dark-eyed Junco,” Solstice Literary Magazine
“Visitation,” Bracken Magazine
“Dressing the Wounds,” Radar Poetry
8 Comments
Laurie Robertson-Lorant
I haven’t seen your recent poems, but as I wrote last year (or whenever it was), I found your poems beautifully balanced between exploration and discovery. I haven’t seen your “Wellfleet” yet, but here is one of my old Wellfleet poems. A very odd occurrence is what prompted me to contact you now. A couple of days ago I found “TAHLEQUAH OK” with no message on my phone. That name meant nothing to me so I goggled to investigate, and I discovered this website and your marvelous poem “TahleQuah” (I hope that’s the correct spelling. I’ll lose this page if I try to check on it.) Can there be any connection? Congratulations on your wonderful poems and thanks for sharing them.
Warm best wishes, Laurie
from WELLFLEET OYSTER
raw membrane, soft and viscous
steel-valved shell
my blood, salt water
my pulse, the moon-drawn tide
I swallow sand
that scrapes my tender skin
bathing grit in brine
to form a precious pearl…
L. R-L.
Rebecca Hart Olander
Thanks, Laurie! I appreciate your comments on my work, and that you shared your own! I included just an excerpt from what you sent because when you post a poem online it is considered “published” and I wanted to protect your right to do so in its entirety in the future. As for “Tahlequah,” I do have a poem about the orca who carried her calf for 17 days after the calf died, and that is the name of the poem and of the orca. Her story captured the attention of the country, so I am sure we’re thinking abut the same Tahlequah. Thanks again for your message!
Barry DeCarli
Rebecca,
I just discovered your website here. While taking a break from nothing that truly needed a break taken, I read a few of your poems. Having done that, I feel resolved of my need to more today, but maybe, I will work on a poem that’s had lines bouncing around in my head for weeks.
Anyway, your poem that stood out for me here, of the few I’ve read so far, is “Why I Became an English Teacher .” I was happy to read that the poet had a more imaginative view, a more expansive experience allowing that we all see things differently and that would be a more exciting way to release the creativity of students. For a teacher to limit the way a poem/story is interpreted by an individual who reads these lines dismisses any other meaning that a reader may have found and brought to the poem.
“…the yellow in the story
could only signify
decay, as in rotting
teeth, as in the streetlamp
glow bathing
the young prostitute….”
And , the rest of your poem proves that yellow has so much more to offer even here,
“…as in the streetlamp
glow bathing
the young prostitute…”
We can see her in a softer, more hopeful light. Maybe.
“Perhaps she was partly right.”
Rebecca Hart Olander
Thank you for reading and responding, Barry! I really appreciate your time and thoughts.
Thank you,
Rebecca
Rebecca Hart Olander
Thank you so much, Marjorie, for reading and for reaching out to say so. That was such a powerful story – I love that so many writers responded in their own ways to the singular story, making it not so singular after all. I was honored to have my poem in the book FOR LOVE OF ORCAS (wanderingaenguspress.com), an anthology about the Southern Resident orcas, Chinook salmon, and their ecosystem, which benefits The SeaDoc Society in support of their efforts to save these two endangered populations and their habitat. My piece swims amidst many other poetic tributes to this mother and her calf, and orcas in general, and part of the beauty of the book is in the variety of response (and, of course, its mission). Thanks again for your comment, and best to you and your work!
Marjorie Moorhead
I read your poem “Tahlequah” in my Twitter wanderings. Stunning. Brought back all the sorrow and appreciation that story stirred in me. I also wrote of the mother orca mourning her daughter..but not as well as you have! I am inspired to go back to my poem for polishing though. Thank you:)
Lori Goodwin
Rebecca we went to college at the same time and your poetry is, I see, still stellar! I remember you had a locally published poem that I fell in love with that still reverberates in my brain today – it’s called Little God. One set of lines in particular still slay me-
“Ambition is a solid 9 – 5
and a book with his name all over it.
Pausing at the top of this hill he decides
against both sides.
The hill is a bathtub toy
bobbing up and down on land.
He is exposed on this terrain.
It is all he can do to make himself
horizontal, to write the lines that cross the page.”
So good!
rebecca hart olander
Lori! This is the kindest comment ever! Thanks so much for reading my work and for remembering my long-ago work. What are the chances!?! I’m floored and feeling grateful. I hope this finds you well and still writing yourself!