Timber Curtain occupies a space between ramshackle and remodel. It
starts with the demolition of a house--Richard Hugo House, the Seattle
literary center where Frances McCue worked, lived, and mourned her
husband. From there, McCue's poems spiral out to encompass icebergs,
exorcisms, the refugee crisis, and the ethics of the place-myths we
create for ourselves. The speaker is plainspoken, oracular, wry,
indicting, and hopeful. Like the Seattle skyline, poems erase and
recombine into a landscape forever saturated with ghosts. Several poems
will be central in McCue's upcoming (2018) documentary Where the House
Was.
From "The Wind Up"
The city erasing itself and the building
where I find you, if I could find you,
comes into focus, then out. I'm pointing
to the site where you worked, the once-was
place. In that gesture, a person could
feel local. I could stand outside that shop
and look up to where we loved each other.
Frances McCue is a poet, writer, teacher, and arts instigator. From
1996-2006, she was the founding director of Richard Hugo House in
Seattle and is currently a Senior Lecturer at the University of
Washington. She has published four books, two of which have been
finalists for the Washington State Book Award in History/General
Nonfiction, and another of which won the 2011 Washington State Book
Award in Poetry. Currently, McCue is producing Where the House Was, a
documentary film about the demolition of the Richard Hugo House building
in Seattle.
