Danyen Powell
Danyen Powell was born in
Sacramento, California in 1952. He was raised by his father and
mother along with four brothers. He attended local schools,
graduated, and went to San Diego State College, then to
Sacramento State College. In 1977, he started a construction
business with his father. He now runs that business with his
son, Joel.
Danyen’s poetry has been included in a variety of publications,
such as Brevities, The Poets’ Guild, Poetry Depth Quarterly,
Chrysanthemum and Rattlesnake Review. He was also the
featured poet in Pudding Magazine, Issue 38, in 1998.
In 2000, Danyen won the Ad
Schuster Annual Citation for outstanding poetic excellence at
the 74th Annual Poets Dinner for his poem, “Pantoum of the
Oncology Ward”. His work has also been included in The
Sacramento Anthology: One Hundred Poems, which was developed
as part of the Sacramento Poet Laureate Program in 2001.
Rattlesnake Press published Anvil, a collection of his
poems, in April, 2004.
Danyen has also been the
facilitator of the Sacramento Poetry Center’s weekly poetry
workshop for the past several years. He currently resides with
his wife, Betsy, in Davis, California and can be reached at
danyen@att.net.
Danyen Powell builds a secret garden by words, which is the
labyrinth of unknown human darkness. He tries to find the
way out with great passion, but meanwhile he indulges in details
of the darkness leading him to be lost. We will explore
complexity in his almost minimized forms.
- Bei
Dao
Danyen Powell Poems
AS IN A PARTING OF FRIENDS
inside day is burning
in the gaps in the barn wall
dust motes spin
like whole worlds
hours pass
and the page
of a scorching narrative
begins to erase
MARINA’S END
Carquinez Strait, CA
Stars slosh in your rib cage,
Brother.
My hand
cleats the halyard,
a full spinnaker...
I raise a toast
to that cheap red wine—
to that moonlit, glass sliver
by the known
and the unknown sea.
WORMWOOD
the encapsulated-self
a beginning an end
a population of plagues
how we long to be
individual
more than dust—holes
in a plank
inhabitants
of a measuring stick
a lost harmonic
brittle wind...
we ate and ate—wormwood
like recorded history
layer upon layer crisscross
and overlap—
the earth compresses
and compresses—
our very molecules become
strata...
wormwood—
our manmade lives—some
like cathedrals
—others
graves clawed by hand
MARINA
boats scattered
broken now vessels for weeds
a dock on stilts
walks out over the sand
sand mounded by an hourglass again and again
as the wind plays a halyard
frayed and pulled by the earth at one end at the other end sky
where a black palm tree leans against the sun
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