"As a writer weaned on Longfellow, Dickinson and Frost in an era when computers were barn-sized and the Internet not even a blip on any supergeek's radar screen, I've long been linearally entrenched. To write a poem adaptable to the permutations possible online in which readers choose the direction the poem will take was challenging – and intriguing. It helped that I remembered reading Whitman's Leaves of Grass. Only the first time did I read his magnum opus from beginning to end. Afterwards, I'd plunge in seeking particular passages or sequences. Remembering that freed me. So did the metaphor of a watershed that arose in mid-stream. I Dream of Darwin was like a watershed with a few tributaries feeding into an overall geography. So I dove in and splashed around. What fun to swim in the non-linear!"                                 ~ Karla Linn Merrifield

Eve Anthony Hanninen: Did you feel constricted by the form, pattern or format of your project requirements, or did you find it stimulating, provoking? Karla Linn Merrifield: To take up this challenge, I chose the option that required me to write three different endings about a single destination. But how? After days of thinking, it came to me: I'd invent three characters. Some readers will follow the tale of a creationist run amok, others that of a tortoise-reared wild-child, and others that of a scientist who falls in love with her subjects. How liberating! The hardest part was slogging through 75+ pages of background on creationism, a topic fairly unfamiliar to me and a repugnant one for a Darwinian-like naturalist. EAH: Do you feel collaboration is an effective method for stimulating growth in students? And do you personally enjoy collaboration with other writers? KLM: As someone who teaches writing to college freshmen, I've tried various peer-group exercises that get students working together. These sessions are quite animated and productive for my young writers. They've taught me that collaboration has surprising dividends, making me a believer. Since, I've collaborated with several poet-friends; one is now writing a renga with me. I've collaborated with poet-photographers and am working on a project with an artist for an artworks-poetwords exhibit. Also, I took The Centrifugal Eye challenge to test another variation on collaboration that I could include in a talk about poetic collaboration that I'm giving to a local poets organization in May. Indeed, collaboration stretches the imagination and dares us to try new approaches, styles, voices. It's a trip! Karla Linn Merrifield holds a Master's of Arts in Creative Writing from State University of New York College at Brockport, (Brockport, NY). She has had poetry published in publications such as CALYX; The Kerf; Redactions, Texas Poetry Journal; Bluelines; Earth's Daughters; Negative Capability; Paper Street; as well as in many anthologies, including Doorways: Families, Friends and Survivors of September 11th Reflect on Living with Loss and Beyond Katrina. In fall 2004, FootHills Publishing published Midst, a collection of her nature poems and in April '06 issued THE DIRE ELEGIES: 59 Poets on Endangered Species of North America, a poetry anthology that she edited. A new book, Godwit: Poems of Canada, will be published by FootHills in September 2007. She teaches writing at SUNY Brockport and is poetry editor to Sea Stories, the new literary-artistic journal of Blue Ocean Institute. Contact Karla Karla Linn Merrifield - 2007

I Dream of Darwin

	Attention, time traveler, You have been naturally selected for this original voyage. Recline your seat into a primal position: mutable, unstable as any other species. Unfasten your seatbelt of restraining piety. Prepare to meet thy remaking with blue-footed boobies alongside.                 1     Catapulting toward flightless cormorants                         "'Cause that's the way God made them, dammit all!"                 2     Convene with pink flamingos                         "Is this for real, mommy?"                 3     The ability to submit to tortoises                         "More properly called Geochone elephantopus."

	My breath is a passport of admission; my blood, warm as it is, pulses into December; my heart plunges into the confluence of five wild currents. I fly me to the Equator off Ecuador, one of the last six billion of the Hominidae, catapulting toward flightless cormorants, readying to land.

Karla Linn Merrifield - 2007

	My breath is a passport of admission; my blood, warm as it is, pulses into December; my heart plunges into the confluence of five wild currents. I fly me to the Equator off Ecuador, one of the last six billion of the Hominidae, catapulting toward flightless cormorants, readying to land. I prepare also to get down on all my fours with marine lizards, and slip into Earth's embryonic waters, rebirthed. Now I lay me down upon volcanic rock, lash-licked by Pacific waves, in the crucible, sun- and salt-bathed among sea lions. I get me to that fabled archipelago of isolations for finches to convene with pink flamingos in hidden lagoons.

Karla Linn Merrifield - 2007

	My breath is a passport of admission; my blood, warm as it is, pulses into December; my heart plunges into the confluence of five wild currents. I fly me to the Equator off Ecuador, one of the last six billion of the Hominidae, catapulting toward flightless cormorants, readying to land. I prepare also to get down on all my fours with marine lizards, and slip into Earth's embryonic waters, rebirthed. Now I lay me down upon volcanic rock, lash-licked by Pacific waves, in the crucible, sun- and salt-bathed among sea lions and seals. I get me to that fabled archipelago of isolations for finches to convene with pink flamingos in hidden lagoons. Because I am one Homo sapiens sapiens, I have the capacity to learn new languages; I know galápago means turtle, like mother to all. A female, I acquire the ability to submit to tortoises, choose the eldest male specimen. With him, I come out of my shell.

Karla Linn Merrifield - 2007

(Blue-footed Booby photographed by Karla Linn Merrifield, 2007; Blue-footed chorus lines designed by E. A. Hanninen.)

Contemporary Poetry With An Eye Towards Resistance


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