A native of Seattle, Kathryn Rantala now finds herself on the Columbia Plateau, in the Inland Empire, in Spokane, near the Palouse. A mossed and gloomy Pacific Northwesterner, she has published poetry and prose for more than 30 years, beginning with Spring Rain, a venerable Seattle journal. Her books include:
- The Dark Man, 1974, a chapbook, Longhouse Press, Seattle, reprinted in 2000 (available from the author)
- Missing Pieces, Ocean View Press, Denver, 1999
- The Plant Waterer, Ravenna Press, 2006
- Traveling With the Primates, Ravenna Press, 2008
- As If They Were a Basket, a chapbook, Ravenna Press, 2008
- A Partial View Toward Nazareth, Casa de Snapdragon Press, Albuquerque, 2010
She has two poetry collections currently in progress: The Finnish Orchestra, and In The State I'm In.
Her short story, Metropolitana, won the Lit Pot Press Award in 2003. Among other honors, she has been a screener for the William Stafford Prize, a reader for the Washington Poetry Association Annual Competition, and a lyricist for Erik Satie.
She founded and edits Ravenna Press with Cooper Renner and Harold Bowes, the journal The Anemone Sidecar and The Ravenna Hotel and is on the team of editors for The Planet Formerly Known As Earth. The book of her life will one day be titled: Omnivory.
Scenes From Her Life
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“Distance in the Palouse is stark and soft. The reach goes farther and farther from the eye; nothing new in it but the wind. It could be that those old silt dunes stretch so far that they outpace the soul. When she would stand in the rain forests of the Pacific Northwest, the wet reflections always turned her inward. Here, in these vast rolling fields, a part of her self wanders out of sight. She hopes to retrieve it before the snow.”(from A Partial View Toward Nazareth)
Samples
- from The Finnish Orchestra
- Gymnopedie No. 1
- Metropolitana
- My Jacket
- Selections
- In Hartmann Hall
- An Appreciation of The Plant Waterer by Norman Lock
She may be reached at krantala@gmail.com.
Bingen
calm of short duration
distance
broad deep rapids over rocks
the stanchions
sunk
paths among the apples
grouse partridge ducks
no further business for the lithe
water under pressure
and loss
loosed and round
as sun tips mountains
snow quite close now
Maryhill that way
far the Teanaway Basalts
The suck of spun water
cedars thinned behind the butte
a trestle a raw-cut road
the utterances of birds
buffed
for late listening
at night
the narrow pins of stars
(from her collection-in-progress, In The State I’m In; the geologies of grief)
