William O’Daly has translated eight books of the late-career and posthumous poetry of Chilean Nobel laureate Pablo Neruda, and most recently Neruda’s first volume, Book of Twilight, a finalist for the 2018 Northern California Book Award in Translation. All nine Neruda translations are published by Copper Canyon Press. O’Daly’s books of poems include The Whale in the Web, also published by Copper Canyon, as well as The Road to Isla Negra (2015), Water Ways (2017, a collaboration with JS Graustein), and Yarrow and Smoke (2018), the latter three published by Folded Word Press. A National Endowment for the Arts Fellow, O’Daly was a finalist for the 2006 Quill Award in Poetry and was profiled by Mike Leonard for The Today Show. A three-time Pushcart Prize nominee, his poems, translations, essays, and reviews have been published in numerous journals and as part of multimedia exhibits and performances. His essay “Creative Collisions: Poetry as a Transformative Act” was a finalist for Tiferet Journal’s 2018 Writing Contest. He has received national and regional honors for literary editing and instructional design, was a co-founder of Copper Canyon Press, and served on the board of Poets Against War. Most recently, he was awarded by the State of California for his written and editorial contributions to the California Water Plan.
a brief section from a long poem in Yarrow and Smoke:
The excesses of light recede,
and shadows grow
across the creek. In your hand,
the knife joins
dried fish and bread, bread and wild onion:
we are born again when a seed
splits inside us,
in the conch where blood
sounds its salty praise
for what we make possible tonight.
—William O’Daly, from “The Fire,” Yarrow and Smoke, Folded Word Press, 2018
| Charles Halsted attended Stanford University (BA, 1958) and the University of Rochester School of Medicine & Dentistry (MD, 1962). His distinguished career as a faculty member at the UC Davis School of Medicine (1974-2016) included teaching, clinical practice, and biomedical research. He prepared for a new career in poetry by enrolling in poetry courses at the Davis Arts Center, by taking online courses from Stanford Continuing Studies, and by attending poetry workshops. His published poems have appeared in Tule Review, Snapdragon, Medical Literary Messenger, and thirty other journals. His chapbook Breaking Eighty was published last year, and his forthcoming full-length book Extenuating Circumstances will be published this year. |
A poem from the Charles Halsted chapbook Breaking Eighty
Bombs in the Night
Tar balls on beaches, blackouts every night
meant battles at sea and German subs near shore.
My English schoolboy pen pal was taken from the sights
of bombers sowing terror on the innocents of war.
The man who pumped gas at the Pegasus sign
was arrested, tried, and convicted, a Nazi spy.
Our fathers were gone, my friend’s was killed in France
while mine, a doctor, was safe behind the lines,
sorting the sick from those too scared to fight.
I dreamed of bombs and fires across the fields,
the creatures of nearby woods in frantic flight,
and invented a ritual to shield me from fear,
to assure my father’s return, a secret rite
that endured to prevent the return of bombs in the night.
