Case 5.1

Gilborn, Alice. "When the Ice Goes Out." Blueline I.I (1979): 28. SPEC F127 .A2 B58.

Rosenberg, L. M. "Blue Mountain Lake." BluelineVI.I (1984): 24-5. SPEC F127 .A2 B58.

Sheffer, Roger. "Gothics." Blueline 13 (1992):62. SPEC F127 .A2 B58.

In 1979, Alice Gilborn, founding editor, released the first issue of Blueline: “A literary magazine dedicated to the spirit of the Adirondacks”. Published at SUNY Potsdam since September of 1988, Blueline has been hugely influential in terms of the publishing of poetry about the Adirondacks (179 of the poems in my bibliography were published in Blueline). I have included some of my favorite Blueline poems in the exhibition, though picking them was extremely difficult because I loved so many.

Alice Gilborn’s “When the Ice Goes Out” was one of the first poems I read and has remained on my list of pieces to display since then. Her description of winter in the Adirondacks is spot on, though I was struck most by her use of enjambment: “…black and brittle as ice on a jig/sawed lake splitting up in May”.

Rosenberg’s “Blue Mountain Lake” is a notable extended metaphor between the mountain and the speaker’s sister, things that are seemingly nothing alike, “You do not represent/anything, you are simply what you are”.

“Gothics” by Roger Sheffer is striking in its ability to connect the author to the mountains “I was in bed making mountains with my knees…I owned the Gothics then”. Though there are shifts between the mountains in dreams and the mountains in reality, the jumps are fluid and allow nature to become something unique to the speaker.