Last week on the Poetry Chain, Pimone Triplett and Andrew Feld brought about some thoughtful praise and criticism.

This week, Triplett and Feld have chosen John Marshall to continue the chain. Here's what Triplett had to say about Marshall:

John and Christine [Deavel] have long been central to the Seattle poetry community as owners of the indispensable Open Books. John's own book, Meaning A Cloud, is startling in both language and feeling, and is written through that rare sensibility that sees no need to sacrifice one to the other.

Speaking personally, I've seen Marshall read once or twice, and I recommend listening to him read his own work. He's obviously a lifelong lover of poetry. You can read more about Meaning A Cloud here. If you haven't been to Open Books lately, you really should; it's one of those places that make me proud to live in Seattle. It's especially nice on nights that they host readings and the store is full of people.

Here is John Marshall's poem for the Seattle Poetry Chain:

Thanks to Pimone Triplett and Andrew Feld and many thanks to John Marshall. With his encyclopedic knowledge of the poetry world, it'll be especially interesting to see who he chooses for the next link on the Seattle Poetry Chain.

(Special note for the commenter who was complaining several weeks ago about the formatting of the poems. I use jpegs of the poems so that I don't screw up anyone's formatting. But you are right it's awful that seeing-impaired people can't enjoy the poetry, and so I am copying the text of the poem and inserting it into the comments of this post. It hadn't occurred to me and I apologize.)