Executive Overview
In the contemporary literary landscape, poems that successfully bridge the chasm between physical geography and psychological interiority are exceptionally rare. This week, The Missouri Review bridges that gap with clinical precision and lyrical grace by naming Lucy Biederman’s striking new poem, "Cannon Beach," as its official Poem of the Week.
Rooted in the atmospheric gloom of the Pacific Northwest and heavily influenced by the structural ghosts of Wallace Stevens, Biederman’s latest work is an intricate meditation on isolation, ecological stewardship, memory, and the strange, recurring loops of mortality. The poem transforms a coastal landscape into a theatre of the mind, where yellow-clad officials patrol the precipice of existence and the world itself feels perpetually on the verge of erasure.
Biederman, an acclaimed Chicago-based writer, essayist, and educator whose previous accolades include the Vine Leaves Press Vignette Collection Award for The Walmart Book of the Dead, brings a distinctive cross-genre sensibility to her poetry. Her work has consistently populated the pages of premier literary journals, including Poetry, Bat City Review, Sixth Finch, and Ploughshares.
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This feature package explores the anatomy of "Cannon Beach" through an exhaustive examination of its literary lineage, the rich contextual tapestry provided by the author’s own notes, its engagement with modern and modernist aesthetics, and an appraisal of Biederman’s expanding footprint within American letters.
Detailed Chronology: The Genesis of a Coastal Elegy
To understand how "Cannon Beach" materialized on the page, one must trace a developmental timeline spanning over a year of intellectual fermentation, accidental cultural collisions, and classroom serendipity.
Phase 1: The Incubation at the Pacific Edge
The conceptual seeds of the poem were sown during a physical pilgrimage to the real-world Cannon Beach—a jagged, mist-shrouded littoral landscape on the Oregon coast. For Biederman, a writer native to and shaped by the expansive, flat freshwater horizon of the Great Lakes, the sheer verticality and oceanic drama of the Pacific edge proved disorienting.
"It was an alien place that I, a person of the Great Lakes, had been confused, horrified, and interested to find myself at," Biederman recalls.
This initial shock of encountering an unfamiliar ecosystem—where towering sea stacks pierce cold August mists and tide pools harbor delicate, vulnerable marine life—remained dormant in her subconscious for months.
Phase 2: The Scholarly Catalyst
The intellectual spark that activated these memories arrived via an Annulet Linkages Lecture. Biederman attended a presentation where poet and scholar Zach Savich read from and discussed his book A Field of Telephones (53rd State Press, 2025). Savich’s work, ostensibly a scholarly meditation on the poetic philosophies of Theodore Roethke, deliberately fractures traditional academic inquiry, employing poetic ellipses to reveal alternative modes of human knowing. Significantly, the emotional climax of Savich’s book converges on a conceptual version of Cannon Beach.
Biederman carried the conceptual weight of Savich’s lecture for over a year, allowing the intersection of Roethke’s ecological mysticism and Savich’s structural ellipses to merge with her own memories of the Oregon coast.
Phase 3: The Musical Interlude and the Classroom Desk
The creative tipping point occurred during an ordinary commute. While driving to teach her college writing courses, Biederman listened to a track by contemporary folk-rock artist Zach Bryan, which happened to feature a lyric referencing Cannon Beach: "They covered all the songs that were best left alone."
The atmosphere of the song, combined with the momentum of her daily academic routine, provided the necessary friction to set her pen in motion. Walking into her classroom, Biederman began writing alongside her students.
Phase 4: Archival Interventions and Workshop Refinement
As the draft took shape, Biederman noticed the spontaneous emergence of Wallace Stevens’ vocabulary—words like sky, sea, and afternoon began populating the lines. Recognizing a kinship with Stevens’ preoccupation with reality and imagination, she began carrying his Collected Poems in her backpack as a mobile touchstone.
By the end of the academic semester, the draft had solidified. Before its selection by The Missouri Review, the poem underwent rigorous peer review within Biederman’s writing workshop circle, benefiting from the critical feedback of fellow poets and scholars Kathy Goodkin, Karen Kilcup, Jess Cory, Ruth Hoberman, and Jennifer Whitaker.
Supporting Context & Metrics: The Literary Architecture of "Cannon Beach"
Textual Analysis of the Poem
Cannon Beach
After Stevens
Everyone was wearing a yellow raincoat
in the cold August mist
at the edge of the world, the worldthat lives as you live,
speaks as you speak.
The mist muzzled sound.The mist existed
between every one thing
and every other.All afternoon
officials roamed in the mist,
separate as separate can be.They wanted nobody
to stand on an anemone.
To go out into the mist like this,here in the home of nobody I know,
was like starting and starting
again and againmany times,
many times over,
but with dying.All afternoon the mist.
Everyone was wearing a yellow raincoat,
but only in my memory.Hey, that’s an anemone,
officials in yellow raincoats said to adults,
and, to kids, whoa, that’s alive!That rock you’re standing on
in the cold August mist
at the edge of the world.Such a cliffy mist-ridden edge of world
was nothing
I’d thought of before.The world as word
played all afternoon on the gramophone,
but no one uses those anymore.The waves pulled back from the shore,
back into the sea’s sky’s mist,
where nothing exists,in nobody I know’s home.
Stop. Said the officials, muzzled by mist,
stop standing on that rock you’re standing on.
Thematic Matrix and Metrics
| Literary Dimension | Analytical Description | Primary Influences / References |
|---|---|---|
| Aesthetic Framework | Modernist pastiche blended with contemporary confessional lyricism; focus on epistemological limits. | Wallace Stevens, Zach Savich |
| Core Motifs | Ecological preservation, estrangement, audio-visual muffling by fog, recursive temporal loops. | Pacific Northwest geography, Great Lakes contrast |
| Stylistic Devices | Repetition, italics for intertextual echo, abrupt tonal shifts (lyrical vs. colloquial dialogue). | "Hey, that’s an anemone" / Wallace Stevens |
| Authorial Background | First-year writing instructor, college access professional, vignette and poetry author. | College of DuPage, The Walmart Book of the Dead |
Official Statements and Authorial Insights
In her official Author’s Note provided to The Missouri Review, Lucy Biederman elaborates on the intricate web of inspirations that breathed life into the piece:
"The seed of this poem was planted in me when I listened to Zach Savich read from and speak about his wonderful book A Field of Telephones… A Field of Telephones is a scholarly book about Theodore Roethke, but it pokes ellipses in what it knows, turning itself into poems again and again to show other ways of knowing."
Biederman also acknowledges the vital communal structures that sustain her writing process, offering praise to her colleagues:
"Thank you always to my reliably brilliant poetry workshop, Kathy Goodkin, Karen Kilcup, Jess Cory, Ruth Hoberman, and Jennifer Whitaker."
Future Outlook: Lucy Biederman’s Expanding Literary Horizon
The selection of "Cannon Beach" as The Missouri Review‘s Poem of the Week highlights an important phase in Lucy Biederman’s literary career. Having firmly established her voice in both prose (with notable appearances in Ploughshares and wigleaf) and poetry (anchored by her award-winning 2017 collection The Walmart Book of the Dead), Biederman continues to synthesize academic research, classroom pedagogy, and observational lyricism.
As she balances her roles in college access and freshman writing instruction at the College of DuPage in Chicago, her ongoing engagement with contemporary critical theory and poetry—evidenced by her deep dives into Stevens, Roethke, and Savich—signals that larger, structurally ambitious poetic projects are likely on the horizon. Readers and critics alike will be watching closely to see how this synthesis of Great Lakes pragmatism and Pacific Coast existentialism manifests in her forthcoming work.
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