I Am The First

I AM THE FIRST
—Paul Celan

I am the first to drink of the blue that still looks for its eye.
I drink from your footprint and see:
you roll through my fingers, pearl, and you grow!
You grow, as do all the forgotten.
You roll: the black hailstone of sadness
is caught by a kerchief turned white with waving goodbye.

—translated from the German by Michael Hamburger

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Couple of notes. Okay, four:

Not tonight, dear... On Friday, Escritores del Nuevo Sol will present an All-Spanish reading (Fausto Avendano, Betty Sanchez, Amado Nervo, Antonio Machado) at La Raza Galeria Posada, 15th & R, Sac, 7:30. $5/$3 students & members. Info: Graciela, 916-456-5323. This event will take place this FRIDAY, not Thursday as I reported earlier in the week. My posting was taken from Poetry Now, in which the reading is listed for Thursday. Please note the correction!

Regretfully, Jody Ansell, who has edited the Poetry Now calendar for a year and a half, is stepping aside. So the Sacramento Poetry Center and Poetry Now Editor Robbie Grossklaus are looking for a Calender Editor to fill the gap. Write to Robbie at dphunkt@mac.com if you're willing to take over this crucial position.

Frank Andrick says: Thursday, Sept.—tonight—writer/editor Cheryl Klein travels all the way from Los Angeles to read for us at Luna's. This is an event not to be missed. You'll go home with a head full of images and deftly-turned phrases that open into word vistas. And you'll go home (well, the first 50 of you will) with a Luna's program featuring work by Cheryl. See ya there for Cheryl Klein at Poetry Unplugged!!

Poems-For-All presents UNSPEAKABLE VISIONS OF THE BEAT GENERATION (Poetry & Conversation with Arthur and Kit Knight) this Sunday, Sept. 18 at The Book Collector, 1008 24th St., Sac., 4 pm, free. Arthur and Kit are well-known chroniclers of the poets and writers of the Beat Generation. As editors of The Unspeakable Visions of the Individual, a series of eight books, Arthur and Kit have a long and interesting history of associations with a number of Beat writers, including Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, Gary Snyder, Gregory Corso, and Herbert Huncke.


THREAD SUNS
—Paul Celan

Thread suns
above the grey-black wilderness.
A tree-
high thought
tunes in to light's pitch: there are
still songs to be sung on the other side
of mankind.

______________________

—Medusa

Medusa encourages poets of all ilk and ages to send their poetry and announcements of Northern California poetry events to kathykieth@hotmail.com for posting on this daily Snake blog. Rights remain with the poets.