A Whole Lotta Poetry (& Some Whimsey)

Whoa! Poetry's a-poppin' in Sacramento in October: that's fer sher! This weekend, alone, there's a huge plate that's spilling over: the SPC Writers' Conference (The Poetic Experience) this Friday and Saturday, for starters—beginning with a reading Friday night which will feature many fine Sacramento poets. Also on Friday is the Davis series, The Other Voice, featuring Carlena Wike, Sibilla Hershey and Theodore Gould (Davis Unitarian Church Library, 7:30 pm. Info: 530-753-2634). Or you can head over to the J Street Cafe in Sacramento to hear, among others, Beth Lisick, Tara Jepsen, Gene Bloom, Barbara Noble, Becca Costello, Chad Williams, Star Vaughn and frank andrick. (8 pm, Info 209-577-8007.) And that's just Friday!

Then on Saturday, The Poetic Experience continues with workshops and readings (info: 916-451-5569). Or head up to Grass Valley as Wordslingers presents Ex-USA Poet Laureate Robert Hass in a poetry workshop from 2-4 pm, and a reading at the Center for the Arts at 7:30 pm. (Info: 530-272-5812)

At 8 pm on Saturday, the same poets who read at the J Street Cafe will read at Hidden Passage Books in Placerville, 8 pm. (Info: 530-622-4540). Also on Saturday is the Patricity in Spirit in Truth open mic at Queen Sheba's restaurant, 1537 Howe Av., 3-5 pm (Info: 916-920-1020).

Or you could travel down to the Bay Area for one of the multitude of events down there, including Litquake with Jerry Brown, Daniel Handler, Armistead Maupin, Michael McClure, Amy Tan, and more (17 events, 250 authors): www.litquake.org—AND—Living Word Festival continues this weekend: an annual performance poetry festival sponsored by Youth Speaks, which in recent years has focused on pushing the genre into new creative directions: http://www.youthspeaks.org.

Then, if you're not thoroughly exhausted, Brad Buchanan reads on Sunday from his new book from Poets Corner Press, The Miracle Shirker (7 pm, Weberstown Mall in Stockton, info: 209-951-7014).

And that's just the next three days! Yikes!

Meanwhile, Sacramento Poet Jane Blue sends us a little whimsey, which I (and I suspect all of us) could certainly use right now:


PASSION
—Jane Blue, Sacramento

Today I've named myself Apassionata, Drama Queen.
Yesterday it was Bawling at the Movies.
There was a man in the newspaper, Heart
Hurts, because of ancestors' bones exposed
in the trenches dug for new commuter rails.

I would like to have a life so connected. My grandmother
asked me, "Do you think you were born
with a silver spoon in your mouth?" So I became
Born With Silver Spoon In Mouth. My mother
compared me to the Princess and the Pea.
I should have changed my name to Princess Pea Pod
but it was only later that I realized
sensitivity to that legume under the mattress
meant I was a princess. (Daddy's Lost Princess.)

At sixteen I was She Who Wears Floral High-Heeled Keds.
I was Changes With the Wind.

Now some call me Blue. I'll change my name again
to Tupelo Turning Red or Dogwood Turning Crimson.
Once I was Fall in Maryland, and Pregnant,
Drinking Gin on the Porch.

This afternoon I'm Woman Following Man Down the Street
Admiring His Ass.

From an exercise in Poemcrazy by Susan Wooldridge

________________________________

CAN'T GIVE YOU UP, COME BACK TO ME
—Jane Blue

I’m a honeydew melon, didn’t you know?
I come from a house of straw
in the melon field. They didn’t know.
They thought the walls were wood and stucco,
they thought the house would last forever,
the house of the velvet sofa
and the lady chair. I spun through the rooms
singing abracadabra. I made myself up.
I was a harvester
of words, Precambrian
equisitum, horsetail growing on river banks
full of silicon, which became good
for scrubbing pots. They didn’t know.
They lived in a contraption
of old ideas, can’t give you up. Cornflower
come back to me. They mow you down
you come back up, azure eyes in the melon field.
I would be the lady chair
that nobody sat in, I would be kick and waltz
but never march. My drum was
rapture. No one knew. Lavender
on the dresser, how secret it was.
I come from a place of secret lavender.
I’m a honeydew melon, didn’t you know?

from an afternoon with Susan Wooldridge

_______________________

Thanks, Jane!

In Snake news, Fangs #1: Snake Poems from the Snake is free at The Book Collector; the last few contributor copies go out next week. The deadline for Snakelets (the journal of poetry from kids 0-12) has been extended to the 10th; get 'em in NOW. (Joyce Koff from LA saved our bacon with a whole sheaf of poems from her students—THANK YOU, Joyce!) Vyper deadline is Nov. 1; please submit poems from teens (13-19). James Den Boer will read next Wednesday (10/12) at The Book Collector, 7:30 pm, to release his new rattlechap, Black Dog: An Unfinished Segue Between Two Seasons. Also being released that night is Song Kowbell's littlesnake broadside, Watching the Rabbit.

Anything else?

—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.