Tracks in the snow leading up to our house—a fox?AN GHORTA MOR, THE GREAT HUNGER
—Taylor Graham, Somerset
While waiting for the steamer, I wrote an earnest appeal
to the people of New England for aid for the starving Irish.
I trust my earnest entreaties will not be in vain.
—Elihu Burritt, Cork, February 28, 1847
Children with jaws deformed by famine,
children bent as if under the weight
of eighty years. Children without voices.
“Breathing skeletons.” Starved folk
of all ages, dead by the side of the road,
mouths stained green with grass
that couldn’t nourish them.
That winter, Elihu, you traveled
from England to document the Irish misery.
You went from village to village;
you became sick yourself. Still,
you wrote pleas to your countrymen
for famine relief. From Boston
came a warship loaded with provisions.
*
Tomorrow is St. Patrick’s Day.
We celebrate with green beer
and corned beef so tender,
it falls off the fork; sweet
cabbage boiled with potatoes.
Potatoes we don’t have to dig
from the ground ourselves.
*
At Castlehaven in a hovel surrounded
by filth, you find an orphan girl
three years old, lying on a plank. “Never
have I seen such bright, blue, clear eyes,”
you wrote, “looking so steadfastly
at nothing.”
Elihu, help us remember.
_______________________
Thanks, TG! Our sleuthing tells us those may well be fox tracks that appeared nightly when we had snow on our driveway—see what a straight line they make? Either that, or as I told TG, a burglar on a pogo stick... Anyway, if it were a fox, it would be appropriate, since Taylor Graham and her Red Fox Underground buddies will be making poetry tracks twice this weekend:
•••Tonight (Friday, 3/16), 7 PM: Brigit Truex will read with Manzanita Editor Monika Rose in El Dorado Hills at the Our House Gallery; take the Latrobe exit south and turn left into the shopping center. Brigit has a brand-new rattlechap available from Rattlesnake Press, called A Counterpane Without.
•••Tomorrow (Saturday, 3/17) at 7 PM, all six of the Red Fox Underground (Taylor Graham, Irene Lipshin, Kate Wells, Wendy Patrice Williams, Moira Magneson, and Brigit Truex—yes, again!) will read at the Cozmic Cafe in Placerville (594 Main St.), featuring photography by Irene Lipshin. The reading is presented by El Dorado Peace and Justice in the Season of Nonviolence; it will begin with a reception from 5:30-7 PM, and will be followed by refreshments. Be sure to drive up and see Irene's beautiful photographs celebrating the concept of world peace.
Also this weekend:
•••Friday (3/16), 7:30 PM: “An Honoring of The Artists / Los Artistas: Featuring a Tribute to CoMadres Artistas”: Music, poems, verbal tributes—all will be used at La Raza Galería Posada, 1024 22nd St., Sac. to honor artists who have depicted, expressed, promoted and preserved the images of the lives and ideals of the Chicano/Latino community. Especially to be featured is the extraordinary group of women artists called CoMadres Artistas, who have worked together as an artistic cooperative for many years, and whose work will be on display at the Galería: Helen Villa, Irma Lerma Barbosa, Carmel Castillo, Laura Llano, and Mareia de Socorro. This event, the annual La Noche de los Viejitos /Night of the Elders, takes place each year at La Raza Galería Posada. The tribute is being arranged by the writers’ group, Writers of the New Sun/Los Escritores del Nuevo Sol. Admirers of all visual artists are also invited to come for the Open Mic and to share your memories, observations, and the inspiration of this creative and vital group, los Artistas / the Artists. Suggested donation $5, but no one denied for lack of $$. Info: 916-456-5323.
•••Friday (3/16) is also the deadline for Six Ft. Swells Press, which is now accepting poetry submissions for the next chapbook in their famed Cheap Shots Poetry Series. This will be a themed issue featuring a collection of the best poetry that reflects those goodtime evenings of drinking, music, and streetlight love affairs, and/or the painful reality of the morning after and the vague remembrance of what may or may not have occurred in the neon night before. Either way, no apologies are given. "We believe poetry is meant to be a good time, so we are only looking for poems that explore these themes in an entertaining, fun, humorous, and/or enthusiastic manner. We will not accept sappy, depressing, AA recovery, or the evils-of-alcohol poems." Send 3-5 poems with cover letter and SASE to 417 Neal St., Grass Valley, CA 95945 or (preferably) email to Todd (Cirillo) & Julie (Valin) at sixfootswells@yahoo.com; please use “Bottoms Up” in the subject line. Poems should not exceed 40 lines; previously-published okay if indicated. Info: www.myspace.com/sixftswells
•••Saturday (3/17), 5-8 PM: A reception honoring Victoria Dalkey, art correspondent for The Sacramento Bee. Through the publication of numerous thoughtful and articulate articles, she has continued to raise awareness and interest in the arts to the benefit of artists, galleries, and museums in this region and beyond. This event will be held in the wonderful art-filled home of Burnett and Mimi Miller. Proceeds from the event will be used to purchase a brick, to be installed in CCAS, honoring Victoria's tremendous contribution to the local arts community and to support CCAS arts programming. Appetizers, fabulous conversation, and outstanding art available through silent auction by renowned artists Wayne Thiebaud, Fred Dalkey, Troy Dalton, and David Hollowell, as well as others. Guest presenters, Diana Daniels, Assistant Curator at the Crocker Art Museum, and Julia Connor, Sacramento Poet Laureate. Please send your payment in now as space is limited. Tickets are available online through Paypal at www.ccasac.org, or call (916) 498-9811 for further information. Member (per person) $50; Non-member (per person) $70.
•••Sunday (3/18), 4-5 PM: Clive Matson Poetry Reading at the Colonial Coffee & Tea Company, 5923 Clark Road, Suite A, Paradise. Phone: 530-877-6949.
•••Monday (3/19), 7:30 PM, Sacramento Poetry Center, HQ for the Arts, 25th & R Sts., Sac. presents Ricardo Sternberg and Stephen Yenser. Richardo Sternberg was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1948 and moved to the United States with his family when he was fifteen. He received a B.A. in English literature from the University of California, Riverside and a M.A. and Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from UCLA. Between 1975 and 1978, he was a Junior Fellow with the Society of Fellows at Harvard University. His poetry has been published in magazines such as The Paris Review, The Nation, Poetry (Chicago), Descant, American Poetry Review, The Virginia Quarterly and Ploughshares. Vehicule Press (Montreal) published The Invention of Honey (1990, republished 1996), Map of Dreams (1996) and McGill-Queen's University Press published Bamboo Church (2003, republished 2006). Cyclops Press released a CD of his readings, Blindsight, in 1998.
Stephen Yenser is author of Blue Guide (University of Chicago Press, 2006) and The Fire in All Things (which was chosen by Richard Howard to receive the Walt Whitman Award in 1993). He has also published a collection of essays, A Boundless Field: American Poetry at Large (University of Michigan Press, 2002), as well as The Consuming Myth: The Work of James Merrill (1987) and Circle to Circle: The Poetry of Robert Lowell (1975). With J. D. McClatchy, he edited James Merrill's Collected Poems (2002), Collected Novels and Plays of James Merrill (2003), and The Changing Light at Sandover (Knopf, 2006). He is professor of English at the University of California, Los Angeles.
_______________________
Joyce Odam and Pat D'Alessandro to be honored:
The County Board of Supervisors will be awarding Snake-Pals Joyce Odam and Patricia D'Alessandro with Lifetime Achievement Resolutions on March 20 at 2 PM. They will be presented in the Board chambers located on the first floor in the County building on 700 H St. Sac. Please come if you'd like or if you can. At any rate, please feel free to pass on this information to anyone who might want to come and support them. Joyce has two chapbooks out from Rattlesnake Press, and Pat will be releasing one next December. Both poets have been published in Rattlesnake Review from the beginning, including the new issue, and Joyce serves the Snake as Formalist-in-Residence.
_______________________
TG confesses to a current obsession with Elihu Burritt:
OLIVE LEAVES AT THE OLD SODA WORKS
—Taylor Graham, Somerset
There are words to be spoken
with the living tongue and earnest heart
for great principles of truth
and righteousness.
—Elihu Burritt
Olive Leaves you called those leaflets from the tree
of peace, sent to newspapers and left in trains
and railway stations, where you hoped to reach
your countrymen with reasons against war.
Did your olive leaves make it this far west, Elihu,
to this 49er ice-and-soda works in Old Hangtown,
this enterprise rooted in abandoned shafts
where men mined for gold?
So close to Civil War, were you still
sending forth your hopeful Leaves in 1859,
when John Pearson raised these walls
of Mariposa slate and rhyolite?
So far away, so near in time and place —
in this Season for Non-Violence, we paste our poems
on the old stone walls, our questions
about right and righteousness.
Iraq, Darfur, Guantanamo, the broken Buddhas.
Our own words, but a message you would understand,
Elihu. The absurdity of oppression and war,
the natural grace of peace.
_______________________
—Medusa
Medusa encourages poets of all ilk and ages to send their POETRY, PHOTOS and ART, as well as announcements of Northern California poetry events to kathykieth@hotmail.com (or snail ‘em to P.O. Box 762, Pollock Pines, CA 95726) for posting on this daily Snake blog. Rights remain with the poets. Previously-published poems are okay for Medusa’s Kitchen, as long as you own the rights. (Please cite publication.)
