Skunk Cabbage
BY THE ROADSIDESKUNK CABBAGE
—Mary Oliver
And now as the iron rinds over
the ponds start dissolving,
you come, dreaming of ferns and flowers
and new leaves unfolding,
upon the brash
turnip-hearted skunk cabbage
slinging its bunched leaves up
through the chilly mud.
You kneel beside it. The smell
is lurid and flows out in the most
unabashed way, attractiing
into itself a continual spattering
of protein. Appalliing its rough
green caves, and the thought
of the thick root nested below, stubborn
and powerful as instinct!
But these are the woods you love,
where the secret name
of every death is life again—a miracle
wrought surely not of mere turning
but of dense and scalding reenactment. Not
tenderness, not longing, but daring and brawn
pull down the frozen waterfall, the past.
Ferns, leaves, flowers, the last subtle
refinements, elegant and easeful, wait
to rise and flourish.
What blazes the trail is not necessarily pretty.
____________________
I don't remember seeing skunk cabbage around here, but it was in bloom on my last trip to Oregon—how dramatic it is, growing like calla-lily-weeds in ditches along the road! I was delighted to find Mary Oliver's poem. The blossom does, however, smell like a skunk, but the Northwest Coast Indians used to use the huge leaves like wax paper, wrapping food in them for baking or preservation.
While we're talking about Oregon, yesterday's first Snake poem, God to the Snake, was by a poet I had not read before, Virginia Hamilton Adair, who published her first book of poems, Ants on the Melon, at the age of 83. I found Ants in the bookstore at Gold Beach, a town which is a bit up the coast from Brookings. The store seems to be very supportive of poets and writers in the area, devoting a rack to their substantial output. The store also carries used books, and their used poetry section upstairs is right next to two big easy chairs facing out onto the sea, with windows that can be surreptiously propped open to catch the incoming breezes. Coffee, too. An oasis, if you're ever up that way. It's right on the main highway through town.
Last night's lollapalloza of a birthday bash for the Snake was hugely attended and greatly supportive of the three readers. Thanks for all the well-wishing, both from the readers and from the humble Snake...
___________________
B.L.'s Drive-By
Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal
A novel by Christopher Moore
415 pp, $19.95
William Morrow Books
Not since Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ has there been a book or film that addresses its subject with more humor. If you are hip to Christopher Moore, then you know what I am saying. However, if you are not hip to this very talented author, then all that I can suggest is that you get your ass up from that couch and buy a copy or go down to your local library to secure one… that is if Homeland Security hasn’t already removed the book from the shelves.
_________________
Some counties have P&W money left:
Jamie Asae FitzGerald, Program Coordinator for California for Poets & Writers magazine writes: I'd like to share some information regarding Poets & Writers' Readings/Workshops program which provides grants to writers who give public readings of their work or teach creative writing workshops. We are near the end of our fiscal year (June 30, 2008), but we still have a small amount of funding available which we would like to put toward events in Central Valley counties we have yet to reach; these include Colusa, Sutter, Yuba, El Dorado, San Joaquin, Merced, and Kings. If you have a literary event planned in one of these counties, would like to plan an event or know of anyone this information would interest, please let us know. Organizations must apply for the grants on behalf of the writer(s) they are hosting. However, many writers initiate events and the application process. Guidelines and application forms can be downloaded from our Web site at http://www.pw.org/funding/. We hope you will forward this email to other writers and literary/arts professionals in your area who would find the program relevant.
Jamie Asae FitzGerald
Poets & Writers, Program Coordinator
California Office & Readings/Workshops (West)
2035 Westwood Blvd, Suite 211
Los Angeles, CA 90025
310-481-7195 phone
310-481-7193 fax
jfitzgerald@pw.org
___________________
Taylor Graham responded to Tuesday's Seed of the Week with the following. Tom Goff, on the other hand, is rhapsodizing about oranges—which, of course, do have seeds...
—Mary Oliver
And now as the iron rinds over
the ponds start dissolving,
you come, dreaming of ferns and flowers
and new leaves unfolding,
upon the brash
turnip-hearted skunk cabbage
slinging its bunched leaves up
through the chilly mud.
You kneel beside it. The smell
is lurid and flows out in the most
unabashed way, attractiing
into itself a continual spattering
of protein. Appalliing its rough
green caves, and the thought
of the thick root nested below, stubborn
and powerful as instinct!
But these are the woods you love,
where the secret name
of every death is life again—a miracle
wrought surely not of mere turning
but of dense and scalding reenactment. Not
tenderness, not longing, but daring and brawn
pull down the frozen waterfall, the past.
Ferns, leaves, flowers, the last subtle
refinements, elegant and easeful, wait
to rise and flourish.
What blazes the trail is not necessarily pretty.
____________________
I don't remember seeing skunk cabbage around here, but it was in bloom on my last trip to Oregon—how dramatic it is, growing like calla-lily-weeds in ditches along the road! I was delighted to find Mary Oliver's poem. The blossom does, however, smell like a skunk, but the Northwest Coast Indians used to use the huge leaves like wax paper, wrapping food in them for baking or preservation.
While we're talking about Oregon, yesterday's first Snake poem, God to the Snake, was by a poet I had not read before, Virginia Hamilton Adair, who published her first book of poems, Ants on the Melon, at the age of 83. I found Ants in the bookstore at Gold Beach, a town which is a bit up the coast from Brookings. The store seems to be very supportive of poets and writers in the area, devoting a rack to their substantial output. The store also carries used books, and their used poetry section upstairs is right next to two big easy chairs facing out onto the sea, with windows that can be surreptiously propped open to catch the incoming breezes. Coffee, too. An oasis, if you're ever up that way. It's right on the main highway through town.
Last night's lollapalloza of a birthday bash for the Snake was hugely attended and greatly supportive of the three readers. Thanks for all the well-wishing, both from the readers and from the humble Snake...
___________________
B.L.'s Drive-By
Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal
A novel by Christopher Moore
415 pp, $19.95
William Morrow Books
Not since Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ has there been a book or film that addresses its subject with more humor. If you are hip to Christopher Moore, then you know what I am saying. However, if you are not hip to this very talented author, then all that I can suggest is that you get your ass up from that couch and buy a copy or go down to your local library to secure one… that is if Homeland Security hasn’t already removed the book from the shelves.
_________________
Some counties have P&W money left:
Jamie Asae FitzGerald, Program Coordinator for California for Poets & Writers magazine writes: I'd like to share some information regarding Poets & Writers' Readings/Workshops program which provides grants to writers who give public readings of their work or teach creative writing workshops. We are near the end of our fiscal year (June 30, 2008), but we still have a small amount of funding available which we would like to put toward events in Central Valley counties we have yet to reach; these include Colusa, Sutter, Yuba, El Dorado, San Joaquin, Merced, and Kings. If you have a literary event planned in one of these counties, would like to plan an event or know of anyone this information would interest, please let us know. Organizations must apply for the grants on behalf of the writer(s) they are hosting. However, many writers initiate events and the application process. Guidelines and application forms can be downloaded from our Web site at http://www.pw.org/funding/. We hope you will forward this email to other writers and literary/arts professionals in your area who would find the program relevant.
Jamie Asae FitzGerald
Poets & Writers, Program Coordinator
California Office & Readings/Workshops (West)
2035 Westwood Blvd, Suite 211
Los Angeles, CA 90025
310-481-7195 phone
310-481-7193 fax
jfitzgerald@pw.org
___________________
Taylor Graham responded to Tuesday's Seed of the Week with the following. Tom Goff, on the other hand, is rhapsodizing about oranges—which, of course, do have seeds...
—Taylor Graham, Somerset
What bird has gone and left these eggs
all blue and speckled in the nest—
the specks like tar, or coffee dregs?
What bird has gone and left these eggs?
A warbler with its dainty legs,
endangered thrush with spotted breast?
What bird has gone and left these eggs
all cool and speckled in the nest?
__________________
NAVEL ORANGE
—Tom Goff, Carmichael
A skin, to the fingers much like nobled stock,
that won’t quite suit a baseball autograph…
Could elegies in sleek ink, notes on a staff
inscribe this thick rotundity? Taste the shock,
pith torn away, of tooth-diving into the wreck:
wrecked beeswings amped like bee-stung lips from flat.
(Did injections infuse these membrane slits and slats?)
Defining itself in dissolve, an acid nectar
geysers among incisors—but be careful:
invisible worker-buzz deep in each ball
prods each last honeycomb cell to sting with tang
yet keep to the sweet—“The balance, the balance!”—fearful,
since ripeness is all, of overripe downfall.
Some too-long umbilical clingers just blacken and hang.
___________________
Thanks, TG and Tom!
Today's LittleNip:
Poetry is not always words.
~Audrey Foris
___________________
—Medusa
Here's Medusa's new weekly menu of features. Contributors are welcome to submit to any and all of these!
Monday: Weekly NorCal poetry calendar
Tuesday: Seed of the Week: Tuesday is Medusa's day to post poetry triggers such as quotes, forms, photos, memories, jokes—whatever might tickle somebody's muse. Pick up the gauntlet and send in your poetic results; and don't be shy about sending in your own triggers, too! All poems will be posted and a few of them will go into Medusa's Corner of each Rattlesnake Review. Send your work to me at kathykieth@hotmail.com or P.O. Box 762, Pollock Pines, CA 95726. No deadline for SOW; respond today, tomorrow, or whenever the muse arrives. (Print 'em out, maybe, save 'em for a dry spell?) When you send us work, though, just let us know which "seed" it was that inspired you.
Wednesday: HandyStuff Quickies: Resources for the poet, including whatever helps ease the pain of writing and/or publishing. Favorite journals to read and/or submit to; books, etc., about writing; organizational tools—you know—HandyStuff! Tell us about your favorites.
Thursday: B.L.'s Drive-Bys: Micro-reviews by our irreverent Reviewer-in-Residence, B.L. Kennedy
Friday: NorCal poetry calendar for the weekend
Daily (except Sunday): LittleNips: SnakeFood for the Poetic Soul: Daily food for poetic thought, including short paragraphs, quotes, wonky words, silliness, little-known poetry/poet facts, and other inspiration. Yet another way to feed our ever-hungry poetic souls.
_________________
SnakeWatch: News from Rattlesnake Press
New in April: Ann Menebroker’s new chapbook (Small Crimes); Ted Finn's SnakeRings SpiralChap of his poetry and art (Damn the Eternal War); and Katy Brown's blank (well, not really) journal series of photos and prompts, MUSINGS (For Capturing Creative Thought).
Coming in May: Join us on May 12 for the release of Among Summer Pines by Quinton Duval; a littlesnake broadside by Stephani Schaefer; and Volume Three of Conversations, our third book of interviews by B.L. Kennedy. That's at The Book Collector, 1008 24th St., Sacramento, 7:30 PM.
Also in May: Deadline for Issue #18 of Rattlesnake Review is May 15. Free copies of Issue #17 are available at The Book Collector, or send me two bux and I'll mail you one.
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.) Medusa cannot vouch for the moral fiber of other publications, contests, etc. that she lists, however, so submit to them at your own risk. For more info about the Snake Empire, including guidelines for submitting to or obtaining our publications, click on the link to the right of this column: Rattlesnake Press (rattlesnakepress.com). And be sure to sign up for Snakebytes, our monthly e-newsletter that will keep you up-to-date on all our ophidian chicanery.
