Be For Me Like Rain

OVERLAND TO THE ISLANDS
—Denise Levertov

Let's go—much as that dog goes,
intently haphazard. The
Mexican light on a day that
'smells like autumn in Connecticut'
makes iris ripples on his
black gleaming fur—and that too
is as one would desire—a radiance
consorting with the dance.

Under his feet

rocks and mud, his imagination, sniffing
engaged in its perceptions—dancing
edgeways, there's nothing
the dog disdains on his way,
nevertheless he
keeps moving, changing
pace and approach but
not direction—
'every step an arrival'.

___________________

Big Bux!

The Sacramento Bee is asking for your personal reflections about life in the 21st century, in 300 words or less. They’ll publish one essay a week and pay the writer $50. You should “strive to make your audience feel as though you have allowed them into your personal space. Your essay will reveal how an individual or an event or another external force paved the way for some meaningful internal exploration”. Email your essay to livinghere@sacbee.com/.


This weekend in NorCal poetry:

•••Friday (10/10), 7-9 PM: Second Friday Poetry Reading at The Vox (gallery & cafe), 19th & X Sts., Sacramento, featuring James DenBoer, Andy Jones, Allegra Silberstein, Susan Wolbarst, Scott Weiss and that wascally wangler Kathy Kieth. Free. Coffee bar open 6-10 PM. Info: voxsac.com.

•••Friday (10/10), 7-9 PM: East-West Books, 2216 Fair Oaks Blvd. Sacramento presents a workshop/reading led by Tim Bellows, featuring “tips for inward travel, more joy in this life, and heart-and-soul writing techniques, including the exploration of Rumi and the divine spirit in life and in poetry.” The topic: “Death”, Magnificent Hoax of the Ages. Tim Bellows, Sierra College instructor and author of Sunlight from Another Day, will read selected recent work and Rumi poems. He’ll feature a video on Rumi, a book signing, and time for questions and discussion. Take a break with Tim and others—and with Rumi—to learn the “true revolutions” waiting in your own consciousness. Celebrate these and what Walt Whitman called “the interior life . . . of the arts.” Be sure to bring along a favorite Rumi poem to share, or bring any poem that mirrors divine spirit! $22adv/$25door. Contact 916.920.3837 or see http://www.eastwestbooks.com/calendar/special/ev20590.php
[see last Monday's post for a bio of Tim Bellows]

•••Saturday (10/11), 6-9 PM: The culmination of Sacramento Poet Laureate Julia Connor’s Poets on Deck project. The vision of this deck is to educate the public about and celebrate the history of Sacramento’s poetry community. The deck honors many of the poets and supporters who were active in Sacramento during the creation and solidification of our poetry scene. Come by and visit with Julia and see the completed deck of cards. The evening will also include an exhibit of the poets’ portraits by Sacramento artist Suzanne Johnson, and the portraits and the Poets on Deck cards will be available for purchase. That’s this coming Saturday, 6-9 PM, at the Art Foundry Gallery, 1021 R St., Sacramento, 916-444-2787. More information on the poets and the project at www.SacMetroArts.org/. The Sacramento Poet Laureate Program is a program of the Sacramento Metropolitan Arts Commission.

•••Sat. (10/11), 10-11:30 AM: Sacramento Poetry Center’s 2nd and 4th Saturday workshop, facilitated by Emmanual Sigauke and Frank Graham, located at South Natomas Community Center (next door to the South Natomas Library), 2921 Truxel Rd., Sacramento. Bring ten copies of your one-page poem. Info: grahampoet@aol.com/. Free.

•••Sunday (10/12), 3-5 PM: Lincoln poets present Voices of Lincoln Poetry Contest winners and an open mic at the new Twelve Bridges Library in Lincoln, in the Willow Room. After the feature, other poets are welcome to read up to 3 poems. Sponsored by The Friends of the Lincoln Library; Open Mic is presented by The Poets Club of Lincoln.

•••Monday (10/13), 7:30 PM: Sacramento Poetry Center presents Steve Cirrone and Michael Spurgeon at HQ for the Arts, 1719 25th St., Sacramento. Open mic after. Steve Cirrone is a professor of English at Sacramento City College and the author of Natural Venus, the sordid and hilarious childhood of the author as he struggles with self-identity against the backdrop of Mother and her very Italian family living in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. He is also the author of a play entitled The Tragedy of Dr. Gnosis.

Michael Spurgeon earned his MFA in creative writing/poetry from the University of Arizona, where he received the 1997-98 University of Arizona Poetry Center Poet in the Schools Fellowship. He is the author of two chapbooks of poetry: Prosthetic Breath & Other Poems, published by the 3300 Press in San Francisco, and Valente’s Delicate Wrist, winner of the 1998 Talent House Chapbook Competition in Talent, Oregon. Additionally, his poems have appeared in a number of journals like The Sonora Review, The 3300 Review, and The North American Review. He received a 1997 University of Arizona Poetry Center & Academy of American Poets University Activities Board Prize and a 1998 Arizona College Theater Festival Meritorious Achievement Award for Playwriting. He is currently an Assistant Professor of English at American River College, where he teaches composition, literature, creative writing, and screenwriting.

On Monday, October 20, SPC will present a reading from Sixteen Rivers Press, featuring Gillian Wegener, Terry Ehret, and Dan Bellm.

___________________

STORM WINDOWS
—Howard Nemerov

People are putting up storm windows now,
Or were, this morning, until the heavy rain
Drove them indoors. So, coming home at noon,
I saw storm windows lying on the ground,
Frame-full of rain; through the water and glass
I saw the crushed grass, how it seemed to stream
Away in lines like seaweed on the ride
Or blades of wheat leaning under the wind.
The ripple and splash of rain on the blurred glass
Seemed that it briefly said, as I walked by,
Something I should have liked to say to you,
Something... the dry grass bent under the pane
Brimful of bouncing water... something of
A swaying clarity which blindly echoes
This lonely afternoon of memories
And missed desires, while the wintry rain
(Unspeakable, the distance in the mind!)
Runs on the standing windows and away.

__________________

THE RAIN
—Robert Creeley

All night the sound had
come back again,
and again falls
this quiet, persistent rain.

What am I to myself
that must be remembered,
insisted upon,
so often? Is it

that never the ease,
even the hardness,
of rain falling
will have for me,

something other than this,
something not so insistent—
am I to be locked in this
final uneasiness.

Love, if you love me,
lie next to me.
Be for me, like rain,
the getting out

of the tiredness, the fatuousness, the semi-
lust of intentional indifference.
Be wet
with a decent happiness.

__________________

THE POSSIBILITY OF NEW POETRY
—Robert Bly

Singing of Niagara, and the Huron squaws,
The chaise-longue, the periwinkles in a rage like snow,
Dillinger like a dark wind.
Intelligence, cover the advertising men with clear water,
And the factories with merciless space,
So that the strong-haunched woman
By the blazing stove of the sun, the moon,
May come home to me, sitting on the naked wood
In another world, and all the Shell stations
Folded in a faint light.

__________________

Today's LittleNip:

NEW LOVE
—Eve Merriam

I am telling my hands
not to blossom into roses

I am telling my feet
not to turn into birds
and fly over rooftops

and I am putting a hat on my head
so the flaming meteors
in my hair
will hardly show

__________________

—Medusa


SnakeWatch: What's New from Rattlesnake Press:

October is Sacramento Poetry Month! October’s releases from Rattlesnake Press include a new rattlechap from Moira Magneson (He Drank Because) and a free littlesnake broadside from Hatch Graham (Circling of the Pack). Both are available at The Book Collector, 1008 24th St., Sacramento, or from me (kathykieth@hotmail.com), or—soon—from rattlesnakepress.com/. Rattlechaps are $6 by mail, $5 at The Book Collector.

Be sure to join us on Thursday, Oct. 30, 8 PM, when Rattlesnake Press will release not one, but two SpiralChaps to honor and celebrate Luna’s Café, including a new collection of art and poetry from B.L. Kennedy (Luna’s House of Words) and an anthology of Luna’s poets, artists and photographs (La Luna: Poetry Unplugged at Luna’s Café) edited by Frank Andrick. Come travel with our Away Team as we leave the Home of the Snake for a brief road trip/time travel to Luna’s Café, 1414 16th St., Sacramento to celebrate Art Luna and the 13 years of Luna's long-running poetry series. Who knows what auspicious adventures await us there??

And check out B.L. Kennedy’s interview with Art Luna in the latest Rattlesnake Review (#19)! Free copies are available at The Book Collector, or send me two bux and I’ll mail you one (address below). Next deadline, by the way, is November 15.

Coming in November: November will feature a new rattlechap from Red Fox Underground Poet Wendy Patrice Williams (Some New Forgetting); a littlesnake broadside from South Lake Tahoe Poet Ray Hadley; our 2009 calendar from Katy Brown (Beyond the Hill: A Poet’s Calendar) as well as Conversations, Vol. 4 of B.L. Kennedy’s Rattlesnake Interview Series. That’s Weds., November 12, 7:30 PM at The Book Collector.


Medusa's Weekly Menu:

(Contributors are welcome to cook up something for 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 kathykieth@hotmail.com or P.O. Box 762, Pollock Pines, CA 95726. No deadline for SOWs; 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 (sometimes): 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 favorite tools.

Thursday: B.L.'s Drive-Bys: Micro-reviews by our irreverent Reviewer-in-Residence, B.L. Kennedy. Send books, CDs, DVDs, etc. to him for possible review (either as a Drive-By or in future issues of Rattlesnake Review) at P.O. Box 160664, Sacramento, CA 95816.

Friday: NorCal weekend poetry calendar

Daily (except Sunday): LittleNips: SnakeFood for the Poetic Soul: Daily munchables for poetic thought, including short paragraphs, quotes, wonky words, silliness, little-known poetry/poet facts, and other inspiration—yet another way to feed our ravenous poetic souls.

And poetry! Every day, poetry from writers near and far and in-between! The Snakes of Medusa are always hungry.......!

_________________

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.