IN CELEBRATION OF SAILING
—Barbary Chaapel, Buckhannon, WV
Come sail with me on Erie waters
To the shackled snap of slatted sails,
Roiling downwind motion,
To cheese and cracker time.
Come sail with me from Ohio,
The stillmorning breakwater,
Where we drift past fogbound barges,
Only dipper ducks awake.
Come sail with me to the West Harbor Light.
Fifty miles out, a ship.
We ask what name,
Where bound.
Come sail with me to Rondeau Bay
On my undulant Snow Goose.
To make a foreign port
Is to be Magellan.
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Thanks, Barbary! Barbary Chaapel is a poet-sailor returned home from 7-1/2 years of living aboard the 30-ft. sailboat, Snow Goose, to the mountains of her birth in West Virginia. She is the author of No Name Harbor: Poetry of Barbary Chaapel, and Journey of the Snow Goose, and, just published this September, her second poetry collection, Estuary. See the latest Rattlesnake Review (#19) for more of Barbary's poetry.
Also on today's menu is a timely poem about fire on Angel Island from Sibilla Hershey, and a cat poem from Allegra Silberstein. Midnight tonight's the deadline for our Seed of the Week giveaway: cats. Send me a poem you wrote about cats (kathykieth@hotmail.com or P.O. Box 762, Pollock Pines, CA 95726) and I'll send you a free copy of Moira Magneson's new chapbook, He Drank Because.
This weekend in NorCal poetry:
•••Friday (10/17), 7:30-9 PM: The Other Voice, sponsored by the U.U. Church of Davis, is honored to present poets Deborah Thomas and Ray Coppock. Readings are held in the library of the church located at 27074 Patwin Road, Davis. Refreshments and Open Mike follow the featured readers, so bring along a poem to share. [See last Monday's post for bios.]
•••Friday (10/17), 7 PM: Poetry at Raven's Tale in Placerville will feature Albert Garcia and Joshua McKinney. A short poetry open-mic follows (signup before the featured readers). Raven's Tale bookstore is located at 352 Main St., Placerville. There is no charge.
•••Friday (10/17), 6:30 PM: 31st annual Arts Awards Celebration (“Starry Night”) in Stockton at the Bob Hope Theatre. Among those receiving awards are David Humphreys, for Outstanding Achievement in Literary Arts. Info: 209-937-7488.
•••Saturday (10/18), 8 PM (doors open at 7:30): The Poet’s Voice: A Special Reading at Luna’s Café, 1414 16th St., Sacramento featuring Neeli Cherkovski, Bill Gainer, S.A. Griffin, Ann Menebroker and A.D. Winans, hosted by B.L. Kennedy. $7 at the door. Info: 916-441-3931.
•••Saturday (10/18), 2 PM: Poems: Eros & Thanatos: Death and Desire. Lillian Vallee and Lee Nicholson will read at the McHenry Museum Theatre, 1402 I St., Modesto. Free; open mic will follow. Info: Cleo Griffith, (209) 543-1776 or cleor36@yahoo.com/. [See last Monday's post for bios.]
•••Saturday (10/18), 7 PM: Roan Press and Underground Books present Brad Buchanan, who will be reading some poems from his new book, Swimming the Mirror. Underground Books, 2814 35th St., Sacramento. Brad is the editor of Roan Press, an operation that he co-founded with his wife, Kate Washington, food writer for Sacramento News & Review, Sunset Magazine and Via. Roan Press will be publishing 1-2 books per year, including poetry, fiction, essays, and memoirs; they are currently open for submissions.
•••Monday (10/20), 7:30 PM: Sacramento Poetry Center presents Dan Bellm, Terry Ehret and Gilliam Wegener of Sixteen Rivers Press at HQ for the Arts, 1719 25th St., Sacramento. Open mic after. Dan Bellm’s third book of poetry, Practice, came out from Sixteen Rivers Press in March 2008. His first, One Hand on the Wheel, launched the California Poetry Series from Roundhouse Press; his second, Buried Treasure, won the Poetry Society of America’s DiCastagnola Award and the Cleveland State University Poetry Center Prize. His work has appeared in Poetry, Ploughshares, Threepenny Review, Best American Spiritual Writing, and Word of Mouth: An Anthology of Gay American Poetry. He is also a widely published translator of poetry and fiction from Spanish. He lives in San Francisco.
Terry Ehret is a poet and teacher, as well as one of the founders of Sixteen Rivers Press, a nonprofit, shared-work publishing collective representing poets of the San Francisco Bay Area watershed. She has published three collections: Lost Body (1993), Translations from the Human Language (2001), and most recently Lucky Break (2008). Literary awards include the National Poetry Series, the Commonwealth Club of California Book Award, and the Nimrod/ Hardman Pablo Neruda Poetry Prize. In 1997, as the writer-on-site at the Oakland Museum of California, she created a poetry audio tour for the Gallery of California Art; and from 2004-2006, she served as Sonoma County Poet Laureate. She has taught writing at San Francisco State and Sonoma State Universities, California College of the Arts, Santa Rosa Junior College, and with the California Poets in the Schools Program. She currently leads private workshops in Sonoma County, California, where she lives with her family.
Gillian Wegener is the author of The Opposite of Clairvoyance, published by Sixteen Rivers Press in 2008. She’s had poems published in numerous journals, including Runes, English Journal, americas review, and In the Grove. A chapbook, Lifting One Foot, Lifting the Other was published by In the Grove Press in 2001, and she was awarded top prizes by the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Foundation for 2006 and 2007. Wegener works as a junior high English teacher in California’s Central Valley. She lives with her husband and daughter in Modesto.
Coming Up at SPC: Friday, October 24, 7:30 PM: Katy Lederer and Rebecca Morrison.
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HOLY JOY ON THE PROMONTORY
—Barbary Chaapel
Johnny hauled the lobsters we will eat this eve.
Anchored and furled for the nonce,
Sun still warming our hair and skin,
We stretch sinew and tendon.
Mary brings cloth, crust, butter.
We slake the grape, we feast,
Retell our day: alewives, blues, foreign brown sail on the horizon.
Nod, slacken, stumble the steps to light candles.
Waves pock and fizz shore rocks below as we kneel east,
Beg blessings from the moonshined sea-of-us-all.
The moonshined sea-of-us-all, pewter and phosphate,
As the big waves climb into bed with us,
Wet our dream skulls to a seal-like gleam.
The dreamtide turns,
Awaken, we, to the invasion of fogwet horn.
Dawn: rain gear, all silent grumps
Until the hot coffee hits our teeth.
A steady hand to guide her through the straits,
Of Thee I Sing thrums, chugs again
To the open sea-of-us-all.
__________________
HONORING SPIRIT
—Barbary Chaapel
Trees alight, Red Bud bursting,
A certain shade, purplemagenta,
Before they sprout green.
Over the Cumberland Gap
Glory on the mountainside.
One hundred years ago
The Indian, Hawk In Flight,
Looked with his physical eyes.
This day, aloft, he guides me.
I hear he liked/likes
To spear fish, is expert
At seeing beyond the sun’s sparkle.
__________________
FIRE ON ANGEL ISLAND
(For Ian W.)
—Sibilla Hershey, Davis
I see on TV
A fire is burning
Out of control
On Angel Island.
Sixteen years ago
You waited for me
Dressed in white shirtsleeves
On the steps of
Great Western Bank.
We had not met
In two decades
But a spark had survived.
I picked you up
And transported you
To Angel Island.
On the island
Drunk with sea air
And scent of dry pines
We ignited a blaze
That scorched and spread
And burned, and burned.
It is official now:
Angel Island
Has burned to the ground
And you have been buried
Already three years
On the South Island
Of New Zealand.
__________________
MY QUEENLY CAT
in one effortless leap
ascends to the table where I write,
sits on her haunches and
for a moment quietly surveys my work
then bats her paw at my moving pen.
I bat back.
My queenly cat showing her disdain
stretches out to the edges of my paper
and in one fluid movement
rolls indolently on her back
delighted with her sensual self
looks at me
knows who’s boss:
no need of crown, she raises the tip
of her tail in pointed exclamation.
I laugh.
What’s my scribbling
to one aristocratic twitch
of her royal scepter tail.
—Allegra Silberstein, Davis
__________________
Today's LittleNip:
If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn't brood. I'd type a little faster.
~Isaac Asimov
__________________
When cats and dogs trick-or-treat
—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 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.......!
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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.
