Winter morning, pale sunshine. White smoke rises up in the valley, against the light, slowly taking on animal forms, against the dark wall of wooded hills behind. Menacing and peaceful forms. Probably this is the smoke of brush fires in the hollow. It might be the smoke of a burning house. Probably not a burning house. Big animal against the blue wall of the hill, a lion of smoke changing into a smoke bear. Cold, quiet morning, the watch ticks on the tale, nothing happens. The smoke dragon rises, claws the winter sunlight, and vanishes over the hills.
—Thomas Merton
___________________
Thanks to Frank Dixon Graham for the wonderful pictures of our last rattle-read that he posted on the Sacramento Poetry Center blog: click on the SPC Blog link to the right of this column! Speaking of SPC:
Sacramento Poetry Center Annual Writers Conference
•••Friday (4/3) and Sat. (4/4): SPC Writers Conference at HQ for the Arts, 1719 25th St. (at R), Sacramento. FREE. Friday night (7:30-9 PM) features William O’Daly, Libby Kovacs and Susan Kelly-DeWitt. Saturday features coffee and muffins at 9 AM, followed by workshops from 10 AM-12 PM and 1-3 PM; panel discussion til 4 PM and then a reading by Camille Dungy, Matthew Zapruder, Camille Norton. For more details or to pre-register for specific workshops, contact SPC. Workshops include:
Camille Norton:
"Confession as Conceit: Robert Lowell, Elizabeth Bishop, and the Lyric I"
Tim Kahl:
"Finding Your “Other” Voice: Using Inflection, Impersonation, and Song in Performance and to Generate Material for Poems". This workshop will explore how to use your voice as a musical instrument which will provide rhythmic and melodic structure to the poetic line. Also, we will discuss how writing poems that incorporate specific songs [pop, jazz, opera, television jingles, TV theme songs, etc.] as well as impersonation will lend themselves to a multi-vocal effect.
Susan Kelly-DeWitt:
"Truth versus Fact: The Art of Lying and Why the Poem Is Not Your Mommy".
William O’ Daly:
"Writing Odes to Our Socks: Poetry and Translation as Creation of Family".
This workshop will revisit what the translation of poetry is, what is required of the poet-translator and how we grow in the process, how translation is accomplished, and what we create when we translate a poem or book of poems. We’ll also compare three different translations of Pablo Neruda’s “Ode to My Socks,” and will shed light on some of the misconceptions surrounding the translation of poetry.
Camille Dungy:
"Didn’t mean to do that: Turn mistakes into gifts, and regain a new sense of purpose in your poems".
Matthew Zapruder:
"Collaboration Strategies in Poetry". Writing poetry, as we all know, can be a lonely, even solipsistic, artistic practice. Collaboration with other writers or artists from other disciplines is one of the best ways of getting us out of ourselves, and into other spaces, where new and exciting things can happen. In this discussion/workshop, we will talk briefly about the history of collaboration in poetry, highlighting a few particularly interesting examples; discuss various types of collaborative practice (particularly with painters, as well as with other poets); and focus on practical advice and suggestions for collaboration. Time permitting, we will try one or two collaborative exercises.
Bios:
Born in 1967 in Washington, DC, Matthew Zapruder is a widely published poet and translator, as well as the founder and Editor in Chief of the acclaimed poetry publishing house, Verse Press (now Wave Books). His first book of poetry, American Linden, was the winner of the Tupelo Press Editors' Prize, and came out in 2002. His second collection, The Pajamaist, was released by Copper Canyon in 2006. His book of translations from the Romanian, Secret Weapon: The Late Poems of Eugen Jebeleanu, was published by Coffee House in 2007. Zapruder lives in San Francisco, works as an editor for Wave Books, and teaches in the low residency MFA program at UC Riverside-Palm Desert and at the University of Houston. In May/June of 2007, he was a Lannan Literary Fellow in Marfa, Texas, and he is a recipient of a 2008 May Sarton prize from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Camille Norton is Professor of English and Chair of the Department of English at University of the Pacific in Stockton, California. Her previous awards include the National Poetry Series Award for her book, Corruption (Harper Collins, 2005), the Grolier Prize in Poetry, the Derek Bok Award for Teaching, and the Eberhardt Teacher-Scholar Award. She is coeditor of Resurgent: New Writing by Women; her recent work has appeared in Field: Contemporary Poetry and Poetics, The Colorado Review, Tiferet, Iris, Ekphrasis, The White Pelican Review, The Gail Scott Reader, and How2, an online journal of women and experimental writing. Oli's Dream, her collaboration with Jarek Kapuscinski, was performed in Finland and in Poland last summer and that she has more recent work forthcoming in The Greensboro Review and Feminist Studies. Her new book is called The Dream Canoe.
Susan Kelly-DeWitt is the author of a full-length collection, The Fortunate Islands (Marick Press) and five previous chapbooks: A Camellia for Judy (Frith Press, 1998), Feather’s Hand (Swan Scythe Press, 2000), To a Small Moth (Poet’s Corner Press, 2001), Susan Kelly-DeWitt’s Greatest Hits (Pudding House, 2003), The Land (Rattlesnake Press, 2005) and a letterpress collection, The Book of Insects (Spruce Street Press, 2003). Her most recent chapbook, Cassiopeia Above the Banyan Tree appears online as Mudlark 33 and has been released in an expanded print version by Rattlesnake Press.
William O'Daly is a poet, translator, and fiction writer. A National Endowment for the Arts Fellow, his published works include eight books of the late and posthumous poetry of Chilean Nobel laureate Pablo Neruda: World’s End (Copper Canyon, 2009), The Hands of Day (Copper Canyon, 2008), Still Another Day (Copper Canyon Press, 2nd edition, 2005), The Separate Rose (Copper Canyon, 2nd edition, 2005), The Sea and Bells (Copper Canyon, 2nd edition, 2003), The Yellow Heart (Copper Canyon, 2nd edition, 2002), Winter Garden (Copper Canyon, 2nd edition, 2002), The Book of Questions (Copper Canyon, 2nd edition, 2001), and a chapbook of his own poems, The Whale in the Web. His poems, translations, and essays have been published in a wide range of magazines and anthologies. With co-author Han-ping Chin, he recently completed a historical novel, This Earthly Life, based on the Chinese Cultural Revolution. A co-founder of Copper Canyon Press, he has worked as a college teacher, a literary and technical editor, and an instructional designer.
Author of What to Eat, What to Drink, What to Leave for Poison (Red Hen Press, 2006), Camille T. Dungy has been awarded fellowships and awards from organizations including the National Endowment for the Arts, Cave Canem, the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, and the American Antiquarian Society. A graduate of Stanford University and the MFA program at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro, she lives in San Francisco, CA, where she serves as an Associate Professor in the Creative Writing Department at San Francisco State University. Her work has appeared in The Missouri Review, The Southern Review, The Crab Orchard Review, Poetry Daily, and other publications. She is Assistant Editor of Gathering Ground: A Reader Celebrating Cave Canem's First Decade (University of Michigan Press, 2006).
Tim Kahl’s work has been published or is forthcoming in Prairie Schooner, American Letters & Commentary, Berkeley Poetry Review, Fourteen Hills, George Washington Review, Illuminations, Indiana Review, Limestone, Nimrod, Ninth Letter, Notre Dame Review, South Dakota Quarterly, The Journal, Parthenon West Review, The Spoon River Poetry Review, The Texas Review, and many other journals in the U.S. He has translated German poet Rolf Haufs, Austrian avant-gardist, Friederike Mayröcker; Brazilian poets, Lêdo Ivo and Marly de Oliveira; and the poems of the Portuguese language’s only Nobel Laureate, José Saramago. He also appears as Victor Schnickelfritz at the poetry and poetics blog/vlog The Great American Pinup (http://greatamericanpinup.blogspot.com/). His first collection is Possessing Yourself (Word Tech Press, 2009).
(Eleutheria) Liberty (Kardules, Wright) Kovacs (Libby Kovacs), Ph.D., MFT, MSN . . . is a self-actualized Greek-American octogenarian who grew up (and lived much of her adult life) between cultures. In spite of the drama and challenges, Libby led a life of admirable perseverance and courage to be all she could be. She not only changed generational patterns and went to nursing school and college at the price of being disowned by her father, but she went all the way to earn an MFT and MSN, and then at age 52, a Ph.D. She worked as a marriage and family therapist into her late seventies. On top of this, she raised three sons, sometimes single parenting, sometimes being caught in the middle with step-parent issues. And to feed her soul, for nineteen years she courageously went white-water rafting. She is the author of Liberty's Quest: The Compelling Story of the Wife and Mother of Two Poetry Pulitzer Prize Winners, James Wright and Franz Wright (Robert D. Reed Publishers)
___________________
It is necessary for me to see the first point of light which begins to be dawn. It is necessary to be present alone at the resurrection of Day, in the black silence when the sun appears. In this completely neutral instant I receive from the Eastern woods, the tall oaks, the one word "Day," which is never the same. It is never spoken in any known language.
___________________
Rituals. Washing out the coffee pot in the rain bucket. Approaching the outhouse with circumspection on account of the king snake who likes to curl up on one of the beams inside. Addressing the possible king snake in the outhouse and informing him that he should not be there. Asking the formal ritual question that is asked at this time every morning: "Are you in there?"
___________________
Today, at work in the woods, I nearly cut off both my legs. The ax kept glancing off the felled pine tree I was supposed to be trimming. It flew at my knees like a fierce, bright-beaked bird and my guardian angel had a busy afternoon fencing with the blade to keep me on my two feet. The woods were wonderful.
___________________
Evening: cold winter wind along the walls of the chapel. Not howling, not moaning, not dismal. Can there be anything mournful about wind? It is innocent, and without sorrow. It has no regrets. Wind is a strong child enjoying his play, amazed at his own strength, gentle, inexhaustible, and pure. He burnishes the dry snow, throwing clouds of it against the building. The wind has no regrets. The chapel is very cold, two die-hard novices remain there alone, kneeling, both upright, very still, no longer even pretending to enjoy or to understand anything.
—Today's prose poems are by Thoma Merton, from The True Solitude: Selections from the Writings of Thomas Merton
___________________
Today's LittleNip:
THE INSUFFICIENCY
—William Bronk
Night and day, the seasons, are as if someone
had arranged them. They were never arranged.
Oh, how marvelous the world is
and I without the strength sometimes to know.
___________________
—Medusa
SnakeWatch: What's New from Rattlesnake Press:
Rattlesnake Review: The new Snake (RR21) is out! The issue is now available at The Book Collector, and contributor and subscription copies will go into the mail this week and next—or send me four bux and I'll mail you one. Next deadline is May 15 for RR22: send 3-5 poems, smallish art pieces and/or photos (no bio, no cover letter, no simultaneous submissions or previously-published poems) to kathykieth@hotmail.com or P.O. Box 762, Pollock Pines, CA 95726. E-mail attachments are preferred, but be sure to include all contact info, including snail address. Meanwhile, the snakes of Medusa are always hungry; let us know if your submission is for the Review or for Medusa, or for either one.
Also available (free): littlesnake broadside #46: Snake Secrets: Getting Your Poetry Published in Rattlesnake Press (and lots of other places, besides!): A compendium of ideas for brushing up on your submissions process so as to make editors everywhere more happy, thereby increasing the likelihood of getting your poetry published. Pick up a copy at The Book Collector or write to me and I'll send you one. Free!
NEW FOR MARCH: Rattlesnake Press is proud to present a new chapbook from Norma Kohout (All Aboard!!!); a littlesnake broadside from Patricia Hickerson (At Grail Castle Hotel); and a new issue of Rattlesnake Review (the Snake turns 21)!
COMING IN APRIL: Wednesday, April 8 will be our FIFTH ANNUAL BIRTHDAY PARTY/BUFFET at The Book Collector, featuring a SpiralChap of poetry and photos from Laverne Frith (Celebrations: Images and Text), a littlesnake broadside from Taylor Graham (Edge of Wildwood), and Musings3: An English Affair, a new blank journal of photos and writing prompts from Katy Brown. That’s at The Book Collector, 1008 24th St., Sacramento, 7:30 PM.
And April 15 is the deadline for the second issue of WTF, the free quarterly journal from Poetry Unplugged at Luna's Cafe that is edited by frank andrick. Submission guidelines are the same as for the Snake, but send your poems, photos, smallish art or prose pieces (500 words or less) to fandrickfabpub@hotmail.com (attachments preferred) or, if you’re snailing, to P.O. Box 762, Pollock Pines, CA 95726. And be forewarned: this publication is for adults only, so you must be over 18 years of age to submit. Copies of the first issue are at The Book Collector, or send me two bux and I'll mail you one.
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, or any other day!): 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.
