It's the Ants, You See...

SEPTEMBER AGAIN
Despair has its own calms.
—Dracula by Bram Stoker

Morning light changes, takes
on greys, fog lingers over
asphalt, just the slightest
gauze wavering. My daily
hikes slow to weekly;
instead of vertical climbs,
(gorging on stolen
blackberries), I’m sleeping-in,
reading a mild novel about
vampires. I’ve never liked
being bitten against my
will, new friends with long
canines; even staying up all
night has lost its appeal. Too
little daylight brings all the old
sadnesses foreword, lined in
pairs and marching past like
trained monkeys. My animal
body, autumn’s disinterested
limbs, all wrapped with yesterday’s
newsprint, the words left blurred
in fog’s settling. So little desire
to be touched, for breech of
skin, for immortality.

—Colette Jonopulos, Eugene, OR

______________________

Thanks, Colette! She took mercy on Medusa and sent in a poem, as did Brad Hamlin. Together, the two poems bookend the shifting of the months:


GHOST WIND
—Bradley Mason Hamlin, Sacramento

In Sacramento
October creeps in
with the best weather

finally not hot anymore
and not yet too cold

orange & white
pumpkins laughing
against your door

red, brown, yellow leaves
crisp
crunch under
rake

giving way to the chill
that's coming—

you've got your coat on again,
feels fine to have that force field
as the autumn brings
the urgency

of other people's thoughts
the whispers
inside your ear canals
and it's okay

you know
it's all right, you're haunted,
but you've always
been that way.

____________________

Thanks, Brad!

Medusa will be taking a wee break; it's the ants, you see... [see below]. In her absence, you have some assignments: (1) send poems; (2) sign up for the Sac. Poetry Center Writers Conference Oct. 7-8 (write to Robbie Grossklaus at dphunkt@mac.com for a form); (3) send more poems; (4) go through Rattlesnake Review #7 and get responses ready for some of the columns in there, like Taylor Graham's and Katy Brown's; (5) send even MORE poems. And maybe go to a reading, too:

All are invited to come hear Indigo Moor, featured poet at the PoemSpirits’ first fall reading this Sunday (10/2), 6:00 pm. A true bi-coastal poet, Indigo has become known for his writing and his presentation, both in Northern California and along the Boston-New York area. He was a 2002 recipient of a Cave Canem Writing Fellowship, a finalist for the 2005 T.S. Eliot Prize awarded by Truman State University, and the 2005 winner of the Vesle Fenstermaker Poetry Prize for Emerging Writers. Co-host Nora Staklis will offer a brief presentation on Enheduanna, a Sumerian princess and the earliest known author in world literature, some of whose writings survive on cuneiform tablets. Stay for our open mic and refreshments. We invite you to bring a favorite poem to read. Location: Unitarian Universalist Society of Sacramento; 2425 Sierra Blvd., Sac. (This is 2 blocks north of Fair Oaks Blvd, between Howe and Fulton Avenues.) Info: Tom Goff, Nora Staklis (481-3312) or JoAnn Anglin (451-1372).

And Monday (10/3), Ilya Aminsko will be featured at HQ (25th & R Sts., Sac) at 7:30, hosted by the Sacramento Poetry Center.

Medusa will be back Wednesday (10/5).


MEDUSA
—Kenneth Fearing

A man is a maze of ants in dark endeavor.
What did the ants do with Medusa's head?
They stood on her brow, sweating beads of lead,
And pried up her nose, with their need for a lever.
The way an ant is valorous and clever
Is in his deep bowels; they never get fed.
And a maze of ants in the dark fields of dread
Are eating their Medusas down forever.

There may be one exception to that rule.
In vines of crooked lightning a hushed fool
May see lost roads that skirt his memory.
He hears old portals vibrate windily,
And listens back to them, locked as a vow.
This is the time he hears them shut...now, now.

______________________

By the way, the October Snakebytes, if you got it, has a mistake: littlesnake broadside #16 is by IRENE LIPSHIN, not Lynn Lipshin, as it says. Arghhhhhhhhh...

—Medusa (here we come, Sammie! Hang onto your wigs and keys!)

Medusa encourages poets of all ilk and ages to send their poetry and announcements of Northern California poetry events to kathykieth@hotmail.com for posting on this daily Snake blog. Rights remain with the poets.

Like a Leather Mini-Skirt

SHE PUBLISHES HERSELF

with shameless effrontery: flaunts
her naked scribblings

like a leather mini-skirt: long red
nails: publishes raw words about

her ex and her step-kids and
that aging hippie next door: favorite

addictions and how her mother
wouldn’t let her shave her legs: pays

for the paper and cranks up the copy
machine to show herself off without

the benefit of cheesecloth: no censor
here to blue-pencil her meanderings,

her random ricochets—reckless
flashing of those sharp red nails…

—Kathy Kieth, Fair Oaks

_________________________

You might as well change the dial if you don't want to hear about Kathy Kieth today. Since nobody else will send me poems...

Today would've been my dad's 95th birthday. Our relationship was mixed, but we did spend one good night together in the hospital shortly before he died, him stoned on legal pharmaceuticals, me stoned on lack of sleep:


WAITING FOR DAYLIGHT
—Kathy Kieth

Addled by drugs, my father is
a handful for the night
nurse, but settles when I sit
with him. Still, he fiddles

with tubes, tries to re-arrange
the imposements of a hospital
bed. Hoping to distract, I trigger
old memories: it works; nurses

withdraw into their own shadowy
midnight of charts and carts, slick
dark hallways... He points out
a big black dog on the foot

of his bed: visitor I'm not ready
to see: hound that waits with us
for tomorrow, for the decisive
scalpel of daylight, for bright sun

to flood this room with his new
family. Meanwhile we hold
hands, talk about our old life,
about the three of us before

my mother died. And the black dog
listens, waits with us: now and then
lifting its huge, dark head...

(Previously appeared in Poetry Now, October 2003)

_______________________

As I mentioned before, Medusa and I have been dealing with burn-out issues. Yesterday was therapeutic: saw several poetry friends, who soothed the beast with the panache that poets sometimes have, whether they know it or not. Plus the Snake won his wily self an award from Sacramento News and Review! Last year those folks were kind enough to crown the wee Snakelets "Best Poetry for Children"; this year we got "Best Small Poetry Press". Just because I'm so indulgent today, I shall reprint the description here:

"Just as there is no shortage of fine poets in the area, there's no shortage of small poetry presses doing quality work; among them are Penn Valley's R.L. Crow and Stockton's Poet's Corner Press. But first among equals is the incredibly, impossibly active Rattlesnake Press, headquartered in Fair Oaks. In addition to publishing Rattlesnake Review, a literary journal; Snakelets, one of the nation's few poetry journals for children; and Vyper, a literary journal aimed at teens, Wrangler-in- Chief Kathy Kieth and her staff manage to turn out a couple of well-made poetry chapbooks every month. Although we're not really fans of the "spiralchap" format (using spiral binding and full-sized pages), the smaller books are lovingly designed, artisanal books worthy of becoming keepsakes. They showcase some outstanding local poets. Watch for chapbook-release parties and readings on the second Wednesday of the month at The Book Collector, 1008 24th Street, Sac."

This is most excellently cool; thanks, SN&R!!!

Back to my friends:


MURMURS IN THE KITCHEN
(for Frannie-Alice)

Yellowing windowshades muzzle
a hot summer day: muffle
brassy July sun that slants against
peeling linoleum. Two grey heads

bend over knife nicks in a wooden
table: murmur the worn-out secrets
of old women as stiff fingers curve
around chipped cups: grasp at

the soft flesh of each other's words:
embrace the slim gossip of this
gathering twilight... Yellowing
shades fold the room in liquid

amber: wash faded tile bronze, as
the murmurs scatter across crowded
drainboards: bounce with a ping off
the cooling stove: roll along base-

boards and under dented pans: finally
come to rest: curl up in the china
cabinet alongside those few choice
pieces left behind by somebody's

grandmother, somebody's mother,
somebody's aunt...

_______________________

Deadline for Snakelets has been extended to OCTOBER 10; please see what you can do to get more kid-poems to me by then (ages 0-12).

I see Molly Fisk still has openings in her Internet October Boot Camp. People speak highly of this chance to write like a dervish for a short period of time: "The October Boot Camp is coming up, October 16-21, in case your fall schedule has room for a harvest of new poems. Space is limited, so let me know as soon as you can. (http://www.poetrybootcamp.com)"

SnakePal Irene Lipshin of the notorious Red Fox Poets in Placerville sends me this link to Garrison Keillor's Writers Almanac website, which posts poetry on a daily basis: writersalmanac.publicradio.org.

One final whipped-cream/cherry-on-top indulgence for kk: I have two chaps available at The Book Collector, and a new (free) broadside: Way Too Much Sky.

Here's me in burnout:


WOLF-CHILD
—Kathy Kieth

She has two tiny fangs embedded
in her jowls: sharp little needles

that sink into outstretched flesh, leave
bloody tracks on unsuspecting

hands. Raised by her wolf-mother,
she can't trust bare hands: snarls

against the perversity of humans: their
naked reachings and their strange pink

hairless bodies. So, one by one, she
carefully unwinds her days, dressed

in her apron, pacing her suburban
house: listens to the aching in her jaws

as the wind howls someplace faraway,
over the snowy mountains...

___________________________


—Medusa (and thanks, Colette Jonopulos, for the kind words on the Tiger's Eye blog August 27—click on link to the right to see it)

Medusa encourages poets of all ilk and ages to send their poetry and announcements of Northern California poetry events to kathykieth@hotmail.com for posting on this daily Snake blog. Rights remain with the poets.

Dragons & Drunken Flies/Poets

RAIN
—Kenneth Fearing

Dragons love the world in rain.
They crawl among the watery feet
Of its sheered cliffs in coats of chain,
Catching glimpses of blazing scales
Through shifting pockets in the discreet
Grey rain. They love to stand and look
On Saracens locked in holy wars,
Waving crimson scimitars.
More do they love to twist their tails
And stare in through a window-pane
At a man bent over a printed book,
Drinking from a crystal flagon.
But nothing is like the dragon's joy
At seeing a portrait of a dragon
Crawling in rain, catching sight,
Through mist, of blazing scales that stain
The watery cliffs, watching the fray
Of Saracens with scimitars bleeding,
Staring, in ecstasies that pain,
Through blurred windows on a man reading,
On portraits of dragons who crawl away
Helpless with wonder in the rain.

________________________

Just a reminder to get signed up for the Sac. Poetry Center Writers Conference Oct. 7-8 (the weekend after this one!) at HQ, 25th & R Sts., Sac. Handy sign-up forms are available from Poetry Now Editor Robbie Grossklaus (dphunkt@mac.com). Sacramento does not have enough day-long workshops, to my way of thinking, and this is definitely a step in the right direction! Hopefully, we will have more of these in the future.

I don't know how many cyber-journals are based in Sacramento, but here's one: LitVision, "the free-range rooster of creative writing", edited by Patrick Simonelli. Lively, colorful, it's an interesting combination of prose and poetry from around the country. Check it out.


BRACELET
—Kenneth Fearing

Return to me now,
For I am a thousand arms
Spread out to you like an open fan;
A thousand gargoyles whose stone mouths
Will twist into shadowy smiles
When you return.
Walk in my night,
Far among the taut strings
Of my veins, that will tremble with sound.
And in my brain, panel'd with broad mirrors,
Be blood-red sparks by thousands
That walk and walk.

_______________________

THE DRUNKEN FLY
—Kenneth Fearing

Sounds at night
Are only bats that fly
Among the lofts of darkness
Through broken rooms
Where stars are chips of fallen lime,
Bleached and dry.
But sounds are nothing:
Old drowned boats
Crawl around the harbor bed
And go up the sky,
Barking, with throats
Choked by fog and dread.

Only silence lives at night,
Silence and fear,
With something warm as melody
Ringing through distant streets
I cannot go near.
Cannot, for the winds that play
Around and through and over me
As though I were a shred of straw
Blown down an alley-way.

Then there is nothing, any more
But rags and bits of glass in corners,
And the sound of dust
Softly raining on an iron door.
Then there is nothing, and no one,
The people are gone
Like an army that has rolled on
Over deep canyons choked with men.

________________________

BUSINESS AS USUAL
—Kenneth Fearing

This is the poet
Who wrote the sonnet
And was paid three dollars
And sixty-five cents.

This is the artist,
The man who has drawn it
(For twenty-five bucks)
A margin of nymphs—
The nymphs in the sonnet
That earned three dollars
And sixty-five cents.

Here is the printer
Who published the page
(Clearing upon it
A hundred or so)
Of nymphs, and the sonnet
That earned three dollars
And sixty-five cents.

This is the empty
Bottle of gin
That cost three dollars
And sixty-five cents
That enabled the poet
To write the sonnet
That earned three dollars
And sixty-five cents.

_________________________

—Medusa (who dearly wishes she could clear a hundred or so a page...)

Medusa encourages poets of all ilk and ages to send their poetry and announcements of Northern California poetry events to kathykieth@hotmail.com for posting on this daily Snake blog. Rights remain with the poets.

I'm Afraid You'll Find Me Out...

HENRY BY NIGHT
—John Berryman

Henry's nocturnal habits were the terror of his women.
First it appears he snored, lying on his back.
Then he thrashed and tossed,
changing position like a task fleet. Then, inhuman,
he woke every hour or so—they couldn't keep track
of mobile Henry, lost

at 3 a.m., off for more drugs or a cigarette,
reading old mail, writing new letters, scribbling
excessive Songs;
back then to bed, to the old tune or get set
for a stercoraceous cough, without quibbling
death-like. His women's wrongs

they hoarded and forgave, myterious, sweet;
but you'll admit it was no way to live
or even keep alive.
I won't mention the dreams I won't repeat
sweating and shaking: something's gotta give:
up for good at five.

________________________

Hidden Passage Poetry Reading is coming up tomorrow (9/28) from 6 to 7 p.m. at Hidden Passage Books, 352 Main St. in Placerville. It's an open-mic read-around, so bring your own poems or those of a favorite poet to share, or just come to listen and gaze at the skeleton under the floor. We hope to see you there!

In the mood for a longer road trip? This coming Thursday (9/29) is the monthly Writers Read Poetry Reading in Ukiah. This month we are honored to have poet Cynthia Bryant here, Poet Laureate of Pleasanton. The location is new this month; it will be hosted at Colored Horse Studios. For those of you inland who haven't yet had a chance to visit Colored Horse Studios, here's how to find us:

780 Waugh Lane, located midway between Talmage and Gobbi (on the Gobbi side, turn at the intersection with the Kelly Moore Paint Store). We have a six-space parking lot in front, park there till it's full, then there is street parking. The driveway is lined with wine barrels, an easy visual landmark. Phone: 707-462-4557.

Featured Reading starts at 7 pm, open mic is at 8:15. Suggested donation: $5;
supported in part by Poets & Writers. Info: Theresa Whitehill at theresa@coloredhorse.com, or www.coloredhorse.com/WritingPoetry/Writing.html


OLD MAN GOES SOUTH AGAIN ALONE
—John Berryman

O parakeets & avocets, O immortelles
& ibis, scarlet under that stunning sun,
deliciously & tired I come
toward you in orbit, Trinidad!—albeit without the one

I would bring with me to those isles & seas,
leaving her airborne westward thro' great snows
whilst I lapse on your beaches
sandy with dancing, dark moist eyes among my toes.

______________________

Howzabout some Berryman Dream Songs?

14
Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so.
After all, the sky flashes, the great sea yearns,
we ourselves flash and yearn,
and moreover my mother told me as a boy
(repeatingly) 'Ever to confess you're bored
means you have no

Inner Resources.' I conclude now I have no
inner resources, because I am heavy bored.
Peoples bore me,
literature bores me, especially great literature,
Henry bores me, with his plights and gripes
as bad as achilles,

who love people and valiant art, which bores me.
And the tranquil hills, & gin, look like a drag
and somehow a dog
has taken itself and its tail considerably away
into mountains or sea or sky, leaving
behind: me, wag.

__________________

101
A shallow lake, with many waterbirds,
especially egrets: I was showing Mother around,
An extraordinary vivid dream
of Betty & Douglas, and Don—his mother's estate
was on the grounds of a lunatic asylum.
He showed me around.

A policeman trundled a siren up the walk.
It was 6:05 p.m., Don was late home.
I askt if he ever saw
the inmates—'No, they never leave their cells.'
Betty was downstairs, Don called down 'A drink'
while showering.

I can't go into the meaning of the dream
except to say a sense of total loss
afflicted me thereof:
an absolute disappearance of continuity & love
and children away at school, the weight of the cross,
and everything is what it seems.

_______________________

365
Henry, a foreigner, lustful & old,
bearded, exasperated, lay in bed
cursing his enemies.
He loved his friends with a thick love, them to hold
to him in all his bad times, which were rife.
Henry living & dead

was full of friends & foes: he had no team-spirit.
He lashed the lapses of those who were to inherit.
He sank back exhausted.
Grimy dreams wore him out. He woke half-sane
& screamed for stronger drinks. Open the main!
Pour, if necessary, drinks down him.

I, Henry Pussy-cat, being in ill-health
& 900 years old, begin & cease,
to doubt.
When my old friend complained to my older friend
'Why don't you come see me more often?'
'I'm afraid you'll find me out.'

__________________________

—Medusa

Medusa encourages poets of all ilk and ages to send their poetry and announcements of Northern California poetry events to kathykieth@hotmail.com for posting on this daily Snake blog. Rights remain with the poets.

Happy Birthday, Tom!

MORNING AT THE WINDOW
—T.S. Eliot

They are rattling breakfast plates in basement kitchens,
And along the trampled edges of the street
I am aware of the damp souls of housemaids
Sprouting despondently at area gates.

The brown waves of fog toss up to me
Twisted faces from the bottom of the street,
And tear from a passer-by with muddy skirts
An aimless smile that hovers in the air
And vanishes along the level of the roofs.

_______________________

Today is Thomas Stearns Eliot's birthday. I spent part of the summer reading Painted Shadow by Carole Seymour-Jones, which is mostly about Vivienne and Tom's marriage, so the Eliots are very much on my mind. It's nothing like the movie, by the way...

Tonight Stephen Sadler reads at HQ (25th & R Sts., Sac), 7:30 pm, hosted by Sac. Poetry Center.

Thursday, the Placer County Clay Poets (Clay Poet Rodney Mott and others) will showcase their text/spoken work/ceramic work at Luna's, 1414 16th St., 8 pm, hosted by frank andrick. Info: 441-3931.

Saturday, head on down to the gorgeous California Palace of the Legion of Honor to attend the Dancing Poetry Festival, 12-4 pm. Hosted by Artists Embassy International, this annual event features dancing and music and poetry and is very colorful. Poets are chosen from contest winners: local poets who won this year include Laverne and Carol Frith, Allegra Silberstein, and Jeanine Stevens. Info and to purchase tickets: www.dancingpoetry.org.


CONVERSATION GALANTE
—T.S. Eliot

I observe: 'Our sentimental friend the moon!
Or possibly (fantastic, I confess)
It may be Prestor John's baloon
Or an old battered lantern hung aloft
To light poor travellers to their distress.'
She then: 'How you digress!'

And I then: 'Someone frames upon the keys
That exquisite nocturne, with which we explain
The night and moonshine, music which we seize
To body forth our own vacuity.'
She then: 'Does it refer to me?'
'Oh no, it is I who am inane.'

'You, madam, are the eternal humorist,
The eternal enemy of the absolute,
Giving our vagrant moods the slightest twist!
With your air indifferent and imperious
At a stroke our mad poetics to confute—'
And—'Are we then so serious?'

___________________________

—Medusa

Medusa encourages poets of all ilk and ages to send their poetry and announcements of Northern California poetry events to kathykieth@hotmail.com for posting on this daily Snake blog. Rights remain with the poets.

The Dance of Affirmation

HIDING PLACES
—Jack Micheline

There are hiding places in my room
where beautiful poems are hidden
Poems hidden away in boxes
on sheets of brown paper
Poems of spirit and magic
workers hands hidden in boxes
beautiful thighs
there are blue skies hidden in my room
dolphins and seagulls
the heaving of breasts and oceans
there are skies in my room
there are streets in my room
there are a thousand nights hidden in boxes
there are drunks in my poems
there are a million stars on the roof of my room
all hidden away in boxes
there are steps down side streets
there is a crazed eye of a poet in my room
there are old Arabs exploring the desert near Escalon
there are sparrows and bluebirds and wildcats in my room
there are elephants and tigers
there are skinny Italian girls in my room
there are letters from Peru and England
and Germany and Russia in my room
There are the steps of Odessa in my room
the Volga river in my room
there are dreams in the night of my room
there are flowers
there is the dance of affirmation in my room
the steps of young poets carrying knapsacks full of poems
there are the Pictures of an Exhibition in my room
Moussorgsky and Shostakovich
and Charlie Mingus in my room
Composers and painters all singing in my room
all hidden away in boxes
one night when the moon is full
they will come out and do a dance

________________________

—Medusa

Medusa encourages poets of all ilk and ages to send their poetry and announcements of Northern California poetry events to kathykieth@hotmail.com for posting on this daily Snake blog. Rights remain with the poets.

Ah, Youth!

SLAMDANCING TO THE BLUES
—David Lerner

there's a sadness that's
better than love
it fell in the air
the other night

little girl face
with a mind as wild as Egypt

she reads all the high-class
sex literature
the pornography of Miller
even the later novels of Rechy
now into the novelization of
Liquid Sky
and The Apocalypse Culture

during the days she
takes off her clothes to
Tom Waits and the Dead Kennedys
at a theatre on Market
while the customers finger their crotches
and tip paper money

she said, "How do I look?"
and I told her she looked like
a 14-year-old beatnik with an
IQ of 200

she wasn't sure she like that
she has invented herself so well
she's not sure she can
escape

I know that song

__________________________

Today and tomorrow (9/24-25), Sac. Poetry Center will have a booth promoting poetry at the Reading Celebration at Fairytale Town, 10-4 pm: Local authors, illustrators, theatre performances, book-making and other crafts, and a children's book exchange. Admission is $4; free for kids 2 and under or park members. (Also free if you bring a new/gently used children's book.) I never did get an answer to my question yesterday, though, about whether FTTown was making an exception to their usual rule of no adults allowed without a child in tow, so be forewarned—you may not get in unless you can rent a kidlet.

Speaking of which—don't forget the looming deadline for SNAKELETS: OCTOBER 1 (a week from today). Send poems from kids 0-12 to kathykieth@hotmail.com ASAP. Next VYPER deadline, for young poets 13-19, is November 1.

Stephen Sadler will be reading at HQ (25th and R Sts., Sac) Monday at 7:30 pm for Sac. Poetry Center.


BLASTED YOUTH
—David Lerner

blasted youth in black
blasted youth looks good in black
hot black

blasted youth doesn't care in this special way
that charms you
only reads the obituaries and the
ads

blasted youth is cold with feeling
blasted youth is sexy
death dressed in the wind and
ready to go anywhere

blasted youth doesn't understand ideals
when it was born they were already
cartoons

blasted youth believes in
the paradise of the single second
the long night of the flesh
the terrible hunger for ecstasy

blasted youth is wild with fragile purpose

the way it moves with grace through
poisoned water
forgetting nothing

blasted youth will die trying
and there are
worse things to die of these days

______________________

—Medusa

Medusa encourages poets of all ilk and ages to send their poetry and announcements of Northern California poetry events to kathykieth@hotmail.com for posting on this daily Snake blog. Rights remain with the poets.

Taking the Moon in Your Hands

THE MOON IN YOUR HANDS
—H.D. (Hilda Doolittle)

If you take the moon in your hands
and turn it round
(heavy, slightly tarnished platter)
you're there;

if you pull dry sea-weed from the sand
and turn it round
and wonder at the underside's bright amber,
your eyes

look out as they did here,
(you don't remember)
when my soul turned round,

perceiving the other-side of everything,
mullein-leaf, dogwood-leaf, moth-wing
and dandelion-seed under the ground.

_____________________


Tonight it's Fourth Friday Poetry at the Art Foundry Gallery, 1021 R St., Sac., 8 pm. Info: www.breitpoet.com/foundry.html. Refreshments available; $5 contribution requested.

Tomorrow (9/24), 12-5 pm, if you're in the mood to travel to Berkeley, join National Book Critics Circle Award-winning poet and former US Poet Laureate Robert Hass and various musicians, artists, and environmentalists as they celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Watershed Environmental Poetry Festival at an exciting new location: the Valley Life Sciences lawn, University of California, Berkeley campus, just inside the west entrance off of Oxford Street between University Avenue and Center Street. This lush, grassy spot overlooks Strawberry Creek, and is one block east of downtown Berkeley BART. Free. Wheel chair accessible; sign language interpreted. Also featured: Brenda Hillman, Robert Hass, Kay Ryan, Joanne Kyger, Alison Hawthorne Deming, Kamau Daaood.

Tomorrow and Sunday (9/24-25), Sac. Poetry Center will have a booth promoting poetry at the Reading Celebration at Fairytale Town, 10-4 pm: Local authors, illustrators, theatre performances, book-making and other crafts, and a children's book exchange. Admission is $4; free for kids 2 and under or park members. (Also free if you bring a new/gently used children's book.) Speaking of which—don't forget the looming deadline for SNAKELETS: OCTOBER 1 (a week from this Saturday). Send poems from kids 0-12 to kathykieth@hotmail.com ASAP.

A caveat about Fairy Tale Town, though: If you read the article in the Sac Bee Metro section today, you heard about the City policy that adults cannot enter Fairy Tale Town without a child. This is supposedly to keep "predators" (that unfortunate term) from hanging out there. I made some phone calls today but couldn't find out whether this policy has been lifted for the Reading Celebration, so go out there at your own risk. Unfortunately, if this policy is upheld this weekend, the Celebration will be unavailable to childless teachers, poets, myself... Please let me know if you hear otherwise.

Also tomorrow (9/24), rattlechappers debee loyd and Karen Baker will read at the Mistlin Art Gallery (Home of the Central California Art Association), 1015 J St, Modesto, 4pm. Open Mic, too.

And if that's not enough, the circus (though politically incorrect) is in town.


EVADNE
—H.D.

I first tasted under Apollo's lips,
love and love sweetness,
I, Evadne;
my hair is made of crisp violets
or hyacinth which the wind combs back
across some rock shelf;
I, Evadne,
was mate of the god of light.

His hair was crisp to my mouth,
as the flower of the crocus,
across my cheek,
cool as the silver-cress
on Erotos bank;
between my chin and throat,
his mouth slipped over and over.

Still between my arm and shoulder,
I feel the brush of his hair,
and my hands keep the gold they took
as they wandered over and over,
that great arm-full of yellow flowers.

_______________________

[Is it just me, or is it hot in here?]


SIGIL
—H.D.

Now let the cycle sweep us here and there,
we will not struggle;
somewhere,
under a forest-ledge,
a wild white pear
will blossom;

somewhere,
under an edge of rock,
a sea will open;
slice of the tide-shelf
will show in coral, yourself,
in conch-shell,
myself;

somewhere,
over a field-hedge,
a wild bird
will lift up wild, wild throat,
and that song, heard,
will stifle out this note.

_________________________

—Medusa (Do—? You out there?)

Medusa encourages poets of all ilk and ages to send their poetry and announcements of Northern California poetry events to kathykieth@hotmail.com for posting on this daily Snake blog. Rights remain with the poets.

The Yellow Moon of Words

AUTUMN REFRAIN
—Wallace Stevens

The skreak and skritter of evening gone
And grackles gone and sorrows of the sun,
The sorrows of sun, too, gone... the moon and moon,
The yellow moon of words about the nightingale
In measureless measures, not a bird for me
But the name of a bird and the name of a nameless air
I have never—shall never hear. And yet beneath
The stillness of everything gone, and being still,
Being and sitting still, something resides,
Some skreaking and skrittering residuum,
And grates these evasions of the nightingale
Though I have never—shall never hear that bird.
And the stillness is in the key, all of it is,
The stillness is all in the key of that desolate sound.

_________________________

The equinox is upon us. Spend it at Luna's (1414 16th St., Sac, 8pm) with the poetry of Gene Avery, or see if there are still tickets at the Crest Theatre to hear Critic, Commentator and Cultural Historian Garry Wills. OR—Poetic Light Open Mic, 8-10 pm at the Personal Style Salon (2540 Cottage Way, Sac); info: John Hughes, 470-2317. OR—Evening of Poetry at Gwen's Caribbean Cuisine, 2355 Arden Way, Sac, 7pm. Info: 284-7831. That outta hold ya, poetry-wise, at least. Best to be with friends, not get too caught up in this autumn thing...


THE READER
—Wallace Stevens

All night I sat reading a book,
Sat reading as if in a book
Of sombre pages.

It was autumn and falling stars
Covered the shrivelled forms
Crouched in the moonlight.

No lamp was burning as I read,
A voice was mumbling, "Everything
Falls back to coldness,

Even the musky muscadines,
The melons, the vermilion pears
Of the leafless garden."

The sombre pages bore no print
Except the trace of burning stars
In the frosty heaven.

____________________


A POSTCARD FROM THE VOLCANO
—Wallace Stevens

Children picking up our bones
Will never know that these were once
As quick as foxes on the hill;

And that in autumn, when the grapes
Made sharp air sharper by their smell
These had a being, breathing frost;

And least will guess that with our bones
We left much more, left what still is
The look of things, left what we felt

At what we saw. The spring clouds blow
Above the shuttered mansion-house,
Beyond our gate and the windy sky

Cries out a literate despair.
We knew for long the mansion's look
And what we said of it became

A part of what it is... Children,
Still weaving budded aureoles,
Will speak our speech and never know,

Will say of the mansion that it seems
As if he that lived there left behind
A spirit storming in blank walls,

A dirty house in a gutted world,
A tatter of shadows peaked to white,
Smeared with the gold of the opulent sun.

___________________________

Good reading last night, Elsie Feliz. On my way home, I headed straight for the moon, a golden globe hanging just two inches off the horizon. Autumn, indeed.

—Medusa

Medusa encourages poets of all ilk and ages to send their poetry and announcements of Northern California poetry events to kathykieth@hotmail.com for posting on this daily Snake blog. Rights remain with the poets.

All Is Not Lost?

IN THE CAGE
—Robert Lowell

The lifers file into the hall,
According to their houses—twos
Of laundered denim. On the wall
A colored fairy tinkles blues
And titters by the balustrade;
Canaries beat their bars and scream.
We come from tunnels where the spade
Pick-axe and hod for plaster steam
In mud and insulation. Here
The Bible-twisting Israelite
Fasts for his Harlem. It is night,
And it is vanity, and age
Blackens the heart of Adam. Fear,
The yellow chirper, beaks its cage.

______________________

All is not lost! Taylor Graham writes to say that the four wayward dolphins Down South did not evacuate the planet after all [see yesterday's post], but apparently have allowed themselves to be re-captured, rather than risk life among the sharks. *sigh* We all make our choices.

I, for one, continue to live among sharks. This time it's the metaphorical shark of technology—actually, it's almost always that same rascal who stalks me—who is holding up the production of FANGS, which Robbie has done a dandy job on. Now all we have to do is get it mass-produced, which is proving more elusive than the diddling dolphins. All is not lost. We shall prevail...

While you wait, head over tonight to either The Book Collector (1008 24th St., Sac., 7:30) to hear Elsie Whitlow Feliz read from her new rattlechap, Tea With Bunya, or go to hear Jose Montoya read at South Natomas Library on Truxel Rd., 7 pm. Usually our two reading series don't conflict; this was an unfortunate convergence of the planets (my fault) that hopefully won't happen again. Sorry, B.L.

If you're of a mind to attend the SPC Writers Conference (The Poetic Experience) October 7-8, or even just the single day on the 8th, you can download the registration form from their website (www.sacramentopoetrycenter.org), or Robbie or I will send it to you.


More from Bob:


RETURNING TURTLE
—Robert Lowell

Weeks hitting the road, one fasting in the bathtub,
raw hamburger mossing in the watery stoppage,
the room drenched with musk like kerosene—
no one shaved, and only the turtle washed.
He was so beautiful when we flipped him over:
greens, reds, yellows, fringe of the faded savage,
the last Sioux, old and worn, saying with weariness,
'Why doesn't the Great White Father put his red
children on wheels, and move us as he will?'
We drove to the Orland River, and watched the turtle
rush for water like rushing into marriage,
swimming in uncontaminated joy,
lovely the flies that fed that sleazy surface,
a turtle looking back at us, and blinking.

_____________________

—Medusa

Medusa encourages poets of all ilk and ages to send their poetry and announcements of Northern California poetry events to kathykieth@hotmail.com for posting on this daily Snake blog. Rights remain with the poets.

Never Let a Vogon Recite Poetry to You

Ever read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy? The dolphins, more intelligent than humans, evacuate the earth—just leap up into the sky—right before the Vogons destroy Earth in order to build a freeway.

Did you hear about the eight dolphins, originally captive, who were found huddled together offshore after Katrina? Four allowed themselves to be captured; the other four stayed in the sea, appearing every day for a ration of fish from the humans. Now those four have disappeared—no sign of them for two days straight. Are they trying to tell us something? Did they evacuate, leap away from this troubled old globe? Or was it just the allure of freedom—did they discover they could catch their own fish without having to do matinees (four shows on Sunday)... Think about it. (The Vogons, by the way, tortured people by tying them up and reciting bad poetry to them.)

While we wait, some poems from Robert Lowell, cousin of Amy. The two of them didn't hang out much; he called Amy "big and a scandal, as if Mae West were a cousin". These are from his challenging collection, The Dolphin.


FISHNET
—Robert Lowell

Any clear thing that blinds us with surprise,
your wandering silences and bright trouvailles,
dolphin let loose to catch the flashing fish...
saying too little, then too much.
Poets die adolescents, their beat embalms them,
the archetypal voices sing offkey;
the old actor cannot read his friends,
and nevertheless he reads himself aloud,
genius hums the auditorium dead.
The line must terminate.
Yet my heart rises, I know I've gladdened a lifetime
knotting, undoing a fishnet of tarred rope;
the net will hang on the wall when the fish are eaten,
nailed like illegible bronze on the futureless future.

________________________

SYMPTOMS
—Robert Lowell

A dog seems to lap water from the pipes,
a wheeze of dogsmell and dogcompanionship—
life-enhancing water brims my bath—
(the bag of waters or the lake of the grave..?)
from the palms of my feet to my wet neck—
I have no mother to lift me in her arms.
I feel my old infection, it comes once yearly:
lowered good humor, then an ominous
rise of irritable enthusiasm...
Three dolphins bear our little toilet-stand,
the grin of the eyes rebukes the scowl of the lips,
they are crazy with the thirst. I soak,
examining and then examining
what I really have against myself.

________________________

Poets of the San Joaquin is having their annual poetry contest. Deadline is Friday, Sept. 30. The fee is only $1/poem. To download an entry form, go to www.ChaparralPoets.org/psjcontests.html. While you're looking at the website, consider joining this state-wide poetry organization, California Federation of Chaparral Poets, Inc., which has two chapters in Sacramento, puts out a monthly newsletter, and holds an annual poetry convention (which will be in Fresno for the next two years). Poets of the San Joaquin is the Modesto chapter. CFCP, Inc. also holds monthly contests (again, see the website); deadline is always the last day of the contest month. September's theme is "Fun With Numbers".


DOLPHIN
—Robert Lowell

My Dolphin, you only guide me by surprise,
a captive as Racine, the man of craft,
drawn through his maze of iron composition
by the incomparable wandering voice of Phedre.
When I was troubled in mind, you made for my body
caught in its hangman's-knot of sinking lines,
the glassy bowing and scaping of my will...
I have sat and listened to too many
words of the collaborating muse,
and plotted perhaps too freely with my life,
not avoiding injury to others,
not avoiding injury to myself—
to ask compassion...this book, half fiction,
as eelnet made by man for the eel fighting—

my eyes have seen what my hand did.

______________________

—Medusa

Medusa encourages poets of all ilk and ages to send their poetry and announcements of Northern California poetry events to kathykieth@hotmail.com for posting on this daily Snake blog. Rights remain with the poets.

A Song, A Sting, and yes—A Wing!

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant—
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth's superb surprise

As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind—

—Emily Dickinson, #1129

________________________

Bless Kate Wells—not only does she forgive me for completely leaving her poem out of the last Snake, but she sends me her kids' poetry, too! The Snake is thoroughly charmed! Please send MORE KIDS' POEMS (ages 0-12) for Snakelets; the deadline of OCTOBER 1 looms!

Busy blog today; another full week of readings:

Tonight (9/19), the Sacramento Poetry Center presents Emily Newton and Scott Petty, 7:30 at HQ (25th & R Sts., Sac.).

Tomorrow (9/20), Blas Manuel De Luna and Linda Thorell will read at Third Tuesday Poetry Series, La Raza/ Galleria Posada, 15th & R Sts., Sac., 7pm. (No open mic.) Hosted by Art and Christina Mantecon. Info: 743-5329.

Wednesday (9/21), Jose Montoya, our previous Poet Laureate of Sacramento, reads at the South Natomas Library, 2901 Truxel Rd., Sac., 7 pm.

Also Wednesday (9/21), Elsie Whitlow Feliz will read at The Book Collector (1008 24th St.) this Wednesday (9/21), from 7:30-9pm, to celebrate the release of her new chapbook from Rattlesnake Press. Entitled Tea With Bunya, this rattlechap explores Elsie’s years growing up as a Russian in San Francisco during the '50's. Refreshments and a read-around to follow; the event is free. Info: 442-9295. (Note: for this month only, the Rattlesnake Reading Series has moved from the 2nd Weds. to the 3rd Weds.)

Also debuting at the Weds. Rattle-read:

***The long-awaited FANGS I: Snake Poems from the Snake—a free anthology of all (we think) of the poems about snakes that appeared in Issues 1-6 of Rattlesnake Review. Probably...

***Two littlesnake broadsides: Territorio Nuevo by Irene Lipshin of Placerville, and Way Too Much Sky by Kathy Kieth of Fair Oaks.

Then on Thursday, you have your choice of Gene Avery at Poetry Unplugged at Luna's (1414 16th St., Sac.), 8 pm, or Pulitizer Prize Winner Garry Wills at the California Lecture Series, Crest Theatre. Tix are $23; info: 737-1300.


Couple of snake poems from Emily:

A narrow Fellow in the Grass
Occasionally rides—
You may have met Him—did you not
His notice sudden is—

The Grass divides as with a Comb—
A spotted shaft is seen—
And then it closes at your feet
And opens further on—

He likes a Boggy Acre
A Floor too cool for Corn—
Yet when a Boy, and Barefoot—
I more than once at Noon
Have passed, I thought, a Whip last
Unbraiding in the Sun
When stooping to secure it
It wrinkled, and was gone—

Several of Nature's People
I know, and they know me—
I feel from them a transport
Of cordiality—

But never met this Fellow
Attended, or alone
Without a tighter breathing
And Zero at the Bone—

(986)

____________________

Sweet is the swamp with its secrets,
Until we meet a snake;
'Tis then we sign for houses,
And our departure take

At that enthralling gallop
That only childhood knows.
A snake is summer's treason,
And guile is where he goes.

(1740)

_____________________

Well, now we know what Emmy thought of snakes...

Speaking of Emmys, and last night's awards, Emily D. has this to say about fame:


Fame is a bee.
It has a song—
It has a sting—
Ah, too, it has a wing.

(1763)

_____________________

Thanks, Emily!

—Medusa

Medusa encourages poets of all ilk and ages to send their poetry and announcements of Northern California poetry events to kathykieth@hotmail.com for posting on this daily Snake blog. Rights remain with the poets.

As Autumn Descends

To what shall
I liken the world?
Moonlight, reflected
In dewdrops,
Shaken from a crane's bill.

***

These poems today have been translated from Dogen by Steven Heine.

Late in autumn the days are cool and clear;
In the dead of night crickets are chirping
Under the crescent moon,
The cacophony of sound echoing my mixed emotions;
Here I sit, gazing up
At the Big Dipper
Slipping off to the east,
As daylight is about to break.

***

All last night and
This morning still,
Snow falling in the deepest mountains;
Ah, to see the autumn leaves
Scattering in my home.

***

Loneliness—
The essential color of a beauty
Not to be defined:
Over the dark evergreens, the dusk
That gathers on far autumn hills.

***

A heart subdued,
Yet poignant sadness
Is so deeply felt:
A snipe flies over the marsh
As autumn dusk descends.

***

Autumn's colors dripping from branches in masses of falling leaves,
Cold clouds bringing rain into the crannies of the mountains:
Everyone was born with the same sort of eyes—
Why do mine keep seeing things as Zen koans?

***

The mountain filled with leafless trees
Crisp and clear on this autumn night;
The full moon floating gently above the cluster of roofs,
Having nothing to depend on,
And not clinging to any place;
Free, like steam rising from a full bowl of rice,
Effortless, as a fish swimming and splashing back and forth,
Like drifting clouds or flowing water.

__________________

—Medusa

Medusa encourages poets of all ilk and ages to send their poetry and announcements of Northern California poetry events to kathykieth@hotmail.com for posting on this daily Snake blog. Rights remain with the poets.

Saturday is a Good Day to Go to Jail

INTERRUPTION IN THE GOOD TIME OF KAIROS
—Elsie Whitlow Feliz

Every time I start to write a poem somone
knocks at the door. They want to give

me something—usually God. I must
explain I already have God, rather

She has me, and I was busy with Her
work when they interrupted, and She's

going to get them if they don't start
moving. Oh, they say, you don't mean

that you think God is a woman? That's
when God comes to the door to stand

by me. They don't like the look in
Her eyes. We'll see you later, they say.

When Hell freezes over, God says, and
we go back to the work of writing.

_______________________

Thanks, Elsie! Elsie Whitlow Feliz will read at The Book Collector (1008 24th St.) this Wednesday (9/21), from 7:30-9pm, to celebrate the release of her new chapbook from Rattlesnake Press. Entitled Tea With Bunya, this rattlechap explores Elsie’s years growing up as a Russian in San Francisco during the '50's. Refreshments and a read-around to follow; the event is free. Info: 442-9295. Note: for this month only, the Rattlesnake Reading Series has moved from the 2nd Weds. to the 3rd Weds.

Bob Kaufman was born in New Orleans. Seems like a good time to listen to his poetry:


from JAIL POEMS
—Bob Kaufman

3
In a universe of cells—who is not in jail? Jailers.
In a world of hospitals—who is not sick? Doctors.
A golden sardine is swimming in my head
Oh we know some things, man, about some things
Like jazz and jails and God.
Saturday is a good day to go to jail.

5
Nuts, skin bolts, clanking in his stomach, scrambled.
His society's gone to pieces in his belly, bloated.
See the great American windmill, tilting at itself,
Good solid stock, the kind that made America drunk.
Success written all over his street-streaked ass.
Successful-type success, forty home runs in one inning.
This is the greatest country in the world, ain't it?
He didn't make it. Wino in Cell 3.

6
There have been too many years in this short span of mine.
My soul demands a cave of its own, like the Jain god,
Yet I must make it go on, hard like jazz, glowing
In this dark plastic jungle, land of long night, chilled.
My navel is a button to push when I want inside out.
Am I not more than a mass of entrails and rough tissue?
Must I break my bones? Drink my wine-diluted blood?
Should I dredge old sadness from my chest?
Not again.
All those ancient balls of fire, hotly swallowed, let them lie.
Let me spit breath mists of introspection, bits of me,
So that when I am gone, I shall be in the air.

_________________________

Blas Manuel De Luna and Linda Thorell will read at Third Tuesday Poetry Series, La Raza/ Galleria Posada, 15th & R Sts., Sac., this Tuesday (9/20), 7pm. (No open mic.) Hosted by Art and Christina Mantecon. Info: 743-5329.

And head over to The Book Collector, 1008 24th St., Sac. (where new Snakes await you!) tomorrow (9/18) at 4 pm for Arthur Winfield Knight and Kit Knight, well-known chroniclers of the poets and writers of the Beat Generation. Info: 442-9295.

One more from Bob Kaufman:


WOULD YOU WEAR MY EYES?
—Bob Kaufman

My body is a torn mattress,
Disheveled throbbing place
For the comings and goings
Of loveless transients.
The whole of me
Is an unfurnished room
Filled with dank breath
Escaping in gasps to nowhere.
Before completely objective mirrors
I have shot myself with my eyes,
But death refused my advances.
I have walked on my walls each night
Through strange landscapes in my head.
I have brushed my teeth with orange peel,
Iced with cold blood from the dripping faucets.
My face is covered with maps of dead nations;
My hair is littered with drying ragweed.
Bitter raisins drip haphazardly from my nostrils
While schools of glowing minnows swim from my mouth.
The nipples of my breasts are sun-browned cockleburs;
Long-forgotten Indian tribes fight battles on my chest
Unaware of the sunken skips rotting in my stomach.
My legs are charred remains of burned cypress trees;
My feet are covered with moss from bayous, flowing
across my floor.
I can't go out anymore.
I shall sit on my ceiling.
Would you wear my eyes?

______________________

—Medusa

Medusa encourages poets of all ilk and ages to send their poetry and announcements of Northern California poetry events to kathykieth@hotmail.com for posting on this daily Snake blog. Rights remain with the poets.

Happy Birthday, Laverne!

Today is Laverne Frith's birthday—our Laverne, who is a reknowned, award-winning Sacramento poet in addition to being co-editor of Ekphrasis, co-editor of Poetry Corner in Senior Magazine, past facilitator of the Sac. Poetry Center Hart Center Poetry Workshop, and the only poet in history to win the Grand Prize at the Dancing Poetry Festival twice. Wallace Stevens is probably Laverne's favorite poet, so let's have a little of that.


FLORAL DECORATIONS FOR BANANAS
—Wallace Stevens

Well, nuncle, this plainly won't do.
These insolent, linear peels
And sullen, hurricane shapes
Won't do with your eglantine.
They require something serpentine,
Blunt yellow in such a room!

You should have had plums tonight,
In an eighteenth-century dish,
And pettifogging buds,
For the women of primrose and purl,
Each one in her decent curl.
Good God! What a precious light!

But bananas hacked and hunched...
The table was set by an ogre,
His eye on an outdoor gloom
And a stiff and noxious place.
Pile the bananas on planks.
The women will be all shanks
And bangles and slatted eyes.

And deck the bananas in leaves
Plucked from the Carib trees,
Fibrous and dangling down,
Oozing cantankerous gum
Out of their purple maws,
Darting out of their purple craws,
Their spunky and tingling tongues.

_____________________

Okay, I confess I like the sly and spunky side of Stevens. Indulge me:


LAST LOOK AT THE LILACS
—Wallace Stevens

To what good, in the alleys of the lilacs,
O caliper, do you scratch your buttocks
And tell the divine ingenue, your companion,
That this bloom is the bloom of soap
And this fragrance the fragrance of vegetal?

Do you suppose that she cares a tick,
In this hymeneal air, what it is
That marries her innocence thus,
So that her nakedness is near,
Or that she will pause at scurrilous words?

Poor buffo! Look at the lavender
And look your last and look still steadily,
And say how it comes that you see
Nothing but trash and that you no longer feel
her body quivering in the Floreal

Toward the cool night and its fantastic star,
Prime paramour and belted paragon,
Well-booted, rugged, arrogantly male,
Patron and imager of the gold Don John,
Who will embrace her before summer comes.

______________________


THE PALTRY NUDE STARTS ON A SPRING VOYAGE
—Wallace Stevens

But not on a shell, she starts,
Archaic, for the sea.
But on the first-found weed
She scuds the glitters,
Noiselessly, like one more wave.

She too is discontent
And would have purple stuff upon her arms,
Tired of the salty harbors,
Eager for the brine and bellowing
Of the high interiors of the sea.

The wind speeds her,
Blowing upon her hands
And watery back.
She touches the clouds, where she goes
In the circle of her traverse of the sea.

Yet this is meagre play
In the scurry and water-shine,
As her heels foam—
Not as when the goldener nude
Of a later day

Will go, like the centre of sea-green pomp,
In an intenser calm,
Scullion of fate,
Across the spick torrent, ceaselessly,
Upon her irretrievable way.

______________________

She scuds the glitters and touches the clouds: sounds like my life (on a good day...). Stevens has a birthday coming up, too, on October 2.

And happy birthday again, Laverne! Be sure to sign up for the coming SPC Writers Conference October 7-8, where you can hear Laverne and his lovely wife, Carol, talk about the dos and don'ts of publishing. More about that later, or check www.sacramentopoetrycenter.org.

—Medusa

Medusa encourages poets of all ilk and ages to send their poetry and announcements of Northern California poetry events to kathykieth@hotmail.com for posting on this daily Snake blog. Rights remain with the poets.

I Am The First

I AM THE FIRST
—Paul Celan

I am the first to drink of the blue that still looks for its eye.
I drink from your footprint and see:
you roll through my fingers, pearl, and you grow!
You grow, as do all the forgotten.
You roll: the black hailstone of sadness
is caught by a kerchief turned white with waving goodbye.

—translated from the German by Michael Hamburger

_________________________

Couple of notes. Okay, four:

Not tonight, dear... On Friday, Escritores del Nuevo Sol will present an All-Spanish reading (Fausto Avendano, Betty Sanchez, Amado Nervo, Antonio Machado) at La Raza Galeria Posada, 15th & R, Sac, 7:30. $5/$3 students & members. Info: Graciela, 916-456-5323. This event will take place this FRIDAY, not Thursday as I reported earlier in the week. My posting was taken from Poetry Now, in which the reading is listed for Thursday. Please note the correction!

Regretfully, Jody Ansell, who has edited the Poetry Now calendar for a year and a half, is stepping aside. So the Sacramento Poetry Center and Poetry Now Editor Robbie Grossklaus are looking for a Calender Editor to fill the gap. Write to Robbie at dphunkt@mac.com if you're willing to take over this crucial position.

Frank Andrick says: Thursday, Sept.—tonight—writer/editor Cheryl Klein travels all the way from Los Angeles to read for us at Luna's. This is an event not to be missed. You'll go home with a head full of images and deftly-turned phrases that open into word vistas. And you'll go home (well, the first 50 of you will) with a Luna's program featuring work by Cheryl. See ya there for Cheryl Klein at Poetry Unplugged!!

Poems-For-All presents UNSPEAKABLE VISIONS OF THE BEAT GENERATION (Poetry & Conversation with Arthur and Kit Knight) this Sunday, Sept. 18 at The Book Collector, 1008 24th St., Sac., 4 pm, free. Arthur and Kit are well-known chroniclers of the poets and writers of the Beat Generation. As editors of The Unspeakable Visions of the Individual, a series of eight books, Arthur and Kit have a long and interesting history of associations with a number of Beat writers, including Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, Gary Snyder, Gregory Corso, and Herbert Huncke.


THREAD SUNS
—Paul Celan

Thread suns
above the grey-black wilderness.
A tree-
high thought
tunes in to light's pitch: there are
still songs to be sung on the other side
of mankind.

______________________

—Medusa

Medusa encourages poets of all ilk and ages to send their poetry and announcements of Northern California poetry events to kathykieth@hotmail.com for posting on this daily Snake blog. Rights remain with the poets.

The Bad Thing About the Dead

DIATRIBE AGAINST THE DEAD
—Angel Gonzalez

The dead are selfish:
they make us cry and don't care,
they stay quiet in the most inconvenient places,
they refuse to walk, we have to carry them
on our backs to the tomb
as if they were children. What a burden!
Unusually rigid, their faces
accuse us of something, or warn us;
they are the bad conscience, the bad example,
they are the worst things in our lives always, always.
The bad thing about the dead
is that there is no way you can kill them.
Their constant destructive labor
is for that reason incalculable.
Insensitive, distant, obstinate, cold,
with their insolence and their silence
they don't realize what they undo.

—translated from the Spanish by Steven Ford Brown and Gutierrez Revuelta

____________________________________

Angel Gonzalez is a Spanish poet, born in 1926, who is anthologized in The Vintage Book of Contemporary World Poetry, ed. by J.D. McClatchy, Vintage Books, 1996.

For local Hispanic poetry, this Friday Escritores del Nuevo Sol presents an All-Spanish reading (Fausto Avendano, Betty Sanchez, Amado Nervo, Antonio Machado) at La Raza Galeria Posada, 15th & R, Sac, 7:30. ($5/$3 students & members.) Info: Graciela, 916-456-5323. This event will take place this FRIDAY, not Thursday as I reported earlier in the week. My posting was taken from Poetry Now, in which the reading is listed for Thursday. Please note the correction!

Regretfully, Jody Ansell, who has edited the Poetry Now calendar for a year and a half, is stepping aside. So the Sacramento Poetry Center and Poetry Now Editor Robbie Grossklaus are looking for a Calender Editor to fill the gap. Write to Robbie at dphunkt@mac.com if you're willing to take over this crucial position.

More from Angel:


BEFORE I COULD CALL MYSELF ANGEL GONZALEZ
—Angel Gonzalez

Before I could call myuself Angel Gonzalez,
before the earth could support the weight of my body,
a long time
and a great space were necessary:
men from all the seas and all the lands,
fertile wombs of women, and bodies
and more bodies, incessantly fusing
into another new body.
Solstices and equinoxes illuminated
with their changing lights, and variegated skies,
the millenary trip of my flesh
as it climbed over centruies and bones.
Of its slow and painful journey,
of its escape to the end, surviving
shipwrecks, anchoring itself
to the last sign of the dead,
I am only the result, the fruit,
what's left, rotting, among the remains;
what you see here,
is just that:
tenacious trash resisting
its ruin, fighting against wind,
walking streets that go
nowhere. The success
of all failures. The insane
force of dismay...

______________________

WHATEVER YOU WANT
—Angel Gonzalez

When you have money, buy me a ring,
when you have nothing, give me a corner of your mouth,
when you don't know what to do, come with me
—but later don't say you didn't know what you were doing.

In the morning you gather bundles of firewood
and they turn into flowers in your arms.
I hold you up grasping the petals,
if you leave I'll take away your perfume.

But I've already told you:
if you decide to leave, here's the door:
its name is Angel and it leads to tears.

________________________

Thanks, Angel!

Snake update: Snake 7 is trickling off the printer; copies will be at The Book Collector tomorrow afternoon and will be going into the mail at the end of this week. FANGS I is flying through the fingers of Editor Robbie Grossklaus and is about to hit the printer; we're hoping for a 9/21 release. (This is a free anthology of snake poems from the first six issue of Rattlesnake Review.) ELSIE WHITLOW FELIZ will read to release her chapbook, Tea With Bunya, next Wednesday, Sept. 21. (Normally, rattlereads are on the 2nd Weds., but for this month ONLY this reading will be on the 3rd Weds.) Snakelets, the journal of poetry from kids 0-12, has an Oct. 1 deadline—see the Snakeblog's sidebar for addresses, e- and otherwise.

One more from Angel:


CITY
—Angel Gonzalez

Things glisten. Roof tiles rise
over the tree tops.
Almost to the breaking point, tense,
the resilient streets.
There you are: beneath the intersection
of metallic cables,
where the sun fits like a halo
complimenting your image.
Rapid swallows threaten
impassive facades. Glass
transmits luminous and secretive
messages.
Everything consists of brief, invisible
gestures for habitual eyes.
And suddenly you're not there. Good-bye, love, good-bye.
You're already gone.
Nothing remains of you. The city rotates:
grinder in which everything is undone.

—translated from the Spanish by Steven Ford Brown and Gutierrez Revuelta

_________________________________

—Medusa

Medusa encourages poets of all ilk and ages to send their poetry and announcements of Northern California poetry events to kathykieth@hotmail.com for posting on this daily Snake blog. Rights remain with the poets.

Naked Ladies

NAKED LADIES ARE DYING

in dusty fields alongside abandoned farm-
houses, where well-worn hands once planted
a few friendly faces. Late August heat

has finished short leafless lives: faded pink
bonnets bob away from searing sun, bow
to the golden grass crowded around bare

feet. Farmhouses are just as faded: porches sag
as paint peels off the dry wood. But the naked
ladies will be back when next year's sun climbs

once again into August: fresh faces will
remember those well-worn hands
planted in the past...

—Kathy Kieth, Fair Oaks
(originally published in Poetry of the People, July, 2002)

__________________________

Change of season. I drove up to Song Kowbell's idyllic retreat in Penn Valley yesterday—everything was dry and dusty and most of the naked ladies were gone. (I still have some in my yard, but the clock is ticking.) More about Song later: we're putting together her littlesnake broadside: watch for it in early October. Song will be reading with Bill Gainer and Todd Cirillo at Luna's on November 17.

littlesnake broadside #16, from Irene Lipshin, is available. It, too, will be in The Book Collector by the end of this week; pick one up for free, or send me an SASE. Here's a sample:


REVOLUTION
—Irene Lipshin, Placerville

At winter solstice
half the bed remained unwrinkled
the nightstand candle burned out.

Winter was bitter, a chilling rain
pelted the roof, ping pinging
into a wailing wind, breaking midnight silence.

By spring equinox red bud explodes magenta,
the old almond tree bursts into bloom,
I sigh relief—the world still turns.

_____________________________

Thanks, Irene! Irene is part of the lively Red Fox poets up in El Dorado County.

I received a poem from a ten-year-old yesterday for Snakelets; praise be! The deadline is Oct. 1—send poems from the wee ones (ages 0-12). And send poems from people ages 13-19 to VYPERS, deadline Nov. 1.

More about change of seasons, this one from Snakepal Amy Lowell:


SEPTEMBER, 1918
—Amy Lowell

This afternoon was the colour of water falling through sunlight;
The trees glittered with the tumbling of leaves;
The sidewalks shone like alleys of dropped maple leaves,
And the houses ran along them laughing out of square, open windows.
Under a tree in the park,
Two little boys, lying flat on their faces,
Were carefully gathering red berries
To put in a pasteboard box.

Some day there will be no war,
Then I shall take out this afternoon
And turn it in my fingers,
And remark the sweet taste of it upon my palate,
And note the crisp variety of its flights of leaves.
To-day I can only gather it
And put it into my lunch-box,
For I have time for nothing
But the endeavour to balance myself
Upon a broken world.

______________________

Thanks, Amy! Know any kid-poets who could send us poems?

—Medusa

Medusa encourages poets of all ilk and ages to send their poetry and announcements of Northern California poetry events to kathykieth@hotmail.com for posting on this daily Snake blog. Rights remain with the poets.

I Have a City to Cover With Lines

Here's a little something for Monday:

from CLEVELAND UNDERCOVERS
—d.a. levy

but that was then
NOW i am, and do not expect
tomorrow or yesterday today.
instead i write in exstacy
and when someone stops to say
"Hey, that's not true!"
i yell backwards,
"For who......and fuck rhyme."
i have a city to cover with lines,
with textured words &
the sweaty brick-flesh images of a
drunken tied-up whorehouse cowtown
sprawling and brawling on its back.

_______________________

Like a wide-eyed teenager, I've just discovered The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry, ed. by Alan Kaufman and S.A. Griffin (Thunder's Mouth Press, NY, 1999, $24.95) and am revelling in the revelations of alternative American poetry snuzzled among its pages. (Mention of locals, too, such as Ann Menebroker, D.R. Wagner, Ben Hiatt...) Whether you like the poetry or not, the history it contains, including the "mimeograph revolution" and the frontal attack on censorship policies, is something that should be required reading. To me, poetry is like music—classical, jazz, ethnic, etc.—and The Outlaw Bible has lots of jazz, rock, and headbanger in it. Check it out. Know your history, even if your ear prefers the classical. You may surprise yourself...

By the way, B.L. Kennedy (with a little help from his friends) will be sponsoring the d.a. levy tribute at HQ on Saturday, October 29.

Josh McKinney reads for SPC at HQ tonight (25th & R, Sac, 7:30). Tomorrow night (9/13) begins Chip Spann's Sutter LAMP Writing Workshop Series, 6:30-8:30 pm, six weeks, Sutter Resource Library, $10. Call Chipp for details: 916-454-6802. Wednesday (9/14) Anne Lamott (yes, Anne Lamott) gives a reading/talk to benefit the Parent/Teacher Home Visit Project, 7 pm at The Grand on 12th & J, Sac. $35. Info: Carrie Rose, 916-643-7917. Thursday (9/15) Cheryl Klein from LA at Luna's, 1414 16th St., Sac, 8 pm. FRIDAY: Escritores del Nuevo Sol presents an All-Spanish reading (Fausto Avendano, Betty Sanchez, Amado Nervo, Antonio Machado) at La Raza Galeria Posada, 15th & R, Sac, 7:30. $5/$3 students & members. Info: Graciela, 916-456-5323.

More levy:


THE BELLS OF THE CHEROKEE PONIES
—d.a. levy

i thought they were
wind chimes
in the streets at night

with my young eyes
i looked to the east
and the distant ringing
of ghost ponies
rose from the ground

Ponies Ponies Ponies

(the young horse becomes
a funny sounding
word)

i looked to the east
seeking buddhas to
justify those bells
weeping in the darkness

The Underground Horses
are rising

Cherokee, Delaware, Huron
we will return your land to you

the young horses
will return your land to you

to purify the land
with their tears

The Underground Horses
are rising
to tell their fathers
"in the streets at night
the bells of Cherokee ponies
are weeping."

______________________

—Medusa

Medusa encourages poets of all ilk and ages to send their poetry and announcements of Northern California poetry events to kathykieth@hotmail.com for posting on this daily Snake blog. Rights remain with the poets.

Let the Beauty We Love Be What We Do

Seems like a good day to talk about peace.

FOLDED INTO THE RIVER
—Rumi

Your face is the light in here that makes
my arms full of gentleness.
The beginning of a month-long holiday, the disc
of the full moon, the shade of your hair,
these draw me in. I dive
into the deep pool of a mountain river,
folded into union,
as the split-second when the bat meets the ball,
and there is one cry between us.

__________________________

THE DRUNK AND THE MADMAN
—Rumi

I'm lost in your face, in your lost eyes.
The drunk and the madman inside me
take a liking to each other. They sit down
on the ground together. Look at this mess
of a life as the sun looks fondly into ruins.

With one glance many trees grow from a single seed.
Your two eyes are like a Turk born in Persia.
He's on a rampage, a Persian shooting Turkish arrows.
He has ransacked my house so that no lives here anymore,
just a boy running barefooted all through it.

Your face is a garden that comes up where the house was.
With our hands we tear down houses and make bare places.
The moon has no desire to be described.
No one needs this poetry.
The loose hair-strands of a beautiful woman
don't have to be combed.

_________________________

Lately I've been reading Rumi, and ironically enough, his work was mentioned in two ways at James Lee Jobe's reading in Davis last Friday night. James bookended his own poems with Rumi, front and back, and another gentleman (whose name escapes me) artfully recited another Rumi poem during the Open Mic. This gentleman also mentioned that a videotape featuring Rumi, read by Robert Bly, Rumi-expert Coleman Barks and others, will be shown at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Davis at 3 pm on Saturday, Sept. 17.

All you need to know to "get" Rumi is that the pronouns are interchangeable. You is I is we is God is your own spiritual self is a barefoot boy is a lover is a flyspeck. He believed we were all things and constantly transforming, and he found great joy in this. This poem sums it up:


UNMARKED BOXES
—Rumi

Don't grieve. Anything you lose comes round
in another form. The child weaned from mother's milk
now drinks wine and honey mixed.

God's joy moves from unmarked box to unmarked box,
from cell to cell. As rainwater, down into flowerbed.
As roses, up from ground.
Now it looks like a plate of rice and fish,
now a cliff covered with vines,
now a horse being saddled.
It hides within these,
till one day it cracks them open.

Part of the self leaves the body when we sleep
and changes shape. You might say, "Last night
I was a cypress tree, a small bed of tulips,
a field of grapevines." Then the phantasm goes away.
You're back in the room.
I don't want to make any one fearful.
Hear what's behind what I say.

Tatatumtum tatum tatadum.
There's the light gold of wheat in the sunh
and the gold of bread made from that wheat.
I have neither. I'm only talking about them,

as a town in the desert looks up
at stars on a clear night.

_______________________________

A few Rumi "quatrains":

(1127)
I drink streamwater and the air
becomes clearer and everything I do.

I become a waterwheel,
turning and tasting you, as long
as water moves.


(914)
Come to the orchard in Spring.
There is light and wine, and sweethearts in the pomegranate flowers.
If you do not come, these do not matter.
If you do come, these do not matter.


(82)
Today, like every other day, we wake up empty
and frightened. Don't open the door to the study
and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument.

Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

_____________________________

Seems like a very good day to talk about peace. Yesterday's war poem inspired Steve Williams:


WHAT PEACE FEELS LIKE
—Steve Williams, Portland, OR

Motionless anaconda digests
capybara for months.

Marine returns to his wife,
he has killed no enemy.

Touch green leaf’s image in pond,
feel autumn’s orange rake.

Gray whale shepherds her little one,
listens for Orca song.

___________________________

Thanks, Steve!

—Medusa (who regrets that there are no Snakes in The Book Collector yet. Shoot for Wednesday.)

Medusa encourages poets of all ilk and ages to send their poetry and announcements of Northern California poetry events to kathykieth@hotmail.com for posting on this daily Snake blog. Rights remain with the poets.

After Every War...

THE END AND THE BEGINNING
—Wislawa Szymborska

After every war
someone's got to tidy up.
Things won't pick
themselves up, after all.

Someone's got to shove
the rubble to the roadsides
so the carts loaded with corpses
can get by.

Someone's got to trudge
through sludge and ashes,
through the sofa springs,
the shards of glass,
the bloody rags.

Someone's got to lug the post
to prop the wall,
someone's got to glaze the window,
set the door in its frame.

No sound bites, no photo opportunities
and it takes years.
All the cameras have gone
to other wars.

The bridges need to be rebuilt,
the railroad stations, too.
Shirt sleeves will be rolled
to shreds.

Someone, broom in hand,
still remembers how it was.
Someone else listens, nodding
his unshattered head.
But others are bound to be bustling nearby
who'll find all that
a little boring.

From time to time someone still must
dig up a rusted argument
from underneath a bush
and haul it off to the dump.

Those who knew
what this was all about
must make way for those
who know little.
And less than that.
And at last nothing less
than nothing.

Someone's got to lie there
in the grass that covers up
the causes and effects
with a cornstalk in his teeth,
gawking at clouds.

—translated from the Polish by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh

___________________________

Catch James Lee Jobe, Susan Kelly-DeWitt and Sandra MacPherson reading at the Avid Reader in Davis tonight from Charlie McDonald's new book, El Sobrante: Selected Poems 1975-2005 (7:30) or go to the Gene Bloom tribute at The Book Collector in Sac (8 pm). Sunday you can hear Robbie Grossklaus at Barnes & Noble, Weberstown Mall in Stockton (7 pm) or go to the Open Mic at Starbucks, 1520 Del Webb Blvd., Lincoln (3-5 pm) with the Poet's Club of Lincoln/Friends of the Lincoln Library (Info: Sue CLark, 916-434-9229). And Josh McKinney of CSUS reads at SPC (HQ, 25th & R, Sac) Monday night (7:30).


UNEXPECTED MEETING
—Wislawa Szymborska

We are very polite to each other,
insist it's nice meeting after all these years.

Our tigers drink milk.
Our hawks walk on the ground.
Our sharks drown in water.
Our wolves yawn in front of the open cage.
Our serpents have shaken off lightning,
monkeys—inspiration, peacocks—feathers.
The bats—long ago now—have flown out of our hair.

We fall silent in mid-phrase,
smiling beyong salvation.
Our people
have nothing to say.

—translated from the Polish by Magnus J. Krynski and Robert A. Maguire

____________________________

—Medusa

Medusa encourages poets of all ilk and ages to send their poetry and announcements of Northern California poetry events to kathykieth@hotmail.com for posting on this daily Snake blog. Rights remain with the poets.