LOVE SONG
—Denise Levertov
Your beauty, which I lost sight of once
for a long time, is long,
not symmetrical, and wears
the earth colors that make me see it.
A long beauty, what is that?
A song
that can be sung over and over,
long notes or long bones.
Love is a landscape the long mountains
define but don't
shut off from the
unseeable distance.
In fall, in fall,
your trees stretch
their long arms in sleeves
of earth-red and
sky-yellow. I take
long walks among them.
The grapes
that need frost to ripen them
are amber and grow deep in the
hedge, half-concealed,
the way your beauty grows in long tendrils
half in darkness.
________________________
Keeping Ted a Secret:
Thanks to James Lee Jobe for the following heads-up: I read in the Davis Enterprise that Poet Laureate of the United States, Ted Kooser, reads on campus at U.C. Davis Thursday, at the Wyatt Pavilion Theater, at 6:30 PM.
Medusa says: Last week it was David St. John; this week it's Ted Kooser who is not advertised in Sacramento environs. What's up with that? Did I miss an announcement or three somewhere? You'd think the University would want to sell tickets...
Thursday in Ukiah:
This Thursday (10/26), 7-9:30 PM: Colored Horse Studio, 780 Waugh Lane, Ukiah features Theresa Whitehill in its Writers Read series. A California poet, designer, and letterpress printer, Whitehill's literary work includes commissioned poetry, culinary poetry, letterpress poetry broadsides, and poetic essays. A resident of Mendocino County for over 20 years, she is well known to local audiences as an expressive performer. Appellation Magazine has published her poetic prose, and her poetry has appeared in regional California magazines and anthologies. Her literary letterpress broadsides, many produced with her husband, artist Paulo Ferreira, are in major national collections including the Getty Center for the Arts, Brown University's John Hay Library, Stanford University's Special Collections Department, the New York Public Library, the Special Collections Department of UCLA, the Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley, the San Francisco Public Library, Mills College Special Collections, and City College of San Francisco, as well as many private collections. An open mic session will follow the featured reading. Refreshments available. Donation requested. For more info: (707)275-9010 or (707)463-6989. This event is sponsored by Poets & Writers, Inc. through a grant from the James Irvine Foundation, and by Tenacity Press and Colored Horse Studio.
Watershed this Saturday:
This Saturday, Poetry Flash sponsors the eleventh annual Watershed Environmental Poetry Festival at the Berkeley City COllege Atrium and Auditorium. Featured will be poets and writers concerned about the environment, including Al Young, Lewis MacAdams, Susan Griffin, Maya Knosla, Chris Olander, Albert Flynn DeSilver, GP Skratz, and John Oliver Simon. Also featured will be young voices from River of Words, California Poets in the Schools, and Poetry Inside Out.
A Pre-Festival Creek Walk and Poetry Workshop begins at 10 AM, starting on the UC Berkeley Campus (Oxford and Center Sts.). The day will also feature literary and environmental panels, workshops and exhibits; see www.poetryflash.org for more details. The event is free, but a $25 donation will get you a letterpress broadside of Al Young's poem, "Geography of the Near Past".
_______________________
OVERHEARD
—Denise Levertov
A deep wooden note
when the wind blows,
the west wind.
The rock maple is it,
close to the house?
Or a beam, voice
of the house itself?
A groan, but not
gloomy, rather
an escaped note of
almost unbearable
satisfaction, a great
bough or beam
unaware it had
spoken.
_______________________
A CURE OF SOULS
—Denise Levertov
The pastor
of grief and dreams
guides his flock towards
the next field
with all his care.
He has heard
the bell tolling
but the sheep
are hungry and need
the grass, today and
every day. Beautiful
his patience, his long
shadow, the rippling
sound of the flock moving
along the valley.
_______________________
THE SECRET
—Denise Levertov
Two girls discover
the secret of life
in a sudden line of
poetry.
I who don't know the
secret wrote
the line. They
told me
(through a third person)
they had found it
but not what it was
not even
what line it was. No doubt
by now, more than a week
later, they have forgotten
the secret,
the line, the name of
the poem. I love them
for finding what
I can't find,
and for loving me
for the line I wrote,
and for forgetting it
so that
a thousand times, till death
finds them, they may
discover it again, in other
lines
in other
happenings. And for
wanting to know it,
for
assuming there is
such a secret, yes,
for that
most of all.
_______________________
Today Denise Levertov would've been 83 years old.
—Medusa
Medusa encourages poets of all ilk and ages to send their poetry, photos and art, and announcements of Northern California poetry events to kathykieth@hotmail.com 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.)