TO THE FIRST,
THE SENSELESS, WARM,
ever-rising caress:
let me go disincarnate,
reckless over asphalt
where cars hiss,
crouch forward, sleek
in dusky rain.
the journey free
of radio’s jagged pitches,
but exact and tight
as a strung
mandolin. give me
arrival to cabins
clustered. and all
around, a brown-yellow mat
of leaves, softening even
the faintest song in the branches,
in the unburdened
air of fall, where even
the hoary-white, far
streaks of cloud
seem chill
as I
thin with age,
sending friends
into the most charming panics.
—Tim Bellows, Gold River
____________________
Thanks, Tim! See further announcements about Tim Bellows' poetry group that meets on the fourth Sunday of the month at Marie Callendar's on Sunrise Blvd. out in Citrus Heights. Their first meeting last week was a grand success! Info/RSVP: tbp45@sbcglobal.net/.
Tonight in San Francisco:
Head on down to the City tonight to hear Snake Pals Noel Kroeplin, B.L. Kennedy, Todd Cirillo and Matt Amott, as Six Ft. Swells Press presents its "Stab 'Em in the Heart" SF Tour 2007. The festivities start at 7 PM at the Amnesia Bar (853 Valencia, between 19th and 20th), then continues at 9 PM at the Cafe Deluxe (in the Haight). Info: myspace.com/sixftswells/.
Or sit at home and hear Bill Gainer:
Another Snake Pal and Rattlechapper, Bill Gainer, can be seen and heard on youtube.com for nine whole minutes, plus! Type in youtube.com, then "Bill Gainer". Kewl!!
Or link up to the Snake through Placerville's website:
Yet another Snake Pal, G. Thomas Edwards, has put a link to rattlesnakepress.com on the Placerville website; thanks, Gary!! Go to http://www.historichwy49.com/placer/placerville.html/ and scroll down to "newspapers", and there we lurk...
Feel like a little workshopping?
•••Molly Fisk writes: The July Boot Camp is coming up, from Sunday (7/15) to Friday (7/20). If you'd like an excuse to stay indoors in the air conditioning, or stay outdoors (with your pad of paper or laptop) by the river, bay, stream, creek, brook, lake, pond, or ocean, this is the month to join us. You'll end up with a collection of six new poems, as well as whatever shells you've gathered from the tide line. To register, or to find out more about this six-day intensive Internet workshop, visit http://www.poetrybootcamp.com or send me an e-mail (molly@mollyfisk.com) and I'll answer your questions. PS: The Boulder, Utah workshop is not filling this year (unless five of you slap your foreheads and call me in the next week to sign up), but we'll plan on it for next year.
•••Rae Gouirand of Davis writes: Two of my summer classes are starting next week: the July/August session of my ongoing Creative Nonfiction workshop at the Davis Art Center, and a new class that I'm offering, a creative writing workshop for teens aged 13-18. The teen class will run on Sundays from 4:30-6:30 PM for eight weeks, and CNF will run immediately after, from 7-9 PM. Both are scheduled to begin July 1st. If you're interested in registering or know someone who is, please contact the DAC in the next couple days to register. You can either call them at 530-756-4100, register online on their website, or visit in person at F & Covell in downtown Davis. It's no longer possible to push the start dates of classes back or to register people on the first day of class (it makes it hard to prepare efficiently!), so don't assume there will be a spot at the last minute. :) I'm really excited about both of these classes, and hope to see lots of returning writers and lots of new faces. The teen class plants the seed for a combined movement/writing class for teen women that I'll be teaching with Meghan Bowen at The Bo Tree starting in September, so if you know any teen writers, please spread the word!
Muses Review:
Andrew Angus, Editor of Muses Review, has put out a call for poem submissions for Muses Review’s Summer 2007 issue (JulAugSep) and Fall 2007 issue (OctNovDec). Submit 3-6 poems for publication, either for the online version of Muses Review or the Anthology of Muses Review. Any themes (nature poems, city poems, romantic poems, etc.). Submit your poems to www.musesreview.org/reviewmypoem/ Evaluation of poems will only take TWO WEEKS......You will know if your poem is approved in two weeks’ time. Also: Free Poetry book ads. Submit poetrybook ads or poem chap ads to: www.musesreview.org/freebookads/
_____________________
POEM AS WISH TO COMPOSE BY DUMB LUCK
—Tim Bellows
I get in the habit of counting in 9s or 12s.
Surely they formulate the order of all gasses, dust and
suggested in the wilds of space. At the same time,
I keep a snapshot here inside: sunlight on understory shrubs —
glossy oval leaves, the small, uncounted bells of flowers. Surely
such habits of study lead me toward the origin of solar wind, sweeping
along in the same air where astronauts exploded
into a bright aerosol in the quiet heights. I decide that all known light
feeds my power to run, counting steps, fields of timothy and bunchgrass.
Days off I cultivate this worldly talent; I shout, sprint,
stain my feet a streaked green, keep body and soul
limber, well versed in the deeper breathing sound that
rises even now to greet my dying, beating, faintly orderly body —
blood and nerves in constant communion. Body that,
in late hours finds its thrill listening in on a tuneful strand of DNA.
Ah, we’re all singers — living and dead; are we not run here and there
by the ruminations of stars? But just you wait; they’ll
sing forward along lines of mystic sight. Your eyes and mine as we
persevere in study, keep the steady count in meditation,
come to track the journeys of vaporized astronauts. Friends,
how they cloud around us. Close. Bending beams of light,
urging us to all manner of bodily tumbling and other completed circles.
We end, giddy with defying Einstein, and begin the new tradition,
diving and diving into the sun forever.
_____________________
UNDER THE HARDWOODS,
the night. the wind, clearing the moon, eye
clarifying the cement pool deck to silvery lithograph.
Oak leaves, shadowy, scramble along the lawns
in randy, phantom breezes. And that moon
floats across my whims — surely nothing
exists but these two forces: the quick of wind,
the slow of moon. I think
to go back into the house where Jill
will click and lisp in baby talk to the cat she loves.
And say to pet him. But no. I’ll take my time,
stay out back to loiter, to clarify my empty wonder
with the emptiness of this good night. The wizened pine
of these Nantucket chairs — their lunar-washed whiteness —
could stand up any time and whisper-shout
my own wooden pleadings and hopes for nakedness: Come
and love me; take time, in spite of the occasional return
of hurry and miscalculation, to visit the roofed prayer hall of my life.
At any moment, with any rolling of the moon, I’ll go in and say,
Come love me, my planetary brightness, my worn girl sifting
her seashore and backyard memories, her old stars in late,
red-giant stages. Love so all impressions
photographed by the sky can wash into our cool rooms
and we’ll sleep, roaming silver-halide dreams
under the hardwood trees that
cluster their acorns full of coming vows, fed
from leaves that capture swinging breezes
and the stillness of the moon’s given light
that lets us dance, that lets us kiss.
—Tim Bellows
_____________________
—Medusa
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.)
SnakeWatch: Up-to-the-minute Snake news:
Journals (free publications): Rattlesnake Review14 is now available at The Book Collector; contributors and subscribers will receive theirs in the next couple of weeks. If you're none of those, and can't get down to The Book Collector, send two bux to P.O. Box 762, Pollock Pines, CA 95726 and I'll mail you a copy. Next deadline, for RR15, is August 15. VYPER6 (for youth 13-19) is in The Book Collector; next deadline is Nov. 1. Snakelets10 (for kids 0-12) is also at The Book Collector; next deadline is October 1.
Books/broadsides: June's releases include Tom Miner's chapbook, North of Everything; David Humphreys' littlesnake broadside, Cominciare Adagio; and #3 in B.L. Kennedy's Rattlesnake Interview Series, this one featuring Jane Blue.
ZZZZZZZ: Shh! The Snake is sleeping! There will be no Snake readings/releases in July or August. Then we return with a bang on September 12, presenting Susan Kelly-DeWitt's new chapbook, Cassiopeia Above the Banyan Tree. See the online journal, Mudlark, for a hefty sample of poems from her book; that’s http://www.unf.edu/mudlark/. Also coming in the Fall: new issues of the Review, Snakelets and VYPER [see the above deadlines], plus more littlesnake broadsides from NorCal poets near and far, and a continuation of B.L. Kennedy's Rattlesnake Interview Series—including an anthology of interviews to be released for Sacramento Poetry Month (October).