Who Writes the Poem?

L Street, Sacramento (Capitol Park)
Photo by Katy Brown, Davis

I am an empty page beneath your pen.
I soak up all. I am blank white paper.
I am the guardian of all you own:
I will multiply your riches forever.

I am the countryside, the rich black earth.
You are my sunlight and the rain's moisture.
You are Lord and Master, Word of God—
I am rich black earth, and blank white paper.

—Marina Tsvetaeva

____________________

We are a pair, close as the right hand
holding the left.

We are one, warm as the right wing
enfolding the left.

But the whirlwind carves a crater between us,
and nothing is left.

—Marina Tsvetaeva

______________________

I'm still alive. That may be soon
a sin. Perhaps these days to live
is not the human thing to do.
Perhaps this age is iron and all
must fall. Perhaps it's not the poet
anymore who writes the poem.

—Marina Tsvetaeva

______________________

This weekend in NorCal poetry:

•••Saturday (6/23), 7:30 PM: The Book Collector presents Unheimlich Theater: Antonin Artaud and His Dopplegangers. Unheimlich Theater re-emerges from the Bardo state to inseminate a new myth of Chaos, Anarchy, and Lucid Unreason. Unheimlich is here not to raise consciousness, but to release the tide of the Uncanny, to break out the underside of Pandora's hoary box and release the likes of Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Poe, Hoffmann, Holderline, Michaux, and especially Antonin Artaud order to undermine a society that has allowed psychology & technology to be on a first-name basis with the creation of its imperious culture. We invite you to the first performance of Antonin Artaud and His Dopplegangers. That’s at The Book collector, 1008 24th St., Sacramento (between J and K Sts.). Info: 916-442-9295 or www.poems-for-all.com.

•••Sunday (6/24), Open mic at 6, program at 7 PM: Borders Books in Stockton (10776 Trinity Parkway, just off Eight Mile Road) presents Marie Ross. [See the new Snake14 for a sample of Marie’s poetry.]

•••Monday (6/25), 7:30 PM: Sacramento Poetry Center features the editors of the Modesto journal, Hardpan, including, among others, debee loyd, Gordon Preston, and Karen Baker. Tim Kahl writes: Please come out and provide a warm Sacramento welcome to our out-of-town guests and show moral support for Modesto’s newest literary magazine, Hardpan. Recent contributors include Brad Buchanan, Taylor Graham, Robert Roden, Patricia Wellingham-Jones, A. D. Winans and William O’ Daly. Hardpan has also begun to sponsor Coyote Caffeine, a semi-quarterly event that is geared to pairing poetry with fine dining [their next event features Sacramento’s own Susan Kelly-Dewitt]. Come and see what it’s all about.

debee loyd [one "L"] is a co-editor of Hardpan, past Poet Laureate of Modesto, and author of Noon, Twilight, Midnight by Rattlesnake Press. She sez: due diligence and all that gets you zip. Stop at a rough-looking diner off I-10, where poetry hides out. Or somewhere in Sinaloa, Mexico. Gordon Preston is also a co-editor of Hardpan and has published in Tar Wolf Review, and elsewhere. Co-editor Karen Baker is a Modesto poet and author of Vocal Exercises in Stone from Rattlesnake Press. She was born on Staten Island, grew up in Rockford, Illinois, and has lived in California’s Central Valley for many years. She is fascinated by the possibilities and limitations of language.

_________________

The rowan-bush
Began to burn.
Leaves were falling.
I was born.

The noisy sound
Of steeple-chime.
A holy day:
St. John the Diviine.

And even now
I love the tang
Of that bitter branch,
the rowan-thorn.

—Marina Tsvetaeva

____________________

I'd like to live with you
in some small town,
in never-ending twilight
and the endless sound of bells.

And in the little town's hotel
the thin chime of an antique clock,
like little drops of time.
And sometimes, evenings, from some attic room,
a flute,
a flute player by a window.
And huge tulips at the windows.
And if you didn't love me, I wouldn't even mind...

In the middle of a room, a great tile stove,
and a picture on every tile:
a heart, a sailboat, a rose.
And out beyond our only window
snow, snow, snow.

You'd lie around the way I like you: lazy,
indifferent, unconcerned.
Once or twice the harsh crack
of a match.
Your cigarette flares and then burns down,
and trembling, trembling at its tip
a short gray stump—the ash
you're too lazy to shake away—
and the cigarette flies into the fire.

—Marina Tsvetaeva

(Today's poetry is from The Stray Dog Caberet from New York Review Books, translated by Paul Schmidt.)

_________________

—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).