POETIC ASYLUM
—Lynn Wiley, Sacramento
I am a refugee in a land of Alliteration
In my land there is no poetry,
No beauty. No rhyme.
Only passive voices voicing passively.
I am a bureaucrat.
Poetically illiterate.
A rhyme-ster, at best
a versifier.
The Alliterates granted gladly my poetic asylum,
acknowledged my persecution.
Left alone in a small cubicle,
tortured daily with blunt phrases,
words designed to leave no mark:
“in order to” Whack!
“due to the fact that” Bam!
“at this point in time” Crack!
I cried out for Clarity.
I shouted for Beauty.
But no one heard my cries.
I am a refugee in a land of Alliteration.
In this land they write poems about eggplants and pomegranates.
Iambically pentametered,
They flow,
With words like honey.
And I,
still dazed from the crossing
sit,
wide-eyed, notebook and pen in hand,
waiting for the words that will make me one of them.
_____________________
Thanks, Lynn! Sacramento Poet Lynn Wiley writes to say that she's taking a creative writing class from Sacramento Poetry Center President Bob Stanley, and he suggested she send this fine poem in to the Snake. Lynn confesses this is her first published poem, and wonders if, with her first acceptance, it's time to quit her day job yet... :-)
Next Week in NorCal Poetry:
•••Monday (7/2), 7:30 PM: Sacramento Poetry Center presents readers from the Cache Creek Nature Preserve writing workshop. HQ for the Arts, 25th & R Sts., Sacramento. Open mic after.
•••Tuesday (7/3), 8 PM: Comedy and Poetry Open Mic at Butch-N-Nellie’s, corner of 19th & I Streets, Downtown Sacramento. Starting July 3rd, Butch-N-Nellie's, 3rd Eye Collective, and UBO Mag present LIFE SENTENCE, a weekly poetry and comedy feature with open mic. Info: 916-548-8391.
•••Thursday (7/5), 8 PM: Poetry Unplugged at Luna's Cafe, 1414 16th St., Sacramento. Featured readers plus open mic before and after.
•••Saturday (7/7), 4 PM: Poetry Marathon at the Willits Library, the Willits Poets are hosting a marathon to help out the Veterans for Peace, whose bus, The White Rose, is down, needing repairs to the tune of $5,000. As most of you know, The White Rose was taking Cindy Sheehan to George Bush's summer ranch to ask him why her son had to die in Iraq, when Hurricane Katrina hit. The bus, loaded with food and supplies, made a run for Mississippi to help out small towns ignored by Red Cross until the White Rose showed up. The Vets have been helping out ever since and it's time to help them out now. If you can't make the marathon, you can send donations to Patrick Tate, 28500 Sherwood Road Willits CA. 95490. Bring poems enough for many five-minute sessions. We will also play Basho, our own poetic form of Bingo. Everyone will be asked to donate, readers and listeners alike, though as always, no one will be turned away for lack of funds.
•••Sunday (7/8), 2:30-4:30 PM: Poets on the Ridge Open Mic Poetry Reading at Juice and Java, 7067 Skyway, Paradise. 530-872-9633.
Kathleen Lynch Reads on July 12 in Berkeley (Not this week, but next):
•••Thursday (7/12), 7:30: Poetry Flash at Berkeley City College presents Andrea Hollander Budy & Sacramento’s Kathleen Lynch. Andrea Hollander Budy's new book of poems is Woman in the Painting; her previous collections are The Other Life, and House Without a Dreamer, which won the Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize. Among her many honors are a D.H. Lawrence Fellowship and a Pushcart Prize, as well as two fellowships from the National Endowment of the Arts. Kathleen Lynch's first full-length book of poems, Hinge, won the Black Zinnias Press National Poetry Book Competition. She's published several chapbooks, including How to Build an Owl and Alterations of Rising. Among her honors are the Spoon River Poetry Review Editor's Choice Award and the Salt Hill Poetry Award. Berkeley City College Auditorium, 2050 Center Street, Berkeley, one-half block from Berkeley BART. Parking garage next door. Info: Poetry Flash: (510) 525-5476. Co-sponsored by Cody's Books.
Give it a break:
Medusa's Kitchen will be closed this week; next post will be Sunday, July 8 or Monday, the 9th. The above photo says it all: Medusa, that tireless surfer, will be catching a wave. Let's say good-bye to June with two poems by the Norwegian poet, Rolf Jacobsen. (These were translated by Roger Greenwald.) Apparently ants are on my mind—yesterday, and now today. Must be the foot-long carpenter ants we have up here in the woods:
RUBBER
—Rolf Jacobsen
One pale morning in June at four o'clock
when the country roads were still gray and wet
in their endless tunnels of forest,
a car had passed over the clay
just where the ant came out busily with its pine needle now
and kept wandering around in the big G of "Goodyear"
that was imprinted in the sand of country roads
for a hundred and twenty kilometers.
Pine needles are heavy.
Time after time it slid back down with its tottering load
and worked its way up again
and slipped back again.
Outward bound across the great, cloud-illuminated Sahara.
_____________________
And finally, we started with a poem about words, and now one about colors—another kind of words. Or are words another kind of color....?
COBALT
—Rolf Jacobsen
Colors are words' little sisters. They can't become soldiers.
I've loved them secretly for a long time.
They have to stay home and hang up the sheer curtains
in our ordinary bedroom, kitchen and alcove.
I'm very close to young Crimson, and brown Sienna
but even closer to thoughtful Cobalt with her distant eyes and untrampled spirit.
We walk in dew.
The night sky and southern oceans
are her possessions
and a tear-shaped pendant on her forehead:
the pearls of Cassiopeia.
We walk in dew on late nights.
But the others.
Meet them on a June morning at four o'clock
when they come rushing toward you,
on your way to a morning swim in the green cove's spray.
Then you can sunbathe with them on the smooth rocks.
—Which one will you make yours?
_______________________
—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 Oct. 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).