Photo by Marie Riepenhoff-Talty
Longboat Key, FL
A WITNESS
—Marie Riepenhoff-Talty
I put his ashes in this grand ocean of a lake.
The tree witnessed.
The sun burned its fire on the end of his days,
but its blaze of beauty did little to heat
the cold hands that threw the ashes
or rekindle the burnt-out embers of
our life together.
_____________________
Thanks, Marie! Marie Riepenhoff-Talty responded to Medusa's quickie challenge this weekend with some of her beautiful photography and poetry. If you missed the challenge—and it was a really short window, ending last night—don't fret; there'll be more. Meanwhile, focus on sending us 3-5 poems, plus art, photography, whatever by August 15 for the next Rattlesnake Review deadline. No bio/cover letter, prev-pubs or simul-subs; send them to kathykieth@hotmail.com or P.O. Box 762, Pollock Pines, CA 95726.
This week in NorCal poetry:
•••There will be no reading at Sacramento Poetry Center tonight (8/6). Next week's reading will feature Stan Zumbiel and John Allen Cann (at Carmichael Library).
•••Thursday (8/9), 8 PM: Poetry Unplugged at Luna’s Cafe, 1414 16th St., Sacramento. Open mic before and after featured readers. Info: Art Luna at www.lunascafe.com (916-441-3931).
•••Saturday, August 11, 2 PM: Poets from Northern and Central California will read their own works from the Summer 2007 issue of Song of the San Joaquin at the McHenry Museum, 1402 "I" Street, Modesto. Free. Light refreshments will be served. (209) 543-1776 cleor36@yahoo.com/.
•••Sunday (8/12), 2:30-4:30 PM: Open mic at Juice & Java, 7067 Skyway, Paradise. Info: 530-872-9633.
Poetry tripping:
•••Saturday (8/18) & Sunday (8/19): Tuolumne Poetry Festival in Tuolumne Meadows (past Yosemite) at the rustic Parsons Memorial Lodge. It's free! Dorianne Laux, David Mas Masumoto, and Kay Ryan are featured poets, and Shira Kammen (violin and vielle) is the musician. There are lodges within an hour of Yosemite, so that's your best bet for overnight, as the camping cabins in the area are usually booked months in advance. Or make it a day trip—! You have to hike in: parking along the main road is fine all day, an then the hike up to the Parsons Lodge is about a half hour on a good trail, uphill the last stretch, but not too strenuous, as you're in the meadow near the Tuolumne River. Workshops are next to the river in the outdoors, so dress accordingly. No dogs or pets on the trail. Info: www.nps.gov/yose/parsons for the complete Parsons Memorial Lodge Summer series schedule.
Sat. 8/18 Schedule:
10-11:30 AM: What Makes a Poem Memorable/Poetry Workshop with Dorianne Laux
2-3:30 PM: Reading/Featured Poets and Writers
7:30-10 PM: Open reading and music—workshop participants and poets in the area gather for a rustic lodgeful of readers to share their poetry aloud. It's a great evening, usually ending about 10 PM.
Sunday (8/19):
10-11:30 AM: Finding Form in Nature: Poetry Workshop with Patti Trimble
2-3:30 PM: Featured poets and music
_____________________
—Marie Riepenhoff-Talty
I put his ashes in this grand ocean of a lake.
The tree witnessed.
The sun burned its fire on the end of his days,
but its blaze of beauty did little to heat
the cold hands that threw the ashes
or rekindle the burnt-out embers of
our life together.
_____________________
Thanks, Marie! Marie Riepenhoff-Talty responded to Medusa's quickie challenge this weekend with some of her beautiful photography and poetry. If you missed the challenge—and it was a really short window, ending last night—don't fret; there'll be more. Meanwhile, focus on sending us 3-5 poems, plus art, photography, whatever by August 15 for the next Rattlesnake Review deadline. No bio/cover letter, prev-pubs or simul-subs; send them to kathykieth@hotmail.com or P.O. Box 762, Pollock Pines, CA 95726.
This week in NorCal poetry:
•••There will be no reading at Sacramento Poetry Center tonight (8/6). Next week's reading will feature Stan Zumbiel and John Allen Cann (at Carmichael Library).
•••Thursday (8/9), 8 PM: Poetry Unplugged at Luna’s Cafe, 1414 16th St., Sacramento. Open mic before and after featured readers. Info: Art Luna at www.lunascafe.com (916-441-3931).
•••Saturday, August 11, 2 PM: Poets from Northern and Central California will read their own works from the Summer 2007 issue of Song of the San Joaquin at the McHenry Museum, 1402 "I" Street, Modesto. Free. Light refreshments will be served. (209) 543-1776 cleor36@yahoo.com/.
•••Sunday (8/12), 2:30-4:30 PM: Open mic at Juice & Java, 7067 Skyway, Paradise. Info: 530-872-9633.
Poetry tripping:
•••Saturday (8/18) & Sunday (8/19): Tuolumne Poetry Festival in Tuolumne Meadows (past Yosemite) at the rustic Parsons Memorial Lodge. It's free! Dorianne Laux, David Mas Masumoto, and Kay Ryan are featured poets, and Shira Kammen (violin and vielle) is the musician. There are lodges within an hour of Yosemite, so that's your best bet for overnight, as the camping cabins in the area are usually booked months in advance. Or make it a day trip—! You have to hike in: parking along the main road is fine all day, an then the hike up to the Parsons Lodge is about a half hour on a good trail, uphill the last stretch, but not too strenuous, as you're in the meadow near the Tuolumne River. Workshops are next to the river in the outdoors, so dress accordingly. No dogs or pets on the trail. Info: www.nps.gov/yose/parsons for the complete Parsons Memorial Lodge Summer series schedule.
Sat. 8/18 Schedule:
10-11:30 AM: What Makes a Poem Memorable/Poetry Workshop with Dorianne Laux
2-3:30 PM: Reading/Featured Poets and Writers
7:30-10 PM: Open reading and music—workshop participants and poets in the area gather for a rustic lodgeful of readers to share their poetry aloud. It's a great evening, usually ending about 10 PM.
Sunday (8/19):
10-11:30 AM: Finding Form in Nature: Poetry Workshop with Patti Trimble
2-3:30 PM: Featured poets and music
_____________________
Alfred Lord Tennyson
COME DOWN, O MAID
—Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892)
Come down, O maid, from yonder mountain height:
What pleasure lives in height (the shepherd sang),
In height and cold, the splendour of the hills?
But cease to move so near the Heavens, and cease
To glide a sunbeam by the blasted Pine,
To sit a star upon the sparkling spire;
And come, for Love is of the valley, come,
For Love is of the valley, come thou down
And find him; by the happy threshold, he,
Or hand in hand with Plenty in the maize,
Or red with spirted purple of the vats,
Or foxlike in the vine; nor cares to walk
With Death and Morning on the silver horns,
Nor wilt thou snare him in the white ravine,
Nor find him dropt upon the firths of ice,
That huddling slant in furrow-cloven falls
To roll the torrent out of dusky doors:
But follow; let the torrent dance thee down
To find him in the valley; let the wild
Lean-headed Eagles yelp alone, and leave
The monstrous ledges there to slope, and spill
Their thousand wreaths of dangling water-smoke
That like a broken purpose waste in air:
So waste not thou; but come; for all the vales
Await thee; azure pillars of the hearth
Arise to thee; the children call, and I
Thy shepherd pipe, and sweet is every sound,
Sweeter thy voice, but every sound is sweet;
Myriads of rivulets hurrying thro' the lawn,
The moan of doves is immemorial elms,
And murmuring of innumberable bees.
______________________
Today Tennyson would've been 198 years old.
—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 should have received theirs by now. If you're none of those, and can't get down to The Book Collector, send two bux (for postage) to P.O. Box 762, Pollock Pines, CA 95726 and I'll mail you a copy. If you want more than one, please send $2 for the first one and $1 for copies after that. 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/free 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).
—Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892)
Come down, O maid, from yonder mountain height:
What pleasure lives in height (the shepherd sang),
In height and cold, the splendour of the hills?
But cease to move so near the Heavens, and cease
To glide a sunbeam by the blasted Pine,
To sit a star upon the sparkling spire;
And come, for Love is of the valley, come,
For Love is of the valley, come thou down
And find him; by the happy threshold, he,
Or hand in hand with Plenty in the maize,
Or red with spirted purple of the vats,
Or foxlike in the vine; nor cares to walk
With Death and Morning on the silver horns,
Nor wilt thou snare him in the white ravine,
Nor find him dropt upon the firths of ice,
That huddling slant in furrow-cloven falls
To roll the torrent out of dusky doors:
But follow; let the torrent dance thee down
To find him in the valley; let the wild
Lean-headed Eagles yelp alone, and leave
The monstrous ledges there to slope, and spill
Their thousand wreaths of dangling water-smoke
That like a broken purpose waste in air:
So waste not thou; but come; for all the vales
Await thee; azure pillars of the hearth
Arise to thee; the children call, and I
Thy shepherd pipe, and sweet is every sound,
Sweeter thy voice, but every sound is sweet;
Myriads of rivulets hurrying thro' the lawn,
The moan of doves is immemorial elms,
And murmuring of innumberable bees.
______________________
Today Tennyson would've been 198 years old.
—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 should have received theirs by now. If you're none of those, and can't get down to The Book Collector, send two bux (for postage) to P.O. Box 762, Pollock Pines, CA 95726 and I'll mail you a copy. If you want more than one, please send $2 for the first one and $1 for copies after that. 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/free 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).