Elizabeth Barrett Browning,
who would've been 202 years old today
LOVE
—Elizabeth Barrett Browning
We cannot live, except thus mutually
We alternate, aware or unaware,
The reflex act of life: and when we bear
Our virtue onward most impulsively,
Most full of invocation, and to be
Most instantly compellant, certes, there
We live most life, whoever breathes most air
And counts his dying years by sun and sea.
But when a soul, by choice and conscience, doth
Throw out her full force on another soul,
The conscience and the concentration both make
mere life, Love. For Life in perfect whole
And aim consummated, is Love in sooth,
As nature's magnet-heat rounds pole with pole.
___________________
Today in NorCal poetry:
•••Today at 2 PM, hear Edythe Haendel Schwartz on Jeffrey Callison’s “Insight” on KXJZ Capitol Public Radio (90.9). Next Monday, Sacramento Poetry Center will feature Edythe at HQ for the Arts, 25th & R Sts., Sacramento, 7:30 PM.
•••Tonight (3/6), 8 PM: Poetry Unplugged at Luna's Cafe, 1414 16th St., Sacramento. Open mic before and after.
•••Also Tonight (3/6), 5:30 PM: Tahoe poet Suzanne Roberts reads from her collections, Shameless and Nothing to You. Wild Mountain Books, 352 Main St., Placerville. Free. 530-622-4540.
Speaking of SPC:
Don't forget the Sacramento Poetry Center's Second Annual High School Poetry Contest; the deadline is March 15, a week from Saturday. Winners will receive prizes including a $100.00 Grand Prize, books, scholarships to the SPC Writers’ Conference (April 5, 2008), and publication in The Tule Review, Sacramento Poetry Center's literary journal, or in Poetry Now, the official monthly newsletter of the Sacramento Poetry Center. Winners and Honorable Mentions will also be invited to perform their work on April 14, 2008 at The Sacramento Poetry Center’s venue at the HQ for the Arts, 1719 25th Street in Sacramento. No entry fees required. (3 poems maximum per student, please.) Send poems to: High School Poetry Contest, The Sacramento Poetry Center, 1719 25th St., Sacramento, CA 95816.
Cache Creek workshop:
The second eight-week workshop in Rae Gouirand’s 2008 series at the Cache Creek Nature Preserve is entitled PROSE POETRY. This workshop will explore a wide variety of contemporary prose poems, discuss the particularities of the form, and use the spring landscape at the Preserve to feed surprising new work. Expect to be inspired in new directions! Writers in all genres and with all levels of experience are welcome. Please note a time change: this workshop will meet in the afternoons on Thursdays, April 10-May 29, from 1-3 PM. (To register, email your name, email address, and phone number to rgouirand@gmail.com/.
B.L.'s Drive-By:
Total Immersion by Glenna Luschei, Presa :S: Press, P.O. Box 792, Rockford, MI 49341. 96 pp, $15. ISBN 978-0-980081-0-4
Sometimes when you review books, you come across a jewel, and the poetry of Glenna Luschei’s new collection, Total Immersion, talks to the reader and quickly becomes one of those books that you just have to have in your library. These poems wrap themselves around you with delicate ease and sharp wisdom. Here is an evocative celebration of aliveness which echoes with alertness and truth. Glenna Luschei is filled with the sounds of the world and language communicated to the reader with such delicate organic style that the poems themselves speak with natural voice and spirit. I fell in love with the shear beauty of these poems. So, if you are not tuned-in to the work of Glenna Luschei, pick up a copy of Total Immersion at your local bookstore, or order it directly from Presa :S: Press and journey with the poet.
—B.L. Kennedy, Reviewer-in-Residence
(“B.L.'s Drive-By” is a Thursday feature on Medusa. Watch for more of B.L. Kennedy's reviews in every issue of Rattlesnake Review; plus, some of his past reviews are posted on rattlesnakepress.com under the heading "SnakeFaves and Things We Wish We'd Published, But Didn't". And if you have something you'd like Bari to look at for possible review, his contact info is in the long blurb to the right of this column.)
___________________
THE SUDDEN SPRING
—John Haines
The coyote had just spoken
and lay down to rest in a snowdrift.
March, like a fly awakened too early,
droned between somnolence
and a furious boredom.
No one remembers the autumnal
prophet, teller of drowsy stories
to be continued...
Winter, the unfinished, the abandoned,
slumped like a mourner
between two weeping candles.
__________________
LARKSPUR
—John Haines
The blue giant is passing,
king of this field.
His trumpets blow pure cobalt,
he brings with him
audiences of the deepest indigo.
By his command
the sky-stained meadows overflow,
and bridges of azure
stretch far into evening...
where the king, his train halted,
stands alone in his blueness.
___________________
MARIGOLD
—John Haines
This is the plaza of Paradise.
It is always noon,
and the dusty bees are dozing
like pardoned sinners.
___________________
THE MUSHROOM GROVE
—John Haines
Here the forest people
died of a sexual longing.
The ground trampled in their passion
healed into a cemetery,
with a few flowers
like frayed parachutes.
Their headstones are umbrellas,
black and weeping.
___________________
Taylor Graham writes to say that her husband, Hatch, is doing much better, and thanks for your good thoughts.
—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.) Medusa cannot vouch for the moral fiber of other publications, contests, etc. that she lists, however, so submit to them at your own risk. For more info about the Snake Empire, including guidelines for submitting to or obtaining our publications, click on the link to the right of this column: Rattlesnake Press (rattlesnakepress.com).
SnakeWatch: News From Rattlesnake Press:
Coming March 12: Rattlesnake Press will be releasing a chapbook from Ann Privateer (Attracted to Light), a littlesnake broadside from Jeanine Stevens (Eclipse), Conversations Vol. 2 of B.L. Kennedy's Rattlesnake Interview Series, and a brand-new issue of Rattlesnake Review (#17—next deadline is May 15). Join us to celebrate all of this at The Book Collector, 1008 24th St., Sacramento, on March 12 at 7:30 PM.