Clarence Wolfshohl
POLITICS OF TYPESETTING
—Clarence Wolfshohl, Fulton, MO
The center may be the best place to stand,
all the cabinet set before you within easy reach.
But I stand to the left, square among lower cases,
all the caps to the far right.
The multitudinous e’s look me straight
in the eye, and all the vowels except u
commune in a tight column surrounded
by clamoring consonants, the more common
clustered near–the n’s , r’s, s’s, and t’s,
with d’s hugging the e’s for quick past tense.
My hand moves among them with a braille
reader’s assuredness, but even
after all this time, I have to look
to pick an upper case from its nest;
they are arranged so neatly, linearly
A’s to G’s, H’s to O’s, only the J’s and again U’s
crammed at the end of the lowest row.
But the lower case come like morning-
hungry cats to my fingers, rubbing silkily
against them as if with volition.
__________________
—Clarence Wolfshohl, Fulton, MO
The center may be the best place to stand,
all the cabinet set before you within easy reach.
But I stand to the left, square among lower cases,
all the caps to the far right.
The multitudinous e’s look me straight
in the eye, and all the vowels except u
commune in a tight column surrounded
by clamoring consonants, the more common
clustered near–the n’s , r’s, s’s, and t’s,
with d’s hugging the e’s for quick past tense.
My hand moves among them with a braille
reader’s assuredness, but even
after all this time, I have to look
to pick an upper case from its nest;
they are arranged so neatly, linearly
A’s to G’s, H’s to O’s, only the J’s and again U’s
crammed at the end of the lowest row.
But the lower case come like morning-
hungry cats to my fingers, rubbing silkily
against them as if with volition.
__________________
Thanks, Clarence, for today's poems! Although Clarence Wolfshohl started publishing in small press magazines in the late 1960s in such places as Road Apple Review and Foxfire, he soon turned his attention to the making of books when he started Timberline Press (www.timberlinepress.com) in 1975. Since then, he has published over seventy books by such poets as Rochelle Holt, Emily Borenstein, David Ray, Charles Fishman, William Heyen, and recently Walter Bargen (current Poet Laureate of Missouri) and Larry D. Thomas (current Poet Laureate of Texas). Most of these publications have been handcrafted by letterpress.
Now retired after forty-one years of teaching, Clarence has returned more vigorously to his own writing in the past few years. His poetry and creative fiction have appeared in Concho River Review, North Dakota Quarterly, Colere, and Rattlesnake Review, and Melic Review and Muse2 online. A chapbook of poems about Brazil, Season of Mangos, is forthcoming from Adastra Press.
Clarence lives with his wife, his writing, a dog, three cats, and his printing press in a nine-acre woods outside of Fulton, Missouri. Watch for more of his work in Snake 20, due out in mid-December. Hey—the deadline for that is
DAY AFTER TOMORROW!! (November 15!)
See SnakeWatch below for how to submit.
Speaking of submitting to the Snake or any other publication, I've just put together a broadside entitled, Snake Secrets: Getting Your Poetry Published in Rattlesnake Press (and lots of other places, besides!). I realized that there are very few places that will tell you how to submit to them, other than the barest of guidelines—they rarely ever tell you what you did right or what you did to piss them off. Submitting can be a real minefield of unspoken do's and don'ts. So I put this booklet together to help us all with that process, not just in Snake Land, but with other editors, besides. I learned submission etiquette from some of the best in the biz, poets like Carol and Laverne Frith and Joyce Odam, who have spent years honing this process, both as editors and as writers.
So if you'd like a free copy, drop me a line (kathykieth@hotmail.com) and I'll mail you one. (Normally they'll be at The Book Collector, too, but we ran out at the reading last night.) I'd also appreciate it if long-time submitters, people who really know the process, would take a look at Snake Secrets and give me their feedback; I suspect this littlesnake broadside will expand over time into a larger publication. Submitters are still all over the board with their "etiquette"—everything from missing names and addresses to... well, we all could use a little brush-up now and then...
Speaking of our Joycey (Odam), she fell down yesterday morning and did serious damage to her shoulder! So far she's okay, but t'was a serious fall.
B.L.'s Drive-bys: A Micro-Review from Rattlesnake Press:
The Mysterious Woman Next Door
BY W.S. Gainer
Lummox Press
P.O. Box 5301
San Pedro, CA 90733-5301
W.S. Gainer (Bill the Meat Poet, to his friends) is a force like none that I have ever seen. He stepped out of Grass Valley and took poetry bullshit by the horns and rammed it with a soft voice and a hard edge. In and out of poetics, Gainer is right up front in his approach to the short poem. He is clean; he is in and out when it comes to his observations of the human condition. For those of you Snake regulars who know his work, well, you’ll know what I’m saying and you dig it. [Rattlechap #19 and littlesnake broadside #14, plus almost every issue of Rattlesnake Review.] So, buy this book for a mere $5—that’s less then a movie! And guess what? It’s a hella lot more entertaining!
__________________
ROSE GARDEN
—Jane Blue, Sacramento
The pastor’s journal lay on a slatted wooden bench
in the sun on the edge of the rose garden.
She had no engagements.
Her name was imprinted in gold
in the black leather cover, and tucked inside,
a script—oh, for a wedding! Ending
“and now Matt and Jewel…” Matt and Jewel,
the pastor and the wedding party were gone,
the empty journal left behind, having no way of knowing,
like me, how their life would turn out.
Would the pastor buy another journal, or someone
present it to her as a gift
for performing another wedding? Or come back
and begin her engagements.
Perhaps the wedding party was over there,
in that group not far, in the park, under a spreading
camphor tree, balloons
marking the picnic tables. A wind blew in
from the west, bearing the slight spice of roses,
more decorative than fragrant; barbecue,
and the fresh odor of the coast.
I could hear the calls of children, the melodic,
trancing drums of the drum circle
which would go on all afternoon and into the night
and the loud talk of geese
marching up out of the pond.
___________________
Thanks, Jane Blue, for the poem about the magic spell of weddings—her response to our Seed of the Week: Secret Gardens and Other Enchanted Places. (It's never too late to send us your SOW!) Jane will also be represented in the up-coming Review, along with her husband, Peter Rodman, who has been inspired of late to send us photos (bless him).
___________________
ELEGANT ENERGY
Wind Farm at McCamey, Texas
—Clarence Wolfshohl
Hundreds of elegant towers sleek
against mesa rimmed sky
curve silence.
Propellers turn
in stately ponder.
Fifty years ago these hills
sat in smell of oil
like bad manners noticed
only by strangers driving through.
Walking beams hunkered low,
pistons keeping Earth’s engine afire.
Black monotony of pumping
like maniacal birds at richness edge.
Now, these towers stand
high to catch western wind,
hum a cosmic chant
as if free of gravity and set
on galactic exploration—
giant propellers spinning out fire
to lift Earth into the air.
__________________
EXCESSIVE CELEBRATION
—Clarence Wolfshohl
The penalty was assessed on the ensuing kickoff,
but they did not care; with 10 seconds to go they
had made the two-point conversion to go ahead
by one and hell broke loose in the endzone.
Players piled on one another in out-of-body
jubilation. The band joined in, some still playing
the fight song, the clarinetist thrusting
their woodwinds at the afternoon sun,
the drummers pounding like a frat kegger
with George Thoroughgood yelling ‘who do you love.’
Cheerleaders kissed the players still on the sideline,
coaches, even a ref. Student body
made the stadium bounce, leapt to the field,
tore down the goalposts. The referees blew
their whistles, the stadium PA system appealed
to reason, the opponents lined up to receive the kick.
The band formed its ranks behind the fractured
goalpost, clarinetists still waving their instruments.
Students climbed back into the stands or pressed
themselves against the arena wall, laughter still
exploding their faces into sublimity. The team
regrouped at the benches, took their positions
on the field, the kicker teeing up the ball for the last
ten seconds of play. When he muffed the kick,
players were still milling on the sideline, punching
the sky with index fingers—we’re #1,
we’re #1—or slapping high fives and looking
for tv cameras to greet mom,
and when the roisterous team lumbered
downfield as if hungover, drums still pounded
and cheerleaders still puckered enjoying the moment
despite the fifteen yard penalty,
even as the opponent’s kickoff receiver grabbed
the ball on the twenty, followed his teammates
toward the sideline, turned up at the thirty
and sprinted seventy yards—all in ten seconds.
__________________
FANCY FLIGHTS
St. George Island, Florida, May 2004
—Clarence Wolfshohl
The brown pelicans skim inches above
minivans on the causeway, serene
yet poised like the Millennium Falcon
seconds before it jumps into hyperspace,
the glints of morning sun on the bay’s
ripples like the sheet of stars ready
to be eclipsed.
The black skimmer cartwheels,
lower beak snared on some undertidesnag and released only by the momentum
of the flight. He rights himself
into an embarrassed soar shoreward.
The F-15 nosedives where the bay
disappears into the marsh, straight down
like an osprey on a fish, and vanishes
but for a thin wisp of steam from the mucky
universe.
A sandpiper advances
and retreats with the waves, pecking organismsleft in their wake. He dances with the tide
with Fred Astaire grace.
A pod of dolphins
parades by, leaping into half gainers.Their light bellies shimmer in the sun
and spray glitters into the darkened waves.
A parachute opens with a flash, drifts
into the bay miles from the sunken jet.
__________________
Today's LittleNip:
I could no more define poetry than a terrier can define a rat.
—A.E. Housman
[And we poets chase it just as hard!]
__________________
—Medusa
SnakeWatch: What's New from Rattlesnake Press:
Next deadline for Rattlesnake Review is November 15!!! Send 3-5 poems, smallish art pieces and/or photos (no bio, no cover letter, no simultaneous submissions or previously-published poems) to kathykieth@hotmail.com or P.O. Box 762, Pollock Pines, CA 95726. E-mail attachments are preferred, but be sure to include all contact info, including snail address.
New for November: Now available at The Book Collector, or from the authors, or (soon) through rattlesnakepress.com, or—heck—just write to me and I'll send 'em to you: a new rattlechap from Red Fox Underground Poet Wendy Patrice Williams (Some New Forgetting); a littlesnake broadside from South Lake Tahoe Poet Ray Hadley (Children's Games); our 2009 calendar from Katy Brown (Beyond the Hill: A Poet’s Calendar) as well as Conversations, Vol. 4 of B.L. Kennedy’s Rattlesnake Interview Series. Also: littlesnake broadside #46: Snake Secrets: Getting Your Poetry Published in Rattlesnake Press (and lots of other places, besides!): A compendium of ideas for brushing up on your submissions process so as to make editors everywhere more happy, thereby increasing the likelihood of getting your poetry published.
Medusa's Weekly Menu:
(Contributors are welcome to cook up something for any and all of these!)
Monday: Weekly NorCal poetry calendar
Tuesday: Seed of the Week: Tuesday is Medusa's day to post poetry triggers such as quotes, forms, photos, memories, jokes—whatever might tickle somebody's muse. Pick up the gauntlet and send in your poetic results; and don't be shy about sending in your own triggers, too! All poems will be posted and a few of them will go into Medusa's Corner of each Rattlesnake Review. Send your work to kathykieth@hotmail.com or P.O. Box 762, Pollock Pines, CA 95726. No deadline for SOWs; respond today, tomorrow, or whenever the muse arrives. (Print 'em out, maybe, save 'em for a dry spell?) When you send us work, though, just let us know which "seed" it was that inspired you.
Wednesday (sometimes): HandyStuff Quickies: Resources for the poet, including whatever helps ease the pain of writing and/or publishing: favorite journals to read and/or submit to; books, etc., about writing; organizational tools—you know—HandyStuff! Tell us about your favorite tools.
Thursday: B.L.'s Drive-Bys: Micro-reviews by our irreverent Reviewer-in-Residence, B.L. Kennedy. Send books, CDs, DVDs, etc. to him for possible review (either as a Drive-By or in future issues of Rattlesnake Review) at P.O. Box 160664, Sacramento, CA 95816.
Friday: NorCal weekend poetry calendar
Daily (except Sunday): LittleNips: SnakeFood for the Poetic Soul: Daily munchables for poetic thought, including short paragraphs, quotes, wonky words, silliness, little-known poetry/poet facts, and other inspiration—yet another way to feed our ravenous poetic souls.
And poetry! Every day, poetry from writers near and far and in-between! The Snakes of Medusa are always hungry.......!
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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). And be sure to sign up for Snakebytes, our monthly e-newsletter that will keep you up-to-date on all our ophidian chicanery.