Anaconda Review

BELOW FREEZING
—Tomas Transtromer

We are at a party that doesn't love us. Finally the party lets the mask fall and shows what it is: a shunting station for freight cars. In the fog cold giants stand on their tracks. A scribble of chalk on the car doors.

One can't say it aloud, but there is a lot of repressed violence here. That is why the furnishings seem so heavy. And why it is so difficult to see the other thing present: a spot of sun that moves over the house walls and slips over the unaware forest of flickering faces, a biblical saying never set down: "Come unto me, for I am as full of contradictions as you."

I work the next morning in a different town. I drive there in a hum through the dawning hour which resembles a dark blue cylinder. Orion hangs over the frost. Children stand in a silent clump, waiting for the school bus, the children no one prays for. The light grows as gradually as our hair.

(translated from the Swedish by Robert Bly)

_____________________

Nothing like a little Transtromer to brace you for the day.

Progress continues on Snake 9; Todd Cirillo says that, at 60 pages and counting, it resembles an anaconda more than a rattlesnake! There just seems to be so much happening—like Staajabu leaving for New Jersey on April 24! Straight Out Scribes, the duo of her and her daughter, has been a huge presence in Sacramento poetry, and now she's leaving and I didn't interview them while she was here...

But oh well. Maybe there's still time. It looks like their last local performance (and the release of their broadsides) will be at the Second Annual Snake Birthday Party on April 12 (The Book Collector, 1008 24th St., Sac., 7:30 pm)—but more about that later. Meanwhile, be sure to add their March 18 Palo Alto performance to yesterday's listings: Saturday, 7-9 pm, Barbara Hiken presents The Straight Out Scribes Experience: poetry, spoken word and conscious rap, featuring V.S. Chochezi and Staajabu, 910 Moreno Avenue, Palo Alto. Donations will be gratefully accepted to support the legal case of Mumia Abu-Jamal. Info: 916-452-1290.

I know, I know—it's hard as hell to let go of books. But should you find the courage, Friends of the Sacramento Public Library is accepting book donations from 9 a.m. to noon Wednesdays and Saturdays at Book Den Warehouse, 8250 Belvedere Av., Suite E, Sac. Info: 916-731-8493.

Snake pal, spiralchapper (Been Born Bronx), soon-to-be rattlechapper (The Setich Manor Poems) and Reviewer-in-Residence B.L. Kennedy is an active volunteer for Friends of the Library. Snake 9 will include another edition of his "The BL 418 Buzz", featuring Bari's take on books, movies, and whatever else tickles his muse.

I happen to think reviews are particularly important in the small press biz; publicity for small books is so hard to come by. Bari is Honcho Reviewer for the Snake, but he is assisted in this gargantuan task by other able folks such as Charlene Ungstad (who wields a heckuva pen!) and Shawn Pittard. Articles by Rattlechapper Shawn (These Rivers) can be seen in the Snake and Poetry Now, but he also writes regularly for an online journal called The Great American Pin-up (www.greatamericanpinup.blogspot.com). This site has 18 "hits" (articles and poems) for Shawn, and lots of other cool stuff as well. Check it out!

______________________

SKETCH IN OCTOBER
—Tomas Transtromer

The towboat is freckled with rust. What's it doing here so far inland?
It is a heavy extinguished lamp in the cold.
But the trees have wild colors: signals to the other shore.
As if people wanted to be fetched.

On my way home I see mushrooms sprouting

up through the lawn.

They are the fingers, stretching for help, of someone
who has long sobbed to himself in the darkness down there.
We are the earth's.

(translated from the Swedish by Robert Fulton)

_______________________

AFTER A DEATH
—Tomas Transtromer

Once there was shock
that left behind a long, shimmering comet tail.
It keeps us inside. It makes the TV pictures snowy.
It settles in cold drops on the telephone wires.

One can still go slowly on skis in the winter sun
through brush where a few leaves hang on.
They resemble pages torn from old telephone directories.
Names swallowed by the cold.

It is still beautiful to feel the heart beat
but often the shadow seems more real than the body.
The samurai looks insignificant
beside his armor of black dragon scales.

(translated from the Swedish by Robert Bly)

_______________________

—Medusa

Medusa encourages poets of all ilk and ages to send their poetry and announcements of Northern California poetry events to kathykieth@hotmail.com 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.)

Extraordinary Patience & Po-Events, 3/13-19

CARMEL POINT
—Robinson Jeffers

The extraordinary patience of things!
This beautiful place defaced with a crop of suburban houses—
How beautiful when we first beheld it,
Unbroken field of poppy and lupin walled with clean clliffs;
No intrusion but two or three horses pasturing,
Or a few milch cows rubbing their flanks on the outcrop rockheads—
Now the spoiler has come: does it care?
Not faintly. It has all time. It knows the people are a tide
That swells and in time will ebb, and all
Their works dissolve. Meanwhile the image of the pristine beauty
Lives in the very grain of the granite.
Safe as the endless ocean that climbs our cliff.—As for us:
We must uncenter our minds from ourselves;
We must unhumanize our views a little, and become confident
As the rock and ocean that we were made from.

________________________

This week's events; let me know if there are more:

•••Tonight (3/13) at Sacramento Poetry Center: !X (no, I'm not cussing) appears at 7:30 pm, Headquarters for the Arts (HQ), 25th & R Sts., Sacramento.

•••Wednesday (3/15), Jim Cardwell and Crawdad Nelson will read at the South Natomas Library's Urban Voices series, 6:30 pm, 2901 Truxel Rd., Sacramento.

•••Thursday (3/16), Keely Sidira Dorran and Bri Pruett read at Poetry Unplugged, Luna's Cafe, 1414 16th St., Sacramento, 8 pm. Free. Info: 916-441-3931. Or...

•••Also Thursday (3/16), La-Rue, Rob Anthony and Flo-Real read at Gwen's Caribbean Cuisine, 2355 Arden Way, Sac., 8 pm. $5; open mic. Info: 916-922-3468. Or...

•••Also Thursday (3/16), Nevada County Poetry Series presents Drew Dellinger, Jack and Billie Shields and Judith Hurley Prosser at The Center for the Arts, 314 W. Main St., Grass Valley, 7:30 pm., $5. Info: 530-271-7000.

•••Friday (3/17): Wear the Green to the Our House Defines Art poetry reading at 7 p.m. Featured readers are Irene Lipshin, Homer Christensen and Wendy Patrice Williams, followed by an open mic. Our House Defines Art Gallery & Framing is located at 4510 Post St. in El Dorado Hills Town Center (next to Ralph's). Or...

•••Also Friday: All are invited to come hear this tribute reading of the works of the great romantic & rebellious Mexican poet, Antonio Plaza, the ‘poet of the people.’ The evening’s poems will be read in Spanish by Graciela B. Ramírez and Jesús Moreno, who will also present their own poems. Music accompaniment by Arturo Balderama. Antonio Plaza (1833-1882), Romantic poet, was born in Guanajuato, México. His work was posthumously published in Barcelona, Spain in a book titled Album del Corazón. La Raza Galleria Posada, 1421 R St., Sac., 7:30 pm, $5 (or as you can afford). Info: 916-456-5323.

•••Saturday (3/18), Bob Stanley and Larry Uklai Johnson-Redd read at Underground Books, 2814 35th St., Sac., 7 pm. Info: 916-737-3333. Or...

•••Also Saturday (3/18), travel to Modesto for a poetry reading featuring Licensed Fools at Mistlin Gallery on J St. (between 10th and 11th) in Modesto, 4 pm. Licensed Fools is an affiliation of local poets who have been meeting to share their ideas and words since spring of 1997. Their collective name comes from Shakespeare’s time, when the “licensed fool” was the person who could “speak the truth to power”, even to the king, without penalty. Their goal is to speak the truth with power through wordplay, however “foolish,” and to support each other’s individual efforts to seek whatever truths they discover. They meet, on average, twice a month, to share their latest drafts, seek advice, and start another poem by the meeting’s end. The Fools include rattlechapper Karen Baker (Vocal Exercises in Stone), plus Stella Beratlis, Tina Arnopole Driskill, Sheila D. Landre, Angela Morales Salinas, Linda Scheller, Gary Thomas, Linda Toren, Gillian Wegener, Ann Williams-Bailey, and other poets who join the group from time to time.

•••Also Saturday (3/18), 7-9 pm, Barbara Hiken presents The Straight Out Scribes Experience: poetry, spoken word and conscious rap, featuring V.S. Chochezi and Staajabu, 910 Moreno Avenue, Palo Alto. Donations will be gratefully accepted to support the legal case of Mumia Abu-Jamal. Info: 916-452-1290.


Let me know if you have an event this week that isn't posted here.

________________________

FAWN'S FOSTER MOTHER
—Robinson Jeffers

The old woman sits on a bench before the door and quarrels
With her meager pale demoralized daughter.
Once when I passed I found her alone, laughing in the sun
And saying that when she was first married
She lived in the old farmhouse up Garapatas Canyon.
(It is empty now, the roof has fallen
But the log walls hang on the stone foundation; the redwoods
Have all been cut down, the oaks are standing;
The place is now more solitary than ever before.)
"When I was nursing my second baby
My husband found a day-old fawn hid in a fern-brake
And brought it; I put its mouth to the breast
Rather than let it starve, I had milk enough for three babies.
Hey, how it sucked, the little nuzzler,
Digging its little hoofs like quills into my stomach.
I had more joy from that than from the others."
Her face is deformed with age, furrowed like a bad road
With market-wagons, mean cares and decay.
She is grown up to the surface of things, a cell of dry skin
Soon to be shed from the earth's old eyebrows,
I see that once in her spring she lived in the streaming arteries,
The stir of the world, the music of the mountain.

____________________

—Medusa

Medusa encourages poets of all ilk and ages to send their poetry and announcements of Northern California poetry events to kathykieth@hotmail.com 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.)

Beau Temps

from AUGURIES OF INNOCENCE
—William Blake

To see a World in a grain of sand,
And a Heaven in a wild flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand,
And Eternity in an hour.

A robin redbreast in a cage
Puts all Heaven in a rage.
A dove-house filled with doves and pigeons
Shudders Hell thro' all its regions.
A dog starved at his master's gate
Predicts the ruin of the State.
A horse misused upon the road
Calls to Heaven for human blood.

Each outcry of the hunted hare
A fibre from the brain does tear.
A skylark wounded in the wing,
A cherubim does cease to sing.

___________________

ETERNITY
—William Blake

He who binds to himself a joy
Does the winged life destroy;
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity's sun rise.

____________________

A MISTAKE
—Czeslaw Milosz

I thought: all this is only preparation
For learning, at last, how to die.
Mornings and dusks, in the grass under a maple
Laura sleeping without pants, on a headrest of raspberries,
While Filon, happy, washes himself in the stream.
Mornings and years. Every glass of wine,
Laura, and the sea, land, and archipelago
Bring us nearer, I believed, to one aim
And should be used with a thought to that aim.

But a paraplegic in my street
Whom they move together with his chair
From shade into sunlight, sunlight into shade,
Looks at a cat, a leaf, the chrome steel on an auto,
And mumbles to himself, "Beau temps, beau temps."

It is true. We have a beautiful time
As long as time is time at all.

_______________________

—Medusa

Medusa encourages poets of all ilk and ages to send their poetry and announcements of Northern California poetry events to kathykieth@hotmail.com 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.)

Put On Your Party Shoes

BIRD DANCE MOM
—James Lee Jobe, Davis

I was dropping acid In 1972, age 16,
when it hit me full on, the wild race
of color, the whirlwind of sounds, I ran
outside because the sky called me.
The next door neighbors had replaced
their yard dog with a peacock (security,
as they will skreech at strangers)
and I never seen one before
except in pictures, and certainly
I'd never heard one before. The shrieks
drew me to their yard, I was amazed
by the wild plumage (that gave off tracers)
and its odd gait. My girlfriend, also tripping,
told me that I danced around, making wings
with my arms, and singing too loud,
"I am The Walrus, Coo Coo Ca Ju."
My mom yelled out of the window,
"What are you kids doing out there?"
And when I looked up at her
I thought she was a peacock, too.
"Bird Dance, Mom."

________________________

Thanks, Jim! James Lee Jobe rose to Monday's peacock challenge, which is now officially over. His rattlechap, What God Said When She Finally Answered Me, is available at The Book Collector, 1008 24th St., Sac.

Today, put on your party shoes: you have a huge variety of poetry events to attend. If you time it right, you can hit every one of them!

First, from 3-5 pm, Patricity's "In Spirit & Truth Poetry Series" features Mario Ellis Hill and Lateka at Queen Sheba's Fine Dining, 1537 Howe Av., Suite 116, Sacramento. Info: 916-920-1020.

Then at 6 pm, Terry Moore reads, signs and celebrates the publication of "SagitTERRYus" and his CD. Underground Books, 2815 35th St., Sacramento, free. With Ray Odon. Info: 916-737-3333.

Beginning at 5:30 pm, writers from Sutter Medical Center's Literature, Arts, and Medicine Program (LAMP) invite you to their Book Launch Celebration, featuring readings by Sutterwriters at 6:30, 7:30, and 8:30 pm. LAMP will be releasing a book of Sutterwriter poetry and prose tonight, called Blood on the Page, in the Buhler Building of the Cancer Center, 2800 L St. (First Floor). Music by the Custom Neon Band will begin at 5:30, along with refreshments. Free parking on Sutter's South Lot (L Street, between 29th & 30th). Info: sutterwriters.com. (See the last issue of Rattlesnake Review for a conversation between JoAnn Anglin and poet Chip Spann about his LAMP project at Sutter Cancer Center, where patients have an opportunity to write about their experiences.) I have seen a copy of their new book, and it are dandy!

Then, tonight at 8 pm, there will be a Special Edition of the Second Saturday Poems-for-All Series, presenting Douglas Blazek, Icon of the 60's mimeo revolution, Poet, Publisher of OLE and Open Skull, and one of the inspirations for the creation of the PFA Series. Note: This reading will be at HQ (25th & R Sts., Sac.) instead of at The Book Collector. Go on down and see the display of Poems-For-All chapbooks from the last five years; the gallery opens at 6. Info: 916-442-9295.

By the way, if you haven't seen the PFA display yet, and can't make it tonight, the gallery at HQ will also be open tomorrow (Sunday, 3/12), from noon until 4 pm.

Also tomorrow (3/12): Margaret Ellis Hill will be reading with Kathy Kieth at the Poets Corner series in Stockton, Barnes & Noble at Weberstown Mall, Pacific Avenue, 7 pm. Margaret (Peggy) will be handing out her littlesnake broadside from 2005, Exegis of Love, and copies of her book, Close Company, will be on sale as well.

James Lee Jobe and I share a love of Russell Edson. Seems to me we could use a little Edson whimsy on this overcast day:

THE CLOCK
—Russell Edson

An old man had wound his clock, and the clock with reassuring predictability replied, tick tock, tick tock...

Do you really think so, said the old man, that I'll live for a couple of billion years?

The clock with the simplicity of a child's yawn replied, tick tock, tick tock...

Oh, what good news, who knows more about time than you, said the old man.


But the old man died that very night. And as he lay in the dark he thought, that clock isn't all that accurate. It's off by at least a couple of billion years...

___________________

—Medusa

Medusa encourages poets of all ilk and ages to send their poetry and announcements of Northern California poetry events to kathykieth@hotmail.com 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.)

Heading Toward Longer Evenings

COMING
—Philip Larkin

On longer evenings,
Light, chill and yellow,
Bathes the serene
Foreheads of houses.
A thrush sings,
Laurel-surrounded
In the deep bare garden,
Its fresh-peeled voice
Astonishing the brickwork.
It will be spring soon,
It will be spring soon—
And I, whose childhood
Is a forgotten boredom,
Feel like a child
Who comes on a scene
Of adult reconciling,
And can understand nothing
But the unusual laughter,
And starts to be happy.

______________________

THE TREES
—Philip Larkin

The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent buds relax and spread,
Their greenness is a kind of grief.

Is it that they are born again
And we grow old? No, they die too.
Their yearly trick of looking new
Is written down in rings of grain.

Yet still the unresting castles thresh
In fullgrown thickness every May.
Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.

____________________

SOLAR
—Philip Larkin

Suspended lion face
Spilling at the centre
Of an unfurnished sky
How still you stand,
And how unaided
Single stalkless flower
You pour unrecompensed.

The eye sees you
Simplified by distance
Into an origin,
Your petalled head of flames
Continuously exploding.
Heat is the echo of your
Gold.

Coined there among
Lonely horizontals
You exist openly.
Our needs hourly
Climb and return like angels.
Unclosing like a hand,
You give for ever.

_____________________

—Medusa

Medusa encourages poets of all ilk and ages to send their poetry and announcements of Northern California poetry events to kathykieth@hotmail.com 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.)

Cowboys, Earthquakes, & More Peacocks

NEUTRINO
—David Humphreys, Stockton

They order different flavors at different times,
Chocolate their favorite now but sometimes it's
Vanilla with hot fudge and nuts, rarely strawberry

With sprinkles. It's not the hot summer sun shining
Down on A Sunday On La Grande Jatte today that
Will solve any of the questions spilled out by Bahcall's

Equations. A tank of chlorine and argon atoms will later
Suggest possible mechanisms but that would all be in
A gallery photo voltaic dance of uncertain electrons,

Oscillating background of ghost particles heavy muon to tau
As you remember bubble chamber tao in another era's bump
And grind reminiscent of peacock can-can at the Moulin Rouge.

____________________

Thanks for the peacock poem, David! David Humphreys heads Small Poets Press, and he will be hosting a reading this Sunday (3/12) at Barnes & Noble, Weberstown Mall on Pacific Avenue in Stockton, 7 pm. Featured readers will be Margaret Ellis Hill and myself.

Send me a peacock poem before this coming Friday night (3/10) at midnight, and I'll send you Frank Taber's new chapbook, Northwind on I-5, or any other rattlechap that suits your fancy. Previously-published poems are A-OK; just lemme know who and when.

Speaking of Taber, his reading was hitch-less last night, with his melodious renderings of his fine poetry. His book is now available at The Book Collector, 1008 24th St., Sacramento. Also released was the wee Snakelets, and Judy Halebsky blew in, too, fresh from her trip to Germany, to read from her new littlesnake broadside, Almost Turning Over, which is now at The Book Collector, as well.

Frank Taber will be reading for the Sacramento Poetry Center on Monday, April 17, which is one day before the anniversary of the San Francisco Earthquake. He's looking for earthquake poems—either your own or somebody else's—to read that night. Send them to FTaber@aol.com. His reading will be at HQ, 25th & R Sts., Sac.; more about that later.

Tonight (Thursday, 3/9), you get your choice of Cowboy Poet/Radio Personality/Humorist/Raconteur Baxter Black, presented by California Lecture Series at the Crest Theater, 1013 K St., Sacramento, 7:30 pm (tickets $23). Info: 916-442-7378 or... Poetry Unplugged presents frank andrick, Luna's Cafe, 1414 16th St., Sacramento, 8 pm, free. Info: 916-441-3931. Frank will be handing out his free littlesnake broadside, Aurelia Occultica Lamantia—AOL.

By the way, if Cowboy Poetry is when you're yennin' for, you could always brave the weather and head on up to Carson City, NV this weekend for their annual Cowboy Jubilee and Poetry Festival, which will feature music, poetry and humor by artists such as Sourdough Slim and Kent Rollins. More info in today's Sacramento Bee (Metro section, "Day Trip") or call 775-883-1532. Sponsored by the Carson Tahoe Regional Healthcare Auxiliary.

At the read-around last night, after Frank's feature, Laverne Frith read Wallace Stevens' "Domination of Black"—which is, of course, a might-ee-fine peacock poem:


DOMINATION OF BLACK
—Wallace Stevens

At night, by the fire,
The colors of the bushes
And of the fallen leaves,
Repeating themselves,
Turned in the room,
Like the leaves themselves
Turning in the wind.
Yes: but the color of the heavy hemlocks
Came stridiing.
And I remembered the cry of the peacocks.

The colors of their tails
Were like the leaves themselves
Turning in the wind,
In the twilight wind.
They swept over the room,
Just as they flew from the boughs of the hemlocks
Down to the ground.
I heard them cry—the peacocks.
Was it a cry against the twilight
Or against the leaves themselves
Turning in the wind,
Turning as the flames
Turned in the fire,
Turning as the tails of the peacocks
Turned in the loud fire,
Loud as the hemlocks
Full of the cry of the peacocks?
Or was it a cry against the hemlocks?

Out of the window,
I saw how the planets gathered
Like the leaves themselves
Turning in the wind.
I saw how the night came,
Came striding like the color of the heavy hemlocks
I felt afraid.
And I remembered the cry of the peacocks.

_____________________

Thanks, Laverne, for reminding me of this fine, fine poem.

—Medusa

Medusa encourages poets of all ilk and ages to send their poetry and announcements of Northern California poetry events to kathykieth@hotmail.com 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.)

It's a Peafowl World...

WHAT COLOR IS COFFEE?
—Ruhiyyih Hansen, Sacramento

Coffee is tan
the color of my skin
Tea is brown
the color of my hair
Juice comes in
different colors
Like the rainbow

_____________________

Thanks, Ru! Ru Hansen's poem is a preview of the fine work to be found in Snakelets, the journal of poetry from/for kids 0-12 years of age. The latest issue of Snakelets (#6) will be available tonight at the reading/release of Frank Taber's new chapbook, Northwind on I-5, at The Book Collector, 1008 24th St., Sacramento, 7:30 pm. Refreshments and a read-around will follow; bring your own poems or somebody else's to read. Also available will be Judy Halebsky's new littlesnake broadside, Almost Turning Over. Here's another sample from Snakelets, this one from Irene Williams, whose father, Steve Williams, used to live in Sacramento and did the very first littlesnake broadside. Steve still keeps in touch from Portland, and regularly submits poetry, both from himself (see the up-coming Review), and from his youngsters (bless his heart). He and his wife also run a poetry website (wildpoetryforum.com); check it out.

MY UNCLE DANNY
—Irene Williams, age 7

My uncle is named Danny.
He lives at Hillcrest.
Grandma goes to visit
Danny and she brings food
and sometimes diapers.
I talk to the parakeets
in the smoking area.
Danny is in a wheelchair.

_______________________

Thanks, Irene!

Taylor Graham took yesterday's bait and sent in a peacock poem, so now a copy of Frank's brand-new chapbook will be winging her way. Send me a peacock poem before this coming Friday night (3/10) at midnight, and I'll send you Frank's book, or any other rattlechap that suits your fancy. Previously-published poems are A-OK.

THE PEACOCK IN LOVE
—Taylor Graham, Somerset

Bits of morning glory,
mountain-lake blue.
Sapphires scattered
on the far side of weeds.
Cerulean and jade.
The neighbors' iris-
studded peacock peck-stalks
the roadside, struts
the pavement stopping cars
with his sun-struck plumage
trailing him across hot
chip-seal. He's searching
for his peahen,
on whom he's never
set the iridescent eyes
of his tail, but believes
she must exist,
somewhere in a great bright
peafowl world. And so
all night, all day
he screams
his pea-love lyrics
to a world that curses
his sweetest note.

(a version of this poem first appeared in Art/Life in 1995)

___________________

Thanks, TG!

—Medusa

Medusa encourages poets of all ilk and ages to send their poetry and announcements of Northern California poetry events to kathykieth@hotmail.com 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.)