Thursday, April 20, 2006

Onna Roll!

GONE
—Dawn M. DiBartolo, Sacramento

My sunglasses
Got up and walked away,
Took the sun along for spite.
I asked the dog about it,
But she maintains her innocence,
Her blameless eyes
Designed to gain my trust.
The kids swear upon
Their school grades
That they played no part
In the disappearance,
And the husband
Has no clue
That the sun has
Even shone recently.
I suppose if the sun
Had any intention
On breaking thru the clouds,
My glasses wouldn't have left me.
They are not misplaced,
But simply gone,
And I'll have to replace them,
Should the sun see fit to return.

________________________

Thanks, Dawn! Dawn DiBartolo is a local gal who sent me her poems, thank ewe thank ewe. Her first book of poems, Love & Other Eternities, is now available at The Book Collector.

Another local—this time B.L. Kennedy, who will be releasing a rattlechap (Setich Manor Poems) in June. Here's a sample:

Someone ripped-up the washing machine
Took the lid right off the damn thing

Kerry who lives in apartment #10
With her daughter

Didn't hear a peep
Crawdad in Apartment #5 agrees

Not a sound
Most of the other residents

Think it may have been this guy Richard
Because Paul gave him a key

To the washer room to crash
When loaded or too fucked-up

To travel anywhere but inside
His own screwed-up psyche

Mrs. Setich says we'll have to wait
For another machine

Maybe two or three months or
Until she hears from Paul who
Has the flu (again)

__________________________

B.L. will be reading for Poetry Unplugged at Luna's Cafe tonight, 1414 16th St., Sac., 8 pm.

Sign up early for the Luis Rodriguez Writing Workshop on the River, to be held Saturday, May 20 from 8:30-4 pm at the Sierra Health Foundation, 1321 Garden Hwy, Sac. Luis J. Rodriguez, a writer with ten nationally published books in memoir, fiction, nonfiction, children’s literature and poetry who has worked for 30 years with youth, prisoners, juvenile offenders, the homeless, men’s groups and artists. He has started a number of prominent organizations, including Chicago’s Guild Complex, one of the largest literary arts organizations in the Midwest, and the publishing house of Tia Chucha Press, and he is a highly sought-after workshop leader. Please sign up early by phone (916-454-6802) or e-mail (spannc@sutterhealth.org); space is limited. $100 includes lunch; your check for the full amount will hold your space. Sponsored by Sutter’s LAMP. More info: www.sutterwriters.com.

Sutter's LAMP is contributing a great deal to the Sac poetry scene these days. Also coming in May is a reading by Jane Hirshfield (May 4) at the Sutter Cancer Center, 2800 L St., Sac, 7 pm, and a joint reading by Jose Montoya and Luis J. Rodriquez on May 19 (same place, same time).

NorCal writers are still thinking about the weather. Well, sort of:


THE GIRLFRIEND
—Todd Cirillo, Grass Valley

Twenty
blonde
small frame
tiny breasts
not much shirt
blue eyes

She sits at the bar
looking beyond the hour hand
paints her toenails
every few days
shows her
flat milky belly
each night.

Fingers tracing
thin
barely noticeable lines
from the top of her
well shaped hipbone
on down
scars of birth and baby.
She cries when it rains.

In 1967
she would be fierce
& free
roaming the country
wearing flowers
perfectly.

She sips her drinks
softly
sometimes
feels good
dates the bartender
and remembers
she is somebody
even when it rains.

_______________________

Thanks, Todd! Todd's new rattlechap, Everybody Knows the Dice are Loaded, will be released on MAY 10.

Keep those pomes a-comin'! We're on a roll!!

—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.)

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Wednesday, April 19, 2006

Earth-Shuddering Poems!

Dear Kathy,

It's been a tough month, no wonder nobody's sending Medusa any poems. We've had 14 inches of rain [in Somerset] in April, as of the 16th. But now the sun's shining, so I've dug up a little something (very little!) for Medusa. Don't ask me what it means, but I suspect our dogs and cats know.

EQUATIONS

If the cat is algebra,
the dog is barbershop quartet.
Does the cat’s pharaoh eye
equal the dog’s tumbleweed moon?

—Taylor Graham, Somerset

_______________________

Thanks, TG! Medusa received an earthquake of poems yesterday—three!—all from NorCal poets who were inspired by yesterday's Sylvia Plath poems. Jane Blue writes:

Here is a poem that copies the syntax of a Sylvia Plath poem for an exercise we did in my class a few years ago. You can see how distinctive her syntax is! "The Munich Mannequins" is in Ariel. The way everybody now uses nouns for verbs—that came from Plath. [Ed. Note: See below for "The Munich Mannequins".]

AT THE WOODLAND PARK ZOO
After Sylvia Plath’s “The Munich Mannequins”
(“Perfection is terrible, it cannot have children.”)

As Sylvia Plath might say:
Captivity is absolute; it cannot be reversed.
Hard as windows, it boxes the heart.

Where rain forests hum like the blind
the skulls of bats, folded in false night
waiting for what? The electric day

the perfect sleep.
It stands for: the perfection of care.
All of us, in Seattle, a family.

So, in their silver beauty
the cobras hang today
in the night house of the Woodland Park Zoo

clothed and hooded in their lamé suits
diamonds on lorgnettes
insufferable, without thoughts.

The rain lets go its particles of light.
Ghosts pass by. In the stalls
arms poke in hay and spray elephants.

The ordinariness of the doors
the steel handles, the beige plastic veneers
and polyester bottoms hibernating in chilled élan.

Outside, the closed concession stands.
Winking.
Winking and waiting.

—Jane Blue, Sacramento

_______________________

Thanks, Jane! And from David Humphreys:

Just worked up an April thing here inspired by that sharp lovely thing you posted by S. Plath:

PENIS IDIOT APRIL
—David Humphreys, Stockton

Stamens are all erect out in the green jungle playground
for a wobbly fool tumbling after his hungry lusty Jill
down the flower thick sausage swelled and swooning hill
bringing giddy drooling angels to full gestation January

________________________

Thanks, David! All three of these primo poets have events this week: Taylor Graham is hosting a reading at Our House Defines Art Gallery in El Dorado Hills, plus her work is on display through April at the Appel Gallery on 10th & T in Sacramento; Jane Blue will be reading on Sunday at The Book Collector (4 pm); and David Humphreys hosts a reading of the Calliope editors at Stockton Barnes & Noble on Sunday. See Medusa's Monday post ["Snakes & Taxes"] for details.

Tonight (4/19), Urban Voices presents An Evening with Victoria Dalkey: a poetry reading and conversation from 6:30 to 8 pm, South Natomas Library, 2901 Truxel Road, Sac. Info: 916-566-2133. Rattlesnake Review Reviewer-in-Residence B.L. Kennedy hosts. Victoria is the author of In the Absence of Silver, which was published by Rattlesnake Press in 2005. Her poems have appeared in Abraxas, bakunin, Birmingham Review, Cimarron Review, Napa Review, and other small press publications. Her chapbook, Twenty-Nine Poems, was published in 1999 by Red Wing Press. Since 1976, she has written reviews, interviews and feature articles about art for The Sacramento Bee.

Here is the "Mannequins" poem that Jane was talking about:

THE MUNICH MANNEQUINS
—Sylvia Plath

Perfection is terrible, it cannot have children.
Cold as snow breath, it tamps the womb

Where the yew trees blow like hydras,
The tree of life and the tree of life

Unloosing their moons, month after month, to no purpose.
The blood flood is the flood of love,

The absolute sacrifice.
It means: no more idols but me,

Me and you.
So, in their sulphur loveliness, in their smiles

These mannequins lean tonight
In Munich, morgue between Paris and Rome,

Naked and bald in their furs,
Orange lollies on silver sticks,

Intolerable, without mind.
The snow drops its pieces of darkness,

Nobody's about. In the hotels
Hands will be opening doors and setting

Down shoes for a polish of carbon
Into which broad toes will go tomorrow.

O the domesticity of these windows,
The baby lace, the green-leaved confectionary,

The thick Germans slumbering in their bottomless Stolz.
And the black phones on hooks

Glittering
Glittering and digesting

Voicelessness. The snow has no voice.

________________________

—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.)
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Tuesday, April 18, 2006

Are You Missing a Bet?

MAUDLIN
—Sylvia Plath

Mud-mattressed under the sign of the hag
In a clench of blood, the sleep-talking virgin
Gibbets with her curse the moon's man,
Faggot-bearing Jack in his crackless egg:

Hatched with a claret hogshead to swig
He kings it, navel-knit to no groan,
But at the price of a pin-stiched skin
Fish-tailed girls purchase each white leg.

________________________

Are you missing an opportunity to publish poems on Medusa? Here it is—April 18— and so far this month Medusa hasn't received one poem from local poets. Send us your poems! And previously-published ones are just dandy for Medusa. Heck—what else are you gonna do with 'em?

The new Poetry Flash is out; pick one up around town, including at The Book Collector. Or subscribe: send $16 for six issues (or $30 for 12) to Poetry Flash, 1450 Fourth St. #4, Berkeley, CA 94710. Lots of on-line stuff: www.poetryflash.org. Nestled among the articles and poetry and announcements of NorCal events are these:

•••Squaw Valley Community of Writers (July 22-29) will feature Robert Hass, Harryette Mullen, Sharon Olds, C.D. Wright, and Dean Young this year. Deadline for submissions is May 10: info@squawvalleywriters.org or 530-470-8440 for info. Or look at www.squawvalleywriters.org.

•••California Poets in the Schools is always looking for donations: CPITS, 1333 Balboa St., Ste. 3, SF 84118. Visit www.cpits.org.

•••The jaunty Poesy Magazine's Special 30th Celebration Edition is available for $2 plus $1 postage: Zeitgeist Press, 1630 University Av. #34, Berkeley, CA 94703, or order at www.zeitgeist-press.com.


METAPHORS
—Sylvia Plath

I'm a riddle in nine syllables,
An elephant, a ponderous house,
A melon strolling on two tendrils.
O red fruit, ivory, fine timbers!
This loaf's big with its yeasty rising;
Money's new-minted in this fat purse.
I'm a means, a stage, a cow in calf.
I've eaten a bag of green apples,
Boarded the train there's no getting off.

________________________

Some elaborations on yesterday's calendar:

•••Sunday (4/23), Rattlechapper-to-be (November) Jane Blue will read at The Book Collector, 1008 24th St., Sac., at 4 pm. Jane Blue was born and raised in Berkeley, California. She has an M.A. in English with an emphasis on Creative Writing from U.C. Davis. Her poems have been published in many magazines, including The Chattahoochee Review, The Montserrat Review, Poetry International, Antigonish, The Louisville Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, Salt Hill, and in the e-zines Blaze and Stirring. Her work has also appeared in the anthology, Proposing on the Brooklyn Bridge: Poems about Marriage. Jane is a member of the Sacramento Poetry Center, and edited their literary magazine, The Tule Review, for four years. She is the author of Now that I am in the Light I See (Konocti Books, 1996) and The Persistence of Vision (Poet's Corner Press, 2003). Info about Sunday’s reading: 916-442-9295.

•••Appel Gallery in Sacramento is hosting a reading by "Tree Stories" poets Sunday, April 30th at 7 p.m. Appel Gallery is located at 931 T Street, at the corner of 10th & T Streets. Regional poets reading include Joseph Finkleman, Susan Hennies, Rebecca Morrison, Taylor Graham & Brigit Truex. Please join us for this closing celebration of "Tree Stories", a showing of mixed media photographs by Judith Monroe. If you didn't get a chance to see "Tree Stories," yet, this will be a great opportunity to see the images in person. To learn more about the on-going Tree Stories project, see http://www.tree-stories.blogspot.com.


STILLBORN
—Sylvia Plath

These poems do not live: it's a sad diagnosis.
They grew their toes and fingers well enough,
Their little foreheads bulged with concentration.
If they missed out on walking about like people
It wasn't for any lack of mother love.

O I cannot understand what happened to them!
They are proper in shape and number and every part.
They sit so nicely in the pickling fluid!
They smile and smile and smile and smile at me.
And still the lungs won't fill and the heart won't start.

They are not pigs, they are not even fish,
Though they have a piggy and a fishy air—
It would be better if they were alive, and that's what they were.
But they are dead, and their mother near dead with distraction,
And they stupidly stare, and do not speak of her.

________________________

Surely you have poems that live! Send them in; the Snakes of Medusa need their daily feed..........

—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.)
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Monday, April 17, 2006

Snakes & Taxes (& Po-events 4/17-23)

THE SHATTERED MIRROR
—Jacques Prevert

The little man who sang without ceasing
the little man who danced in my head
the little man of youth
broke his shoelace
and all the booths at the fair
all at once collapsed
and in the silence of this fair
in the desert of this head
I heard your happy voice
your torn and fragile voice
childish and desolate
coming from afar and calling me
and I put my hand upon my heart
where shivered
bloodily
the seven glass slivers of your starlit laughter.


_______________________
Lots to talk about today! Judith Monroe has a show of mixed media photographs called "TreeStories" on display at Appel Gallery, 931 T St., Sac. (corner of 10th and T), through the first week of May. Judith took photos of trees, posted them on a blog, and asked poets to respond to the images. She then used their poetry to create "Tree Stories" by working the poetry into the hand colored images. The poems, by Taylor Graham, Rebecca Morrison, Joe Finkleman, and Susan Hennies, among others, are posted next to the photographs at the gallery. You can get a taste by going to www.appelgallery.com.

Readings this week (let me know if I've missed any):

•••Tonight (Monday, 4/17), get your taxes done before 7:30 and go hear Rattlechapper (Northwind on I-5) Frank Taber, who will read for the Sacramento Poetry Centerabout, among other things, earthquakes. Headquarters for the Arts, 25th & R Sts., Sac., 7:30 pm. [By the way, I know some of you have sent your own Earthquake poems to Frank as per his request; Medusa would dearly love to post these, if you're of a mind to send 'em over to her lackey at kathykieth@hotmail.com. And previously-published poems are always A-OK with Medusa.]

•••Wednesday (4/19), Urban Voices presents An Evening with Victoria Dalkey: a poetry reading and conversation from 6:30 to 8 pm, South Natomas Library, 2901 Truxel Road, Sac. Info: 916-566-2133. Rattlesnake Review Reviewer-in-Residence B.L. Kennedy hosts. Free.

•••Thursday (4/20): B.L. Kennedy himself will read at Luna's Cafe for Poetry Unplugged (1414 16th St., Sac.), 8 pm. Info: 916-441-3931. B.L.'s art is currently on display there, too.

•••Our House Defines Art will hold a poetry reading Friday (4/21) at 7 pm in El Dorado Hills. Featured readers are Kate Wells, John Donnelly, and Jean Salfen, followed by an open mic. Our House Defines Art Gallery & Framing is located at 4510 Post St. in El Dorado Hills Town Center. Free.

•••Also Friday (4/21): Writers, poets, singers, songwriters, dancers salute Earth Day at Literature Alive! in Grass Valley. St. Joseph's Cultural Center, 410 S. Church St., Grass Valley, 7 pm, $8-$10. Info: 530-272-5812.

•••Saturday (4/22): S.A. Griffin, John Dorsey, Ellyn Maybe, Robert Roden, Scott Wannberg, Lob read at 8 pm at The Book Collector, 1008 24th St., Sac.. Info: 916-442-9295. Free.

•••Sunday (4/23), Rattlechapper-to-be (November) Jane Blue will read at The Book Collector, 1008 24th St., Sac., at 4 pm. Info: 442-9295.

•••Also Sunday (4/23), the Nevada County Poetry Series will continue to celebrate National Poetry Month by holding another open-mic reading at Booktown Books & Tomes. Open-mic readers are invited to submit their poems for possible inclusion in the NCPS 2006 Anthology. The readings are free, from 12 to 3 pm this Sunday and next (4/30) at Booktown Books and Tomes, 107 Bank St. (corner of South Auburn) in Grass Valley. Info: (530) 432-8196 or (530) 272-4655. Free.

•••Also Sunday (4/23), Poet's Corner Presents Kristi Britz and Josef Nguyen, Calliope Editors at University of the Pacific, who will read at Barnes & Noble, Stockton Weberstown Mall, 7 pm. (The address is 4950 Pacific Ave., Suite 319.) Free.

•••Or head up to Paradise (!) Sunday (4/23) for the inauguration of the new monthly Poets on the Ridge series, an open mic from 2:30-4:30 pm at Juice & Java, 7067 Skyway, Paradise. Info: 872-9633 (I'm assuming that's the 530 area code). Snake Pal Lara Gularte is hosting this new series, which will, I'm sure, feature some of the Skyway poets who were represented in the current issue of Rattlesnake Review. Free.

Looking for a contest? California Federation of Chaparral Poets, Inc. has a monthly contest that is open to all, whether they are members or not. Monthly Contest Chair Cleo Griffith writes: The April contest entries for CFCP are very low so far. This is a nice subject—“With a Song in my Heart”... hope to receive poems from all of you. Write to Monthly Contest Chair Cleo Griffith (cleor36@yahoo.com) for guidelines and other information. Prizes: $25, $15, $10.

_________________________

ONE SHOULDN'T...
—Jacques Prevert

One shouldn't let intellectuals play
with matches
Because Gentlemen when left to itself
The mental world Gennntlemen
Isn't at all brilliant
And as soon as it's alone
Works artibrarily
Erecting for itself
Out of self-styled generosity in honor of
building-workers
an auto-monument
Let's repeat it Gennnntlemen
When left to itself
The mental world
Lies
Monumentally.

________________________

One last thing: The Orangevale "Neighbors" supplement to The Bee was full of snakes yesterday: two articles: one about the coming movie, Snakes on a Plane, and how one Brian Finkelstein, a first-year student at Georgetown University Law School, saw the title of the upcoming movie and turned it into a joke, setting up a blogsite with some pretty funny stuff. Check it out at www.Snakesonablog.com. (Personally, I think there should be Snakes—the paper kind, at least—on every plane.) And there was also an article on snake removal—who to call when snakes show up on your doorstep. (Humane Rattlesnake Removal Services in Diamond Springs: humanerattlesnake.com, 530-295-5539; or Ramirez Rattlesnake Removal in Auburn, ramirezrattlesnakeremoval.com, 530-889-2775). Or, heck—you could just read 'em some poetry...

—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.)
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