spc Sacramento Poetry Center
poetry now
march / april 2011
Book Review: Lyn Lifshin’s Ballroom n in dialogue with frank andrick
Free featuring James
Benton Michael
Cleary Lisa
Falls Patrick
Grizzell Peter
Layton Royce Joseph
Linder Elissa
McLaurin Ann
Privateer G.A.
Scheinoha Maxfield
Wagner David
Wagoner NEW! Young Voices Poems from poets under the age of eighteen.
Susan Kelly Dewitt and Frank Andrick at The Writers Brush on Jan. 8, 2011 at the Poetry Center.
Smile poet! Throughout this issue of Poetry Now you’ll find photos of poets at
April 8-9 SPC Writing Conference Details, page 3
various poetry events. With the SPC camera in hand, Trina Drotar and Sandy Thomas have been a ubiquitous presence at poetry events taking these images as part of the Poetry Center’s effort to visually chronicle the people and places that make up the Sacramento-area poetry scene. There’s more to come! www.sacramentopoetrycenter.org March / april 2011 | Poetry Now | 1
poetry now
President’s Message
Poetry Now, the Sacramento region’s literary review and calendar, is published by the Sacramento Poetry Center (SPC) and is funded in part with grants from the Sacramento Metropolitan Arts Commission. Submissions of poems, artwork, reviews, and other work of interest to the Sacramento poetry community are welcome. Note that work submitted may also appear on the Poetry Now website. Poem Submissions Submit poems and a 30-50 word bio to the poetry editor at SPCPoetryEditor@gmail.com. Electronic submissions preferred. Distribution
Poetry Now is distributed in area bookshops, Sacramento City and County libraries, and by mail to member-subscribers. If you are interested in receiving Poetry Now, or want multiple copies to share with others, please contact us. Editor: Trina Drotar Book Review Editor: Emmanuel Sigauke Interview Editor: Lisa Jones Interview Contributor: Dorine Jennette In Dialogue: Alexandra Thomas Poetry EditorS:
Shadi Gex, Alexa Mergen, Agnes Stark Staff: Linda Collins, Sandra Senne Design/production: Richard Hansen Copyediting: Shadi Gex, Ann Wehrman
SPC The Poet Tree, also known as the Sacramento Poetry Center, is a non-profit corporation dedicated to providing forums for local poets—including publications (Poetry Now and Tule Review), workshops, special events, and an ongoing reading series. Funded primarily by members, SPC is entirely run by a volunteer board of directors. We welcome your input and your interest. Board of Directors:
Bob Stanley, President Tim Kahl, Vice President Sandra Senne, Treasurer Frank Graham, Secretary Kate Asche Alexa Mergen Linda Collins Rebecca Morrison Lawrence Dinkins, Jr. Jonathan Schouten Trina L. Drotar Emmanuel Sigauke Paco Marquez Mary Zeppa Theresa McCourt contact information: 1719 25th Street • Sacramento, CA 95816 info.sacpoetrycenter@gmail.com • 916-979-9706 www.sacramentopoetrycenter.org
bob stanley Feb. 12. Lucky. Joyce and I just heard W.S. Merwin speak and read his poems. At 84, he’s still speaking out against issues of injustice, environment and war. The light in his eyes remains undimmed when he shares his love of language and poetry—and how poetry expresses the inexpressible in our lives. Merwin still remembers poems he heard when he was five or six years old and reminisces that he Bob Stanley and W.S. Merwin always wanted to be a poet. Thanks to everyone who made the jazz and poetry night a roaring success at California Stage! The Brubeck Institute Jazz Quintet was fantastic, and poets Eve, Mario, Ann and Mary rode the train of music into a space where two art forms danced, soared and transcended. Talk about lucky. I joined that wonderful mix for a while myself. Plans are already afoot for Jazz and Poetry next year. In case you missed it this time, fear not. Many local poets are mourning Elsie Whitlow Feliz who passed away recently. Whitlow, along with her husband, Don, have long been active in the Sacramento poetry community. Together, Here’s a wonderful excerpt from her poem “The Music of the they coordinated the Towe Auto Molokans,” which I found* on the Rattlesnake Press website: Museum poetry contests and published Free-Wheeling, Towe’s annual poetry journal. Whitlow’s When my Aunt Fran work was published in numerous sang while sewing my Queen-of-the-Maypole dress, journals, and, luckily, we will I knew why the black-and-gold treadle sewing soon be able to buy a book of machine was named Singer—Bunya and all my her poetry. SPC also hopes to celebrate her work with a reading aunts sang at their work, in Russian or English. in summer or fall. Nancy and I know our time here is short, and we Thanks, Elsie, for sharing the undimmed love of language of know our children can never understand this which Merwin spoke. Not long thing about the music. They will bury us from now, we’ll sing your songs to a different song, or probably none at all, and try to understand, once again, but once, not so long ago, our whole family sang. “this thing about the music.” * Find the entire poem, and others at: http://www.rattlesnakepress.com/Elsie_Whitlow_Feliz.html
2 | Poetry Now | March / april 2011
a publication of the sacramento poetry center
small press corner
Poetic License — Portraits of Sacramento’s Poets by Suzanne Johnson February 2 – March 30 SMUD Gallery Connie Post and Katherine Hastings March 29 • 6:30 – 8:00 p.m. Towne Center Books Charles Plymell May 22 • 1 p.m. Readers Café and Bookstore Fort Mason, San Francisco
New & Forthcoming Roan Press Peach Farmer’s Daughter by Brenda Nakamoto Sixteen Rivers Press The Stranger Dissolves by Christine Hutchins In the Body of Our Lives by Jeanne Wagner
Calls for Submissions
Our Life Stories, a CrossGenerational Writers’ Conference May 7 • 8:30 a.m. – 4:30 p.m. Consumnes River College Registration deadline: April 22
Including Albert Garcia, Susan Kelly-DeWitt, Dennis Hock, Emmanuel Sigauke. hart-crcwritersconference.org
Write for Details
Young Voices SPCPoetryEditor@gmail.com Snail Mail Review snailmailreview@gmail.com Tule Review tulereview@sacramentopoetrycenter.org
Contests SPC Book Contest • sacpoetrycenter.wordpress.com Swan Scythe Press • www.swanscythe.com
Poetry Event Calendars
SPC art gallery The SPC 25th & R Street location features monthly rotating exhibits and a Second Saturday reception and reading.
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medusaskitchen.blogspot.com
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eskimopie.net
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sacramento365.com
Upcoming SPC readings Sun. March 20 Mon. March 21 Mon. March 28 Wed. April 6 Mon. April 11 Thu. April 14 Mon. April 18 Sat. April 30 Sun. May 1 Mon. May 2 Mon. May 9
Sister Spit: Next Generation with Michelle Tea Robin Rule and Patrick Grizzell Gerald Fleming and Nancy Krygowski Opening Day—Poets celebrate Baseball Greg Glazner and Michael Spring LitFix at the Crocker Art Museum Tule Review release reading Paul Fericano and Ann Menebroker Joelle Biele: “Elizabeth Bishop and The New Yorker” Dana Levin Donald Anderson and poets from Moon Mist Valley
www.sacramentopoetrycenter.org
SPC Writing Conference 1719 25th Street, Sacramento, CA $15 Members / $30 Non-Members — April 8 • 7:30-9:30 p.m. (readings) April 9 • 9:00-2:30 p.m. (workshops) April 9 • 3:00-5:00 p.m. (readings) — K. Silem Mohammad Flarf, Conceptualism, and the “Post-Poetic” Jim Powell “Poetry, History, Witness, and Substrate” Melissa Morphew Playing Around with Words: Simple Exercises to Beat Writers’ Block and Invigorate Your Diction Julia Connor To Be Determined Dean Rader “Four Contemporary American Indian Poets You Should Know” Tim Kahl “Creating Musical .mp3 Backgrounds for Your Online Publications Using GarageBand”
Other Conferences Words in Bloom Writers’ Conference www.extension.ucdavis.edu/wordsinbloom Squaw Valley Writer’s Conference www.squawvalleywriters.org/ CSU SummerArts www.csusummerarts.org/index.shtml
spc presents
First WednesdayS poetry Series Hosted by Bob Stanley 6pm. Central Library, 828 I Street. Sacramento
March / april 2011 | Poetry Now | 3
Book Review by James Benton
She is, by any measure, a true heavyweight. So why do I find her poems so trifling and weak?
Notice how Lifshin doubles down on “the young male dancers” as though the sensitive reader would be confused by “young as these studs.” A sensitive poet would recognize March Street Press, 2010 this “two-fer” as superfluous and excise it on the first I hate to do this. I really do, because Lyn Lifshin is perhaps rewrite. It is as though Lifshin never met a thought too the most prolific writer alive. She has written more than fleeting or insignificant to commit to writing, and then 125 books, some, like Ballroom, more than 200 pages long. valorize as a poem. To be fair, there are better poems in this volume, probably She has more books out of print than most poets will ever enough for a book of a more manageable size. Or maybe publish. She has given, by her own count, more than seven hundred readings, and she has won more awards for her not. Take for example, “Sometimes on the Metro for No poetry than anyone I can think of or find in an unscientific Reason” (161), here in its entirety: Google search. She is, by any measure, a true heavyweight. I imagine your thoughts So why do I find her poems so trifling and weak? Perhaps flying to me. I think of it is because in order to crank out the thousands upon how they say two photons thousands of words she produces, she leaves little time for fired through a slit stay paired self-critical editing. What else explains a stanza like this, forever. As if they could from a poem titled, “Ball Room Gigolos and the Jeweled chose [sic] this. I’m not asking and Powdered Ladies” (28)? for much. Just lets [sic] call … it photon tango. That one If their flesh isn’t what it was, the place someone who isn’t gowns dazzle. What young girl could afford you can be as long as $4,500 for a beaded rhinestone dress, the CD holds out. So close hotel and air. These men sparkle but they for a wrong step. Thigh will burn out like a star. blood braiding as much one … almost as with a lover in bed. Now, there is nothing wrong with the insight that This poem begins with the advantage of a working certain women exhibit complex motives for seeking the metaphor, but one that never matures; the metaphor steps temporary company of dazzling, younger men, or the out onto the stage and then retreats behind the curtain insight that complicates the presence of such men in the from whence it came, never to be seen again. Add to that first place. But wistful content, no matter how insightful, is not the typos and the indecipherable final three lines, and it the same thing as poetic craft. A good idea does not, by is clear that no one looked at these poems once they had itself, rescue bad writing. In jazz, if a player hits a wrong been cast to the page. The titles of the next ten poems note, sometimes the solution is to hit it again, harder, thus (Ten! In a row!) speak to Lifshin’s range of emotions and alerting the audience that it wasn’t a bad note after all but the attention she pays to each poem:“Other Lovers,”“Some represents instead an avant garde interpretation of, well, who Lovers: Foreplay,” “Some Loves,” “ Some Lovers,” “Some knows what it is other than a mistake running for cover. Lovers,” “Other Lovers,” “Some Men That Aren’t Quite Perhaps this explains the poem, “Gigolo Ballroom” (30) Lovers,” “ Another Sort of Lover,” ‘Even More Lovers,” and that appears immediately following “Ball Room Gigolos.” “Those Lovers.” I am not making this up. I want to like prolific poets. I want to admire their Yes, it is the same poem, this time without stanza breaks. invention, the scope of their intellect, their facility with language, their breadth of insight into the human condition. Only the ball gowns are lovely As highly regarded as Lyn Lifshin seems to be, I was eager $4,500 for gold and sequins to dig into this volume and discover what all the fuss was and silk, a little less for a about. Perhaps it is to be found in one of Lifshin’s 124 black tulip floating over other volumes. Rita Dove writes better ballroom poetry, rose petals. Once these women Dorianne Laux writes better relationship poetry, and Jan were as young as these studs, Beatty writes better feminist confession. All of these women the young male dancers. write far fewer poems, but they make each one count. … Ballroom by Lyn Lifshin
4 | Poetry Now | March / april 2011
a publication of the sacramento poetry center
spc Book Manuscript Contest
Guidelines: Submit 48-70 numbered pages of original poetry in any style. Manuscript must contain 2 title pages: Name and contact information (including email address, if possible) should appear on first title page only. Name should not appear anywhere else. Manuscript should be typed, singlespaced, paginated, and bound with a clip. The Sacramento Poetry Center will consider publishing additional manuscripts from the contest. Check for $20.00 US per entry (multiple entries OK) should be made out to The Sacramento Poetry Center. Paidup members of the Sacramento Poetry Center may enter the contest for a reduced fee of $15. Please note that members of SPC will not receive preferential treatment in the judging process. Include a table of contents page and an acknowledgments page for magazine or anthology publications.Will read entries postmarked between January 1, 2011 and March 31, 2011. Enclose an SASE for announcement of the winner. Entries should be mailed to: The Sacramento Poetry Center Poetry Book Contest P.O. Box 160406 Sacramento, CA 95816
spc
& Poetry Unplugged @7:30 Luna’s present p.m. | Crest Theatre
Sunday, March 20
Sister Spit: Next Generation with Michelle Tea 7pm • California Stage
$10 at the door /$8 in advance
www.sacramentopoetrycenter.org
Bill Gainer and Pat Hickerson at Hickerson’s Rattlesnake Press reading on Feb. 9, 2011 at The Book Collector.
2 0 1 0 - 2 0 11 S E A S O N Lectures, Readings, Conversations
Sacramento’s literary arts series TErry mcmill AN Getting to Happy, How Stella Got Her Groove Back, Waiting to Exhale march 24, 2011 ThOm A S mcGuA N E Driving on the Rim, The Longest Silence, Ninety-Two in the Shade April 6, 2011
ArT SpiEGElm AN Artist /Illustrator MAUS, Breakdowns, In the Shadow of No Towers April 29, 2011
rOy B lO u N T, J r . NEW EVENT!
In partnership with the Sacramento public Library r Oy B l O u N T, J r . NPR Panelist on Wait, Wait…Don’t Tell Me! Alphabetter Juice: The Joy of Text (May 2011), Hail, Hail Euphoria, Duck Soup may 24, 2011
7:30 p.m. | CREST ThEATRE SINGLE TICKETS $30 | $15 w/ Student ID Tickets.com or (800) 225-2277 (service fee) Or in person at the Crest Theatre 1013 K Street, Sacramento Monday–Thursday 4:30–8:00 p.m. Friday–Sunday 12:30–8:00 p.m. (no service fee)
7:30 p.m. | TSAKOpOULOS GALLERIA TICKETS $15 www.californialectures.org Or (916) 737-1300
CALIFORNIA LECTURES info@californialectures.org | (916) 737-1300
www.californialectures.org
March / april 2011 | Poetry Now | 5
10 highlights
of the 2011 Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP) conference in Washington, DC by Alexa Mergen
1. 2. 3.
Reading the conference program, thick as a smalltown phone book. I felt like a college undergrad again, choosing among myriad enticing courses. Browsing journals and small presses represented in the expansive exhibit hall. Running into former colleagues from Zoogoer magazine and from California Poets in the Schools, all still writing and teaching.
4.
Standing in line for Illy coffee with Linda Hogan.
5.
Hearing Philip Lopate talk about essays.
6. 7. 8.
9.
A small session discussion about the responsibility of the nature writer and how nature writing occurs outside of wilderness. In a keynote audience of row upon row, sitting, it turned out, beside a friend of a friend. Playing hooky Friday afternoon to breakfast at Eastern Market, walk through museums along the Mall, and climb the steps to the Lincoln Memorial. There, spotting fellow conference goers (with AWP totes) also relishing the sunny winter day. Reading with other Salmon Poetry poets at an offsite gallery in the lively Adams Morgan neighborhood; meeting new poetry pals.
10. The joy of having a rich art and literary community to return to in Sacramento.
— A student in a maximum-security prison challenged Alexa to define “the responsibility of the artist”; with the help of colleagues she’s puzzling it out through teaching, writing, performing, and volunteering.
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Publishing at AWP by Gordon Warnock
While reading up on what I should expect from my first experience at AWP, I came across a rather high-profile blogger who wrote, “AWP will not help you publish your book or find an agent.” This naturally piqued my interest as an agent who was invited to sit on a panel at what is perhaps the country’s largest annual gathering of small presses, literary magazines and aspiring writers. Though there were a handful of agents and even the occasional Penguin editor roaming the book fair, the focus of the event was less on commercial publication but rather on seeking to AWP is an educate young artists and excellent to help them connect with the indie publishers place to find who are actively printing a publisher. their type of work. A common misconception among writers is that these presses are not a desirable or respectable means of having their work published. I held a few pitch sessions hosted by the Southeast Review and the Los Angeles Review, and one gentleman in particular signed up just to talk strategy with me. “Tell me,” he said,“how do I get my collection of short stories published by Random House?” Careful to not break the man’s spirit, I told him, “You don’t. But look around. You are exactly where you need to be.” Contrary to the sentiments of the aforementioned blogger, AWP is an excellent place to find a publisher. These hundreds of indie presses and lit mags are precisely who you should contact if you are an aspiring writer of shorts, poetry, hybrid, or any such form that the majors just don’t consider unless your last name is King or Gaiman. In fact, agents and editors we deal with like an author to have a solid list of publication credits from such venues when they come to us with something more commercial. It’s not only good for your writing career, but it’s honorable. Some of these presses have published work by Nick Flynn, Ben Percy, Tess Gallagher, and so on.You’re in good company. — Gordon Warnock is a Senior Agent with Andrea Hurst Literary Management.
a publication of the sacramento poetry center
poems by James Benton Cannibals
Hard Landing A twig snaps flannel wings on the asphalt flutter of crows where the ground calls out to a mother’s damp salt mixes where her fallen child leaks from his ears a bicycle’s broken spoke a spinning loud and sticky as her hands demand the crows
What would I have my daughter take from you? A piece of flesh, a bone? You were powerful when the spirit quickened you. Your eyes owned the secret beauty Of places she may one day conquer; Your shoulders bent to the work of attaining them. Your heart possessed the anguish of enduring. And I will have my daughter Consume it all. In your Name she will partake of your Body she will assume your Place in time and spirit. For I will name you to her and she will devour your eyes and your shoulders. I will name her for you and she will carry your anguish in her heart.
return but they haven’t anywhere left to land
I will name her for you. Self Portrait
On Thirty-Ninth Street
the one whose portrait includes a bullwhip, the one who built an eyeless plastic friend with latex tongue, the one wearing blindfolds, and high heels, and fishnet, who lay on her back in the bathtub breathing water for our amusement.
I drive a little plastic car up and down my parent’s knees while they lay in bed. It is dark. They wake up and we drive the plastic car up and down the covers until breakfast. We eat plums from the backyard tree. The woman next door never comes outside; she yells if we come too close, play too loudly. Her window screens smell like rust. We don’t know if she likes plums.
At first, we thought it courage to appear like that, naked, to die with every breath before the camera’s surrogate eye, courage that kept her trying kept her trying to almost drown, to gasp, to choke, to sputter and rise, to peek into the camera and release for us that faint private smirk.
Across the street, Pearl wears black dresses with white lace at the neck; Thin Frenchie smells of something like sour milk. Porcelain terriers guard their porch. Glass giraffes graze at bowls of hard candy. Dozens of plastic cars line the mantle. They give me one to play with, and they talk with my mother about plums and rust.
*** continues
www.sacramentopoetrycenter.org
March / april 2011 | Poetry Now | 7
poems For My Philosophy Professor
continued
Everyone piles their leaves in the street— great mounds, slick and wet, turn black for the city to haul away. The street scrapes its metal rakes, arms together, front to back, in unison. Except the woman next door. When I climb behind the wheel of my father’s big car, set it rolling down the drive, into Pearl and Frenchie’s yard, Her one arm opens the door, her other pulls me out. She yells. Her hard fingers smell of plums. —James Benton
Windows She still lives in the house where she was born, remembers the last basement step, broken, misses affluent activity of many hands. Her mother’s efforts linger, like smells of cold kitchen tile floor on her feet; porcelain dishes shattered upon contact, icicle splinters needing surgery for removal, scissorstweezershydrogenperoxide, years & years worth.
He was agreeable. No matter what ethical or metaphysical or aesthetic questions he posed to our blank faces, no matter how vaguely or repetitiously or illogically or evasively we replied to his no doubt thoughtfully-prepared-decades-ago-before our-time-and-even-before-his-own questions by blinking at the ceiling, musing, growing pregnant with our remarkable new insights, absorbing and reproducing our intuitions, which made us feel, briefly and perhaps for the first, even the last, times in our lives as if we might be passably platonic. —David Wagoner
m
Digging Out Day after, slushy snow clogs the shovel, wearies arms, back and lungs. He gasps, short of breath, but also knows: her leaving weighs the most. —G.A. Scheinoha
Still
How is Gold
She’d run fingers through the travelling version of his hair, but what really gets the dander up is losing her grip. Still—follicles will out.
The trees with their orange-y glow neon almost radioactive beautiful New York fall someone’s perfumed air burning leaves the nip the cold hilltops, houses, the nineteen hundreds arranged streets I used to ride my bike here leave marks in the wet paths, like lines there was a friendly girl next door who’s somebody’s mother now and may be dead.
Thinking about you, remembering, is fragile as dried up rain on paper blurred the ink stains and lines wetted, now dry, affirmed in their respective and however brittle places set aside inside one and beautiful though scarred.
—G.A. Scheinoha
—Peter Layton
—Elissa McLaurin No Flakes
8 | Poetry Now | March / april 2011
—Peter Layton
a publication of the sacramento poetry center
Skipping a Beat My heart does that now and then and again almost all on its own, without the slightest help from the shocks of love or recognition or my failures to absorb the bumps in the road or sudden realizations that the semicircular skip-rope is coming around again and trying to find a path underfoot. The doctors call them PVC’s, a short-handed way of saying post-ventricular contractions, which that complex and often disorderly bundle of muscles and valves and tissues of lies under our breastbones forgets to pay attention to, letting a moment slip by without counting it. I wonder every time it happens (which of course is also when it doesn’t) what my heart, that legendary center of all feeling and surely part of what we call soul, is trying to tell me about our parimutuel natures besides the obvious fact it has more on its schedule than my peace of mind. I believe our contractual agreement involves sending my blood around and around and around, reloading it constantly with the benefits of dreamland and then redistributing that wealth to the rest of me, and every skip is a test to be certain I still remember where it’s all coming from and who’s in charge of it, but never the why and wherefore.
Ars Poetica at the Teen Canteen Sippy joined our huddle of jocks with a scrawny guy he swore was tough as a punching bag and could prove it, “Ready, Worm?” he asked. Worm half-smiled and braced. When Sippy’s big-fisted windup whammed into his stomach, he lifted, bowed, landed light as a dancer, that grin never leaving his face. Worm, suddenly a someone, strutted: “Any other a’ you hot shots wanna try?” We poked his belly. It was a slab of slate. In the snack bar, Knox mouthed off a big brag: “For five bucks, hell, I can drink anything.” We chipped in change to concoct a goopy mess of root beer, mustard, pepper, relish, sugar, cigarette ashes. Knox swallowed the dare before puking. His pockets jangled music for hours. —Michael Cleary
—David Wagoner
www.sacramentopoetrycenter.org
March / april 2011 | Poetry Now | 9
TWO VIGNETTES by Patrick Grizzell vignette #12
vignette #7
nikki knew two things: that boy was trouble and she liked trouble. what she hadn’t counted on was not so much that he was on the run, but what he was on the run from. she liked that he could be gone in a day, an hour, that anything that might happen would happen fast, that there would be no strings, no promises no heartache, but a lingering mystery would sear itself into her like a brand, ok? he showed up at the end of her shift, ordered the blue plate special, which didn’t exist on the menu. “i thought all these joints had a blue plate special,” he said. “that’s why i pulled in here, for the blue plate special.” “well, we don’t have one,” she replied.“but i could make one up.” “what would it be?” “meatloaf, mashed and peas.” he put two dollars on the counter, stared at his coffee. “ok, how about fried chicken, potato salad and a roll?” “i’ll take the roll,” he said, reaching for a cigarette. “you can’t smoke in here.” “i was just leaving. this is for outside. it’s a nice night out.” out the window, a half moon hung low, the silhouettes of cars on the highway blurred slices through it. “what about your roll?” she asked. when they walked out into the sunny morning, he turned and pulled her up close and tight around the waist. he was strong. he kissed her hard and said nothing as he turned and walked towards his truck. “not a soul!” she shouted after him. “i won’t tell a soul.” he looked once at her as his tires crunched through the motel’s gravel parking lot as though he would never look at her again.
the first time i saw the place we’d driven through the night closing in on l.a. as the sun was rising. we pulled into one of those rest stops, dropped the seats back and slept for about an hour. on the way in, on a road through the hills to the coast there were about 25 buzzards in the middle of the road— some fresh road kill, hopping out of the way of cars and hopping back like black water filling in as they drove past, and another 25 or so in a dead tree on the ocean side of the highway preening and lifting up and down, big wings flexing for balance. once there, elijah made us a snack of crackers and cheese and some of that flavored continental coffee that comes in a box. instant. i forget what mine was. but flavored. the house hung over a cliff, the patio cantilevered out over a hundred foot drop. down on the beach below, in what felt to me like cold air, three naked women caught what was left of the sun, two face up, one face down. all night i tasted that fake coffee. walking late on the beach, i even opened my mouth to the wind, taking in the salty language of the sea spray but still couldn’t shake it. i walked around where i’d seen those sunbathers, searching in the sand for evidence like a detective who’d witnessed a crime he wasn’t sure happened at all, then the sea like a good housekeeper sweeping it all away before the fingerprint technician could get there. up the cliff, elijah’s windows shone like beacons and i found that the cold suited me, after all. and far, far out, out there, in sky and sea, none of it mattered, then or now.
Cheap Used Books!
TBC The Book Collector 1008 24th St. Sacramento
Large selection of poetry & literature!
10 | Poetry Now | March / april 2011
New book from A.D. Winans Winner of 2006 PEN National Josephine Miles Excellence in Literature Award and recipient of 2009 PEN Oakland Lifetime Achievement Award. Drowning Like Li Po in a River of Red Wine Selected Poems from 1970-2010. 368 Pages. $20 plus $5 shipping. Bottle of Smoke Press 902 Wilson Drive Dover, DE.19904
a publication of the sacramento poetry center
If it’s Thursday it must be Poetry Unplugged at Luna’s Café which on Feb. 17, 2011 featured the release of the journal WTF!? #9. Pictured: Art Luna (with apron) and JoAnn Anglin.
David Meltzer during a feature reading on Jan. 17, 2011 at SPC that also included Neeli Cherkovski and Art Beck.
Burns Night is celebrated every Every Jan. 25 at The Book Collector. Kevin Jones (right) and his grandson just after reading Robert Burns’ ‘To a Haggis.’
Judy Halebsky, Danyen Powell, and Joyce
Kathy Kieth, JoAnn Anglin, and Annie Menebroker on Feb. 9, 2011 at a
Odam at SPC in Jan. 24, 2011.
second Wednesday Rattlesnake Press reading at The Book Collector.
www.sacramentopoetrycenter.org
March / april 2011 | Poetry Now | 11
in dialogue
with
frank andrick
Interviewed by Alexandra Thomas Frank Andrick is a poet. Give you more? Well, he’s influenced by Blaise Pascal (16231662), Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867), and Philip Lamantia (1927-2005). He edits WTF?! and is a member of Drogas, a band of poets and writers (Josh Fernandez, Rachel Leibrock, Jessalyn Wakefield and Ruben Reveles). He lives above a poem and drinks two pots of Lion Coffee before noon. You can find him sunning himself like a lion when the sun even hints of coming out from behind the clouds. He pours unlimited cups of conversation, and his blue eyes tell stories of the sea inside his soul. Written in black Sharpie marker across the putting it into two lines. He said, “Yes, and if The Forever Love face of his oval Victorian mirror is a Charles you can do that, you are a poet. It is often a Baudelaire quote: “To strive everyday to thankless job, but it’s the one I want and can’t To haunt become a great man and a saint . . . but always live without. You see, poetry is so personal is always greater in accordance with one’s own standards.” He for me; it reflects a moral tone. I don’t see tells me that quote is his standard, his purpose, how it can be anything else.” than his raison d’etre, that, at some point each day, he Personal describes the poem affectionately to possess. “finds [his] face in the mirror and those words called, “Lamantia.” The complete title In that spirit across [his] face.” Always curious about how is “Aurelia Occultica Lamantia (AOL),” I hope poets meet dead poets, I asked Frank. “It’s a released as a littlesnake broadside in 2006 I haunt you strange story, really,” he said. “When I was (Rattlesnake Press). Frank said he wrote the forever. thirteen or fourteen, I discovered that Jim poem the day Lamantia died. “The poem,” Morrison read and suggested Rimbaud and he said, “is about the expansion of the man from The Baudelaire. I read Rimbaud first, who referred and his thoughts, his loves, his desires, and Magnet Project to Baudelaire as ‘the premier seer and the what influenced him. That poem is about so (R.L. Crow) king of poets.’ Baudelaire, interestingly, led to many things.” They met just once and talked Pascal, a philosopher and mathematician. Pascal for hours, and I thought how we so rarely influenced Baudelaire and others, and he was meet the living poets we read. also a poet. He coined the phrase, pénsee, which is a thought, What else do I know? What else should you know? Frank idea, or contemplation.” Frank has written many pénsee hosted and produced the KUSF radio show, “Pomo Literati,” poems, and his most recent one, “The Forever Love,” can be which featured poetry, spoken word, interviews, and infound on magnets, part of a project by R.L. Crow. studio live band sessions, for what would have been twelve When I asked about Frank’s writing process, he said, “It years this April. The station was sold in January, the show is really some type of inspiration first. Then I write and cancelled, but recordings can be found online. I also learned overwrite. The second step, however, is the most important. about his work as a journalist, specifically about interviews Self-editing requires me being able to pull away from the with Patti Smith and bands like The Cure, Nirvana, Sonic work, to look at it, minus the original emotion and inspiration Youth and U2, and I discovered that much of his work has that brought me to it. Then, clinically put it together again. been translated into German, Japanese, and Russian. Little Charles Baudelaire used to say that the task of a poet is taking appears in the United States. For those of us looking for his infinity and reducing it down to diamond-like clarity.” I writings, Mandorla, a collection of selected poetry, prose, and asked if that was like taking the big picture of a novel and experimental works will be released later this year. This interview was winding down and going off the record.The streetlamp just outside his window intermittently This conversation took place on a high wind warning February flickered. The clock showed half-past six. afternoon at Frank Andrick’s flat, above a poem, “Old Ironsides.” 12 | Poetry Now | March / april 2011
a publication of the sacramento poetry center
The Central Valley
Charles Baudelaire used to say that the task of a poet is taking infinity and reducing it down to diamond-like clarity.
Near sea level the sun fed peat meets the fog and prolongs the valley’s depression. Farmland is the quilt of the bed I lie in/and if not for the twisted, mottled rivers my eyes would go geometric blind. The white heat bleaches the polished blue sky aging the day which lacks a hint of inspiration and lulls the dizzy transient. Perhaps the farm worker with her unchanged expression of labor understands the hell fire complexion of her ceiling which offers no shade nor sympathy/and any thought she might inherit the earth evaporates. Mount Diablo, bosom of our fallen horizon, dark idol in the low, dead end sky startles the drifting gaze but Diablo from thin air resembles a castle of sand after the tide rolls in. Thought I do prefer the tree lined veins of my body under the light weight quilt of green . . . over the Spanish tile carpet of the south with its blue poke-a-dot pools . . . over the nail bed cities of my state I stay planted in this moody valley to observe the sun baked peat in your wrinkles and grow my children. —Lisa Falls
Aurelia Occultica Lamantia first stanza
This morning/mourning paper I feel a void The knowledge and presence of a void — paradoxia paradiso Space does not rush in to fill This void Void of voids — oh void of voids from PariScope: A Triptyche, a reprint of Frank Andrick’s three previous littlesnake broadsides. (Rattlesnake Press)
www.sacramentopoetrycenter.org
Art & poetry April 30th at SPC
To cap off National Poetry Month, a special one-day poetry/art exhibit will accompany the tag-team reading by Paul Fericano and Ann Menebroker. The works of the poets who inspired them will be on view. March / april 2011 | Poetry Now | 13
Young Voices Poems from poets under the age of eighteen.
Astro
Ice Skating
Astro under the sun. Astro on Mount Davidson. Astro sees a dog. Astro wanting to play. Astro going downhill. Astro injured...can’t play. Astro at home again. Astro doesn’t understand. Astro wanting to play again. Astro dreaming of friends.
Flying. Not in air, but on ice. Yes, ice. Gliding, swerving, almost graceful, not even looking and . . . CRASH! Down, I fall. Give up? No. Back up with a spring in my step Ready to glide, glide, glide.
—Royce Joseph Linder
—Maxfield Wagner is in the third grade and lives with two fish, his dog, mom, dad, and older brother. He dances while playing the piano and singing. He also plays baseball, basketball, football, soccer, and keep-away with Astro and his brother.
Royce Joseph Linder
is in the fourth grade. He enjoys games, pets, and Disneyland. And he loves life wherever it takes him.
Hunger Directs My mother waited tables after the horse races concluded, before a black and white TV was invented, after people waited to come inside, before wading through brackish water, after rain soaked the paddock, before the races closed, after hurricane havoc laughed its pants off, before America invented the fast food myth, after Friday nights were a lifesaver, before people hungry for a roast beef sandwich leaned into their twirling stools, after a trim physique eliminated grizzle from the equation, before horseradish was added on the side, after smoking a Camel was essential, before playing pinball all night, after guzzling a Coors, before bright red orca lip prints decorated coffee cups and cigarette butts, after dancing the boogie in tight Levis and cowboy boots, before pomading my forelock, after I hid behind the bar to wash beer glasses. —Ann Privateer
Maxfield Wagner
Submit poems for Young Voices Submit 1-3 poems at a time, a onesentence bio, and an email address with the name of a contact person. No more than two submissions during a calendar year, please. SPCpoetryeditor@gmail. com Subject line: Young Voices. We seek poems that show the world through young eyes with insight, humor or both. Please allow 1-3 months for consideration by the editors. If your poem is selected for publication, you must sign a release form authenticating that it’s your original work and granting Poetry Now permission to print it.
Sample bio: Alex Smith attends fourth grade at B.F.F. Elementary School in Sacramento, and he enjoys baking cupcakes, walking dogs and playing soccer.
spc presents
tuesdays poetry workshop
Facilitated by Danyen Powell 7:30pm. E.M. Hart Senior Center 915 27th Street. Sacramento New and experienced poets welcome. Bring 15 copies of one, one page poem.
14 | Poetry Now | March / april 2011
a publication of the sacramento poetry center
contributors has, at various times, been a sailor, electrician, retail clerk, janitor, professional musician, bill collector, nuclear engineer, bank manager, and fraud investigator in roughly descending order of personal dignity.With fresh new learning under his belt, Jim now searches for the good Voodoo of gainful employment.
James Benton
has poems in The Texas Review, The Seattle Review and Poetry Lore. His collection of poems, Hometown, USA, received a 1992 American Book Series Award. He has also received two Florida Arts Grants in Poetry and the 2005 Paumanok Poetry Award.
Michael Cleary
lives in California and writes about its diverse beauty.
Lisa Falls
Patrick Grizzell is a poet, songwriter, and
author of Minotaure Into Night and Dark Music, Chicken Months about which Robert Bly said, “... the poems have a sweet spontaneity and tenderness.” He is a founding member and former director of the Sacramento Poetry Center. Peter Layton
lives and writes in Southern
California.
Jennifer Pickering at The Writers Brush at the Sacramento Poetry Center. paintings by artist/muralist Alex Escalante, including portraits of poet José Montoya and Phylicia McGee, can be seen in the background.
Elissa McLaurin loves life with her three sons, overlooking the Pacific Ocean. She also likes to read, walk, eat, garden, dance, play and laugh. Ann Privateer, poet, painter, photographer, Clevelander, now resides a fraction of the year in Paris, France, where she tries to keep the pace with her granddaughter, Lilas. Ann’s poems have appeared in Manzanita, Poetry Now, Tapestries, Suisun Valley Review, The Sacramento Anthology: One Hundred Poems and Tiger’s Eye.
lives in Wisconson and enjoys experimenting with drabble, prose poems, and haibun. His poetry has appeared in Contemporary Haibun, Pearl, Lynx and Scarlett Pooh. G.A. Scheinoha
has published 18 books of poems and ten novels, including The Escape Artist, which Francis Ford Coppola adapted into a screenplay. He has won the Lilly Prize and prizes from Poetry (Chicago). He was chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and for the National Book Award.
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/ april 2011 | Poetry Now | 15 Mail to: 1719March 25th Street, Sacramento, CA 95816
spc Sacramento Poetry Center
poetrynow
The Sacramento Poetry Center presents
march / april 2011
editor’s message
Trina L. Drotar Poetry Now continues to evolve, and I’m pleased to announce a new column, YoungVoices, a feature honoring poetic voices under eighteen.This first column features words by Royce and Maxfield, and I hope you enjoy them. Many thanks to Shadi Gex for suggesting this column. After two and a half years, Cynthia Linville has stepped down as poetry editor, but I am excited to have three editors who will rotate throughout the year. Shadi Gex,Alexa Mergen and Agnes Stark will bring their shared and individual aesthetics to the task. Many thanks to Cynthia for her past service and to Shadi, Alexa and Agnes for their future service. Please note an important change regarding submissions of poems. We urge everyone to submit 3-5 poems and 30-50 word bios electronically to SPCPoetryEditor@gmail.com as an attachment. By doing this, formatting is preserved, and it is easier to for the editors to contact you. Be sure to include your mailing address for your contributor’s copies. Additionally, all works must be previously unpublished. I am delighted that In Dialogue has returned for this issue.You’ll notice that it takes a different form this time and that the dialogue is with only one poet. You’ll also find book contests, calls for submissions, and only a few of the many writing conferences that appear around this time of the year and continue through summer, including information about the SPC writing conference in April. Poetry Now is always seeking poems, book reviews, and articles. If you have attended a writing conference and would like to write a short article about your experience, please contact me at PoetryNowEditor@gmail.com. Missing from this issue is the feature interview usually conducted by L.A. Jones or Dorine Jennette. These interviewers graciously donated space for other features this issue. Their interview will return in the May/June issue and showcase D.A. Powell.
16 | Poetry Now | March / april 2011
Third Thursday Brown Bag Lunch Series
Hosted by Mary Zeppa and Lawrence Dinkins. Noon. Central Library, 828 I Street. Sacramento
a publication of the sacramento poetry center