March, 2013

FEATURED POET: Denis Mair:   In a suburb outside of all ring roads, so far from the capital it's in another province, fortune allows him to walk where houses are now planted, yet memory of turnips here is fresher than of orange groves elsewhere. Swaths of gentrification happened here with help of one-time payments, which even now are being gambled away over mahjong tables. He only knows this from the newspaper. As a matter of fact, his whole view of the world is imaginary, mostly mediated by signs, and sometimes he finds this amazing. He holes up in Gloaming Studio, waxing commentarial over gnarly symbols, but only as a hobby. When ridiculous words occur to him, he misses how his daughter would have laughed, but she is hitched to a native up Alaska way. On a gradient of freshness, he remembers clear lungfuls of L.A. air. Blessedly his orbit takes him at times to an inn in Shangrila, once even to a "Frozen Waterfall Festival and Cultural Conference." He has been allowed to spend whole days in company with the congenitally kind, and these same literati send him projects down an intermittent pipeline. His proudest prize is a goblet won on Poets and Painters Day at the local artists' village, for poems translated by a friend.

廢品店

     伊沙

 廢品店的生鐵
沈默地瞅著四周
剛剛被賣掉
經一個小崽子之手
被廉價地出賣
比人的骨骼還要堅硬的
生鐵 咽不下這口氣啊
今晚 倉庫頂上的月亮很高
他還沒有學會逃跑
只有沈默地等待
進一步地出賣
或者熔爐
或者有賊閃現
而此刻他已行動
一截生鐵渴望像一條蛇
那樣爬行
他艱難地爬向路口
當看倉庫的老頭出現時
他要瘋狂地撲上去
像蛇撲向
冬天的捕蛇者


THE REFUSE DEPOT

 

           by Yi Sha

 

Iron bar at the refuse depot

Peering about in silence

Was sold a little while ago

Unloaded by some punk

At a cheap price.

Iron bar is harder than human bones:

It can’t get over being slighted this way.

Moon high tonight over the warehouse,

Iron bar ignorant of escape

Only waits in silence

Waits to be sold more cheaply

Or thrown in a furnace,

Or maybe a thief sneaks in.

This is when it leaps into action,

Iron bar longs to crawl

The way a snake does,

Shakily it crawls to the intersection

Where the old warehouse guard appears.

It wants to strike

Pounce on him crazily

The way a snake wants to pounce on the handler

Who caught it in winter.

 

      Tr. by Denis Mair

WRITE YOUR POEM: 

Rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat...they never tell you when to stop on those shampoo bottles.  With the powerful use of repetition, how does it function in your poem?  Like a gong in the distance?  Some Western poetic structures have it cleverly woven into the form, like threads in fine embroidery.  For some poems it is on key word that ends up as a punchline.  As you kick ideas around see what you need and what you can delete.  In any case, rinse and repeat, I mean write and repeat, write and repeat...

February , 2013

FEATURED POET: Rachelle Linda Escamilla is the winner of multiple poetry awards including: The Academy of American Poets, The Dorritt Sibley Poetry Prize, and The James Phelan Literary Awards. She has an MFA in Poetry from The University of Pittsburgh and is a founding member of The Poets and Writers Coalition of SJSU. Her poetry can be found at Cave Moon Press, Hinchas de Poesia, A Joint Called Pauline, La Bloga, Occupoetry, The Villiage Pariah, 580 Split, 99poemsforthe99percent, Two Thirds North: An International Anthology, and Shadowed, Unheard Voices an Anthology of Women. She lives Guangzhou, China where she is faculty for the Creative Writing program in the School of Foreign Languages at Sun Yat-sen University.

CALIFORNIA HWY

Driving the 101, her brother stations his chin just

above the locked, quarter high window. Flustered

with his height, the thin of his neck crinkles pushing

his face into a scowl as they round the bend.

The sideways of San Jose blur against his inky

eyes his mud skin. She pulls away from the speedway

behind a train of cars, a pool of police and people.

Here, slammed not two feet from the tires of traffic

heads, dark hair melting into the asphalt curls

sizzled straight on this July day. Her brother’s hands

ball. They pass the primered Hondas, the dust colored

Toyotas. They pass the moms and sons, all brown

faces seeding the asphalt. Arms zip-tied behind backs,

her brother’s fingers number the bodies, practicing

arithmetic.

PEOPLE OCEAN

How do you write People Ocean my students ask

what is the word in English?  I say I have no clue.

Babylon takes the stage and says its when the world

around you moves in waves and the bodies beside

you sway and you are part of it too.

I was in a gulf of people at the Macau Immigration station.

In the Foreigner Queue there were multi colored faces,

hair and dress an equally distributed rainbow

like a PBS afternoon special,

but over the cement precipice

a mass of black hair and sand colored faces

lurch as the officers steady the gates

at the swell of uniform hair

and women tottering on coral feet. 

Lotus Dream by Christina Michaels Tremblay

WRITE YOUR POEM

Delayed on the Szechuan Road
                        Chang Yueh

A traveler races the sun and moon
coming and going according to plan
but autumn wind doesn't wait
it reaches Loyang before me

So as you race the moon in our global village what autumn winds do you chase?  It is easy to scurry and forget that the scraps of paper you use for your poems hold import.  They hold value to those most important.  Don't forget to write.

JANUARY 2013

FEATURED POET: Joan Gelfand’s poetry, fiction, reviews, essays and letters have appeared in national and international anthologies and literary journals including Rattle, Kalliope, The Toronto Quarterly, The New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, the newversenews, and The MacGuffin. Joan teaches for California Poets in the Schools, is the Fiction Editor for Zeek Magazine and the Past President of the Women’s National Book Association. Joan blogs for the Huffington Post. Her books are: A Dreamer’s Guide to Cities and Streams (SF Bay Press, 2009). Here & Abroad, a chapbook of short fiction (winner of the 2010 Cervena Barva Fiction Award) and Seeking Center, (Two Bridges Press, 2006). Transported, a spoken word CD with original music can be found on itunes & reverbnation.com http://joangelfand.com

RUSSIAN RIVER WATERSHED

Russian River floods then trickles
Rushes, ebbs sprung free
From Mayacamas
Through ashen haze
Flows west, always west.

Until the day word spreads:
Volcanic soil makes for very good grapes.
And, the best news of all? Sells
Higher than Pink Ladies, Braeburns,
Gravensteins, Warren, or Taylor’s Gold.

Vineyards.

Trees pulled as fast as oil spilled
From southern deserts,
As violently as veins were mined.
Merlot, Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc
Replace apple’s knobby arms, the shady glen

Who’s to sip this pricey lode?

Blue black oak-studded hills fade
Replaced by purple grapes hanging ripe
Scatter them. They matter to birds
And children and all of us
Craving sustenance.

Joan Gelfand

FALLEN LEAF LAKE

Wind whispers through Bishop pines

in secret sun dappled spot

We lie surrounded by pennyroyal and dust.

Sap drips in dark rivulets

I take your hand, seek your lips.

We are alone but for the sound of

Pine needles drifting to the forest floor.

Lake water laps licks at the shore

Melted glacier cools

The heat of high summer.

Waves break.

A breeze spins

Circles around us.

The sky: cloudless

High altitude blue

Fire/air/earth/water converge.

Earthy scents

Sierra in July.

Joan Gelfand

WRITE YOUR POEM 

Layer upon layer on the alabaster terrace
I tell the boy to sweep them up in vain
just as the sun takes them all away
the full moon brings them back again

Su Shih (Translated by Red Pine)

So what types of rituals never seem to end, and yet define the permanent parts of our lives?  For some reasons these elements become the porcelain memories that we place into words.  Write a poem.  Draw a picture.  Andrew Wyeth, an American Realist, used to let sketches valued in the tens of thousands of dollars lay scattered on his floor for the dogs to walk in.  He had to get it right.  One portrait was a gift for one of his models, a poor farmer.  The poor farmer recycled a frame and tore the painting to fit the frame.  Wyeth loved it and didn't see his work as holy.  He just worked to get his corner of the world right.   What inspires you to get your corner of the world represented- right?

DECEMBER 2012

FEATURED POET: Changming Yuan, 4-time Pushcart nominee and author of Allen Qing Yuan, holds a PhD in English, teaches independently, and edits Poetry Pacific in Vancouver. Yuan's poetry appears in 619 literary publications across 23 countries, including Barrow Street, Best Canadian Poetry, BestNewPoemsOnline, Cave Moon, Cortland Review, Exquisite Corpse, Hawaii Review, PANK and World Literature Today.  Poetry submissions welcome at poetrypacific.blogspot.ca

et cetera

we, yuan ii, by the grace

of god, emperor and autocrat of

all english words, king of dreamland

grand duke of assonance and

consonance, author of

allen qing yuan, architect of

george lai yuan, last scribbler of

poetic lines, et cetera et cetera

et cetera et cetera etc

herein proclaim ourselves as no extra ordinary line

but a yellow-skined ellipsis

H: For Hengxiang Liao

inspired by a fence in hell

you were invented long ago

to connect every human

for a tall ladder of hope

that we can stand high

against the blue horizon

like the Babel Tower growing to reach Him

where I can find a home in the fame hall

where I can settle my soul in heaven

8: Sudden Fortune/Prosperity/Power/Sacrifice

first, a curved 1 from Indians

then, it was twisted until it became an S

ready to seduce, re-presenting itself like a 5

before the Arabs connected

her two closed circles

piling them one above the other

as if to round up

all sudden Chinese fortunes

WILLIAM O. DOUGLAS WRITING PROJECT:
Look at them on: What kids can do

We're still writing and publishing student work.  Students wrote letters to judges last month.  More poetry is on the way

WRITE YOUR POEM:
What do you do to jump start your motivation?  Jumping jacks?  Whatever keeps you in the habit of creating, make it simple and attend to it every day.  Tend the poems like seedlings.  The seasons change.  The moments will come again, even when it seems you are writing in the snow. Peter Guber tells a story of Zhang Huan, a performance artist who collects ash around the temple and then packs it into a mold.  When the mold gives way the sculpture stands five seconds at best before it is blown away by the wind.  Poems stand for those five seconds, and somehow that is why they start to endure.  Make sure to keep writing.  

November 2012

FEATURED POET:

Esther Altshul Helfgott is a nonfiction writer and poet with a Ph.D. in history from the University of Washington. Her work appears in American Imago: Psychoanalysis and the Human Sciences, the Journal of Poetry Therapy, Maggid: A Journal of Jewish Literature, The American Psychoanalyst, Drash: Northwest Mosaic, Beyond Forgetting: Poetry and Prose about Alzheimer's Disease, The Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Review, Floating Bridge Review, HistoryLink, Pontoon, Raven Chronicles, The Seattle P.I., FragLit & elsewhere. Her chapbook, The Homeless One: a poem in many voices (Kota, 2000) is a poetic docu-drama about homelessness & schizophrenia. Esther is a 2010 Jack Straw poet.  Find her at:
http://www.estherhelfgott.com/

Reading with Alzheimer's

Sprawled out
in the recliner
wearing
a tie-dyed shirt
the kids
gave him,
a Middle Eastern
yarmulke
on his head,
he holds
a book of stories
in his hands,
turns
the pages
as he always did:
carefully,
respectfully,
leaning, learning
words the brain loses
before he under-

stands.

10/29/05, 3 am

As I Sit In Class

 

I think of him
wanting
to come home,
how I pinned
my business card
to his undershirt.
On the back
I wrote:
You're in Adult Day Care.
I'm going to class.
I'll pick you up
at 1:30 p.m.He reads the words
with me. I kiss him
goodbye,
give the nurse
a plastic baggie
filled with tylenol
and a just-in-case Ativan.
In class,
Jeanne, Mary
and I
write
and talk
about writing.
We read Bill Stafford's
What's In My Journal
while my first cell phone
sits unringing
but ready
on the desk by the door.

11/4/05, 8:45 pm

WILLIAM O. DOUGLAS WRITING PROJECT:
Look at them on: What kids can do

We're still writing and publishing student work.  Amber Ortiz, an alumni of the project presented her book at Heritage University last month.  More to come.

WRITE YOUR POEM:
What if you saved your Halloween costume, put it on now and wrote a poem in the costume? Maybe read your favorite poem?  What associations change?...just make sure not to go to public...never know what will happen with a poet in disguise...write, dance, find your way to take those minutes and create.  Let us know what you think

 

FEATURED POET: Peter Marcus.  [Jack Estes reports:] I'm writing to tell you about a new collection of poetry from Pleasure Boat Studio: A Literary Press. The title is DARK SQUARE, and it's written by Manhattan poet Peter Marcus. Although this is his first collection, he's had most of these poems published already in some of the country's best poetry journals, including Poetry, Ploughshares, Southern Poetry Review, North American Review, Iowa Review, Harvard Review, and over a dozen others. In other words, his poems have withstood the test of modern editors. I'm not surprised. They're stunning, very personal and still accessible, very thoughtful and still clear. 

Peter is a psychologist as well as a poet, and that background naturally comes out in many of the poems. He has traveled widely, also, and his poems reveal his intense interest in and eye for the various cultures he has witnessed: Mexican, South Asian, Eastern European, Central Asian, American Southwest. The book also includes love poems and poignant poems of family.

Go to our website at www.pleasureboatstudio.com for an image of the cover and for ordering information. Peter's book is now available from Pleasure Boat Studio for $14.95 (www.pleasureboatstudio.com). If you order one before Dec. 1st, we will pay for shipping. What a deal!! You can also get this book from amazon.com or bn.com.

Dark Square

We all die dreaming something of this world:

its eggs, dust, feathers,

and its body of bread.

             On moonless nights

the whole house sways

with sleep.

            At dawn, a marlin arcs and wavers

toward the Mexican sun.

Murmuring children pass

through the graveyard gates, carrying little pines

Peter Marcus

Statue of Eros Without Wings Dark Square

I think there was no joy
in what was fought for.
Welts where the wings were.
A few feathers of a hen
after the fox has run.
What of the wholeness his body
wanted to belong to? Bone-yellow
hunk of torso bolted to a pedestal.
The radiance used up.
Only his heart lost within stone,
working like wings: that pitiful
flapping as he plummets.

Peter Marcus

Write your poem!
Alliteration or allusion?  Given Western cultures traditions around referencing religions, how does it influence your poems?  For all the Romantic traditions of Poe or Blake, how does this filter into your poem?  Try out a couple of ideas.  Write them down on a credit card bill envelope.  Put it in the mail....

 Rustling Wrens on Amazon

We hope all is going well.  We still have some website challenges, but hope to smooth out the potholes of the cyber superhighway.  It took a little past August, but we are thrilled to release our work with Denise Calvetti Michaels.  This is a great collaboration we are in with Solid Ground helping mitigate poverty in Seattle.  We are also grateful to 4Culture for helping bring this work into the world.  Let us know what you think at cavemoonpress@gmail.com

Please check out out her blog for all the events related to her new release!   Rustling Wrens blog

Here are a couple of her poems!  She's also going to be at the Washington Convention Center this
Friday at 7:00 September 7, 2012.  

Photo of the School at San Gabriel Dam, 1920

Barefoot girls wear cotton dresses, thin as whispers.

Boys in dark overalls are the restless image of James Dean
—blond hair slicked back, stray strands falling forward into their eyes.

Perhaps the teacher asks the children to say cheese, the long note
that unifies them like a song, like an anthem, the depression
and the war to come.

The boy who will become my father wears a long-sleeve shirt
and smiles for the camera as all the children do.

Maybe my grandmother packed his knapsack with salami and goat
cheese, dried figs and apricots—abundance a concrete thing—reach
for it and it’s passed down.

He still recites, for me, at ninety, his first lesson once written in chalk:
Travel and read. No one can take this away from you.


- Denise Calvetti Michaels


We Were Traveling South

On Highway 101
down the Oregon coast
with our little dog, Jazzy,
and all that one carries

Torn typewriter ribbon
dredging light
tendril clues

and the questions, Angie, my youngest, asked,
about my writing,
how I begin,
and the answer that came to me later,
crossing the border into California,
when this story came back:

Once upon a time we tired of picking lettuce
and wandered away, down a furrow,
sun disappearing behind distant hills marked by shape-shifter oak,
my brother and I imagining buffalo, mustang,
and a coyote howling.

When I turn back, my grandfather is lost
to me in a glint of shimmering topaz.

This is nothing I could say I had language for
—not in the Piedmontesse dialect of my grandparents
—not in English or Italian.

First I’m a brown-eyed girl
trying to hold open the gaping mouth
of the sack that scratches my neck,
itches my skin,
smells of dust,
catches my buttons.

- Denise Calvetti Michaels