Dear Literary Folk,
The December Literary Calendar highlights some delightful holiday events.
Truman Capote’s “A Christmas Memory“
Kick off your holiday season with this delightful interpretation of Truman Capote’s early work. In his 1956 story, “A Christmas Memory,” Capote remembers when he was 10 years old and it was, “fruitcake weather.” His holiday rituals are painted with loving and nostalgic strokes, becoming a truly memorable experience for all ages. Carolers and local personalities reading their favorite Holiday stories will also be on hand to enhance the Holiday experience.
LOCATION
The Award Winning Pelican Art Gallery
143 Petaluma Blvd N, Petaluma CA 94952
707.773.3393
PERFORMANCE DATES
Friday Dec 3 7:30 pm
Saturday Dec 4 7:30 pm
Iota Press Holiday Open Studio
You have your choice of two literary events on the afternoon of Sunday, December 5. The first is a Holiday Open Studio & Book Release Reading. Iota’s letterpress shop will be open for merriment, viewing recent work, and a special reading by Judi Goldberg. Letterpress holiday cards made by co-op members will be on sale, and visitors will have an opportunity to print a poster on one of the four presses. Check the December Calendar for details.
Reading from The Place That Inhabits Us
Sixteen Rivers and Copperfield’s Books Present a special reading of poems from The Place That Inhabits Us: Poems of the San Francisco Bay Watershed and Inheritance, by Margaret Kaufman, at Copperfield’s Books in Petaluma. The San Francisco Chronicle just named The Place That Inhabits Us one of its holiday book picks for 2010!
Sunday, December 5, 2:00-4:00 pm
Copperfield’s Books in Petaluma
140 Kentucky Street, Petaluma, CA 94952
“What a rich and impressive array of topics, themes, settings, and emotions! If you love poetry and poetics, you will be smitten over and over again by this cornucopia, this amazing, diverse harvest.”
—Michael Krasny, Forum, KQED-FM, San Francisco
Featured readers include Margaret Kaufman, whose newest collection of poems, Inheritance, was released this year by Sixteen Rivers Press; Gillian Conoley, author of Profane Halo; and Sharon Doubiago, author of Hard Country.
They will be joined by local contributors Barbara Brauer, Donna L. Emerson, Robin Leslie Jacobson, William Keener, James Nawrocki, Daniel Polikoff, and Kathleen Winter
Sixteen Rivers Call for Submissions
Sixteen Rivers Press is looking for poetry chapbook manuscripts by poets 40 and under for a new chapbook competition. First prize is $1,000 and publication in 2012.
This is also the time when Sixteen Rivers is accepting book-length poetry manuscripts from San Francisco Bay Area poets who are interested in becoming members of this publishing collective.
Details for both the chapbook competition and our manuscript submission guidelines are included in the Calls for Submission section of the Literary Update, but you can also find the details by clicking here.
Poem for Winter
In December, we might feel the edge of frost, the deep working of time’s hands, the call of all living things to a place of renewal and transformation. In that spirit, I offer you this winter poem.
Time Spirals
by Kenneth Rexroth
Under the second moon the
Salmon come, up Tomales
Bay, up Papermill Creek, up
The narrow gorge to their spawning
Beds in Devil’s Gulch. Although
I expect them, I walk by the
Stream and hear them splashing and
Discover them each year with
A start. When they are frightened
They charge the shallows, their immense
Red and blue bodies thrashing
Out of the water over
The cobbles; undisturbed, they
Lie in pools. The struggling
Males poise and dart and recoil.
The females like quiet, pulsing
With birth. Soon all of them will
Be dead, their handsome bodies
Ragged and putrid, half the flesh
Battered away by their great
Lust. I sit for a long time
In the chilly sunlight by
The pool below my cabin
And think of my own life—so much
Wasted, so much lost, all the
Pain, all the deaths and dead ends,
So very little gained after
It all. Late in the night I
Come down for a drink. I hear
Them rushing at one another
In the dark. The surface of
The pool rocks. The half moon throbs
On the broken water. I
Touch the water. It is black,
Frosty. Frail blades of ice form
On the edges. In the cold
Night the stream flows away, out
Of the mountain, towards the bay,
Bound on its long recurrent
Cycle from the sky to the sea.
“Time Spirals” is from The Collected Shorter Poems (New Directions, 1952). It is also featured in The Place That Inhabits Us (Sixteen Rivers Press, 2010)
Sonoma County Literary Update 