Sonoma County Literary Update

Dear Literary Folk,

Under the light of a blue super moon, we turn the calendar to September and take a look at literary events coming up as we welcome Indian Summer and the approach of fall.

Petaluma Poetry Walk on Sunday, September 17 11:00 a.m.-8:00 p.m.
The Petaluma Poetry Walk is back! Last September, we bravely ventured to outdoor venues after COVID’s interruption of the Walk for two years. And then, of all things, it RAINED! A first for the Poetry Walk. We scuttled to move readings indoors and held umbrellas for each other as we moved from venue to venue. Who know what the weather (and fire season) will bring? But rain or shine, here is the spectacular line-up of venues and readers:

Hotel Petaluma, 11 AM: Kary Hess, Matthew M. Monte, Joseph Zaccardi
Artaluma, noon: Melissa Eleftherion, Jack Crimmins, David Rollison
The Big Easy, 1 PM: Charlie Getter, Gail Mitchell, Kurt Schweigman
Oli Gallery, 2 PM: Anita Erola, Connie Post, Dr. Jeanne Powell
Copperfields, 3 PM: Kim Shuck, Maw Shein Win
Phoenix Theater, 4 PM: MK Chavez, Gail Entrekin, Steve Trenam
Petaluma Historical Museum, 5 PM: Tony Aldarondo, Georgina Gabriela Tello Bugarin, Ernesto M. Garay
Aqus Café, 6-8 PM: Iris Jamahl Dunkle, Terry Ehret, Elizabeth C. Herron, Maya Khosla, Phyllis Meshulam, Gwynn O’Gara.

Thanks to all the local Petaluma businesses that have opened their doors to make the Walk possible. More details may be found on our County news page. Look for updates on Facebook. The complete schedule is posted at: www.petalumapoetrywalk.org. Or download a brochure here.

Long Poems at Café Frida
Celebrate the start of fall and the unique pleasures of live poetry with Ed Coletti’s Festival of the Longer Poem. Ten poets will read one poem for up to ten minutes each (see our Calendar for list of poets). The reading will be held on Sunday, September 24, 1-3 PM at Café Frida, 300 South A Street in Santa Rosa.

Maggie Tuteur’s Book Launch Coming Soon
Many of you know that I’ve been working with a team of writers and artists to bring out a remarkable collection of poems by Maggie Tuteur. Maggie has been struggling for many years with hearing loss, chronic fatigue, and dementia, but seeing her poems make their way into print has been a source of deep pleasure for her. And these are amazing poems!

The book is called How the Earth Holds Us. We hope to bring it out by the end of the month, so we invite you to look forward to October’s Literary Update where the book launches will be announced.

About the book, our Sonoma County Poet Laureate Elizabeth Herron wrote this:

“We hear in ourselves the yes of recognition when we read “A Long Life,” the opening poem of How the Earth Holds Us — our death winds around our lives as bindweed does the flowers in a garden, closer even, for it cannot be rooted out. All along death “hums beneath your breath/too familiar to hear.” In these poems, over and over Mary Holman Tuteur reminds us of our mortality using nouns that become verbs, verbs that attach themselves surprisingly to subject phrases, while her prepositions lead over and over to unusual transitions. But there are narratives too in these poems, stories to remember later, wondering and a little haunted by them. Peopled with family and friends, her poems often begin in the middle of their stories and then unfold around the reader as they unfolded around their writer. Some of her most direct phrases have enormous impact (“How could the earth not throw us to our knees?”); and her passion compels us to the implicit answer. An erotic edge permeates her poems – intimate and revealing. And there is humor, too. In “Women of a Certain Age,” the poem from which the title of the book is taken, Tuteur tells us “we discern the shift/ in how the earth holds us.” Her poems pivot from present to past and past to present as deftly as a dancer. She is “a woman who will never look forward without glancing back.” Finally, these poems invite readers into the emotional life of a sensitive adventurous spirit with a bright intuitive aesthetic ripening through time. This is a book I am glad to have read and will return to.”

Give That Unsolicited Manuscript a Chance!
Jo-Anne Rosen, co-editor of this Literary Update, maintains an excellent page with information about calls for submission in various genres. Please do visit the Calls for Submission page and check it out. Here is a call for poetry manuscripts which I’ve just learned about, and which isn’t yet up on the submissions page, but worth looking into.

2024 Perugia Press Prize is OPEN: Perugia Press is a women’s poetry publishing outfit. Poets must be women, which is inclusive of transgender women and female-identified individuals. Because gender inequity still occurs in publishing, it is part of our explicit feminist mission to support and promote women’s voices in print.

To support writers in early to mid-career, poets must have no more than one previously published full-length book. You are still eligible if you have published a poetry chapbook/s or books in other genres.

Publication of the winning manuscript comes with $2,000, author copies, and other support from the press.

Manuscripts must be submitted between August 1 and November 15. Details and guidelines are available on the Perugia Press website: https://perugiapress.org/contest/

Redwood Writers Presents a Roundtable Discussion on Writing & Publishing
Wherever you are at in your writing journey, this event will offer a rare opportunity to connect with the minds behind stories and poetry, explore the craft, and gain valuable insights into the world of literature and publishing. Saturday, September 16, 1:00-2:30 p.m. Admission: $5 CWC members, $10 non-members. More details and registration: redwoodwriters.org

Round Table Conversations at the Sitting Room Library
The Sitting Room Library is launching a new series this fall called Round Tables. Here’s how they work: These Round Tables are a new way of getting small groups in conversation using the rich resources of the Sitting Room Library. Here is how we are imagining them: no cost, no advance preparation needed. And only one meeting planned. Browse the library, select a book. Each person speaks and also listens and thus we have what we all say we are wanting: conversation. Bring your curiosity! 

Saturday, September 16, 2:00 p.m.
Round Table Introduction with Sharon Bard.
Join in for an introduction to the Round Table Conversations. All are welcome, but space is limited to the first eight who email Sharon, srbard@comcast.net.

Saturday, September 23, 9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.
Qi Gong: Writing Gong Workshop with Karen Fitzgerald
This workshop is designed to appeal to your Creative within – be she/he a writer, painter, sculptor, weaver, designer It is a workshop aimed at all creatives, from beginners to advanced to Masters of an art form, even if that art amounts to doing life. Writing will be the act that serves to integrate the gentle movements of a qi gong practice to one’s creative practices. $30 donation benefits the Sitting Room Library. Please email Karen, thinkinc@aol.com for additional information.

Saturday, September 30, 2:00 p.m.
Round Table 2, Reading Other People’s Mail with J.J. Wilson
What could be more fun than sitting a-round-table where we pluck books from the LETTERS FROM WOMEN WRITERS SHELF and choose some worthy of reading aloud to one another. Not surprisingly, from Jane Austen to Zora Neale Hurston, they are good letter writers (tho we are warned that Virginia Woolf’s letters are “intensely performative and recipient-specific in tone”) and I think we’ll get some good insights along with some good laughs. To sign on the dotted line for this experience (ltd to six people), please telephone J.J. Wilson at 707 795-9028.

And here are the October dates and topics:
Saturday, October 7, 1:00 to 4:00 pm, Round Table 3, Savoring Woolf with JoAnn Borri
Saturday, October 14, 2:00 p.m. “H.D.: Out of the Shadows,” with Barbara Beattie, M.A. student, Sonoma State
Saturday, October 28, 2:00 p.m., Write Your Own Obituary with Marie Thomas McNaughton.Check out the Literary Update’s Calendar page or visit the Sitting Room Library’s new website at this link for details: https://sittingroomlibrary.org/events

Anyone interested in hosting a Round Table that is tailored to the resources of The Sitting Room Library, please telephone J.J. Wilson, 707 795-9028 to talk your ideas over, o.k.?

Poetry of Remembrance Community Reading October 21
On Saturday, October 21, from 6:00 to 8:30 PM, members of the community are invited to attend the annual El Día de los Muertos “Poesía del Recuerdo / Poetry of Remembrance” celebration. We are pleased to announce that this year’s event will take place atPetaluma Historical Library & Museum, 20 4th Street, Petaluma, CA 94952.

Our featured bilingual speakers will include Lalin the Poet (Luis Vasquez) and poet Gina Tello Bugarin; poet and painter Sandra Anfang; artist and community educator Irma Vega Bijou, former Sonoma County Poet Laureate Phyllis Meshulam, and many others. Our host for the evening will be Elizabeth Herron, Sonoma County’s current Poet Laureate.

Those who wish to honor the memory of someone who has departed are encouraged to bring something—a photo or an item that reminds them of their loved one—that can be placed on a community altar for the evening.

Those who would like to participate in the community reading are encouraged to share, in Spanish (or other language) and/or English, a brief poem or remembrance.

Poetry of Remembrance/Poesía del Recuerdo is part of the month-long El Día de los Muertos celebrations held in Petaluma during the month of October, featuring community altars, bilingual storytelling, sugar skull workshops, music, dance, and a procession with giant puppets.

Admission is free. For more information about El Día de Los Muertos events, check out Facebook at El Día de Los Muertos Petaluma.

Sixteen Rivers Press Benefit Will Feature California Poet Laureate Lee Herrick
For three years, Sixteen Rivers has hosted its annual benefit reading as a virtual event. We’re thrilled to return to a live event, complete with delicious food, books by our authors, new anthologies of teen poets, and a reading by California Poet Laureate Lee Herrick.

The benefit will be held on Sunday, October 22 from 2-5 PM at Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda, Berkeley.

Please join us for a delightful afternoon of wine, hors d’oeuvres, a silent auction, poetry, good company and conversation. The event is free and open to all. We ask that you use the link below to visit our EventBrite page. Once there, click on “get tickets” to let us know you’re coming. This will help us plan food and beverages for our guests. You can also use the EventBrite page to make a donation, if you’re so inclined. https://www.eventbrite.com/e/sixteen-rivers-2023-fall-fundraiser-tickets-680501587567

Poem for September
The Poetry Foundation website has a terrific list of autumn poems by Richard Wilbur, Stanley Kunitz, John Keats, Bruce Weigl, Annie Finch, Rita Dove, and more. What caught my attention was this quirky poem by Grace Paley, one of my favorite short story writers (who also wrote essays and poetry), and one of my favorite human beings. Here’s the link to the Poetry Foundation’s fall poems page: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/collections/101590/fall-poems

In my internet sleuthing, I also came upon this interesting and insightful commentary of Paley’s “Autumn” and thought I’d share it with you. The author is Rosandreea on the website Contagious Gothic. Rosandreea is not a fan of romantic seasonal poetry, and I think she’s onto something in her interpretation of Paley’s poem. You can read the rest of the commentary at this website: https://contagiousgothic.wordpress.com/2017/10/09/autumn-1991-grace-paley/

“Perhaps it is something of an acquired taste, but I really appreciate the humor in “Autumn” (1991). I love the streak of mock seriousness running through the whole text and the contrast between the anti-climax of the poem’s conclusion and its core of vivid natural imagery. Much nature poetry aims to give us some kind of special insight into the processes of the natural world in order to then put that insight to work on larger questions and issues having to do with human (rather than natural). Mary Oliver’s “Lines Written in the Days of Growing Darkness” (2012) is a useful example of this. There is much more going on in the poem, but one of the natural (!) conclusions from reading the poem is that the changing of seasons shows us that we have to let go of what or who we love so that they can become renewed.”

________

Autumn
by Grace Paley

What is sometimes called a
 tongue of flame
or an arm extended burning
 is only the long
red and orange branch of
 a green maple
in early September reaching
 into the greenest field
out of the green woods at the
 edge of which the birch trees
appear a little tattered tired
 of sustaining delicacy
all through the hot summer re-
 minding everyone (in
our family) of a Russian
 song a story
by Chekhov or my father

2

What is sometimes called a
 tongue of flame
or an arm extended burning
 is only the long
red and orange branch of
 a green maple
in early September reaching
 into the greenest field
out of the green woods at the
 edge of which the birch trees
appear a little tattered tired
 of sustaining delicacy
all through the hot summer re-
 minding everyone (in
our family) of a Russian
 song a story by
Chekhov or my father on
 his own lawn standing
beside his own wood in
 the United States of
America saying (in Russian)
 this birch is a lovely
tree but among the others

 somehow superficial

— Grace Paley, “Autumn” from Long Walks and Intimate Talks by Grace Paley and Vera B. Williams.

Copyright © 1991 by Grace Paley. Reprinted with the permission of The Feminist Press at the City University of New York, http://www.feministpress.org.

Source: Begin Again: The Collected Poems of Grace Paley (The Feminist Press, 1999)
________

Terry Ehret
Co-editor, Sonoma County Literary Update