Sonoma County Literary Update

Dear Literary Folk,

Happy New Year to you all!

From 2000 to 2020, my husband Don and I hosted a New Year’s Poetry and Potluck Brunch at our home in Petaluma. Some friends from the literary community came every year. Some attended when they could. Whatever the griefs and troubles, both personal and political, we may have been carrying, this was always a warm, lively, inspiring way to launch each new year,

Then Covid forced us into social distancing, and though we might have kept the event going as a virtual zoom gathering, that just didn’t feel the same. So, for five years, we’ve welcomed the new year in quieter ways, usually up at our Sierra cabin, deep in snow. That’s been nice, too.

During these years, I have often heard from those who attended our Poetry Brunch just how much they have missed the gathering and its nurturing energy. We considered holding it at the Summer Solstice so we could all be outside (safer than gathering indoors), but summer is a time when many are traveling, myself included. And there was something about starting the year together that was very sweet. So my husband and I are considering resurrecting the event next year in 2026.

I realize that many of us are still wary of Covid, RSV, and other miserable bugs, so I imagine a 2026 gathering may be smaller than in past years. That’s fine, too. We have a year to think about how to make this all work, and to see whether an indoor gathering is still feasible.

After Seeing A Complete Unknown

Like many baby boomers, my husband and I went on New Year’s Eve to see the biopic about Bob Dylan’s debut on the New York folk music scene and his tumultuous departure from that scene when he “went electric” at the Newport Folk Festival. I enjoyed the film, the music, and the acting. I wasn’t much bothered by the fact that Dylan remained as enigmatic at the end of the film as he was at the beginning. The title let me know the film wasn’t going to be revelatory. But it told a good story about someone who wanted to be “known” (as in famous) without being “known” (as in defined or owned), and I was intrigued by Dylan’s relationship with Woody Guthrie which the film conveyed (real or invented). I also appreciated the way the director let the music speak for itself, and to provide much of the story-telling, both what was going on with national social upheavals and what was unfolding in Dylan’s personal relationships.

I remember that when Dylan was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, many friends, colleagues, and students wondered if it was deserved. Dylan must have wondered, too, as he didn’t make his whereabouts known for a few weeks, and responded to the news with his accustomed arrogance. He also chose not to attend the ceremonies where he’d formally receive the recognition.  Yes, I believe song lyrics are a form of literature, though more accurately a part of the oral tradition. And, yes, I believe lyricists can be recognized by Nobel (or other) Prizes. The fact that 13 films have been made by or about him, both documentary and biopic, is proof enough that his influence has been wide and deep, and still as perversely mysterious as it ever was.

Seeing the movie sent me back to a poem written by my friend and colleague Diane Lutovich, who grew up in Hibbing, Minnesota in the same Jewish Community as Bobby Zimmerman (aka Dylan), a poem which has always for me filled in some of the blanks about Dylan’s youth. It’s called “Dancing at Bobby Zimmerman’s Bar Mitzvah.” Here’s the opening stanza:

What were they thinking
those children in 1954; he,
the blue-eyed son wrapped in
a wrinkled tallis, his yarmulke levitating
on that huge head of curls; the blue-eyed
girl tripping in new high heels,
back and shoulders bare
as an invitation.

For the rest of Diane Lutovich’s nostalgic, poignant (and revelatory) poem, scroll down to the end of the post.

New Release of “Meeting Light/Encontrando La Luz”

Sebastopol poet Raphael Block has recently released a 3-minute film of his poem “Meeting Light/Encontrando La Luz” in two versions; one with English subtitles, and one with Spanish subtitles. The poem is featured on the Welcome Page of Raphael’s website, and comes from the book, At This Table, which is also available as a free audio download. Please spread the word to Spanish speakers and communities who might enjoy know the film.

Barbara Baer’s New Novel: Masha & Alejandro Crossing Borders

We inadvertently neglected to post a publication announcement in our December newsletter, so this is a shout-out for another extraordinary novel from prolific and talented Sonoma County author Barbara Baer, whose other novels include: Grisha the Scrivener, The Ballet Lover, The Last Devadasi and The Ice Palace Waltz.

Two young immigrants, Masha from Ukraine and Alejandro from El Salvador, move to rural, forested Trinity County, California. Masha works as a nurse in a regional hospital and Alex in an auto body shop. What they don’t expect are visits from a local militia group unfriendly to outsiders. Masha’s unvaccinated Covid patients blame her for their illness, while Alex faces hostility and violence from MAGA supporters. Alex and his son Tomas battle the Trinity wildfires side by side with unlikely allies, making peace with neighbors seem possible. The novel focuses on immigrants trying to find a home, the timeless American story in a time unlike any other.

Publisher: Spuyten Duvvil
ISBN: 978-1-963908-30-5, 292 pages, $25.00
Available at: https://www.spuytenduyvil.net/Masha-and-Alejandro.html
or on Amazon

Start Your Year with a Meditation and Writing Workshop

Santa Rosa poet and memoirist Clara Rosemarda is offering two writing workshops starting this month. The first of six Tuesday workshops is called “Not Contained Between My Hat and Boots: Creative Writing as Spiritual Practice.” It starts January 14 from 11 am to 1 pm. The second workshop series runs for six Thursdays, starting January 16 from 1-3 pm. It’s called TRANSITIONS: Finding Your New Narrative, 

Both workshops are on Zoom. For information or to register (707) 567-7117 or rosen@sonic.net. Details on Workshops page.

Spring Workshops with Dave Seter

Our Sonoma County Poet Laureate, Dave Seter, will be leading three workshops hosted by the Sebastopol Center for the Arts this Spring. Sign up for one or all three.

Sunday March 2: Abstraction through Form
Sunday March 30: Documentary Poetry
Sunday May 4: Interweaving Text

These workshops form a series of Poetry Challenges because they are meant to help poets expand the boundaries of what they might normally choose as subjects or poetic styles. That said, these workshops are meant for all levels from the beginning poet to the more experienced poet.

Seter is donating his time, so any fees go directly to support programs at SebArts.

Follow this link for more details and to sign up: https://www.sebarts.org/literary-arts

Poetry Flash Needs Our Help

For almost 40 years, Poetry Flash has been a vital resource for California’s literary community. When I was a newbie in the writing world, a graduate student at SFSU just learning the ropes, Poetry Flash came out as a print newsletter, and every month, we snatched up the publication wherever it was available. Joyce Jenkins put together various and sundry announcements, articles, reviews, calls for submissions, and a calendar of readings and open mics in the Bay Area. I found my footing with the help of Poetry Flash. I imagine many of you did, too. Since then, Joyce, Richard Silberg, and many other contributors have expanded Poetry Flash’s reach and influence.

Like many nonprofits, especially in the literary world, Poetry Flash needs our help. Please consider sending a (tax deductible) donation that will support Poetry Flash’s living newspaper, the Watershed environmental poetry festival, the Northern California Books Awards, and much, much more. You can make a donation at this link: https://poetryflash.org/give/.

Annual Call for Submissions for Book-Length Poetry Manuscripts

Sixteen Rivers Press, a shared-work poetry collective with a three-year commitment, invites Northern California authors to submit full-length poetry manuscripts by our deadline of February 1, 2025. All manuscripts will be read blind, and typically one or two manuscripts are selected for publication. The winner(s) will be announced on the press’s website during summer 2025. Selected manuscripts will be scheduled for publication in spring 2027.

For full submission guidelines, use this link: https://sixteenrivers.org/submit

Volume Three of Plagios/Plagiarisms Is Coming Soon!

After more than twelve years, the monumental translation project to bring the complete published poems of Ulalume González de Leόn into print in three bilingual volumes is nearly complete! Official book release date of Plagios/Plagiarims, Volume Three is April 2, 2025.

The translations are by Terry Ehret and Nancy J. Morales (with essential help from John Johnson and Jabez Churchill, among others); the cover art is by Jeffrey Morales; the foreword is by William O’Daly. Volumes Two and Three are available on the Sixteen Rivers website. Volume Three is on its way from the printer as I write this and will be available for pre-order in February.

https://sixteenrivers.org/author-profiles/ulalume-gonzalez-de-león.

Here’s a preview of the cover and blurbs.

This third and final volume of Ulalume González de León’s Plagios is a triumph, a culmination of some of the most compelling elements of her poetic works: her exploration of found and familiar language, her curiosity and playfulness, her embrace of the everyday alongside the poetic. These revelatory poems create convergences that both delight and trouble as they incorporate song, riddles and games, nonsense, rumination, contemplation, and celebration. The poems in Plagios are threaded with the realities of time, darkness, loss, and even death, evidence of their comfort with duality and tension. This wonderful bilingual edition lays bare the precision and care of the translators’ work in bringing across the wordplay, depth, sensibility, and humor of her voice.

—Amanda Moore, author of Requeening,
selected for the 2020 National Poetry Series by Ocean Vuong

Weaving the remembered and the imagined into presences that disappear and live within us, that fill with darkness and light, breadth and depth of perception, this third and final volume of Ulalume González de León’s Plagios/Plagiarisms welcomes you. These remarkably original poems invite your participation as someone in whom the dynamics of this world, the physics of love, the veracity of rooms and mirrors, flowers and words, and the materiality of death . . . cultivate questions we live with night and day.

—William O’Daly, author of The New Gods
and translator of Pablo Neruda’s Book of Twilight

There are certain poets whose intelligence, sensitivity to the world, and instinct for the symbol, are singular and instantly recognizable. Ulalume González de León is tapped directly into the source. Her poetry, in lucid and lovely translation by Ehret and Morales, is concerned with what matters to all of us: presence and absence; how different times permeate our lives through memory; and our fate, which is to be continually left here in this world to remember until we ourselves leave. As this book progresses it achieves an almost unbearable level of intensity and honesty and directness of perception. This poet is a rare master. I return to her when I need to be reminded what poetry is, and can be.

—Matthew Zapruder, author of I Love Hearing Your Dreams

______

Poems for January

A Chill Wind
by Margaret Rooney

I wish I could resurrect yesterday
when hope was roused by bright reason
and the certainty of circumstance

before the dismantled truth
bled across the horizon
on today’s cold morning

I walk along a collapsing cliff
high above the grave
and trembling sea

a sharp beaked cormorant
lifts into a cushion of air
like an omen I cannot parse

untilled hills to the east
riddle with shadows
in cloud-dimmed light

there seems
to be no center
no above or below

only a bizarre spin of time
capsizing dreams
I thought were true

 

Margaret Rooney has been writing poetry for a while. She has a chapbook out called A Wild Rain and has been published in several of the Redwood Writers Poetry Anthologies and other journals. Two of her poems were nominated for a Pushcart prize in 2021.

______

Dancing at Bobby Zimmerman’s Bar Mitzvah
by Diane Lutovich (1937–2004)

What were they thinking
those children in 1954; he,
the blue-eyed son wrapped in
a wrinkled tallis, his yarmulke levitating
on that huge head of curls; the blue-eyed
girl tripping in new high heels,
back and shoulders bare
as an invitation.

Evening shone tender, blue
from inside, lighting up the town
as if the sun had refused to fully set.

The Androy Hotel, perched between
ore dumps and open pit mines, on Hibbing’s
one main street, its Crystal Lounge
awash with his aunts, uncles—Irenes,
Sylvias, Labels, Mikeys—all congratulating,
guzzling champagne, wrapping their dreams
around the bar mitzvah boy,
all to the beat
of sambas and rumbas
imported from Duluth;
chandeliers reflecting
light in a hundred directions
rousing people who’d been hibernating
for years. His mother beamed
over her blue-eyed boy who’d go far—
medical or law school she predicted.
He looked dazed or
ashamed, kept his feet shuffling, fingers tapping,
eager to leave for somewhere else.
I, too, couldn’t wait for those big-city lights,
attentive boys who knew how to dance, kiss.

No one would have guessed
how far we’d run after
the champagne was gone,
the guests coerced to their cars, homes,
and we had licenses of our own. But it was as far

from Hibbing—its open pit mines, its mounds
of red topsoil, winters of icy caves, and
summer nights sweet and fragrant as forget-me-nots—
as we could.

From What I Stole (Sixteen Rivers Press, 2003).

 

Diane Sher Lutovich, a writer and teacher of writing, was a native of Hibbing, Minnesota. She passed away on June 2, 2004, after having fought a long and tenacious battle with cancer. Her poetry has received several awards and has appeared in a number of reviews and anthologies. She is the author of Nobody’s Child: How Older Women Say Good-bye to Their Mothers, published by Baywood Press, and In the Right Season, published posthumously by Sixteen Rivers Press.

______

Terry Ehret
Co-editor, Sonoma County Literary Update