Dear Literary Folk,
Lately lines from two poems have been much on my mind. The first, familiar to you all, is the opening of “The Second Coming,” by W.B. Yeats:
“Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world. . . .”
The second set of lines comes from the closing of “Jet,” by Tony Hoagland:
“We gaze into the night
as if remembering the bright unbroken planet
we once came from,
to which we will never
be permitted to return.
We are amazed how hurt we are.
We would give anything for what we have.”
These quotes in particular capture the angst and anger and despair of what daily we are losing to a sordid power that aims to rob us of decency, humanity, and hope. It makes me want to devote this Literary Update post to celebrating the creativity that brings us together and the hope and gratitude it can engender.
On a personal note, I have something grand to celebrate. I have just recently returned from two months in Colorado. If you followed my May post, you know that I flew there in April to help out with the arrival of new granddaughter Rosalie, born on May 6, 2025. She was born with a heart defect, one that’s not uncommon for babies with trisomy 21 (Down Syndrome), and with that come some health challenges that have kept her in the neonatal ICU. A few of you have written to Jo-Anne and me wondering about the baby, so here she is. Though she is slowly making progress, there’s a good chance she’ll remain in NICU until she’s strong enough to undergo the surgery needed to correct the defect. Sending a huge thank you to all you NICU nurses, doctors, and staff who care for the most fragile of babies with an astonishing empathy and expertise. We are in your debt!
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Literary Birthdays and Anniversaries
Rivertown Poets and Aqus Café have been an integral meeting place for the creative community of Petaluma and Sonoma County. On Monday, June 2, 6:15 pm. Rivertown Poets celebrates its 12th anniversary. There will be three featured readers—Christina Lloyd, Murray Silverstein, and Alice Templeton—presenting from their 2024 publications from Sixteen Rivers Press. The featured readings will be followed by open mic. Sign up early to get a 3-minute slot. Sande Anfang will be back in town for this reading! Location: Aqus Café, 189 H Street, Petaluma. Questions? Contact: rivertownpoet@gmail.com
On Saturday, June 7, 2:00 pm, the Sitting Room Library celebrates its 44th birthday with its annual garden party featuring lively conversation and local authors.
For over 25 years, the Sitting Room has been my home for writing, reading, and leading poetry and prose poem workshops on a wide range of authors and themes. Here I came to know so many talented writers, and even found a haven for translating the enigmatic poems of Ulalume González de León.
If you haven’t yet discovered this Sonoma County jewel, here are just some of what the Sitting Room has to offer:
- Books aplenty by and about women, LITERATURE, ART, POETRY, ESSAYS, WORLD LIT and oh heck, lots else.
- The underutilized treasure of the ARCHIVES, with files that vary from the slender to the overflowing on women writers from A to Z,
- An oddly fascinating — and beautifully organized — collection of OBITS of women, local and farnwide as well as from the Overlooked series in the NYTimes
- Ever changing exhibits which vividly spotlight strong points of the SR collections
- Space just to do your own too long postponed work + of course, coffee/tea/and wifi
Come join us in the Sitting Room garden on June 7! Copies of the Sitting Room’s latest anthology, WORK, will be available along with past issues, samplers, free books, and all sorts of lovely “merch.” Questions? Call 707 795-9028. At 2025 Curtis Drive, Penngrove. Or visit the website: sittingroomlibrary.org
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June Readings and Workshops
On Monday, June 16 at 6 pm, Napa Bookmine hosts a reading by Sixteen Rivers’ 2025 authors, Moira Magneson, author of In the Eye of the Elephant, and Patrick Cahill, author of If We Are the Forest the Animals Dream. Moira and Patrick will be joined by translators Nancy J. Morales and Terry Ehret, reading from the third and final volume of Plagios/Plagiarisms, by Mexican poet Ulalume González de Leόn.
Many thanks to Kary Hess, whose feature article in the May 28th edition of the North Bay Bohemian tells the story of this translation project as it has evolved, culminating in Plagios Volume Three. https://bohemian.com/a-trilogy-in-verse-plagios-volume-iii-released-by-local-translators/
Besides being a free-lance journalist, Kary is also a poet, visual artist, and the current acting director of the Petaluma Poetry Walk. Scroll down to the end of the post to read a poem from Hess’s recent collection of poems, 1912.
Café Frida Poetry Festival on Sunday, June 29, 1:00–3:00 pm, hosted by Gwynn O’Gara, will feature Jack Crimmins, Lisa Shulman, Dave Holt, Melissa Eleftherion, John Duran, Briahn Kelly-Brennan, Audrey Meshulam reading from Phyllis Meshulam’s new book, and Timothy Williams.
This will also be an occasion to celebrate the launch of Sonoma County Poet Laureate Emerita Phyllis Meshulam’s book Re-Creations. Many of you know that Phyllis is living with a degenerative neurological disease, so her poems will be read by her daughter Audrey Meshulam.
Café Frida is located at 300 South A Street, Santa Rosa.
Looking to generate new work this month? Check the calendar of events and the workshop page for a full list of what’s coming up this month. Here are a few of the many opportunities.
On Tuesday, June 17, 10:00 a.m.-12:00 pm writing prompt coach Christina Evans leads the first of two generative writing groups. See Workshops page for details.
On six Wednesdays beginning June 25, 1:00-3:00 pm, Clara Rosemarda leads a series of online creative writing and meditation workshops called TRANSITIONS: Finding Your New Narrative for Healing. Details on Workshops page. Contact Clara Rosemarda: 707-567-7117 or rosen@sonic.net.
And on Sunday, June 29, 10:00 a.m.–4:00 p.m. Occidental Center for the Arts hosts author and writing guide Susan Hagen for an all-day workshop: Write Your Life Stories: A Women’s Writing Circle. Beginning, experienced, and exploring writers are all welcome. For details, see Workshops.
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Two Poems for June
Though technically summer doesn’t start till June 21, our hills have put on their summer gold, and the clock’s leap and earth’s tilt offer us generous evenings of lengthening light. This month I’ve picked two poems that embrace summer in similar ways. The first poem, by Kary Hess, celebrates a familiar haunt for Petaluma folk, as well as the moments from our youth that are transformational without our quite knowing it. It reminded me of “Jet,” by Tony Hoagland, which I quoted at the opening of this post. I’ve included Hoagland’s poem, too.
If you have a poem or short prose piece you’d like me to consider for a future Literary Update post, scroll down to the end of this post where you’ll find the submission guidelines. They’re very simple, and all are welcome.
_____
The Apple Box Café, Petaluma
by Kary Hess
We carry our coffee outside
to sit at a table, speaking French
when a train goes by.
The sound drowns out our speech for a minute
as the grinding metal cars glide over the trestle
built along the waterfront in 1922.
It used to be grain
and eggs here,
transported out of town
to San Francisco
before the Golden Gate.
Now this trestle hosts cups of pour-over coffee
(before anyone did pour-over coffee).
I am always shocked that I can sit
inches away from an active train
and drink a latte.
But it’s the 1990s
and we are all in our twenties
and we don’t even realize how happy we are.
from: 1912: Poems of Time, Place & Memory by Kary Hess. Published by FMRL 2022
Kary Hess, MFA, is a writer, editor, artist, and literary event producer, shaping stories for media, leading women’s writing workshops, and creating her own work, which explores themes of “place” and how it contours our experience. Currently, she’s the editor of Made Local Magazine, and a regular contributor to alternative newsweeklies The North Bay Bohemian, The Marin Pacific Sun, and North Bay Magazine. Her book 1912: Poems of Time, Place and Memory was published by FMRL Press in April 2022 and she currently produces the Petaluma Poetry Walk, an annual all-day poetry festival in downtown Petaluma, CA. As an artist, she’s produced and designed two feature films, created the SparkTarot® Deck + Guidebook, and collaborated on multiple conceptual art installations in the Bay Area.
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Jet
by Tony Hoagland
Sometimes I wish I were still out
on the back porch, drinking jet fuel
with the boys, getting louder and louder
as the empty cans drop out of our paws
like booster rockets falling back to Earth
and we soar up into the summer stars.
Summer. The big sky river rushes overhead,
bearing asteroids and mist, blind fish
and old space suits with skeletons inside.
On Earth, men celebrate their hairiness,
and it is good, a way of letting life
out of the box, uncapping the bottle
to let the effervescence gush
through the narrow, usually constricted neck.
And now the crickets plug in their appliances
in unison, and then the fireflies flash
dots and dashes in the grass, like punctuation
for the labyrinthine, untrue tales of sex
someone is telling in the dark, though
no one really hears. We gaze into the night
as if remembering the bright unbroken planet
we once came from,
to which we will never
be permitted to return.
We are amazed how hurt we are.
We would give anything for what we have.
from Donkey Gospel, published by Graywolf Press, Saint Paul, Minnesota, 1998.
© Copyright by Tony Hoagland.
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Send Us Your Poetry/Short Prose Selections for 2025
Starting in January of 2024, I began featuring a different Sonoma County writer each month at the end of the Literary Update Post. Here’s how to participate.
The theme can be anything you feel is appropriate to the season. I’ve adjusted the subject line, so you won’t feel limited to sending lineated verse. In fact, prose poems, flash fiction, creative nonfiction are all welcome, as long as the piece you send is no more than a page in length.
Send your submission to me at tehret99@comcast.net, with “SCLU Poem/Prose of the Month” in the subject heading.
Send me just one submission, no more than a page (or less).
These can be previously published, provided you identify the publishing source. If the piece is not your own, provide the author’s name and source. The author should be a Sonoma County voice, and if contemporary, please ask the author’s permission to submit.
Deadline: You can send the submission any time during the month, but I’ll need to receive your submission a few days before the month’s end to give me time to read, make my choice, and contact the author of the piece selected.
____
Terry Ehret
Sonoma County Literary Update Co-Editor
Sonoma County Literary Update 
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