Sonoma County Literary Update

Dear Literary Folk,

We’ve just come to the end of National Poetry Month, and the Sonoma County literary community gave us so many fabulous ways to bring poetry into our daily lives and to recognize local poets with new books. Among the county-wide events were the five-poet reading at Occidental Center for the Arts, the Favorite Poems event at the Sebastopol Center for the Arts, the celebration of the book at Barrel Proof Lounge in Santa Rosa, the radio interviews with local poets on KRCB, a virtual reading with Poetic License, Dave Seter’s poet laureate workshop, and much, much more. Many thanks to those who organized and hosted these events. I was busy all month attending and participating in as many as I could, and filled with gratitude for what we together create each month right here.

Remembering Lee Perron and Richard Silberg

Last month, I paid tribute to our poet laureate emerita Phyllis Meshulam, who passed away at the end of March. Sadly, two more poets have left us, and I grieve our collective loss.

LEE PERRON
I’m not sure I ever met Lee in person, which is a strange thing to say about someone I considered a friend. Over the years, we corresponded often about poetry. Lee was a long-time supporter of Sixteen Rivers Press, and in his email poetry series, he featured many poets, local, national, international, contemporary, and classical, including Lynn Trombetta, Blaise Cendrars, Ezra Pound, Natalie Diaz, H.D., Billy Collins, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti.  Through his series, I discovered authors entirely new to me, as well as little gems by poets whose work I thought I knew, and familiar ones I hadn’t reread in years.

Our mutual friend Pat Nolan provides this bio, photo, and poem to remember Lee: poet, bookseller, collector, Rexroth aficionado, and raconteur. Born in 1941, Lee will be remembered by his friends by his unfailing generosity and love of literature. He published two poetry collections of note, Silent Crow (1983), and more recently, Celtic Night (2013), of which the poet Michael Hannon wrote: “Lee Perron’s poems have shown me the path to the dark forest pool where Psyche terrifies her guests, and the poet is, at last, allowed to surrender his vision. Inexorable death, inexorable life—just as he found them, water mixed with the sun.”  Lee was also the editor and publisher of Sun Moon Bear Editions and a long time focal figure in the Sonoma Country literary life. He was a man of many talents and great erudition. Lee passed away Saturday, April 3rd after a long illness.

Lee Perron, from North American Suite (Sun Moon Bear Editions, 2015)

5.
Ostinato
•
meditating waves
manchester beach setting
coast solitaire
•
cazadero red slide
reached only by rain
remote as panthers
•
mantanzas creek butchery
historic pigs
dappled light dappled shade
•
twilight over healdsburg
hills manifesting
manifesting waves

6.
Coda
•
a way that cannot be told
day dreams at night
night dreams in the soil

• • •

RICHARD SILBERG
Richard wasn’t a Sonoma County poet, but many of us knew him and the integral role he played in the literary life of the San Francisco Bay Area. Born April 15, 1941, he hailed from New York City, studied at Harvard, and came to California where he studied creative writing at San Francisco State. He lived in Berkeley, and for decades he and Joyce Jenkins ran the Northern California and West Coast literary news journal called Poetry Flash.

I first met Richard back in the early 80s when I started at San Francisco State in the MA program in creative writing and began to dip my toes in the Bay Area poetry scene. At the Poetry Flash readings, held then in the loft of the iconic Cody’s Books in Berkeley, Richard introduced each poet with such wit, insight, and care that his one-of-a-kind introductions were already becoming legendary. To have Richard introduce one’s book was to feel deeply understood and profoundly honored.

I had my first experience of this in 1990 when my friends Susan Sibbet, Steve Gilmartin, and I co-produced a quirky three-poet chapbook of interlocking poems called Suspensions, and were invited to participate in the Cody’s/Poetry Flash reading series. This was our first-ever recognition, and for newbies like us, it felt so affirming. Every book since then, including the recent three-volumes of translation, received Richard’s attention. He had an instinct for finding a poem at the heart of every book, distilling it to a few lines that he would quote, and then inviting the audience to discover  for themselves what he had found in the work they were about to hear.

Many Bay Area writers came to know Richard through these introductions or through the workshops he taught at UC Berkeley Extension. Others knew him through his poetry, literary criticism, translations, his book reviews in Poetry Flash, and his work with the annual Watershed Environmental Poetry Festival.

Richard authored six collections of poetry, most recently The Horses: New and Selected Poems and Deconstruction of the Blues, recipient of the PEN Oakland-Josephine Miles Literary Award 2006 and nominee for the Northern California Book Award in Poetry. D. Nurkse wrote about Horses, “Dynamic, kaleidoscopic, shot through with a thousand faces and voices too real to be characters, Richard Silberg’s work is a Chaucerian pilgrimage to strange and uncannily familiar places—Fremont, the Lower East Side, ‘the humped island of Mind.’” And about Deconstructing the Blues, Tony Barnstone wrote, “These poems are timeriffs and deathrants and they are written with a profound humanity, and with a ‘crying so deep / it was like coming / bitter crying / crying sweet like milk.’”

After several years living with the challenges of Parkinson’s disease, Richard passed away on April 21. He was 85.  I will post any information about a celebration/memorial honoring Richard as soon as I know the details.

Here’s a short poem to give you a taste of Richard’s poetry, originally published in Poetry Flash November 2018.

THE ANSWER

We write at it    as if death could be solved
like a riddle    deaf    dearth    earth    heart
How can it be that we will have to leave this world?
The other day    I stepped out onto my empty street
at sunset    mid-summer    glow of that wide
                breathing sphere
Magnificat    red slanting    Hush    wind whispering leaves
Standing there in planet turn    I believed I had the answer

New Feature on the Literary Update

Getting one’s book reviewed is a major accomplishment these days, especially when there is so much online chatter demanding our attention. But when a review appears, let’s celebrate that together. Starting this month, the Literary Update will begin featuring recent reviews of books by Sonoma County writers. This is a small section added to the Sonoma County in Print page. The first of these is a review of Donna Emerson’s new collection, Daphne Lifts Up.

If you have a book or chapbook that’s been recently reviewed—whether fiction, poetry, memoir, or essay—send the essential information to editor@socolitupdate.com: Your name, title of book, name of reviewer, a link to the review if online (or to a webpage for a print journal) and one succinct quotation.

Some Cool Events on the May Calendar

Wednesday, May 6, 7:00 p.m. Live storytelling: Redwood Nights: Storytelling Under the Stars at Deer Park Villa in Fairfax. Hosted by award-winning NPR storyteller Don Reed. THEME: MOTHER (Mother’s Day Week Show). Details and tickets: eventbrite.com/e/redwood-nights-storytelling-under-the-stars-at-deer-park-villa-tickets-945373817537

Friday, May 8, 8:00 p.m. Copperfields Books presents An Evening with David Sedaris, at Luther Burbank Center for the Arts, 50 Mark West Springs Road, Santa Rosa. David Sedaris is one of America’s pre-eminent humor writers. His book, The Best of Me, collects 42 previously published stories and essays. Tickets: lutherburbankcenter.org/event/david-sedaris26/

Saturday, May 9, 4:00-5:30 p.m. North Bay Letterpress Arts presents: An Afternoon of Poetry with Robert Hass & Forrest Gander. At 925-D Gravenstein Hwy. S., Sebastopol. Free event. RSVP required. More details and registration link at: northbayletterpressarts.org/events-calendar/2026-hass-gander

Sunday, May 24, 2:00-4:00 p.m. Memoir Workshop with Ianthe Brautigan, at the Sitting Room Library (2025 Curtis Drive, Penngrove). During this memoir workshop, we’ll be exploring different structures and approaches to writing about one’s life with a literary lens. Free. Sign up on Eventbrite.

Check out all the May readings, workshops, and events listed on the Calendar page.

Poem for May

At the Favorite Poems Event last month, I read a recent poem by Ilya Kaminsky, which appeared in the New Yorker. Several of you asked if I would include it in the Literary Update, so here it is.

Kaminsky was born in Odessa, Ukraine in 1977, and arrived in the U.S. in 1993, when his family was granted asylum by the American government. In 2019, Kaminski was selected by BBC as “one of the 12 artists that changed the world.” He currently teaches in Princeton and lives in New Jersey.

Psalm for the Slightly Tilted
By Ilya Kaminsky
January 19, 2026

This is not
a good year.
But it has
witnesses.

When you see them protest the powerful,
since who else does,
they stand
like flagpoles outside the courthouse
after a northeaster.

They came with
the wrong shoes
for revolution.
Still,
they showed up.

Comfort, Lord,
their bodies—
each a question mark
doing time
as a coatrack,
hung with borrowed jackets.

They are your legion
of bent spoons.
They are the only ones
who showed up—
with their orthopedic flair.

I saw my people lean—
not toward hope but toward each other.
They chant off-rhythm
and mean it.

These are my kind of people:
no tears—just
steam from a kettle
that never quite boils.

In times like these, don’t forget us:
the lopsided
leaning on one another,
like sodden paperbacks
left out on the stoop—
Nobody opens them.
But they still insist
on carrying the plot.

Comfort us standing up—
half scarecrow
half saxophone
with a squawk.
While stiffness becomes state policy,
comfort us sitting—
in that collapse called calm.

In the year they come for us
watch my people
make protest signs
out of old pizza boxes.
Watch—

there are no boring people
which is unfortunate.
You’d think statistically
we’d get at least a few—
one-speed souls
with just meh stuff to do.

But none of them are dull.
Each—
a suitcase
held together
by duct tape.

These are your coffee-stained saints
who rise not with trumpets
but with Advil.
They stand
and wait
creased like maps
of a country
that doesn’t exist anymore.

Published in the print edition of the January 26, 2026, issue of The New Yorker.

_____

Send Us Your Poetry/Short Prose Selections

In 2024, I began featuring a different Sonoma County writer 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). Be patient, as I sometimes have a backlog of poems I’ve selected to publish.

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, co-editor
Sonoma County Literary Update