Sonoma County Literary Update

Sonoma County Literary Update

Post for April 1, 2012

Dear Literary Folk,

April is National Poetry Month. Also the cruelest month, according to Mr. Eliot, who may not have realized how true this would turn out to be for poets laureate! Well, not exactly a cruel fate, but somedays an exhausting one. Here’s what our own Sonoma County has to offer.

Every Day Poems

One of the first projects of Sonoma County’s new poet laureate, Bill Vartnaw, is a collaboration with KRCB called “Every Day Poems.” Starting this month, KRCB will broadcast a poem a day, selected by the  current and past poets laureate: Terry Ehret, Geri DiGiorno, Mike Tuggle, Gwynne O’Gara, and Bill. For more about this project, check Bill’s Poet Laureate News Page.

There are many inspirational programs on the Sonoma County literary landscape. Here are some I especially recommend for National Poetry Month. You can find out more about these and many others on the Calendar Page.

Poetry at the Redwood Café , April 1, from 5-7 PM

Geri Digiorno has launched a new series of poetry and music at the Redwood Café in Cotati. Today, April 1, from 5-7 PM, treat yourself to former California Poet Laureate, Al Young, Q. R. Hand Jr. & Sarah Baker. The Redwood Café is at 8240 Old Redwood Highway, Cotati. For details, see: www.redwoodcafe.com/poetry.html

Favorite Poems Reading, Thursday, April 5, 7:00 p.m.

In celebration of National Poetry Month, you are cordially invited to spend a delightful evening of poetry amidst the artistic beauty in the gallery of the Sebastopol Center For The Arts. This is always a rich and delightful event for poetry lovers. You will hear poems from e.e.cummings, William Stafford, Rumi, Rilke, and many others. Presenters will include Sonoma County Poet Laureate Bill Vartnaw. Free program. Refreshments will be served. The Sebastopol Center For The Arts is located at 6870 Depot Street, Sebastopol.

Saturday, April 21, 2:30 to 4:30 p.m. Fundraiser for California Poets in the Schools. French Garden Restaurant presents poetry through the eyes and from the voices of youth. Light refreshments provided. 8050 Bodega Ave., Sebastopol. Free to the students, $5 for their parents, and for others, a recommended donation of $10 – $50.  100% of all proceeds from the event will go to match a California Arts Council grant

Friday, April 27, 6:15 to 9:30 p.m. Poetry Night is the kick-off event for the Redwood Writers conference. At the Flamingo Hotel, 2777 Fourth St, Santa Rosa. Keynote speaker will be Al Young, California Poet Laureate emeritus. Bill Vartnaw, Sonoma County Poet Laureate, 2012-2013, will be featured reading his poetry. For more information and to register, go to www.redwoodwriters.org/poetrynight

In Memoriam, Adrienne Rich

Finally, as many of you know, poet and political activist Adrienne Rich passed away at age 82 last Tuesday. Some of you may have seen the NPR tribute to Rich broadcast on Thursday, and the poem by Rich and an answering poem by Vilma Ginzberg which Larry Robinson sent out to his e-mail subscribers.

When I had just moved to Sonoma County, teaching hither and yon and raising three daughters, Carolyn Kizer sent me a poem called “(Dedications),” by her friend, Adrienne Rich, just before it was scheduled for publication. A single mother of three, Kizer knew what it was like to keep the creative embers lit without betraying our commitments to family and community, and to ourselves, and she sent me the poem “in poetry, motherhood, sisterhood—all of it.” I kept posted close to my writing space for many years. Rich’s words offered hope, support, and acknowledgment of the greater community a writer’s work creates around it, and the importance of those readers who breathe a writer’s work to life.

In memory of Adrienne Rich, here is “(Dedications),” the last section in a 13-part poem called “An Atlas of the Difficult World,” which appeared in her 1991 collection by the same title. This is followed by an excerpt from an interview with Bill Moyers in which she discusses the poem in the broader context of her life’s work.

Dedications

I know you are reading this poem
late, before leaving your office
of the one intense yellow lamp-spot and the darkening window
in the lassitude of a building faded to quiet
long after rush-hour. I know you are reading this poem
standing up in a bookstore far from the ocean
on a grey day of early spring, faint flakes driven
across the plains’ enormous spaces around you.
I know you are reading this poem
in a room where too much has happened for you to bear
where the bedclothes lie in stagnant coils on the bed
and the open valise speaks of flight
but you cannot leave yet. I know you are reading this poem
as the underground train loses momentum and before running up the stairs
toward a new kind of love
your life has never allowed.
I know you are reading this poem by the light
of the television screen where soundless images jerk and slide
while you wait for the newscast from the intifada.
I know you are reading this poem in a waiting-room
of eyes met and unmeeting, of identity with strangers.
I know you are reading this poem by fluorescent light
in the boredom and fatigue of the young who are counted out,
count themselves out, at too early an age. I know
you are reading this poem through your failing sight, the thick
lens enlarging these letters beyond all meaning yet you read on
because even the alphabet is precious.
I know you are reading this poem as you pace beside the stove
warming milk, a crying child on your shoulder, a book in your hand
because life is short and you too are thirsty.
I know you are reading this poem which is not in your language
guessing at some words while others keep you reading
and I want to know which words they are.
I know you are reading this poem listening for something, torn
between bitterness and hope
turning back once again to the task you cannot refuse.
I know you are reading this poem because there is nothing else left to read
there where you have landed, stripped as you are.

Adrienne Rich
(from an interview with Bill Moyers)

RICH: Well, that line—”there where you have landed, stripped as you are”—is multi-layered. Even as I was writing “Dedications,” I wanted the poem to speak to people as individuals, but also as individuals multiplied over and over and over and over: the mother or father, as the case may be, warming milk by the stove with the infant over the shoulder; someone reading a book because she or he, too, is thirsty late at night; the office worker still in the office after rush hour. As pan of a collectivity.

And then, in this last line, I thought first of all of someone dying of AIDS. I thought of any person in an isolate situation for whom there was perhaps nothing but a book of poems to put her or him into a sense of relation with the world of other human beings, or perhaps someone in prison. But finally I was thinking of our society, stripped of so much of what was hoped for and promised and given nothing in exchange but material commodities, or the hope of obtaining material commodities. And for me, that is being truly stripped.

MOYERS: Then you go on to say, “I know you are reading this poem which is not in your language/guessing at some words while others keep you reading. ..” Something like this happens to me when I read a poem: One minute I’m puzzling over some word or image, but the next line carries me forward beyond my misunderstanding into another realm of discovery.

RICH: Yes, and I had in mind an even more literal case as well–someone reading a poem in American English the way I would read a poem in Spanish or French or some other language that I know slightly, or used to know better, but of which I have forgotten a lot of the vocabulary, guessing at some words, yet struggling, and carried on by something in that poem. But what is that? And why do I want to know what it is? I want to know because whatever it is in my poem that keeps you reading is some kind of bond or filament between us, something that I’ve been able to put there that speaks even to this other person, whose language this is not.

MOYERS: How important is your audience when you are actually writing the poem? Do you picture the audience?

RICH: I write for whoever might read. I recently saw a very interesting distinction made by the African Canadian writer Marlene Nourbese Philip. She speaks of the difference between community, audience, and market. I believe that I write for a community. Obviously, I write for a community of other poets, people whom I know, people with whom I have already connected in some way, but I also write for whoever will constitute a new and expanded community audience.

MOYERS: What inspired “Dedications”? For whom were you writing it?

RICH: “Dedications” is the final section of a long poem, “An Atlas of the Difficult World,” which reflects on the condition of my country, which I wrote very consciously as a citizen poet, looking at the geography, the history, the peoples of my country. I started writing “An Atlas of the Difficult World” just before the Gulf War, so I was writing it during and after the Gulf War, and “Dedications” came to me as a way of creating a personal dialogue with many different kinds of readers who might have read this whole poem and connected with it here or there. But I wanted “Dedications” to be there at the end, waiting for the reader.

MOYERS: So you did have the audience in mind, even though you couldn’t picture the particular reader or listener.

RICH: I made up some readers and listeners, but I also remembered and recognized actual people, as a fiction writer might, in that section and throughout the poem. The poem is full of voices: they’re not all my voice, they’re not all women’s voices, some of them are men’s voices, but, yes, I certainly had an audience in mind. The distinction between community, audience, and market is a really important distinction for an artist of any kind. There is a community of those whose work and whose lives you respect and love and cherish, a community that gives you the strength to create, to push boundaries, to take risks, a community that perhaps challenges you to do all that.

There is an audience of those unknown to you but whom your words are going to reach. You can’t know them in advance, but you can hope for them, desire them. Market, on the other hand, is all about packaging and buying and selling, and the corresponding group would be the consumer. I don’t want my poetry to be consumed in that sense. I do want it to be used.

I was very moved by Robert Bly’s just now reading Neruda’s “Ode to My Socks,” which ends with the poet’s saying that something beautiful is twice beautiful, something good is doubly good, when it is a pair of socks–warm socks in winter. It’s an ode to a very beautiful pair of socks that someone had made for Neruda. I think that what is beautiful is doubly beautiful and what is good is doubly good when it can be truly used, not consumed, but used in lives, and probably used in ways that, as an artist, you could never fully know or anticipate.

from The Language of Life: A Festival of Poets. New York: Doubleday, 1995. Copyright © 1995 by Public Affairs Television, Inc., and David Grubin productions, Inc.

The Spoken Art of Poetry

This semester in the Monday-Friday prosody workshops at the Sitting Room, we have been reading Amy Lowell, e.e. cummings, Phil Levine, and Jorie Graham. I scoured the Internet for downloadable recordings of poems in the voice of each poet. Ironically, the only poet among these four who was never recorded was Amy Lowell—ironic because she was a jubilant proponent of the oral performance of poems and the musical/emotional breath in words off the page. In her essay “Poetry as a Spoken Art,” Lowell wrote, “Poetry is as much an art to be heard as is music, if we could only get people to understand the fact. To read it off the printed pages without pronouncing it is to get only a portion of its beauty. . . . Poetry will come into its Paradise when carefully trained speakers make a business of interpreting it to the word.”

Poetry Out Loud

How fortunate for us in Sonoma County that we have so many readers and writers who believe in the spoken art of poetry. On Sunday, February 12, at the Glaser Center in Santa Rosa, we were treated to fourteen young performers presenting twenty-seven poems from memory as part of Sonoma County’s Poetry Out Loud annual high school competition. For those of you who weren’t there, I can assure you, the oral life of poetry is alive and well.

This year’s winner was Brynna Thigpen of Maria Carrillo High School performing “The Room” by Conrad Aiken and “Childhood’s Retreat,” by Robert Duncan. First runner up was Kennedy Petersen of Montgomery High School, performing “Ovation” by Carol Muske Dukes and “Banneker,” by Rita Dove. These two will be traveling to Sacramento for the statewide competition on Sunday March 25 and Monday March 26. We wish Brynna the best of luck. How proud we are to have her representing our county!

Hats off also to Phyllis Meshulam, of California Poets in the Schools, and Karin Demerest, of the Sonoma Art Council, for coordinating the POL program for the past seven years, and to all the parents, teachers, and mentors who coached and supported these young people to such lively and moving performances. If you want to find out more about Poetry Out Loud, you can check this website: www.poetryoutloud.org

Poetry Slams

Besides the POL program, the literary community has supported the oral life of poetry through the North Bay Poetry Slam, hosted by Brianna Sage, which celebrated its first anniversary last December. You can catch the North Bay Slams the first SUNDAY of every month at 7 PM at the Hopmonk Tavern in Sebastopol. Check the ongoing and open-mic readings page for details. In addition, for nine years the Sonoma County Library sponsored monthly slam competitions, hosted by Armando Garcia Davila, and when budget cuts put the slam program on hiatus, Tom Mariani and Gloria DeBois, of Unitarian Universalist Congregation Santa Rosa (UUCSR) Writers, stepped in to take over (see http://uucsrwriters.blogspot.com for details). You can check out videos of slam performances on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NG8LuSnraU.

“Feeding the Soul”

Yet another member of our literary community who has for years nurtured poetry as a spoken art is Sebastopol’s Larry Robinson. Here’s what Larry has to say:

The first time I really “got” poetry was hearing a friend recite Rilke’s Archaic Torso Of Apollo. It changed my life! In high school and college, I had read the requisite great poems and learned how to analyze and scan them for rhythm and rhyme and symbol and style. And, of course, they stayed in my head, as did I.

But then I heard a poem that had been taken into the body, made part of it and brought back out into speech. It was immediately apprehensible and awakened in me something that had been asleep for longer than I could remember.

I began to listen in a new way and to read poetry to myself out loud rather than just silently off the page. This inspired me to begin memorizing a few good poems. I discovered that the poems that I took into my own body went to work on me in a profound way, like medicine or a zen koan.

I am now inhabited by about 200 poems which continue to enrich my inner life. Several times a year, I host poetry salons whose only rule is “no reading.” People are encouraged to bring poems, stories, and songs learned by heart. It is not a performance or a competition or a slam. Rather, what emerges over the course of the evening is a kind of poetic conversation that feeds the soul.

This practice has fed my own writing of poetry. I have no interest in academic rules of poetry or in literary criticism. They certainly have their places, just not in my life. What matters to me in the poetry I write and the poetry I imbibe is how it feels on the tongue and in the body and whether it connects me with something greater than myself.

Rumi advises us to “start a large, foolish project — like Noah.” My large, foolish project is to restore the soul of the world through restoring the oral tradition of poetry.

Thanks to all who honor poetry by inhabiting its language and learning it by heart. I exhort you all to take this month to commit one poem to memory, and then when March opens the door to April and National Poetry Month, find an occasion to recite this poem. As Larry Robinson so well expressed it, memorizing poems enriches your inner life. Poetry’s music and rhythms have healing power—it’s powerful medicine.

Terry Ehret
Sonoma County Literary Update Co-Editor

You may download a pdf of most of the pages on this site, updated March 1 2012 here.

Dear Literary Folk,

Last week, I heard the first frogs of the season singing their love-chorus along the banks of Thompson Creek—a sure sign of spring on the way. It’s the Year of the Dragon, as the Chinese celebrate it. According to sources, “The key to the Dragon personality is that Dragons are the free spirits of the Zodiac. Restrictions blow out the creative spark that is ready to flame into life. Dragons must be free and uninhibited. The Dragon is a beautiful creature, colorful and flamboyant . . . an extroverted bundle of energy, gifted and utterly irrepressible.”

A Poet-Dragon in Our Midst

In the literary news, on Sunday, January 29, the literary community of Sonoma County (and beyond) gathered to welcome and honor our seventh Poet Laureate, Bill Varnaw.

Our previous Poets Laureate were present, in body or spirit, to join in the celebration, along with an audience of about a hundred friends, family, and fans. Among those was David Madgalene, who sends this reflection:

Orion Rising
by David Madgalene

On the Installation of Bill Vartnaw as Sonoma County Poet Laureate 2012-2013, January 29, 2012

Crowned with laurel,
reading his homage
to Artemis, Bill Vartnaw
bears witness… we are
part of something timeless.

Many heartfelt thanks to Gwynne O’Gara for her service as Sonoma County Poet Laureate 2010-2012. Look for Bill’s monthly messages on the Poet Laureate’s News Page of the Literary Update, coming soon.

Bill Vartnaw will be reading again on Tuesday, February 14, 7:00-9:00 p.m. at The Center Literary Café in Healdsburg. Details on the Update’s Calendar Page.

February’s Riches

In addition to Bill’s upcoming reading, the February literary calendar is filled with great events. Here are some others I especially recommend.

Friday, February 3, 8:00 to 10:00 p.m. 100 Thousand Poets for Change reading at Gaia’s Garden Restaurant in Santa Rosa features a dozen local poets: Vilma Ginzberg, Jodi Hottel, Gor Yaswen, Phyllis Meshalam, Colleen Werner, Clare Morris, Elaine Holtz, Ken Norton, Lynda Williams, Maggie Tutuer, Maryann Schacht, and Michelle Wing. Music provided by Marilyn O’Malley and Kate Willens. The event will honor Brigit’s Day, celebrated in Ireland between the Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox.

Sunday, February 12, 6:30–9:30 p.m. Poetry Out Loud Country-wide competition for high school students at the Glaser Center, 547 Mendocino Ave., Santa Rosa. Details on County News page.

Monday, February 13, 12:00 noon. Newman Auditorium, SRJC Santa Rosa Campus. “Love in the Open Hand.” Donna Emerson and Terry Ehret will read from their new books: Night Sky Journey and Wild Mercy. Donna and Terry will present their work as a poetic dialogue on the theme of love. A second reading takes place at 7:00 p.m. on Wednesday February 22 at Mahoney Library on the SRJC Petaluma Campus.

Wednesday, February 29, 7:00-9:00 p.m. Speakeasy Literary Saloon at Aqus Cafe, Petaluma. Celebrate Leap Day with featured authors Jonah Raskin, Jean Hegland, Patti Trimble, Joy Lanzedorfer, Timothy Williams.

Terry Ehret
Sonoma County Literary Update Co-editor

P.S. New Web Address:
We have a new, easy to remember, Web address for the Literary Update: www.socolitupdate.com. Note that the original wordpress address (URL) will still work. Thanks to Juanita Martin for her donation, making this upgrade possible.

To download a pdf version of the entire Sonoma County Literary Update, click here.

Dear Literary Folk,

The first month of the new year brings us a wealth of literary events—readings, dinners with authors, a benefit dinner for Poets in the Schools, workshops and classes, and a reception for our new poet laureate.

Sonoma County California Poets in the Schools Benefit
January 28, 2012
Gourmet Chinese dinner to benefit Sonoma County’s California Poets in the Schools Program. Food and poetry served by Gwynn O’Gara, our 6th Sonoma County Poet Laureate, Iris Jamahl Dunkle, Pamela Yezbick, Phyllis Meshulam, Molly Albracht Sierra, Meg Hamill, Humboldt County gourmet chef and poet, Daryl Chinn. Cost determined by you. Read more about this event on the County News page.

Sonoma County Poet Laureate Reception
January 29, 2012
The Poet Laureate Selection Committee will host a reception honoring Bill Vartnaw, Sonoma County’s seventh poet laureate, at the Sonoma County Library (3rd and E Streets, Santa Rosa) on Sunday, January 29, 2012. Light refreshments will be served beginning at 3:00 pm, followed by a program featuring Bill Vartnaw, and previous poets laureate Terry Ehret, Geri Digiorno, Mike Tuggle and Gwynn O’Gara, who will be reading their work. The event is free and open to the public.  Please see the County News page for more details.

New Format for Monthly Update

Also new is the format for delivering our monthly emailed Update. Because the email has hitherto been so lengthy (i.e., all the pages on the blogsite were included), 10 to 15 percent of subscribers have not been receiving the news at all. We are now using MailChimp to deliver the goods; it’s a free service, similar to Constant Contact.  The trade-off is that the monthly emails must be considerably shorter, containing only the calendar items and anything NEW from other pages, with no redundancies.  But for those who really prefer the entire enchilada to the low-fat version, a pdf is available. Click here to download the pdf (34 pages).

And of course, all of this information is yours to peruse at any time, simply by returning to this blogsite, which you should bookmark right away: https://literaryfolk.wordpress.com

Wishing you all a creatively fulfilling new year,

Jo-Anne Rosen

Co-editor, Sonoma County Literary Update

Dear Literary Folk,

The sun is low on the southern horizon, its windfall light held in the few yellow birch leaves outside my window. Each day this light is slivered a little thinner as we head toward the Winter Solstice. By nightfall, we feel the darkness gathering its mystery and promise.

Our many voices—each a small, but vibrant light—illuminate this darkness and reveal its gifts.

Sonoma County’s Poets Laureate

Outgoing poet laureate Gwynn O’Gara was celebrated last Saturday with a gala reception and reading at the Sebastopol Center for the Arts. For all she has done to enrich our literary lives during her two years as poet laureate, we are deeply grateful.

I’m pleased to announce that Petaluma native Bill Vartnaw has been named Sonoma County’s seventh poet laureate, and will be honored at 3 p.m.,  Jan. 29 at Santa Rosa Central Library, 3rd and B Streets.

Vartnaw has been writing poetry for more than 35 years. He founded Taurean Horn Press in 1974, and has published 14 books, including his own In Concern: For Angels, in 1984.

Congratulations to Bill!

December Literary Highlights

No need to rush to the stores for this season of giving and receiving; merely step into any one of the many venues where writers and lovers or words are gathering this month. Here are a few I recommend. You can find these and so many more in the December Calendar of Events and on the Workshops page of the Literary Update.

Friday, December 2, 8:30 p.m. and Saturday, December 3, 8:30 p.m. Petaluma Readers Theatre presents: Truman Capote’s “A Christmas Memory” and music by the Petaluma Choraliers. (Saturday show begins right after the Lighted Boat Parade and Tree-trimming Party in Theatre Square.) Produced by Nancy Long. At Pelican Art Gallery 143 Petaluma Blvd. North, Petaluma. TICKETS: www.petalumareaderstheatre.com. $12 Adults, $5 17 years and under.

Sunday, December 4, 6:00-8:00 p.m. NEW! Poetry Music series created by Geri DiGiorno. Free. Featuring: Jonah Raskin, Timothy Williams, Sarah Baker. At Redwood Cafe, 8240 Redwood Highway Cotati.

Wednesday, December 7, 14, 21, 2:00-3:00 p.m. Writing During the Season of Light: A Spiritual Reflection Workshop led by Iris Jamahl Dunkle Ph.D, MFA, poet, teacher at Sonoma State and UC Santa Cruz. Location Room 5. Sebastopol United Methodist Church, 500 N. Main Street, Sebastopol (across from Safeway). This is a free community writing workshop exploring the themes of the season through writing.  Each week, we will read poems and writing about this time of spiritual reflection and students will participate in writing exercises based on these themes.  For more information, contact Iris at idunkle@roico.com.

Sunday, December 11, 6:00-8:30 p.m. Offrendas a las Virgen. Jabez Churchill and Theresa Whitehill invite you to a celebration of Our Lade of Guadalupe with poetry, music, and merriment. Readers include Lorena Calvo-Evans, Terry Ehret, Armando Garcia-Davila, Beatriz Lagos, Marcos Pereda, Fabiola Sandoval, Arthur Sheridan, and Ricardo Stocker. Location: Grace Hudson Museum, 431 South Main Street, Ukiah. For more information, contact Jabez Churchill at jabez@sonic.net.

Poem for December

In the Grip of the Solstice

by Marge Piercy

Feels like a train roaring into night,
the journey into fierce cold just beginning.
The ground is newly frozen, the crust
brittle and fancy with striations,
steeples and nipples we break
under our feet.

Every day we are shortchanged a bit more,
night pressing down on the afternoon
throttling it. Wan sunrise later
and later, every day trimmed
like an old candle you beg to give
an hour’s more light.

Feels like hurtling into vast darkness,
the sky itself whistling of space
the black matter between stars
the red shift as the light dies,
warmth a temporary aberration,
entropy as a season.

Our ancestors understood the brute
fear that grips us as the cold
settles around us, closing in.
Light the logs in the fireplace tonight,
light the candles, first one, then two,
the full chanukiya.

Light the fire in the belly.
Eat hot soup, cabbage and beef
borscht, chicken soup, lamb
and barley, stoke the marrow.
Put down the white wine and pour
whiskey instead.

We reach for each other in our bed,
the night vaulted above us
like a cave. Night in the afternoon,
cold frosting the glass so it hurts
to touch it, only flesh still
welcoming to flesh.

“In the Grip of the Solstice” is from Piercy’s collection The Art of Blessing the Day, Knopf Doubleday, 2000.

Blessing to you all,

Terry Ehret, Literary Update Co-Editor

Click on any of these pages from the menu above to view the rest of the December Literary Update:

Monthly Calendar of Events
County-Wide News (Including News from East, West, and North County)
Poet Laureate’s News
Sonoma County in Print
Local Workshop Teachers and Writing Consultants
Current and Upcoming Workshops
Writers’ Connections
Conferences
Ongoing Writing Groups and Open Mic Readings
Calls for Submission
Recommended Northern California Journals and Presses
Directory of Sonoma County Writers
How to Send Announcements to the Literary Update
About the Literary Update
Contact

Dear literary folk,

A writer friend who lives in San Francisco tells me that Sonoma County is well known as a hotbed of literary activity. I didn’t know that when I left the City for Petaluma 13 years ago, but how very grateful I am now for this bounty. There are readings or open mics almost every night, workshops and writing support groups for every discipline and taste. And our writers are being published.

We support huge events such as the book festival on September 24 that drew visitors from all around the Bay Area.  It is always a peak experience to be surrounded by hundreds, possibly thousands, of people who love to read and write.

The other large and well attended event took place the night before the book fest: 100,000 Poets for Change. There Terry Ehret read her powerful, hair-raising prose poem, “How Fascism Will Come,” reprinted below, for those who were not able to attend (and those who were and enjoyed it on the spot).

Of note in October: UUCSR Writers is presenting a free all-day forum, “From Chaucer to Tweets,” on October 8, with workshops on writing craft, language and technology, and an afternoon poetry panel. (See http://uucsrwriters.blogspot.com).

Newly published this fall are Terry Ehret’s Night Sky Journey, Bart Schneider’s Morning Opera and Mike Tuggle’s What Lures the Foxes, all from Kelly Cove Press; the Redwood Writers annual anthology Vintage Voices: The Sound of a Thousand Leaves; edited by Cynthia Helen Beecher; Wisdom Has a Voice: Every Daughters’ Memories of Mother, edited by Kate Farrell (Unlimited Publishing); and Donna Emerson’s Wild Mercy from Finishline Press. There will be readings in various locations for these books throughout October. Check the calendar.

Also recently published: LOSS, an online fiction anthology (Wordrunner eChapbooks, Petaluma), featuring stories by Sonoma County author Stefanie Freele, among others, and edited by Marko Fong. You may read these at www.echapbook.com/stories/loss.

And now to Terry’s prose poem.
Enjoy the literary bounty,
Jo-Anne Rosen
co-editor

On Friday, September 23, on the eve of the 100 Thousand Poets for Change international reading, poets, musicians, and activists gathered at Gaia’s Garden in Santa Rosa to participate in the world’s largest poetry event. The Santa Rosa reading was sponsored by the Peace and Justice Center and hosted by Susan Lamont.

On September 24, poets around the USA, and across the planet, gathered in a demonstration/celebration of poetry to promote serious social, environmental, and political change. This project was launched by two Bay Area poets, Michael Rothenberg and Terri Carrion. If you’d like to find out more about the 100 Thousand Poets for Change events and future readings, visit their website at www.100tpc.org.

Responding to some requests, here is the prose poem I wrote for the September 23 event.

How Fascism Will Come

When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.  

                                                                             —attributed to Sinclair Lewis

When fascism comes, it will greet us with a smile. It will get down on its knees to pray. It will praise Main Street and Wall Street. It will cheer for the home team. It will clap from the bleachers when the uninsured are left to die on the street. It will rally on the Washington Mall. It will raise monuments to its heroes and weep for them and place bouquets at their stone feet and trace with their fingers the names engraved on the granite wall and go on sending soldiers to die in the mountains of Afghanistan, in the deserts of Iraq. It will send doves to pluck out the eyes of its enemies, having no hawks to spare.

When fascism comes, it will sit down for tea with the governor of Texas. It will pee in the mosques from California to Tennessee, chanting, Wake up America, the enemy is here. It will sing the anthems of corporatization, privatization, demonization, monopolization. It will be interviewed, lovingly, on talk radio. It’ll have talking points and a Facebook page and a disdain for big words or hard consonants. It won’t bother to read. It will shred all its books. It will lambast the teachers and outlaw the unions.

When fascism comes, it will look good. It will have big hair, pressed suits, lapel pins. It will control all the channels. It will ride in on Swift Boats. It will sit on the Supreme Court. It will court us with fear. It will woo us with hope. When fascism comes, it will sell shares of itself on the stock market. It will get rich, then it will get obscenely rich, then it will stop paying taxes. It will leave us in the dust. It will kick our ass. It won’t have to break a sweat to fool us twice. It will be too big to fail.

When fascism comes to America, it will enter on the winds of our silence and indifference and complacency. And on that day, one hundred thousand poets will gather. In book stores and libraries, bars and cafes, in their houses and apartments, in schools and on street corners, they will gather. In Albania, Bangladesh, Botswana, Bulgaria, Chile, China, Czech Republic, Finland, Guatemala, Hungary, Macedonia, Malawi, Qatar, crying, laughing, shouting. They will wrap the sad music of humanity in bits of word cloth and hang them, like prayers, on the tree of life.

Note: Note: This piece was inspired by images, articles, and commentary I found online when I “googled” Sinclair Lewis’s quote. Exact quotes are italicized. One of the most powerful was Henry Wallace’s warning written in April, 1944. Here’s the link: http://newdeal.feri.org/wallace/haw23.htm. Another inspiration was Tim Wise’s essay on Redroom.com called “This is How Fascism Comes: Reflections on the Cost of Silence,” from October, 2008. Here’s the link for that: http://redroom.com/member/tim-wise/blog/this-is-how-fascism-comes-reflections-on-the-cost-of-silence.

Terry Ehret
September 23, 2011

Click on any of these pages from the menu above to view the rest of the September Literary Update:

Monthly Calendar of Events
County-Wide News (Including News from East, West, and North County)
Poet Laureate’s News
Sonoma County in Print
Local Workshop Teachers and Writing Consultants
Current and Upcoming Workshops
Writers’ Connections
Conferences
Ongoing Writing Groups and Open Mic Readings
Calls for Submission
Recommended Northern California Journals and Presses
Directory of Sonoma County Writers
How to Send Announcements to the Literary Update
About the Literary Update
Contact

Dear Literary Folk,

September always feels like homecoming in the literary community with two favorite annual gatherings: the Petaluma Poetry Walk on Sunday, September 18, and the Sonoma County Book Festival on Saturday, September 24. To find out who’s reading and presenting at these events, click on each, or visit the County News page of the Literary Update.

This is the time for nominations for Sonoma County Poet Laureate. If you are interested in serving as Poet Laureate, if you’d like to nominate a poet you know, or if you’d like to be part of the Poet Laureate Selection Committee, contact Linda Galletta at the Sebastopol Center for the Arts: lindag@sonic.net. Deadline for nominations is September 30, 2011 and the new Poet Laureate will be announced in December. You can download the submission requirements and application form from the Sebastopol Center for the Arts’ website www.sebarts.org.

For those like me whose lives revolve around the academic calendar, September is also the start of a new year. Classes and workshops are starting up all over the county, such as Marlene Cullen’s Jumpstart Workshops, Iota Press’s Poetry and Printing, and Nancy Long’s personal coaching for those who dream of putting on a one-person show. Check out the Workshops page to see all the current and upcoming offerings.

September, then, is a time for new ventures and beginnings, as it is for those who observe the Jewish High Holy Days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. The Jewish Year 5772 begins at sunset on September 28, 2011, but Rosh Hashanah is not exactly a celebration; it’s more a time of reflection and redirection when we look back and ask, have we strayed from our path?  Have we stopped listening to the small voice of honesty within us? Have we lost our soul’s balance?

For the last ten years, September has been a time of grim remembrance and atonement. 9/11 will always have an ominous ring to it for those of us who watched the towers fall, and especially for those who lost friends or family. We should also remember that 9/11 is a sad day of remembrance for the people of Chile, too. On September 11, 1973,  the CIA-backed military coup, led by General Pinochet, overthrew the democratically-elected government of President Salvador Allende, leading to his assassination (or suicide) and ushering in an era of brutal repression.

As we enter this September, with its promise of abundance and its memory of sorrows,  here is a poem  about reclaiming our balance and our light, written by our new U.S. Poet Laureate, Phil Levine.

Making Light of It

I call out a secret name, the name
of the angel who guards my sleep,
and light grows in the east, a new light
like no other, as soft as the petals
of the blown rose in late summer.
Yes, it is late summer in the West.
Even the grasses climbing the Sierras
reach for the next outcropping of rock
with tough, burned fingers. The thistle
sheds its royal robes and quivers
awake in the hot winds off the sun.
A cloudless sky fills my room, the room
I was born in and where my father sleeps
his long dark sleep guarding the name
he shared with me. I can follow the day
to the black rags and corners it will
scatter to because someone always
goes ahead burning the little candle
of his breath, making light of it all.

from A Walk with Tom Jefferson, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1988

Terry Ehret, Sonoma County Literary Update Co-Editor

Click on any of these pages from the menu above to view the rest of the September Literary Update:

Monthly Calendar of Events
County-Wide News (Including News from East, West, and North County)
Poet Laureate’s News
Sonoma County in Print
Local Workshop Teachers and Writing Consultants
Current and Upcoming Workshops
Writers’ Connections
Conferences
Ongoing Writing Groups and Open Mic Readings
Calls for Submission
Recommended Northern California Journals and Presses
Directory of Sonoma County Writers
How to Send Announcements to the Literary Update
About the Literary Update
Contact

Dear Literary Folk,

August, in Celtic tradition, begins with a celebration of the sun god, Lugh, called Lughnasadh, a favored time for handfastings— trial marriages that would generally last a year and a day, with the option of ending the contract before the new year, or later formalizing it as a more permanent marriage.

Now, I don’t know how the debt-ceiling debate will be settled, but chances are our politicians in Washington will come up with an eleventh-hour fiscal equivalent of handfasting.

I’ve recently returned from leading a two-week literary tour and writing retreat in West Ireland with some local writers. We had a “grand and snug time,” as one of them put it. (If you’d like to know more, check the website: http://westireland.wordpress.com/.) I then spent a week in Prague in the Czech Republic where music, art, and poetry are celebrated in every way, though it hasn’t always been so. The political leaders of Praha have a centuries-old tradition of defenestration—literally tossing their opponents out of high windows. In the event our legislators fail to achieve any handfasting agreement in the Celtic fashion, they might resort to the window-tossing option. Or we will.

Whatever the outcome, it’s clear we need to stay awake and vigilant in these days when so much of our social network has already been dismantled. And we need to write and speak our truth. During the 40 years the people of the Czech Republic endured two oppressive regimes, their poets, writers, and artists kept the embers of truth alive. When the winds shifted in 1989, these embers caught fire and ignited a dramatic and peaceful revolution. With virtual communities like this Literary Update, we have a vital way to stay connected and to make our voices heard. Keep writing! Keep supporting each other!

August Poem

Each month, we include a poem in our post. Here’s one that seems to speak to our somewhat bitter summer season: Derek Walcott’s “Dark August.”

Dark August

So much rain, so much life like the swollen sky

of this black August. My sister, the sun,

broods in her yellow room and won’t come out.

Everything goes to hell; the mountains fume

like a kettle, rivers overrun; still,

she will not rise and turn off the rain.

She is in her room, fondling old things,

my poems, turning her album. Even if thunder falls

like a crash of plates from the sky,

she does not come out.

Don’t you know I love you but am hopeless

at fixing the rain ? But I am learning slowly

to love the dark days, the steaming hills,

the air with gossiping mosquitoes,

and to sip the medicine of bitterness,

so that when you emerge, my sister,

parting the beads of the rain,

with your forehead of flowers and eyes of forgiveness,

all will not be as it was, but it will be true

(you see they will not let me love

as I want), because, my sister, then

I would have learnt to love black days like bright ones,

The black rain, the white hills, when once

I loved only my happiness and you.

Nominations for Sonoma County Poet Laureate

Our county’s poet laureate, Gwynne O’Gara, as well as those who have served before her, has done so much to nourish our community. I hope you’ll check out her Poet Laureate’s News page, where you’ll see her call for poems by Sonoma County residents. The deadline is September 30, 2011. From those she receives, she’ll choose three poets to read with her later this fall.

Believe it or not, it’s time once again to consider nominations for the 2012-2014 poet laureate. If you are interested in the nomination process or in serving on the Poet Laureate Selection Committee, contact Linda Galletta at Sebastopol Center for the Arts: lindag@sonic.net.

Poetry Flash’s New Website

On June 28, 2011, Poetry Flash launched a new website

( http://poetryflash.org/) to be published online in monthly issues. The July 2011 issue features a sparkling new design, a more easily navigated event calendar for California and beyond, Some Information Blog Posts, Calls for Submissions, Archives, and info about Poetry Flash programs. For details, check the County News page.

Here are some of the literary highlights for August I hope you’ll be able to attend:

August 6, Saturday, noon to 4:00 p.m. Poets’ Picnic. Location: Benicia First Street Park with Gazebo Corner of Military and First Street. For details, check the Calendar page.

Thursday, August 18, 7:00-9:00 p.m. Writers Forum of Petaluma presenters Belva Davis and Vicki Haddock: The Semi-Reluctant Memoirist. Legendary TV news anchor Belva Davis and journalist Vicki Haddock share the inside story of their collaboration to produce the acclaimed memoir Never In My Wildest Dreams: A Black Woman’s Life in Journalism. See Workshop page for details.

Saturday, August 20, 5:30-9:30 PM: CONFLUX: An evening of poetry and music to celebrate the opening of Gallery V: Contemporary Art in Valley Ford. Visual artist and poet Centa Theresa reads with Patrice Warrender and Terry Ehret, along with cellist Sebastion Plano and vocalist Caitlin Moe. Location: 14875 Valley Ford. Estero Rd., Valley Ford, CA. 94972. For details, visit the Gallery V website.

Sunday, August 21, 2:00-5:00 p.m. “The Sensual M.F.K. Fisher,” a fundraiser benefitting the Sonoma County Book Festival. Biographer Anne Zimmerman of San Francisco comes to Mimi Luebbermann’s Windrush Farm in Petaluma to share the most colorful years and personal stories behind some of M.F.K. Fisher’s beloved gastronomical writings. For tickets or information, check the Calendar page.

And finally, I have some personal announcements to share:

Kelly’s Cove Press

I pleased to announce the launch of a new publishing company, Kelly’s Cove Press, founded by Bart Schneider and dedicated to new work and classic reprints of California writers and artists. Books in the initial series are Kenneth Patchen 1911-1972: A Centennial Selection; Civil War Stories,by Ambrose Bierce, illustrated with paintings by Chester Arnold; The Best of the Devil’s Dictionary, by Ambrose Bierce; What Lures the Foxes, by Mike Tuggle; Morning Opera, by Bart Schneider, and my own new collection, Night Sky Journey. Books may be ordered through the website, www.kellyscovepress.com (live September 2011), or by calling 510-338-3480.

Eavan Boland Reads for Sixteen Rivers Press

Sixteen Rivers Press will be hosting a benefit reading featuring Irish poet Eavan Boland. The date is Saturday evening, October 22. For more information or to request an invitation, contact Sixteen Rivers at info@sixteenrivers.org.

Sitting Room Prosody Workshops for Fall 2011

I will again be offering two eight-week Prosody Workshops in the fall of 2011. These will be held on Mondays and Fridays, 9 AM to noon starting the week of September 26. For details, check the See Workshop page or visit my website at www.terryehret.com and click on the workshops link.

Terry Ehret

Literary Update Co-Editor

Click on any of these pages from the menu above to view the rest of the August Literary Update:

Monthly Calendar of Events
County-Wide News (Including News from East, West, and North County)
Poet Laureate’s News
Sonoma County in Print
Local Workshop Teachers and Writing Consultants
Current and Upcoming Workshops
Writers’ Connections
Conferences
Ongoing Writing Groups and Open Mic Readings
Calls for Submission
Recommended Northern California Journals and Presses
Directory of Sonoma County Writers
How to Send Announcements to the Literary Update
About the Literary Update
Contact

It’s summer at last, time to kick back with a book and a glass of something cool under the shade of an oak, the redwoods or your beach umbrella.

Summertime offers Sonoma County an abundance of literary events — twelve Bibliophoria-sponsored workshops, demonstrations and readings in July alone, including workshops on letter press, writing and book-folding for teens, and creating childrens’ books, and a book camp for kids (see the calendar from July 5 through 26).

Summer Sunday Backyard Readings in Petaluma (every 2nd Sunday during the summer unless it rains) are open mics without the mic for poetry, essays, short plays or scenes, comedy, music, or anything creative. The next backyard reading is July 10 (see calendar for details).

And be sure to check out the Ongoing Writers’ Groups and Open Mic Readings page for the usual suspects. Something’s on tap every day of the week. Most of these events are free. Of note: Terry Ehret will be back from Ireland to read at the Healdsburg Literary Salon’s Third Sunday Salon on July 17 (followed by an open mic).

If you’re going, you’ve already signed up for the two writers’ conferences this summer in Napa and Mendocino. Closest to home, the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference, July 24-29, also offers daytime lectures and evening readings to the public, without full conference registration. Students with current ID are admitted free. See the calendar for details or go to http://napawritersconf.org/events.

The Mendocino Coast Writers’ Conference takes place July 28-30 in Fort Bragg (www.mcwc.org). Among the conference faculty who will be presenting readings open to the public is Norma Watkins, whose just published memoir The Last Resort: Taking the Mississippi Cure (University Press of Mississippi) is my personal summer reading recommendation (www.normawatkins.com).

Remember to visit our website: The Sonoma County Literary Update website is updated every few days at https://literaryfolk.wordpress.com. We encourage you to visit these pages frequently for breaking news. If you have a workshop, event, contest, newly published book or call for submission to announce to the Sonoma County literary community, you may send it at any time and it will be posted on the site. Email announcements to sonomacountyliteraryupdate@gmail.com.

Call for submissions: Wordrunner Electronic Chapbooks is looking for short fiction for the fall echapbook, themed “mini-anthology” — one to three stories per author will be published. No fee to submit. Submissions are open July 1 through August 21. See www.echapbook.com/submissions.htm for details.

I’ll close with a poem by Paul Sohar that reminds me of the euphoric suddenness of summer.

Jo-Anne Rosen
Sonoma County Literary Update Co-editor

Being and Its Skin

So what if I stumble,
drunk on the first draft of air
slurped directly from the sky?
And crawl on all fours
to the other edge of the peak?
In the vast space below
I don’t even bother to seek out the house
I left behind.
Maybe I’ll go back down there
maybe I won’t,
it doesn’t matter now.
At the top it feels good to know
there’s nowhere else to go, just stand. And stand still.
Still like the air that goes nowhere
even when tugged by a restless wind.
The rocks don’t move and neither does the sky.
They are all in the right place
and they are what they were meant to be.
And I am where I wanted to be
and what I was meant to be.
To go back down would consume
the substance of being;
to rise any higher would
quench being into nothingness.

(from The Wayward Orchard, at www.echapbook.com/poems/sohar)

Dear Literary Folk,

I’m off to Ireland and the Czech Republic next week, so I won’t be on hand to compose a July post for the Literary Update. Jo-Anne, our wonderful co-editor who keeps this website updated, will step in for me.

One of the newer features on the Sonoma County Literary Update is the Directory of Sonoma County Writers. Jo-Anne and I set this up almost a year ago, and since then 32 of you have joined the roll call. Of course, I know there are more than 32 writers out there. If you’re reading this and not yet on the directory, you can remedy that in a snap. All you need to do is send a jpeg photo and a short bio. Include your contact information and a link where someone could go to buy your books.

Congratulations to Bibliophoria poetry contest winners Lin Max, John Johnson, and Susan Adams (none of whom are yet in our directory, but should be!). Their work will be printed by Eric Johnson of Iota Press. Gwynn O’Gara, Sonoma County Poet Laureate, was the final judge for the blind submission contest. The winners will be reading their work on Friday, June 10.

Two birthdays are coming up this month: Copperfields and the Sitting Room. When I moved from San Francisco to Petaluma in 1990, these were the two writing communities that welcomed me. Through Jane Love, who was the readings and events co-ordinator and editor of the much beloved Dickens literary journal, I met so many fine writers. And through JJ Wilson and Karen Petersen, founders and directors of the Sitting Room, I found a home for my writing workshops where I’ve had the pleasure of working with so many of you.

I hope you will join in the celebrations planned for these two vital members of the Sonoma County Literary Community. Details are included in the June Calendar of Events.

Saturday, June 4, 12:00 p.m. Copperfield’s Birthday Party.

Sunday, June 5, 2:00 to 5:00 pm. Sitting Room’s 30th Birthday Party.

In more recent years, Katherine Hastings and Ed Coletti have given us a way to celebrate our local writers and to gather as a community to welcome visiting authors. Both Katherine’s WordTemple and Ed’s Café Azul series( new name Poetry SoCoCo) ( new name Poetry SoCoCo) have events scheduled this month.

Saturday, June 18, 7:00 p.m. The WordTemple Poetry Series returns to the Sebastopol Center for the Arts, located at 6780 Depot Street, Sebastopol.

Saturday, June 4, 7:00-9:00 pm. Poetry Azul has a new name, at a new venue and time: Poetry SoCoCo opens at the SoCo Coffee at 4th & Brookwood, 1015 4th Street, Santa Rosa. For more details, see Ongoing Groups/Open Mics page.

And finally, Bibliophoria is sponsoring and hosting a number of important events this summer. Thanks to Christine Walker who has helped to bring all these aspects of writing and book-art together.

Bibliophoria: Celebrate Book Arts! takes place in June & July in Sebastopol. Workshops, readings, exhibitions, parties, town tour, and merchant tie-ins. All for the love of books. Hosted by Sebastopol Center for the Arts and Copperfield’s Books, in honor of the independent store’s 30th Anniversary. http://bibliophoria.com

Writer’s Sampler Series at Sebastopol Center for the Arts: Monday evenings June 20: Making Art with Words: A Collaboration in Print Art & Poetry. June 27: Inkling to Ink & Beyond: Developing and caring for your nonfiction book. July 11: The Many Faces of Memoir: Finding the Style and Structure That Works for You. July 18: The Making and Marketing of a Chapbook. http://bibliophoria.com/writers-sampler/

Children’s Book Writing Conference for writers and illustrators interested in learning more about writing for children from published authors/illustrators and a children’s book editor/agent. A day-long
intensive with sessions devoted to picture books, middle-grade and YA, editing, and presentation. July 16, 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sebastopol Center for the Arts. $110 includes lunch. http:// bibliophoria.com/childrens-book-conference/.

To close, here is my poem for June: Eavan Boland’s “White Hawthorne in the West of Ireland.”

Boland will be the special guest poet for the Sixteen Rivers Benefit on October 22, 2011. You may want to save the date for that. Details available at http://www.sixteenrivers.org.

I will also be offering a workshop on Prosody this fall at the Sitting Room, in which we will be studying Boland’s work, along with three other poets. Check my website for details in July: www.terryehret.com.

Terry Ehret
Sonoma County Literary Update Co-Editor

WHITE HAWTHORN IN THE WEST OF IRELAND
By Eavan Boland

I drove west
in the season between seasons.
I left behind suburban gardens.
Lawmowers. Small talk.

Under low skies, past splashes of coltsfoot
I assumed
the hard shyness of Atlantic light
and the superstitious aura of hawthorn.

All I wanted then was to fill my arms with
sharp flowers,
to seem, from a distance, to be part of
that ivory, downhill rush. But I knew,

I had always known
the custom was
not to touch hawthorn.
Not to bring it indoors for the sake of

the luck
such constraint would forfeit —
a child might die, perhaps, or an unexplained
fever speckle heifers. So I left it

stirring on those hills
with a fluency
only water has. And, like water, able
to redefine land. And free to seem to be —

for anglers,
and for travelers astray in
the unmarked lights of a May dusk —
the only language spoken in those parts.

— Eavan BOLAND, Outside History, selected poems – 1980-1990, (Norton/1990).

Click on any of these pages from the menu above to view the rest of the June Literary Update:

Monthly Calendar of Events
County-Wide News (Including News from East, West, and North County)
Poet Laureate’s News
Sonoma County in Print
Local Workshop Teachers and Writing Consultants
Current and Upcoming Workshops
Writers’ Connections
Conferences
Ongoing Writing Groups and Open Mic Readings
Calls for Submission
Recommended Northern California Journals and Presses
Directory of Sonoma County Writers
How to Send Announcements to the Literary Update
About the Literary Update
Contact