Dear Literary Folk,
It feels like we have all been wringing our hands these past few weeks leading up to Tuesday’s election. Some of us feel like the hands we have been figuratively (or literally) wringing. I hope you will all take the time to vote, and if you already have, thank you! So much is at stake.
Back in the fall of 2016, I led a workshop at the Sitting Room called “Singing in Dark Times: Reading and Writing Political Poems.” Certainly you all remember that particular election. Dark times indeed. One of the poems we read together was “Enemies,” by Wendell Berry:
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Enemies
If you are not to become a monster,
you must care what they think.
If you care what they think,
how will you not hate them,
and so become a monster
of the opposite kind? From where then
is love to come—love for your enemy
that is the way of liberty?
From forgiveness. Forgiven, they go
free of you, and you of them;
they are to you as sunlight
on a green branch. You must not
think of them again, except
as monsters like yourself,
pitiable because unforgiving.
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Today I marked my ballot and dropped it in the ballot collection box outside the Veteran’s Memorial Building. On Monday, the sun poured in through the open doors of the cemetery chapel where my family and I set our sister’s urn in her niche. On Saturday, my daughter sang Bach’s “Ave Maria” and “Make Me a Channel of Your Peace,” the latter an adaptation of the Prayer of Saint Francis, which is framed in stained glass in that cemetery chapel. But how to be a channel of peace? Is there a way to hone ourselves, keep ourselves in tune so when we are called to place a calming hand on this troubled world, we’re ready?
I’ve learned over many years of writing and teaching that the gift, whatever that is, comes not so much to us as through us. And with whatever writing practice we’ve adopted, we are tuning ourselves as instruments. Maybe voting is a kind of exercise, certainly an exercise in hope, like taking the time to breathe through a difficult moment. And in breathing, we take in the ghosts around us, so full of the hope we’re needing.
This time of year, our dead come close to us, like the Super Moon in the perigee of its elliptical orbit. Make room for them. Gather them up like windfall apples. Think of them in the small acts of remembrance you may be inclined to on this Día de los Muetos. Ask them to guide us toward the kind of liberty, child of forgiveness, that Wendell Berry speaks of in his poem. Ask them to help us preserve that other liberty we are in danger of losing. But such prayers are not enough. We each have to do our part. As Mary Harris “Mother” Jones once said, “Pray for the dead. Fight like hell for the living.” And as another wise woman, Grace Paley, put it “Hope is action.” Let’s hone our instruments and get to work!
Poetry from the North Country: Lynne Knight and Katherine Hastings
I’m looking forward to zooming in for Monday’s Rivertown Poets, partly because the two featured readers are dear friends who have moved out of our geographical circle, but who are very much part of the work we all do here in the Bay Area. Katherine Hastings, our former Sonoma County Poet Laureate and director of WordTemple Reading Series, will be joining us via zoom from her new home in upstate New York, not far from the Canadian border. And Lynne Knight, colleague at Sixteen Rivers Press, will be joining us from her new home in British Columbia, Canada.
The reading will be on Monday, November 4, 6:15 p.m., followed by open mic. Open mic slots are three minutes each, including any introduction or backstory. If you’d like to be added to the list or, have any questions send an email to rivertownpoet@gmail.com. The list fills very quickly; it’s better to sign up and then cancel later, if necessary. Join Zoom Meeting: us06web.zoom.us/j/6508887879. Passcode: 2241991
West Side Stories: Less than Perfect
Join the chorus of Sonoma County storytellers on Wednesday, November 13, 7:30-9:00 p.m. when Dave Pokorny presents West Side Stories. Theme: Less than Perfect. The event takes place at Polly Klaas Community Theater, 417 Western Avenue, Petaluma. Details and ticket ($21.50) purchase: davepokornypresents.com/west-side-stories.
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 between November 1, 2024 and 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 2024. Selected manuscripts will be scheduled for publication in spring 2027.
Online Submissions: Send an e-mail to submissions@sixteenrivers.org with your name, address, phone number, and the name of your manuscript. Attach a PDF of your manuscript to the e-mail address (name the PDF with the title of your manuscript). In the body of the e-mail, please include a personal statement (350 to 500 words) about why you want to work in a publishing collective, including any special experience or skills you might contribute, and tell us where you heard about the press and our call for submissions. The manuscript must be e-mailed no later than February 1, 2025. Note: We do not accept hard-copy manuscripts sent by US mail. Please do not include your name anywhere in your manuscript, as it is important that your manuscript be a blind submission. The manuscript must be single-spaced and between 60 and 90 pages. Manuscripts must be previously unpublished, although individual poems may have been published online or in print. The manuscript should include a title page without the author’s name and address, a table of contents, and an acknowledgments page listing previous publications of the poems.
Sixteen Rivers values diversity. We encourage poets of color, young poets, and LGBTQ poets to submit.
Two Poems for November
I received two submissions this month, and found I wanted to include them both, as they each speak so eloquently to the season and its embrace (and transformation) of grief.
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Visitation
by Lisa Shulman
Sometimes the dead drop in for a visit
unannounced they slip past me on the step
having no need for doors locked or open
they make themselves at home, kick off their shoes
rest cold bones on empty creaking rockers
thumb through yesterday’s newspaper, old
New Yorkers, dusty books of poetry
or argue idly over the remote.
Sometimes the dead settle in the back seat
without asking, tag along for the ride
press pale cheeks to cool glass, watch flickering
reflections of light play on wet pavement.
I hear them whisper wordless seashell sounds
behind my back, as if I were the ghost.
Sometimes I think they fiddle with the knobs
on the radio when I’m not looking.
Why else would these hot tears spring to my eyes
at an old song I’ve never heard before?
Why else would I mourn at a certain turn
where crooked arms of valley oaks reach out,
an empty embrace holding a cold sky
reminding me of all that I have lost?
Sometimes I doubt, but if the dead do not
stop by, why then do I push back my plate
the bread in my mouth turned ash and dust?
Why then do I wrap myself in blankets,
warding off the dull chill of silent rooms
that are at once empty and too full to bear?
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Lisa Shulman is a writer, children’s book author, and teacher. Her work has appeared in New Verse News, ONE ART, Poetry Breakfast, Catamaran, Minnow Literary Magazine, California Quarterly, The Best Small Fictions, and a number of other magazines and anthologies. Nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Lisa’s poetry has also been performed by Off the Page Readers Theater. Her chapbook Fragile Bones, Fierce Heart is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press. Lisa lives in Northern California where she teaches poetry with California Poets in the Schools. http://www.lisashulman.com
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So Easy to Forget
by Raphael Block
Grief has its rocks, waves, tides,
spiraling depths—
and, like the vast ocean,
it’s full of life, its folds filled
with cod, squid, salmon, and kelp.
The ones I’ve lost swim inside—
some closer than in life—
their fins brushing against my skin.
They knock on my ribs, sometimes
to wake me from reverie,
and, in the night, their blessings
murmur in my blood.
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Raphael Block is the author of five poetry books, The Dreams We Share (2023), At This Table, Strings of Shining Silence, Spangling Darkness, and Songs from a Small Universe. Raphael produces the monthly Earth-Love Newsletter which can be viewed at raphaelblock.com along with a National Geographic selected 5-minute documentary.
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Send Us Your Poetry/Short Prose Selections for 2024
Starting last January, 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
Ground-breaking Mexican-American musician, artist, and activist Joan Baez joins accomplished writer, professor, and tribal leader Chairman Greg Sarris in a conversation about writing, creating, and legacy. Sarris is co-executive producer of Joan Baez: I Am A Noise, a deeply personal, profound, and haunting documentary that follows Baez on her 2018 Fare Thee Well goodbye tour and explores memory and abuse through home videos, journal entries, photographs, and therapy tapes. This pairing sold out in a few days last year, so we invited this dynamic duo again!
Greg Sarris will also be reading at the Rohnert Park-Cotati Library
Sonoma County Youth Poet Laureate and Poetry Ambassador
It was a book,
Speaking of the voices of youth poets, Sixteen Rivers Press has just released Our Own Light, a compilation of poems written in response to the poems in the anthology America, We Call Your Name: Poems of Resistance and Resilience, which brought together poetry across the millennia, speaking from moments of crisis and uncertainty.
A mighty tree in our West County community, whose solid trunk supported our community, whose deep roots spread far and wide, and whose protective branches provided shade for all, Stephen Cartwright Fowler(b. Jan 24, 1940) left us unexpectedly on Thursday, April 11. He died as he lived, (his timing uncanny, sharing his death day with Luther Burbank, April 11, 1926) in mid-stride of a vital life, playing golf with a close friend, on a beautiful sunny day. Steve was a humble Steward of Life, a man of open generosity of spirit, unerring principle, and a fierce advocacy for social justice. He was a passionate and grateful lover of nature, community, family, the arts, philosophy, and the soul. As a friend remarked, he was a warm hearth on a cold day. A keen and kind listener, he was also witty, playful, and erudite, always a twinkle in his eye. He combined wisdom and tact, in a manner and voice almost stately, a true gentleman. Though we will sorely miss hugging this tree of a being, he is within us now, showing us by example and few words, how to live a superlative life of the heart. We are better people for having known him.
I sailed beyond the “end of the world” with my two sisters on a ship housing about 2500 passengers and at least 300 crew and staff, a small floating city, 16 decks tall and as long as the Eifel tower is high. My youngest sister Louise, who lives in Santa Rosa, and I were traveling with a group of retired Florida teachers that included our middle sister Ava. This was the only time since childhood we three sisters have traveled together.
After 14 exhausting hours on airplanes, we rested in Buenos Aries two days, enjoying a tour of the colorful Boca neighborhood that was settled by Italian immigrants and the largest and most splendid bookstore I’ve ever seen (El Ateneo Grand Splendid), housed in a beautiful old opera house, five stories high.
We boarded the ship on 20 January and were at sea three days, our first port of call being the southernmost city in Argentina, Ushuaia, where we had booked an excursion to see a penguin colony in Tiera del Fuego. It never happened because that day workers were on strike protesting the new government’s policies. Instead, we came across an exciting protest march, consisting of many left-leaning factions, we learned, that normally do not get along, everything from Peronistas to Socialists. As it turned out, there were more penguins to be seen elsewhere.
We reached Cape Horn on day 5 where luckily visibility was excellent, so we could sail close to the coast and see the Chilean lighthouse at the southernmost point on the continent. The Drake Passage, dreaded by many a navigator of yore, was unusually calm. On day 6 we were elated to spot our first floating iceberg from our stateroom (we had a balcony). Although we’d been warned a dense fog might prohibit entering the Schollart Channel, the sun broke through and we sailed into Paradise Bay. We sisters ran all over the boat taking photos and videos. 
I was actually relieved to be quarantined for five days; there were too many people and too much activity on the ship for my taste. Also, the cruise line provided me with free room service and phone calls and, best of all, a notification that I will be refunded for those five days. On day 1 of Covid-jail, I could see all of Elephant Island from our cabin, since the ship rotated slowly, as if to give me a view of everything. The sun literally sparkled on the water. 
My only regret was not being able to visit Port Stanley and take the excursion via tour bus and jeep to see the Gentoo penguins. But my sisters took great photos and videos. And they had fish n’ chips for lunch (the comfort food of our Canadian childhood). I also missed out on Puerto Madryn, which had been founded in 1865 by Welsh settlers. However, I didn’t miss much, as that is now a small, rundown city with a beachfront that looks like Miami Beach did in the ‘50s. Our final port of call was Montevideo, Uruguay, whose old town near the port reminded us of Paris or New Orleans. We celebrated my 80th birthday that night on the ship.
A Benefit for SebArts: Rumi’s Caravan on Saturday, February 10, at 7 pm. An Evening of Poetry + Music in the Ecstatic Tradition, featuring Doug von Koss, Kay Crista, Barry Spector, Maya Spector, Rebecca Evert and Larry Robinson with musical accompaniment by Jason Parmar and Don Fontowitz.
Redwood Writers Club will be presenting Life in the Flames: A Five-Year Journey Bringing Inflamed to Publication on Saturday, February 17, 11 a.m.–2 p.m. Just after midnight on October 9, 2017, as one of the nation’s deadliest and most destructive firestorms swept over California’s Wine Country, hundreds of elderly residents from two posh senior living facilities in Santa Rosa were caught in its path. The frailest were blind, in wheelchairs, or diagnosed with dementia, and their community quickly transformed from a palatial complex that pledged to care for them to one that threatened to entomb them. Investigative reporters Paul Gullixson and Anne Belden will share their five-year journey bringing this story to publication, at Finley Community Center, Cypress Room, 2060 W College Ave., Santa Rosa. For more information: 
Longtime Sonoma County teacher, artist, and poet Marylu Downing returns to celebrate the launch of her new book, Pink Paisley Scarf. The launch will be held on Saturday, February 17, 4:00-5:30 p.m at the Occidental Center for the Arts. After selected readings, the author will be in conversation with Patrick Fanning, author, publisher and President of the OCA Board. Q&A with the audience. Free admission, all donations gratefully accepted. Book sales and signing. 3850 Doris Murphy Way, Occidental. 
Some of you may be familiar with N. Scott Momaday from his work with Ken Burns in documentaries over the years, often providing the historical perspective of the Native Plains people, most recently in The American Buffalo. More important, however, Scott Momaday was the first Native American to win a Pulitzer Prize for his 1968 debut novel House Made of Dawn. His narratives, poetry, and teaching inspired other Native American authors, such as James Welch, Sherman Alexie, Leslie Marmon Silko, Joy Harjo, and Louise Erdrich. According to Joy Harjo, “Momaday was the one we all looked up to. His works were transcendent. There was always a point where despite the challenges and losses … there was some moment that imparted beauty.”
Sonoma County poet Mark Tate’s collection Walking Scarecrow was selected for the 2023 Blue Light Book Award. Mark is the author of three previous books of poetry Pommes de Terre (2001), Sur lie* (2002), and Rooms and Doorways (2003), and three novels, Beside the River, and its sequel River’s End (McCaa Books, 2021), and Butterfly on the Wheel (McCaa Books, 2022). He served for ten years on the Sonoma County Poet Selection Committee for the poets laureate of our county. He is a long-time resident of Northern California where he lives with his wife, Lori. 
We spent some holiday time watching movies: old favorites like Truman Capote’s A Christmas Memory, Dylan Thomas’s Child’s Christmas in Wales, The Holiday, Joyeaux Noël, and (new to us) Love, Actually; and some newer releases like Barbie, Maestro, American Symphony. We also introduced our grandson Connor to How the Grinch Stole Christmas (the original, narrated by Boris Karloff). None of us could name the uncredited vocalist who sings “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Ginch,” so I looked it up. His name is Thurl Ravenscroft, also known as the booming voice behind Tony the Tiger, among many other credits. It seems a shame that he remains unknown to most of us, so I’m doing my part here to make sure we all know his name.
Never tried your hand at flash fiction? Here’s your chance to explore new ways of writing. Guy has been leading workshops for many years on the power of flash and micro fiction. “Strive for sinewy sentences,” Guy says, “and stories that charge the moment. We’ll practice the art of expressing more with less as we explore flash and micro fiction. Using writing seeds, time limits, and story samples, we’ll pursue the creativity of limitation, the pleasure of discovery, and the earnest work of craft.”
Mark Tate Wins Blue Light Book Award
Book Launch for Claire Drucker’s New Collection The Life You Gave Me
Saturday, January 20, 2024, 5:00-7:00 pm
Exact right life
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