26 Sunday Jun 2011
Posted in poetry & poets, Uncategorized
≈ Comments Off on “Longing for the Light” provides poetic start to summer
It finally felt like summer, with light and sun pouring in as Seattle’s ACT Theatre quickly filled for “Longing for the Light,” Copper Canyon Press’ Summer Solstice Reading, the devoted audience leaving the balmy evening for a dark urbane interior.
Poet Heather McHugh
Notable poets from distant corners of the U.S. filled the stage, bringing with them considerable light and a summation of wordful colors.
16 Monday May 2011
Posted in poetry & poets, Uncategorized, writers and writing
≈ Comments Off on Richard Ford on Writing
What can be said about a man so calm and charming that it seems perfectly reasonable to store manuscripts in the freezer or plant a 38mm bullet through an unsavory book? The author himself demonstrates the answer when he reads from his upcoming novel, Canada. What can be said is the gentleman can surely write. In a few short minutes Richard Ford takes listeners down a windy path, introduces us to a family and splays open their history, from a happenstance beginning to the worn features of lives habituated by compromise.
23 Saturday Apr 2011
Posted in poetry & poets, Uncategorized, writers and writing
≈ Comments Off on Setting the Mantle Aside for an Evening
As Dr. Jessica Burstein of the UW English Dept, introduces Joyce Carol Oates, the room grows still. Surely the credits are remarkable and even perhaps incomparable—over 50 novels and dozens of short story collections, the National Book Award and the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction. Her works Black Water, What I Lived For, and Blonde were all finalists for the Pulitzer Prize. In 2003, Oates was honored with the Common Wealth Award for Distinguished Service in Literature. For brevity, here I omit listing her purview at Princeton and other extensive recognitions…
Joyce Carol Oates’ quiet presence filled the room as Seattle’s Benaroya Hall audience sat in on a discussion of Oates work, skillfully and unobtrusively led by Dr. Burstein. But for starters, Oates took off the mantle of her achievements, making it clear that her role was not to distribute wisdom, rather it seems she casts sidelong glances at her worldly accomplishments, not owning them in a way that explains her light touch in discussing her writing process and the consistently unusual choice of topic for her works.
16 Saturday Apr 2011
Posted in poetry & poets, writers and writing
≈ Comments Off on What was the first moment…
… poetry wooed you? So asks Alice Quinn, longtime poetry editor for the New Yorker and current executive director for the Poetry Society of America. The answers are informing, coming from three famous University of Oregon Alumni, gathered around after a Seattle Arts & Lecture (SAL) reading in Seattle.
Major Jackson describes the importance of being raised in the church, not because of the religious aspect, but because of the respect and honor shown to ritual in his Philadelphia family home. Sacred speech, like Robert Frost’s Nothing Gold Can Stay, was a beckoning.
22 Sunday Aug 2010
Posted in Book Reviews, poetry & poets, travel
≈ Comments Off on Falling off the page
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Ok, ok, so most of summer is gone and I haven’t blogged in a month. Now I will make up for it and with one single post cover a book review, some new poetry and observations from the Greater Seattle, excessively PC caffeine wagon.
02 Friday Jul 2010
Posted in environment, ocean & fisheries, poetry & poets
≈ Comments Off on Blue Marble Planet lover Lea Haratani dives deep
“A lot of people attack the sea. I make love to it.” —Jacques Cousteau
Lea Haratani has had a lifelong passion for the ocean, and every day she tries to show it. Some days, it means not eating fish. Other times, it’s all about taking a walk on the beach—or diving off the coast of Belize with Jim Simon, the vice president of one of the nation’s largest ocean conservation organizations, Oceana. She might also be found circulating petitions against offshore drilling with her children at Bookshop Santa Cruz, or organizing a fundraising event for Oceana at the Saint Francis Yacht Club in San Francisco.
Read more about Lea and ocean activism, featured in Good Times this week.
17 Monday May 2010
Posted in poetry & poets
≈ Comments Off on Houses Are Fields
Silverman reads at Bookshop Santa Cruz
This week I attended a reading by Taije Silverman. Silverman read from her new book Houses Are Fields. (Published by LSU in 2009)
Amazing, soulful. Words hung on a loosely reorganized scaffold of iambic pentameter. A powerful reader whose quiet strength shines through metaphors, and leaves sensual images drawn from a mix of Greek tragedy and the sumptuous landscape of Virginia.
Looks like Santa Cruz has a very active current of poetry running through it, with its own Poet Laureate (Gary Young), amazing residents like Adrienne Rich (more on Rich and her upcoming book later) and an organization dedicated entirely to fostering poetry, Poetry Santa Cruz.
23 Tuesday Mar 2010
Posted in environment, poetry & poets
≈ Comments Off on Lovely song, sacrificed without a passing regret
Poetry and the arts take an important place in the realm of influencing change, raising awareness and stirring the pot. Poets, writers and film makers have been my catalysts and guides along the sometimes confusing trail of conservation and direct action.
Hip Pocket Press publishes a newsletter sharing poets views on the environment. Named Canary for the unique place this lovely songbird held as a harbinger of deadly mine gas, this collection of loosely themed writings informs us of an inner life nurtured by nature.
“The canary in the coal mine” was a primitive early warning system used by miners to alert themselves to poison gases seeping into the mines. If the canary was found dead, it was time to get out quick. As a metaphor, its significance for me includes not only the salvation of the humans, but also the casual loss of the canary, that fragile and innocent bird with its lovely song, sacrificed without a passing regret….”—Gail Entrekin, Editor, Hip Pocket Press
12 Friday Mar 2010
Posted in Book Reviews, poetry & poets
≈ Comments Off on Falling Into Light
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Molly Fisk’s New Book
Molly Fisk’s new book, The More Difficult Beauty was released yesterday. Somewhere in the Sierra there was a great stirring and release party, I suspect.
See my short review in Sacramento News & Review, or read the full review below.
The More Difficult Beauty
by Molly Fisk
Publication Date: March 10, 2010
Pages: 96
Trim size: 5.5″ x 8.5″, soft cover
Price: $15.00
ISBN 10: 9780917658365
ISBN 13: 978-0-917658-36-5
Hip Pocket Press, 5 Del Mar Court, Orinda, California 94563
Reading Molly Fisk’s The More Difficult Beauty gave me the odd sensation of falling down a well, but instead of into darkness, I fell into light. Fisk’s words give us darkness and shadow, but these poems twist this into a kind of release, leaving the reader with a bittersweet, sobering hope. John Updike considers Fisk’s current poetic offering a “Fearless, clear-eyed work.”
This poet braves the more difficult places and reveals the world’s simple truths. —Dorianne Laux
02 Tuesday Feb 2010
Posted in poetry & poets
≈ Comments Off on California State Poetry Society
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Just out in California Quarterly, my poem as tribute to Edward Abbey-
by Pamela Biery
Edward’s words
sear images into my eyes
making me yearn
for the widest spaces this planet
still offers
and call out
for the wild ones lurking
in the brush
and beg
to lie on the hard earth,
searching the sky.
Not too late
perhaps to save
a few river miles
surrounded by
Glen Canyon green
dipping water ouzels
and suspended,
temporary surety
of a river
still flowing
free.
Green remains,
but Edward and
the Glen Canyon
are gone.
A shadow dances
across the water
A fish? A leaf?
Racing with the current,
down the riffle,
into deep pools
swirling, twisting
out of sight
but present
as surely as
this passing day.
