BAY AREA POETS REVIEW
COLUMNISTS
ADAM DAVID MILLER
MARY RUDGE
JUDY HARDIN CHEUNG
CLAIRE BAKER
Berkeley Poet Adam David Miller was honored on May 21st of this year at the annual Berkeley Poetry Festival, created by Louis Cuneo. The daylong festivities were held at Berkeley City College.
Miller Time
by Adam David Miller (Berkeley)
Some notes and observations on
Chapter & Verse
When Rose Black handed me a promo sheet for Chapter&Verse I read “Five Bay Area…poets, invited five additional…poets…to contribute to this collection…”, I wondered what manner of work was this. With the thin-skinned, fragile ego-driven, fractious nature of many poets I wondered how they even got the book together.
I need not have wondered. From Ethan Kaplan’s cover photograph of “Stained-glass window (detail) from Congregation Emanu-El, San Francisco…”; to Tania Baban-Natal’s tasteful cover and book design (in this case “You can tell a book…) with two apt blurbs; to Jane Miller’s (“a well known American poet) thoughtful and inviting Introduction, Chapter &Verse is an anthology readers will immerse themselves in, learn from, cry and laugh with the poets who do cry and laugh at themselves. In plain speech, this is one helluva fine collection.
I appreciate the testimonials of the poets that precede their bios in the Contributor’s Notes. These acts of witness as well as the poems helped me see the many ways there are of claiming Jewish identity. Examples of a few will illustrate: Jacqueline Kudler, “My Jewish identity, like my female identity, has never been a subject that much concerned me: it just is.” Raffaella Del Bourgo, “I came out of the nest an atheist and nothing in my upbringing or environment ever changed my mind about that, but I always felt 100% Jewish.”
Rose Black, “I began with the deep split between my mother’s strong Jewish roots and my father’s strong Catholic ones, with their alienation from their own religions and their own families, with the pain and loss that was always spilling out, in spite of their attempts to hide it.” Dan Bellm, I came to Judaism by choice in my late twenties; entered the mikveh as a convert at the age of thirty-six; and became a bar mitzvah in my jubilee (fiftieth) year.”
Jews come from a myriad of places throughout the world and share such complex histories that it is not surprising that many feel ambivalent about their identity as Jews. Chana Bloch says, “My own poetry has increasingly found its way to the time-honored Jewish practice of arguing with the tradition. At seventy I am still asking; the answers keep changing.”
As they should be as life changes and with change different circumstance. Read Chapter & Verse and see for yourself how these ten accomplished poets shake the tree.
From the Fall 2010 issue:
“Also thanks for lending me Jan’s book. I read it today and really liked it a lot. I’m a sucker for a story, and Jan’s family tale and coming to grips with her father’s death through poetry was very moving. I liked the structure of the book also, and the way she drew her siblings into the tale. Must have been a real catharsis for her to complete this poetry memoir after so many years of repressing her grief, and I think it’s the deepest and best I’ve heard from her.”
To this I add Amen! The above assessment is from Judy Wells (quoted with her permission), herself an exceptional poet in the rich tradition of Irish storytellers, of Albany poet Jan Dederick’s new book, Hammer It Into Horseshoes.
For a thirteen-year-old girl to lose a father she adored is an event of cataclysmic proportions. The girl at that point in her life is an opening flower, to her body, to the new world around her. In one society, this young girl is a source of wisdom, listened to by the elders who gather around and seek her counsel. That Dederick’s father should leave her at such a critical moment in her life was devastating.
The shock of his death at 39 was felt not only by the family but made waves throughout the community, as Dederick quotes a neighbor of her father’s generation many years later:
. . .when your dad went. . .
it sent shock waves through
the whole community. . .
things were never the same
after that for any of us.
The structure of Hammer It Into Horseshoes is an act of genius. With earthquake as her overarching metaphor, from fault-lines to aftershocks and digging out, Dederick is able to hold together what would have been an unmanageable cast of characters and events. I also sense a kind of symphonic theme-and-variation where we are treated to line after line of verses of startling beauty. She opens with:
Outgrown
into open hands
black glyphs on white,
skins of antique loss
I shed
in holding
healing
Her “Prologue, The Land,” is repeated in her “Epilogue, Sleep Walking,” with the addition of one line, “His sleep has become our waking.” Hammer It Into Horseshoes is a book well worth exploring.
Thank you Judy. Thank you Jan!
Adam David Miller’s new poetry collection, The Sky is Not a Page was released this past year. Email Miller at eshuhouse@yahoo.com or visit his website:http://www.adamdavidmillerpoet.com
Let’s Hear from Alameda
The Rudge Report
by Mary Rudge, poet laureate of Alameda
Graves, Landmarks, History-Making Poets
When California was busy deciding who its new poet laureate would be, I visited the grave of the first poet laureate in the state: Ina Coolbrith who was also the first poet laureate in the country.
Coolbrith’s grave in the Mountain View Cemetery on Piedmont Avenue was unmarked for 56 years uuntil poets themselves commissioned and contributed to a pink granite gravestone. It was unveiled in a ceremony attended by the then-poet-laureate Charles Garrigus, and dozens of poets, including me. This cemetery now conducts tours to her grave and graves of other notable persons buried there. 
Ina Coolbrith once sent a wreath of California laurel to have laid on Lord Byron’s grave by Joaquin Miller. This reminded me of when a member of the Ina Coolbrith Circle, B. Jo Kinnick went to Scotland to lay a rose on the tomb of Robert Burns. Landmarks and grave sites receive uncounted numbers of visitors.
Happy New Year to the Undead,
Long May They Live
A future historic grave site to visit may be at the San Pablo Cemetery (not too soon, I hope) which will hold the joint tombstone of Floyd Salas and Claire Ortega. The pair are designing it for themselves, deciding which of their poems will be engraved on it, their photos embedded into it, and a statue by Floyd to be on top of the tombstone.
If you haven’t heard Jeanne Lupton sing her song about inheriting two cemetery plots, check on the website maintained by Amos White where the poems of each poet reading at “Heart of the Muse” in Alameda can be heard. Click on Lupton’s name and you may love hearing her sing the poem.
In 2011, 94 Years Dead and Still Celebrated
The Alameda Island Poets have celebrated the birthday of their Home Boy Jack London (1876-1916) every year for more nthan 20 years in recognition of the fact that Jack London, wanted, more than anything else, to be one of the poets. He first started school in Alameda at the West End School (where Longfellow School now stands) and returned to Alameda to study again as a teenager at the Anderson Academy (where Longfellow Park is now) and to learn to box at Neptune Gardens (forerunnner of Neptune Beach). His love of words led him to string clotheslines across his room with words on it so he could learn new ones every day.
Dreams Do Come True
Can a free publication with no money or means of support succeed and grow for 40 years? Thirty-seven poets whose work is published in a special edition of the news-paper El Tecolote came onstage in a passionate demonstration August 29, 2010, at the Mission Cultural Center in San Francisco to testify to this accom-plishment with their poems. Among the readers were Francisco X. Alarcon, Nina Serrano, Francisco Herrera Brambila, Jorge Tetl Argueta, Adrian Arias, Avotcja, Lorna Dee Cervantes, Rafael Jésus Gonzalez, Jack Hirschman, devora major, Ginny Lim, Nelly Wong, Lucha Corpi, Dorinda Moreno, Alejandro Murguia, Joe Navarro, Tomas Riley, Roberto Vargas, Roberto Ariel Vargas, myself and many more.
Hundreds of the newspaper’s readers and celebrants witnessed a slide-show and visited exhibits of photographs, posters, art displays, and tables of books and compact-discs.
Juan Gonzales is the founding editor of El Tecolote. He recounted the paper’s beginnings in August 1970, and attested to its importance and staying power as it expands into an online version that features audio and video stories.
The bilingual paper was created when a disproportionate number of young Latino-Americans were dying in Viet Nam, while simul-taneously they were experiencing injustices “back home” in their California neighborhoods. El Tecolote has exposed wrongs, informed for social change, and urged its community to shape its own destiny through ethnic studies and by presenting choices for peaceful and thoughtful activism.
Poets and artists have contributed greatly through the years to El Tecolote and are preparing an anthology of their work; check for it at www.eltecolote.org.
Mary Rudge is Poet Laureate of Alameda. Comments about her articles or to provide tips on stories to cover can be sent to maryrudge@aol.com.
(L-R) Judy Hardin Cheung, Natica Angilly, Kay Ryan and Mary Rudge
Lillian Ozorio, born in China, reads English with Phi Phi Dang, born in Viet Nam, reading in Mandarin or Cantonese. Phi Phi also reads Viet Namese poetry and speaks French and English
Sonoma Poets
By Judy Hardin Cheung
Poets gather in the breezeway of the Redwood Empire Chinese Association’s Multi-Cultural Center for the read-arounds. This group of poets came from Santa Rosa, Alameda, Richmond, Berkeley, Oakland, San Francisco, Viet Nam, China, and Germany.
Here we are, way up north, with Sonoma County’s big toe barely touching the waters of San Francisco Bay. Yes, we are here, looking south to all the great poetic happenings in the other counties of the Greater San Francisco Bay Area.
Yet, as we look south, we also look outward to the rest of the world and inward with inspiration broadened by our jagged coastline, our unparalleled redwoods, our seasonally changing hills, our cities, towns and rugged, rural areas. We live poetry, breathe poetry. To achieve a broader recognition, we look south to share our poetry. But, there are a lot of poetry interactions going on up here with many poets living in Sonoma County’s hills, forests and urban centers. Many gather in small groups and some participate in ‘city-style’ readings; others write and submit in solitude. We, the less urban poets of Sonoma County are happy to join the BAY AREA POETS SEASONAL REVIEW.
Poets of the Vineyard Chapter of California Federation of Chaparral Poets is a Sonoma County poetry organization that has served poets for nearly 40 years. In that time, we have hosted monthly meetings, critique workshops, contests; we have published anthologies and hosted the statewide Chaparral Convention. Now, we have a monthly newsletter announcing poetry events, activities, member news and, of course, member poetry. We are not bound by geography. Our members live throughout California and we even have members living in other states and countries. One current member is from Thailand. For more information about Poets of the Vineyard, or how to join, please contact Judy Hardin Cheung at jhcheung@comcast.net. We do not have a website yet.
Poets of the Vineyard’s main event each year is the Multi-Cultural Poetry Reading and Pot Luck Lunch held in August at the Redwood Empire Chinese Association Multi-Cultural Center, 3455 Sebastopol Road, Santa Rosa, CA.
Usually we have twenty or thirty people attend but we are not limited to that number. This event is co-sponsored by the Redwood Empire Chinese Association and Artists Embassy International. Alameda Island Poets with Poet Laureate Mary Rudge and many multilingual, multicultural members of AIP always attend.
The Multi-Cultural Poetry Reading attendees meet about noon and share a delicious pot luck lunch. It is not unusual to have lasagna sitting next to eggplant with tofu, hummus, Viet Namese spring rolls and Kentucky Fried Chicken.
Everyone is encouraged to chat and get to know each other. During lunch, bilingual books of poetry are provided (or bring your own). Our primary language is English, but we look forward to hearing other languages also. Everyone is asked to choose a poem in a language they can read and find someone else to read it in the second language. If you read only English, that is fine. If you read only Spanish or Chinese, no problem. If you speak all of the languages, we ask that you find a partner so that everyone can share in the fun. Those willing may be partners with many different poets.
After lunch and after the poems and partners have gotten acquainted, we usually sit outside in the breezeway for a balmy afternoon poetry read-around. If it is too hot, we have an air conditioned dance studio where we can meet.
Our first read-around session is the Pick-A-Partner where a pair of poets read the same poem in two languages. Sometimes a discussion about meanings, nuances, translations of idiomatic phrases, sym-bolism, etc., follows the reading. Occasionally, a poem is read in two languages and we will have a third language-speaker stand up and say, “I know that poem …,” and recite it in yet another tongue.
David Chung and Ken Peterson pair up for a reading of a Chinese poem in Mandarin and English
Once, Benicia’s poet laureate Joel Fallon was partnered with David Chung, a Chinese poet from Santa Rosa. Joel read his poem in English. When David stepped forward to read in Chinese. Joel said, “Wait,” and proceeded to read in excellent Chinese. He then handed the book to David and said, “Now, you read it in the classical style.” Little did Joe know that David is one of the few people in Sonoma County who is an excellent reader of classical-style Chinese poetry. This is only one example of our frequent and unexpected poetic moments.
Our Pick-A-Partner Read-Arounds have an English version of every poem. Other languages have included Mandarin, Cantonese, Viet Namese, Cambodian, Korean, Japanese, Tagalog, Kapampangan (a Philippine language), Spanish, French, Italian, German, Greek, and Cheyenne.
After a short break to enjoy more food and a stretch, we hold a conventional read-around where poets read individually, in pairs or groups; poets then read their own work or the work of others, whether or not they are contemporary. One time a group of three poets stood up and did a poetic skit in Viet Namese. This is a chance for each poet to share his or her own poetry with an audience who will carry their thoughts away into the greater world beyond the confines of our own minds and neighborhoods.
For more information about the 10th Multi-Cultural Poetry Reading and Pot Luck Lunch in Santa Rosa, please contact Judy Hardin Cheung at jhcheung@comcast.net. We invite all poets interested in poetry from around the world. Come with a friend. Bring poetry and food to share.
