BAY AREA POETS REVIEW 

FROM THE CANYON OUTWARD

NEELI CHERKOVSKI (SAN FRANCISCO)

From the Canyon Outward by Neeli Cherkovski. (R.L. Crow Publications, P.O. Box 262, Penn Valley, CA, 95946: 2009), 88 pages, 43 poems, $12.95. Cover photograph by Bill Gainer; back cover photo of poet by Dennis Letbetter. Email info@rlcrow.com.

Poet David Meltzer writes that this book “is a deeply rich work which reminds me of the best of Rexroth’s nature . . . But more than that, there’s a deep philosophical and elegiac edge to the beauty of the words & lines.” With 10 previous poetry books, three biographies (one of Lawrence Ferlinghetti and two about poet Charles Bukowski), and his critically-noted Whitman’s Wild Children (1988; 1999) about the Beats, Cherkovski generously shares his poems of lyric and metaphysical beauty in this new collection.  

INFINITE LOVE:

Poems from a Course in Meditation

VIRGINIA BARRETT (SAN FRANCISCO)

Infinite Love: Poems from a Course in Meditation by Virginia Barrett. (Studio Sara-swati, San Francisco, CA: 2009), 62 pages, 21 poems, $12. Designed by the author. www.studiosaraswati.com; www.virginiabarrett.com.

Infinite Love is dedicated to the author’s spiritual guide; they are devotional poems in a deep Vedic tradition and chronicle Virginia Barrett’s inner journey during a yoga retreat. Sprinkled between the poet’s own work are quotations from her teachers including passages from the Bhagavad Gita.  Poets always struggle with the limitations of language as we try to embrace our sense of mystery or the Divine. Barrett is candid about this conundrum, yet able to convey the ecstasy and clarity that can reward the practitioner of contemplative activity.

   OTHER CLUES
GRACE MARIE GRAFTON (OAKLAND)

Other Clues by Grace Marie Grafton. (Latitude Press, Pittsburg, CA: 2010), 88 pages, 56 poems, $15. Cover design by Inez Machado with back cover photo by Michael Grafton. Latitude  is an imprint of RAW ArT PRESS, www.rawartpress.com.

Prize-winning poet and publisher Rusty Morrison, states that Grace Grafton “has the insight to draw readers into the epicenter of lived experience where simple logic is shed, where the chaos of daily event turns round a still point of intense recognition. We needn’t look to these poems for answers, but rather for opportunities to quicken our own adaptive clairvoyance.” Grafton’s work is dense, complex, and frequently punctuated by a startling phrase, a totally original image.

WHEN THE PHOENIX DIED
DEBRA GRACE KHATTAB (BERKELEY)

When the Phoenix Died by Debra Grace Khattab. (Cimarron Poetry Series, Meridien Press Works, P.O. Box 640024, San Francisco, CA 94164: 2010), 44 pages, 26 poems. Cover art by the author; back cover art by Deborah Vinograd. meridienwriters@gmail.com.

Intimate poems of love and loss by one of the Bay Area’s mainstays of the poetry community. Khattab is fearless in her work, yet sustains a graceful balance. Many poems address fellow poets, close friends and loved ones, evidence that relationships are front-and-center for this poet who is buoyant and devastated by turns, passionate companion with ideas worth thinking about.

I know why the San Francisco skyline
makes the breath tie up
and catch in my throat
I know why that blackbird
has nestled into my throat
hunting the path to the canary
that once lit the way
down to the tunnel to hope
                  (from “Glue”)

  PANIC
JULIA VINOGRAD (BERKELEY)

Panic by Julia Vinograd. (Zeitgeist Press, 1630 University Ave. #34, Berkeley, CA, 94703: 2009), 78 pages, 50 poems, $5. Cover art by Chris Trian; cover photos by Dave De La Vega. www.zeitgeist-press.com.

This is Vinograd’s 55th book and continues her chronicle of the streets. Here is a poet who routinely raises the mundane to the Holy, who brings the mighty down to their rightful place on the bench in People’s Park. Reading a book of Julia’s poems always brings smiles and anger as she contemplates the zeitgeist in its quixotic continuum between purpose and mindlessness.

VIEW ROM MY BANILLA VANILLA VILLA
EVA SCHLESINGER (BERKELEY)

View from My Banilla Vanilla Villa by Eva Schlesinger. (dancing girl press: 2010), 40 pages, 7 poems. Cover art and design by the author; photo credit to David Anderson. www.dancingggirlpress.com.

As made obvious by the chapbook’s title, Eva Schlesinger is a playful wordsmith unconcerned that she may be called a silly-billy. The poems have the associative word-sounding experimentation most practiced by children:

I have fallen into a slump
into the dump
into the damp
with a cramp
a lamp
tea and crumpets
    (from “Slipping Sideways”)

It’s always fun to meet a punster who likes the occasional tongue-twister.

I DREAM OF CIRCUS CHARACTERS:

A BERKELEY CHRONICLE
JUDY WELLS (BERKELEY)

I Dream of Circus Characters by Judy Wells. (Beatitude Press, Berkeley, CA: 2010), 100 pages, 38 poems, $14.95. Book and cover design by Douglas Rees; cover art by Betty Bishop.

BAPSR columnist Adam David Miller describes Wells as “both a painter and sculptor, directing our eyes to the exact place to focus, then paring away excesses to show the truths in what she sees. What she sees in the streets, offices and bedroom will make you laugh, cry, shout and scream. At one moment sober and reflective, at another wild and hilarious. Wells tells it as she sees it, without flinching or shying away.”

ISAIAH AT THE WALL: Palestine Poems
DANIEL MARLIN (BERKELEY)

Isaiah at the Wall: Palestine Poems by Daniel Marlin (QuikBooks, Berkeley, CA: 2010), 76 pages, 27 poems. Cover art by the author. Some poems available online at www.Counterpunch.org.

These questioning poems grew out of the author’s visit to Palestine and Israel in the summer of 2008 and present the stark realities of violence, poverty, suppression and injustice in that part of the world. Daniel Marlin has found many routes into his experience of witness, using narrative, picture-poems in the style of Kenneth Patchen, and his own art. He roots out humanity in its darkest places.

The people of Gaza want libraries.
Every day they read
clouds of questions
in their children’s eyes.

They want pencils
to write down grandmother’s words
before her voice
fades into silence.
    (from “Blockade”)

ALL THAT GORGEOUS PITILESS SONG
REBECCA FOUST (ROSS)

All That Gorgeous Pitiless Song by Rebecca Foust. (Many Mountains Moving Press, Philadelphia, PA: 2010), 96 pages, 56 poems, $15.95. Cover art by ; design by. website address. To order: http://mmmpress.org or www.spdbooks.org.

Rebecca Foust is really getting the books out. This--her fourth in less than three years--won the 5th Many Mountains Moving Press Poetry Book Competition selected by Steven Huff who writes in his “Foreword”: “This is the kind of book that reminds me of why we cannot do without our poets. Not to give us hope on a plate by itself. But to give us a whole gallimaufry of trouble and worry and love, the music in which a foolish and hopeful dog will come to the door ‘where there’s never been a bone.’ The whole gorgeous pitiless song.”

I SHOULD HAVE GIVEN THEM WATER
EILEEN MALONE (SAN FRANCISCO)

i should have given them water by Eileen Malone. (Ragged Sky Press, P.O. Box 312, Princeton, NJ 08801: 2010), 84 pages, 61 poems, $15. Cover art by Egon Schiele, designed by the author; author photograph by Robert DeKraker; graphic consult by Az Samad. http://www.raggedsky.com.

Scott Norton of University of California Press notes that “These poems are ravishing, pungent, immediate. They surprise by combining the urgency of interior monologues with precise observations of nature and human relationships. This is an earthbound, mystical poet doing the hard work of constructing self and faith.”

I wear what I do six inches above my head
like a crackly halo of consciousness
    (from “Wild Glass”)

  TRIP WIRES
CONNIE POST (LIVERMORE)
 
Trip Wires by Connie Post. (Finishing Line Press, P.O. Box 1626, Georgetown, KY 40324), 26 pages, $12. Cover art by Trish Fenton. www.finishinglinepress.com

     Lynne Knight calls Connie Post’s poems in Trip Wires “fiercely honest as they are tender,” while Al Young describes them as “feisty poems--many of them soft-spoken psalms--[that] stituch and glue the everyday to the eternal, interweaving the worldly with the eternal.” Post is poet laureate emerita of Livermore and runs the Valona Deli reading series in Crockett.

Rosie the Riveter Museum in Richmond

  PETROGLYPHS

FRED OSTRANDER (WALNUT CREEK)

Petroglyphs by Fred Ostrander. (Blue Light Press/1st World Publishing, San Francisco/ Fairfield, IA: 2009), 106 pages, $15.95, with cover photo by Kenneth Ingham and book design by Melanie Gendron, www.1stworldpublishing.com.

Fred Ostrander’s best poems are lyric and lovely in their descriptions of nature, with many poems having Bay Area or Southwest settings, a familiar terrain that is treated with fresh, acute vision and sensitivity. Ostrander knows his natural world, and uses sand, wind, sun, moon, stars as leitmotifs that unify the work to some extent. Nature is the force behind poems both elegiac and hopeful for renewal:

Below us the cliff sways, the wind,
the surf returns and mingles among the little shells,
wings and lamps,
the kelp and the iodine.

Our faces, altered with the dusk,
turn in the one direction,
jacket over the ribs,
the heart new as a seed.
        (from “Sunset”)

SOMETHING ABOUT
ANDRENA ZAWINSKI (ALAMEDA)

Something About by Andrena Zawinsky (Blue Light Press, 1st World Publishing, San Francisco/Iowa: 2009), 102 pages, $15.95, with cover art by Jane Hyland, book design by Melanie Gendron, www.1stworldpublishing.com

Poet Lynne Knight writes: “Here are poems so penetrating in heart and intelligence, so unflinching in their gaze upon the self and its obligations to the world, that we feel ourselves turned upside down as we read, jostled from complacency into a desire to heed Zawinski’s passionate call to action.”

This morning circling Lake Merritt, the birds
rouse the imagination with squawks, honks,
raspy cries. Slick cormorants line log booms
beating wings at mist, clumsy pelicans
slap at the water’s sheen, everything
awake on a snake of lake-light crawling
the gnarl of tree trunks . . .
        (from “Call Her”)

BILLIE HOLIDAY ME AND THE BLUES
A.D. WINANS (SAN FRANCISCO)

Billie Holiday Me and the Blues by A.D. Winans (erbacce-press, Liverpool, UK: 2009), 36 pages, $8, cover and production by Alan Corkish.

Jazz music and ghosts permeate this little chapbook from A.D. Winans. Along with the downbeat world of city streets, boozing, and getting by, however, there is awareness of the power that a horn can make, the succour of a bittersweet voice singing out of corner of a beat room, and the survival of far-from-fittest. No one captures this quite like Winans, not even Bukowski; here‘s "Reality":

The streets are alive with
Jazz
Strange love songs serenade
My head
Outside the window
Invisible vampires wait
For the first sign of dawn
When dreams turn
To ham and eggs

   KALI     
DAVID MAGDALENE (SANTA ROSA)

Kali by David Magdalene (Round Barn Press, Santa Rosa: 2009), 32 pages, cover art by Ed Coletti.

With a surprising first poem title, “Your pilot tonight is Jackson Pollock,” you know you are in for a bit of fun and absurdity with Kali. You also know you are in for a bit of edgy violence, sexual gaming and abandoned self-expression:

One night at the quarry
   she leaves my car, and stands on the
    cliff,
        as the waters below
         whisper of love.

“Don’t think I’m chasing you,” she
             said,
        “that’s your job.” And
    she leapt . . .
                   (from “First Love”)

A FEW KIND WORDS
ANITA MAY (CROCKETT)

A bloom of love and metaphysical poems from the poet who managed Cody’s poetry section: in that she placed many a book of verse into an eager customer’s hands. May is new to publishing, but put together this chapbook of some 20+ poems full of lyricism and wisdom in work that celebrates friendship, family, magic and nature:

In this world you have to be patient
There is a reason the sweetest food
is called dessert and served in limited
quantity
at the end of the meal.

In this world everything
waits for something else.
spirit is the seed, body is the flower.
    (“from “What She Taught Me”)

FALLON READS FALLON
A COLLECTED POEMS
JOEL FALLON (BENICIA)

This 2009 CD from former Benicia poet laureate, Joel Fallon contains 41 poems recorded by David Alpaugh, design by Gene Hirsh. Published by Benicia’s Samizdat Press, www.joelfallon.com.
 

WHERE SHADOWS WILL
SELECTED POEMS 1988-2008
NORMA COLE (SAN FRANCISCO)

Where Shadows Will, Selected Poems 1988-2008 by Norma Cole (City Lights Books, San Francisco: 2009), 128 pages, $14.95, with cover photo by Jesse Zeifman and design by Quemadura.

Lauded as an avant garde poet, Cole was “a member of the circle of poets around Robert Duncan in the 1980’s, and a fellow traveler of San Francisco’s language poets. Here’s her poem “For Barbara Guest”:    

    at some point, or at gunpoint
    human is to wander

    the light is not the usual light
    the birds are

BERKELEY BLUES
LIKE THE CITY A WORK IN PROGRESS
RANDY FINGLAND (BERKELEY)

Berkeley Blues by Randy Fingland (CC. Marimbo, P.O. Box 933, Berkeley, CA 94701-0944), 32 pages, $4.99, with cover art by Sandro Sardella and book design by CC. Saw.

Written in the spontaneity of every day life as lived on the streets, buses, and in the parks, bars, coffeehouses,  and libraries of Berkeley, Randy Fingland sketches the essence of a town everyone loves to poke fun at but often turns to for leadership in a world of change (i.e., green politics, smoking regulations, crossing guards in front of schools, ban on Styrofoam, nuclear physics, anti-apartheid and civil rights movements, etc.).

needless to say

my favorite route
to include
when walking
is Addison
between Milvia
& Shattuck
although I’m
always in too
much of a hurry
to read
the poem plaques
embedded in concrete

FOURTEEN HILLS
San Francisco State University Review

16.1 2010

Fourteen Hills 2010, Christopher Hayter, Editor-in-Chief; Daniel Lichtenberg, Managing Editor. (Creative Writing Department at SFSU, San Francisco: 2009).150 pages, $9, www.14hills.net.

Editors Hayter and Lichtenberg, along with a team of students and faculty-advisors have done a terrific job of bringing out current work of creative writing students in San Francisco State’s program as well from writers further afield. There poets include: Austin LaGrone, Chuck Carlisle, Tom Bourguignon, Sarah Cohen Powell, Gabrielle Myers, Susanna Rich, Jean-Paul Pecqueur, MRB Chelko, Joseph Martin, Rae Freuden-berger, Gregory Mahrer, Kenneth Frost, Katie Cappello, Marc Stone, Mary Hood, Carolyn Hembree, Steven D. Schroeder, Mark Lamoureux, and Dan Pinkerton.

TWO NEW TRANSLATIONS

from CC. Marimbo: http://www.ccmarimbo.com

JACK HIRSCHMAN (SAN FRANCISO)

VOUDOU SONGS from SAVALOU E, or A WORD TO THE WISE (IS ENOUGH)
Voudou Songs from Savalou E, or A Word to the Wise (Is Enough) by Rachel Beauvoir and Didier Dominique, Translated from the Haitian by Boadiba and Jack Hirschmann (CC. Marimbo, Berkeley: 2009), $20, book design by CC. Saw with cover illustration by Jack Hirschman, 1984 Printing.

MOUTH BITTERS FRANCO CARDINALE

Mouth Bitters by Franco Cardinale, translated from the Italian by Jack Hirschmann. (CC. Marimbo, Berkeley: 2009), $19.95, book design by CC. Saw with artwork by Sandro Sardella, 1984 Printing.

Jack Hirschman and CC. Marimbo publishers in Berkeley bring us new poetry from distant lands, but it is difficult to find these books anywhere unless you contact CC. Marimbo directly: CC. Marimbo, P.O. Box 933, Berkeley, CA 94701. Do so! You will be in for a treat of over-sized, fresh-off-the-press books including these two: Savalou E, are poems from Haitian poets Rachel Beauvoir and Didier Dominique, co-translated by Hirschman and Haitian-American poet Boadiba; and Mouth Bitters from Italian Worker Poet poet, Franco Cardinale, who died in 1996. Both books deserve longer reviews, but here at least is a taste of Mouth Bitters:

To be a man
takes courage
against the nausea
death as hostage.

How many cowards
exist in the world?
How many are trampling what’s fecund
while shaping false
theories in the mud
of hypocrisies?

Wake up, man!

Don’t let my tears
go it alone . . .
Message of one who’s mute
to a world of deaf people.

NERVOUS TICKS ON THE ROAD
MEL C. THOMPSON (SAN FRANCISCO)

Nervous Ticks on the Road by Mel C. Thompson. (www.melcthompson.com, San Francisco: 2009), 32 pages, with photograph by Regen Murray.

Opening with a dedication to the people of Biloxi, Mississippi, Mel C. Thompson closes his chapbook with one of the most honest, funny and poignant autobiographical blurbs of any book recently published: “Be warned that this character is likely to cast his whole journey as one long search for enlightenment.” Who knows why the author ventured to cross Texas on a train to visit the South’s southland, but having done so, he has given us many creative snapshots and precisely drawn portraits:

We’re all kneeling at card tables,
Reading the Bible in brothels.

I’m stealing pretzels and candy
From a four-star bistro at noon.

Everything is televangelism.
We broadcast our sex addiction.

The Delta keeps calling you,
But you’re lost on the Internet.
    (from “Mississippi Gulf Poems #11)

                         Berkeley skyline and wind surfer on SF Bay. Photos by Jannie M. Dresser