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Francesca Bell's work has appeared in many journals, including Willow Springs, North American Review, MARGIE, CALYX, and The Chattahoochee Review. Her poem, "Making You Noise" (see side panel,) first published in Nimrod, was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2008. New work is forthcoming in RATTLE, slipstream, Spillway, Solo Novo, and 5 AM.
I came to poetry the way I came to so many things in my early life: by following my older sister. I was born three years and one day after her, and I was by far the more submissive, fearful, shy girl. From the beginning, I traipsed along behind, trying without success to catch up. I still walk very quickly wherever I go.
When we were four and seven, our parents allowed us to read from the set of encyclopedias we had at home, and we memorized the first poems I can remember hearing: "Poor Dog Tray" by Thomas Campbell and "The Broncho That Would Not Be Broken" by Vachel Lindsay. My sister must have done the reading for us both, but I clearly recall reciting the poems together in our little house in Yakima, Washington. The one about the poor, faithful dog who followed wherever his master led was my poem, and the one about the broncho who could not be broken of dancing was definitely hers.
When my sister was in fourth grade, and I was in first, she had an assignment to write a poem at school. I remember she brought it home and read it to all of us, and I sat down that evening and wrote my first poem. I actually remember very clearly the experience of sitting at our kitchen table with my pencil and a piece of that paper with the big lines and working out carefully the words of that first poem. No copy survives, which is probably for the best, but I do know it was about a daisy. My mother grew a huge bed of daisies in our yard, and my sister and I used to bribe our little brother to pose among them while we photographed him wearing a wig so he'd look like a girl. Daisies apparently loomed large for us then.
A few years after that, my mother bought me a book that cemented my interest in poetry forever. It was a small collection of famous poems, and I memorized Poe's "Annabel Lee," Whittier's "The Barefoot Boy," and Blake's "The Tyger." I read the poems in that book aloud to myself, over and over, in what was by then my room in a little house in Idaho Falls, Idaho. I was nine years old, and nothing sounded better to me than being shut up in a sepulchre in a kingdom by the sea (so long as it involved at some point the chance to experience a love that was more than love).
I've been interested in poetry, then, nearly my entire life. I have never found anything that does quite what poetry can do for us. It can allow us a breathtaking, sometimes harrowing intimacy with others and with our own frightened and frightening selves. There have been long years when I have written nothing; nine of them in an unforgiving row come to mind during which my older two children were small, and I was caring for my adult, bipolar stepson. But poetry has always been the adhesive I use to kludge my life together, this messy, aching, ravishing life that is all any of us has.
- Reviewed by Kirsten Jones Neff
Poems move forward through Susan Terris' new book, The Homelessness of Self (Arctos Press, 2011),
with a confidence and choreography that give them a sense of inevitability. While some of the
writing can be savored bit by tiny bit, this collection feels dramatically layered, and designed
to be devoured in one sitting. The poems work together to create a universe, all entities orbiting
around a central woman, who is in fact many women. While the poems are powerful on their own,
some strikingly so, their drama derives from the light and shadows each poem reflects onto the
others, so that we the reader experience an intricate portrait of the paradoxes of being female.
Terris gives the reader instructions in the poem "Beyond Blue" at the end of the first section,
prevailing upon us to lay our selves open to experience. She writes:
In the Sky, look for the blue beyond blue
In the word, look for the sense beyond sense
Her writing is somehow both sure-footed and delicate of step.
Some stanzas are at once brutal and full of tenderness:
Take the dragonfly, one by one
Pinch off and save his gold-veined leaves.
And the final stanza of the same poem:
Sing the eternal song of the wandering
and partly redeemed self
This book is an epic song of the "partly redeemed self," the arrangement of a life - from the sweetness of childhood to adolescent loss to the full-bloom strength and complication of womanhood. We meet several permutations of woman in these poems and follow her from "fields, a sheepdog at my heels" to the place "beyond the railroad ties" to "some lost universe where Innisfree/had a rock with an iron handle," and, finally, to a "cave with an underground river" that is a long marriage.
It becomes clear early on in the book, and in our woman's childhood, that her life will be a balance of wild pursuit and desire for safety. That struggle permeates this poetry, and makes what might seem like nostalgic tales turn corners to surprise the reader. In "Forbidden Fire" we journey with small girls, following their burning interior wildness, to a hidden place:
A fort, a blanket, matches
Like all secrets, a place of omission -
with a spring-wild pond for girls
Thin as April, lithe as snakes
Shedding skin. Girl's print dresses
Slick with pond scum, dry on low bushes
But in life we are never safe, even in the places we make for ourselves:
But what of the man who crosses
The trestle, dark of face, foul of breath?
Aha, he says, hotdog, hot damn, lookee.
The girls freeze. Tinkerbelles,
He says, backing up, away. Wilis,
Succubi, Vivian girls, Heeby-Jeebies.
Rhapsodic, lyrical, at times scathingly wry, the language portrays living as an obstacle
course, designed, it seems, to make us lose track of ourselves. Bogeymen appear in many forms.
In "The Path to Innisfree," the specter is modernity, a metaphor for innocence lost and
the subsequent onset of paranoia:
before e. Coli or giardia
we knelt at the edge of streams
cupped clear water in our hands
and drank to quench our thirst.
and in the final stanzas:
How careless we've become yet careful.
We drink now from plastic bottles,
but have lost the path to Innisfree.
The moon is dark. The fire is out.
Disease and dis-ease. What we have
taken, must all be returned.
One of the most powerful poems, entitled "Temporary Dislocation,"
magnifies a painful moment, the dislocation of a kneecap, in which
the woman relies upon the "son/husband/lover" to tend her.
The woman (and the reader) float, like the kneecap, in a place
that feels all wrong. She is in a disoriented state of utter physical
and emotional vulnerability:
This scene has too damn much sky. The blue
pieces are interchangeable and will not
stay in place. The picture - a chancy
lose-lose landscape - is coming apart
and you've never had a head for logic:
too many skiffs crossing rivers filled with
crocodiles and an infinity of blue.
The poems detail the mysterious truths of a woman's life and thereby hold tight to the wandering, lost selves. The prevailing sense is that despite the scares and scars, despite the dislocations, Terris' woman moves forward, as a woman must and, in doing so, creates a shelter for the homeless selves. This is a beautiful collection that leaves readers with a sense that somewhere along the way, they have discovered the "blue beyond blue."
Within the pages of Chapter and Verse: Poems of Jewish identity (Conflux Press, 2011)
are stories of grim funerals and larger-than-life grandmothers, potato menorahs and
morning light, blue crystal and handcarts, a Nodic Pool Hall and olive oil,
"deep and green and pungent." These tales, revealed in the poetry of five Bay Area Jewish writers,
are chronicles of Jewish history and faith. They are also revelations of the longing,
ambivalence, guilt and gratitude inherent in each writer's Jewish identity. They are
portraits of both secular and orthodox individuals, of struggles against Judaism as well
us flawless devotion. The cover is a photograph of the "The Great Window,"
a stained-glass window in the sanctuary of the Congregation of Emanu-El in San Francisco.
The book itself is a window in which beveled pieces of personal perspectives and memories,
sketched in extraordinary detail, reflect light and color on Jewishness.
Consider, for example, the way Margaret Kauffmann faces the threat of Sudden Oak Death
on her property in "The Starting Hour."
Our downslope neighbor appeared at the door
to warn of oak blight and chain saws
seven oaks lost on his place. It was as if
the clock needed resetting. Our trees looked fine
for how long? This tree, this oak.
Those davening know it's time to pray when they can
separate the dark threads of their prayer shawls
from the light. When I can, from my pillow,
distinguish one leaf from another, time to move
into each day the way squirrels move...
In Sabbath at Starbucks in Los Gatos Sim Warkov experiences the disconnect between his modern Californian life and his Jewish childhood.
and I am in awe of these fragrant pagans
flaunting their youth arm's length
from small town Daddy Mommy
Father Joe and Sister Theresa
and I jazz the secular English
at the very hour my grandfather
the Zaydeh would be studying
a page of Talmud in Hebraic Aramaic
at a shul near Burrows Avenue
when I was a kid in corduroy britches.
Identity is not as malleable as we modern Californians might think. The cup of hot water steeped in black tea, will always carry the amber tint and taste of that tea. These daily lives are steeped in Jewish ethnicity, culture, family, history. The Jewish woman carries with her the losses of all Jewish women, as in Jaqueline Kudler's Lot's Wife. The narrator loads her belongings onto a handcart to escape the doomed city of Sodom. In scripture, she will be turned into a "pillar of salt" as punishment for looking back at her lost life:
an animal doesn't look back. How
can I know where I am going without
knowing where I have been? I turned
to see the sweet curve of the hill
above my home - my mother, arm
still raised, grown small - pale as
a moth in the glitter of the noon
sky. Then nothing. Salt. Of tears
sweat semen. Only an animal
has no name. My mother named me
Zachora. It means remember.
Memories float like shafts of light through the lines of poetry in this collection. In Rose Black's prose poem Bad Sheep, memories of her father's lapsed Catholicism and her mother's betrayed Judaism sneak their way out of attic trunks and "burst through all the doors and windows" to make their way into her childhood home:
They didn't talk about the past, but the word Catholic made Dad make a tight white fist and pound the table, shout Irresponsible Breeding! or Holy Water! Why don't they pour it into oceans, purify the world? The word Catholic made the pale pink dishes shake and fresh green beans and squash just sit there cold. I knew that Catholic was buried in a secret trunk upstairs - Henry, First Communion, 1909.
Jewish was my mother's word. It made her wring her hands and cry, sniffle down at me and say, I'll never be accepted in a synagogue again! It made her grab my arm and say, You don't know anything ABOUT Jewish, do you? You don't know anything at all.
Rafaella De Bourgo's On Spending Just one Night With A Very Young Rabbinical Student is a memoir of the corporeal as it tends the spiritual:
Later, emerging from the bath,
he mentions the Hebrew word chet,
meaning not "sin" but rather "missing the mark,"
the archer having made a mistake
through lack of experience or skill.
I smile, towel him dry.
After breakfast
he leaves my house,
crunches away on the gravel path.
Underneath the yarmulke,
new strands of sunshine
woven into his hair.
And in Reveille, Melanie Maier's description of the secular infuses the devotional as memories of a joyous childhood dance lessons come back to a grown niece at an uncle's funeral:
I remember
how he taught me to jitterbug.
His sons told stories,
the rabbi led kaddish --
The poets of this collection have crossed arms and reached to take the others' hands to create a lattice upon which they might carry the beauty, joy, and humanity of their birthright, but also to bear the ghosts and pain of a Jewish identity. A poem near the end of the book, Dan Bellm's The Weight reads as the pillar of this collection:
Over and over you will pick it up
and set it down
and as you wander
you will lose what you brought forth,
the ark will collapse in your hands,
the stones of the law will break.
Then you will carry me in your minds,
in your mouths -
unbearable as you want. You can bear it.
Unbearable, yet borne, which is the essence of Jewish suffering over the past five thousand years. The final piece in the book is a call to remembrance. The last stanzas of Susan Terris's To our Children read:
They knew days with no light, nights
with no heat, years with no safety -
years of pogroms, famine, and loss.
But, still, you may collar their essence
if, shaking pearls form your ears,
you can know wet boots and windfall.
The study of Jewish religion, history and culture could take a scholar's lifetime. These writers have found a way to share with us, through beautifully wrought memoirs of their own Jewish experience, something exponentially more visceral than most texts. These poetic allegories allow the reader to internalize the comfort and strength, as well as the alienation and vulnerability that accompany a Jewish identity.
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"Today's session at Corazon Latino with Javier was a smash hit!! He was just great,
gave background, talked about his immigration experience as a child of 3, read
about 7 poems, including two in Spanglish and the rest in Spanish. It was a really
big crowd, probably 30 people." (Abby Wasserman, Moderator of this program, along
with Whistlestop) Many Latin countries of origin were represented. The crowd
had grown larger beyond the many returners."
Abby Wasserman
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"We had a wonderful gathering. The poets read a variety of original and borrowed works.
One of our Stockstill residents, Brad, knew the words to one of the poems read by Linda and
he spoke them along with her. I can see that like music poetry stays vibrant in the brain
when most other things fade."
Chloe Cook, Stockstill House, Pt. Reyes Station
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"Surprising to me has been the genuine delight on the faces of these folks, many of whom are probably opening themselves to poetry for the first time. Even more surprising has been how deeply satisfying these readings are to me. I didn't expect to love doing this so much."
Marilyn King, who read at Rafael House in San Rafael
CB ('Lyn) Follett, the current Poet Laureate of Marin County has initiated a program called ROAR (Reach Out And Read). ROAR is setting up quarterly poetry readings on site at senior living facilities around Marin. Over 50 poets and lovers of poetry have already signed up to be readers, facilitators, and program arrangers. Some twelve programs are already happening and others will follow. The programs vary and include featured readers, or readers of old and new favorites, but in all cases when appropriate, ROAR will encourage the seniors in the audience to read aloud their own poems, or particular favorites. There is a great deal of enthusiasm about ROAR on both sides of the 'podium'.
Watch out for programs in your area, and if your residence facility would like ROAR to come to them, let 'Lyn Runes@aol.com or the Marin Arts Council know.
Congratulations to our own Margaret Stawowy, who won both both first
and second place in the poetry division of the Soul-Making Literary Competition!
Come help her celebrate at the Awards Ceremony, Sunday March 20, 1-4 pm, at
the San Francisco Main Library, Koret Auditorium (lower level).
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MPC CLASSIFIEDS
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Volunteer Oportunities
MPC Board Positions Available
Marin Poetry Center's board is made up entirely of upaid, overworked volunteers.
We are currently short-handed, and trying to fill two board positions:
- Membership / Corresponding Secretary (requires moderate computer skills)
- Public Relations
We're a great group, and would welcome the help. Payment in satisfaction.
If you are interested in joining us, please contact:
info@marinpoetrycenter.org
High School Poetry
Needs assistance. Possible duties include
updating the teacher data base, contacting members, scheduling workshops in the
schools, and assisting with the annual high school poetry anthology and contest.
One person need not be responsible for all the above tasks. Please contact
Barbara Martin at humjourney@aol.com.
Marin Poetry Center Anthology 2011
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Submission Guidelines
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Submission Period: |
Mar 1 - March 31. |
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Eligibility: |
Entrants must be current members of Marin Poetry Center.
If you're not a member, then you can download a membership
application at
www.marinpoetrycenter.org/join.php
.
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Guidelines:
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Submit up to five poems (unpublished preferred, six page maximum).
IMPORTANT: Do not put your name on any of the poems.
Simultaneous submissions are permitted. Please notify the editor immediately if
your poems are accepted elsewhere.
Submit your best work. No revisions are allowed after March 31.
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This year half the poetry will focus on the theme of Mountains -
be creative, we're looking for the literal, figurative and
mystical interpretations - the rest is open to any subject matter.
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We now prefer email submissions
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On the subject line type in: mpc-submission.
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In the body of your email include your name, contact information,
the titles of the submitted poems, and your bio (limit fifty words).
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Include your poems, without identification, in a single attachment
(Word .doc or .rtf) to:
anthology@marinpoetrycenter.org .
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For snail mail submissions:
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Enclose a cover sheet with your name, contact information,
the titles of the poems, and your brief bio.
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Include a Self-Addressed Stamped Envelope (SASE)
in order to be notified about results.
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Send your submission by regular USPS. Please use #10
business size envelopes. Large envelopes clog the mail box.
Mail to: MPC Anthology, c/o Joseph Zaccardi, Editor,
P.O. Box 9091, San Rafael, CA 94912
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We will notify you of our decisions, via email or SASE, within three months.
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Click here to read
our Code of Ethics.
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Marin Poetry Center Summer Traveling Show 2011
Look out for your 2011 Summer Traveling Show Packet
MPC is gearing up for the 2011 Summer Traveling Show. Members should all have received a
letter with background information about the Traveling Show as well as a postcard listing
the reading sites and dates. Any member is welcome to read by marking and returning the
postcard with your 1st, 2nd and 3rd choices by March 31st. Assignments are made on a
first come, first serve basis although every effort will be made to give each reader
one of their three choices. If you have not received a packet by March 15, please
email travelingshow@marinpoetrycenter.org
and we will contact you to get your selections.
MPC is looking forward to another great summer of poetry!
Marin Poetry Center Reading Series 2010-2011
Third Thursdays @ 7:30 pm (unless otherwise noted)
Falkirk Cultural Center, 1408 Mission St. at E, San Rafael
March 17, 2011
Sixteen Rivers Anthology Reading
April 21, 2011
Jacqueline Berger and Alexandra Teague
May 19, 2011
New Voices: Askia Humphrey and Javier Zamora
For more information, visit www.marinpoetrycenter.org or email Roy Mash or Becky Foust at events@marinpoetrycenter.org
Poetry Reading Workshop
Led by Roy Mash, this workshop will focus on the "craft" of reading poetry aloud.
Topics include: involving the audience; pacing, intonation,
reading with meaning; 'scoring' a poem; visualization and memory. Workshop attendance limited to
10 people. Fee: $30.00, all proceeds to be donated to Marin Poetry Center's High
School Poetry Program. The exact date has not yet been determined, but will probably be
a Saturday in April or May. To register: Send a request to
info@marinpoetrycenter.org
MPC Readers: Do you have a favorite poet? Maybe a secret favorite poet? We would like to
hear about that poet you believe everybody must read! Please introduce us to a poet, or remind
us why we must seek out or rediscover a certain poet. Please send your thoughts and inspirations
to: newsletter@marinpoetrycenter.org
Open Mic/Poetry Critique at Falkirk Cultural Center, on the fourth Thursday of
each month (except Dec.), starting at 7pm. Bring ten copies of your poem, no more than
one page in length. This event is free, and is open to everyone.
1408 Mission Street, San Rafael.
calvinahlgren@att.net.
Marin Poetry Center Bookgroup meets at 7pm the second Wednesday of each month, rotating
among living rooms of participants. In April Robert Hass' Field Guide will be discussed,
and in May, Anna Akhmatova.
For more information contact Roy Mash:
webmaster@marinpoetrycenter.org
Real Men Write Poetry:
A Poetry Shindig by Six Men Wed., April 13, 7-8:30 p.m. Larkspur
City Hall Council Chambers 400 Magnolia Ave., Larkspur, CA.
Come hear poems by Joe Zaccardi, Sim Warkov, Sandy Scull, Shawn Pittard,
Dick Brown, Calvin Ahlgren.
Refreshments served. No open Mic. Handicapped Accessible.
Poetry Farm is a monthly reading series held at Dr. Insomnia's Cafe in
Novato. This is a well-attended and high-spirited reading series now in its fifth year.
We feature one published author each month. If you would like to be
considered for our "Featured Farmer" spot, please send an email describing
your work to Kirsten@Neff.Org. Otherwise, come
join the audience or sign up for open mic.
Second Mondays, 7pm,
Dr. Insomnia's Cafe on the corner of Grant and Reichert in Novato.
Marin Poetry Center Blog is now online. Just click on the Blog! tab of the MPC website.
MPC members can now upload their own blog posts, receive comments, and comment on the posts of others.
An easy way to start is to send in a poem or two for the 'Admired Poems' section of the new MPC blog.
These would be poems by someone else that you particularly admire or that have meant a lot to you or
that you think of as overlooked. Send poems or blog postings to
webmaster@marinpoetrycenter.org .
Comments can be made on the blog itself.
MPC Mailing List: If you would like to be included in the Marin Poetry Center
mailing-list events notification, please contact
webmaster@marinpoetrycenter.org
Suggestions, questions, ideas?
Reply to:
newsletter@marinpoetrycenter.org.
MPC values your input! Comment, dream out loud, stimulate, unveil —
this is YOUR newsletter, so use it! Please!
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MARIN POETRY CENTER |
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BOARD OF DIRECTORS |
CONTRIBUTING MEMBERS |
| Paula Weinberger - Chair/Summer Traveling Show |
Calvin Ahlgren - Newsletter, Open Mic Workshop |
| Rose Black - Anthology Associate Editor |
Richard Brown - Marin Poet Laureate Liaison |
| Barbara Brooks - Recording Secretary |
Kirsten Jones Neff - Newsletter |
| Rebecca Foust - Events |
Gabrielle Rilleau - High School Poetry, Aegis Program |
| Barbara Martin - High School Poetry |
Margaret Stawowy - Hospitality |
| Colm Martin - Treasurer |
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| Roy Mash - Co-chair/Webmaster |
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| Cathy Shea - Events |
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| Joe Zaccardi - Anthology |
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