Ripening Persimmons

Yi Gao -- illustrator, storyteller

Gently squeeze to see

if fruit yields using a firmly

placed thumb. Astringent

types are yielding when ripe.

Non-astringent varieties

go either way, but note

size and color of each exotic

piece. Place in brown paper

bag with an off-gassing banana,

crumple or nestle together

in a deeply rounded bowl

for a couple of days and long

nights, nesting, entwined. Eat

strawberries while you wait,

sip champagne, embrace, slip

 into our luscious sweetness

n  Kate Campbell

Note: Scientists in California and Japan have discovered how to sex persimmon trees. Male trees code for a very small piece of RNA that acts as “molecular scissors,” cutting down gene expression to create a female tree. But, the experts say RNA scissors can be “fickle,” and this may help explain why “dioecious” plants that are genetically one sex can also function as another.

Baryshnikov’s Feet

Earth's mass is 6.580 sextillion tons

and we cling to it like lint, endlessly

revolving. But some, they pull away,

unravel for an instant from this

spinning orb and lift with muscled

feet and thickened toes, defying mass

Mikhail rises for us, slides, sweeps,

soars, knobby toes extended en plein air.

Arched feet settle in fifth position. Slide

to second. Plié, Relevé, again

Heroes Passing Through Our Valley -- U.S. Poet Laureate Philip Levine

In remembrance: Heard U.S. Poet Laureate Philip Levine passed away today. Had a chance to hear him read his poetry a few years ago and at 84 he was spry and funny, charmingly self-effacing.

They called him the father of the "Fresno School of Poetry," and there was a hint of scoffing from the Central Valley poets in the audience that such a thing as the Fresno School exists, and politely shunned the notion. Levine, however, who taught for more than 30 years in the English Department of California State University, Fresno, intimately knew the valley and it's people, it's music and majesty.

He read at American River College near Sacramento to a sold-out audience, announced he had just stepped down as poet laureate; his term ended a mere week before the reading. It was good to see him and visit with my ARC creative writing professors -- Traci Gourdine, David Merson, Harold Schneider, Michael Spurgeon and with friends from the Sacramento Poetry Center.

And, it was delightful to hear a poem about where I live, to hear words capture what happens sometimes in the valley on a hot summer day -- a whiff of salt reminds in an instant that something so powerful even the mountains have no word for it lies just beyond the valley's simmering bowl. I love this captured subtly, this shared intimacy with Levine about a place I know well, this recognition the ocean is only a heartbeat away.

San Joaquin Valley in late spring

Our Valley
By Philip Levine b. 1928 d. 2/15/2015

We don't see the ocean, not ever, but in July and August

when the worst heat seems to rise from the hard clay

of this valley, you could be walking through a fig orchard

when suddenly the wind cools and for a moment

you get a whiff of salt, and in that moment you can almost

believe something is waiting beyond the Pacheco Pass,

something massive, irrational, and so powerful even

the mountains that rise east of here have no word for it.

You probably think I'm nuts saying the mountains

have no word for ocean, but if you live here

you begin to believe they know everything.

They maintain that huge silence we think of as divine,

a silence that grows in autumn when snow falls

slowly between the pines and the wind dies

to less than a whisper and you can barely catch

your breath because you're thrilled and terrified.

You have to remember this isn't your land.

It belongs to no one, like the sea you once lived beside

and thought was yours. Remember the small boats

that bobbed out as the waves rode in, and the men

who carved a living from it only to find themselves

carved down to nothing. Now you say this is home,

so go ahead, worship the mountains as they dissolve in dust,

wait on the wind, catch a scent of salt, call it our life.

My son Mark waiting in line.

My son Mark bought tickets to Philip Levine's 2012 reading as a Mother's Day gift. He said reading "What Work Is" convinced him we should attend the event.

He was right, but my son was disappointed Levine didn't read the poem that night. Here it is with thanks to my wonderful son, who knows about standing in line and what work is. The poem holds sentiments too many Americans share. 

What Work Is

By Philip Levine

    We stand in the rain in a long line

waiting at Ford Highland Park. For work.

You know what work is—if you’re

old enough to read this you know what

work is, although you may not do it.

Forget you. This is about waiting,

shifting from one foot to another.

Feeling the light rain falling like mist

into your hair, blurring your vision

until you think you see your own brother

ahead of you, maybe ten places.

You rub your glasses with your fingers,

and of course it’s someone else’s brother,

narrower across the shoulders than

yours but with the same sad slouch, the grin

that does not hide the stubbornness,

the sad refusal to give in to

rain, to the hours of wasted waiting,

to the knowledge that somewhere ahead

a man is waiting who will say, “No,

we’re not hiring today,” for any

reason he wants. You love your brother,

now suddenly you can hardly stand

the love flooding you for your brother,

who’s not beside you or behind or

ahead because he’s home trying to

sleep off a miserable night shift

at Cadillac so he can get up

before noon to study his German.

Works eight hours a night so he can sing

Wagner, the opera you hate most,

the worst music ever invented.

How long has it been since you told him

you loved him, held his wide shoulders,

opened your eyes wide and said those words,

and maybe kissed his cheek? You’ve never

done something so simple, so obvious,

not because you’re too young or too dumb,

not because you’re jealous or even mean

or incapable of crying in

the presence of another man, no,

just because you don’t know what work is.

 “What Work Is” from What Work Is. Copyright © 1992 by Philip Levine. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.

Source: What Work Is: Poems (Alfred A. Knopf, 1991)

Peddling Poetry -- A Time-Honored Tradition

Restored peddlers wagon, Ohio

Beyond the flow of mainstream media, where mega-best-sellers barge by creating big wakes, there are quiet bays where writers row in welcoming waters, where a tide of readers wade in and tug their turquoise and yellow books to shore. I've been hanging out in these quiet inlets, splashing in the tide pools of poetic arts, collecting.

I've gathered prickly urchins and violet anemones, shells that play madrigals and rondos. I've taken them home and treasured each one. Many of these collected "chapbooks" include the poems of friends or writers I've heard read their stories at literary events. Some are the work of acquaintances on social media and others passed along by poets.

These slender volumes created by working artists follow a centuries old tradition made popular by "chapmen," peddlers of sometimes dubious character who tramped the byways of 17th century small-town Europe offering housewares and hardware and the occasional booklet to rural residents. These pamphlets included political and religious tracts, folk tales -- and often poetry.

Peddler in modern China

Although the Industrial Revolution brought better printing presses and the chapbook fell out of favor, the publishing method never completely died out. The appeal of inexpensive booklets easily distributed was not lost on thrifty residents of rural towns or on avant garde artists seeking attention for their work -- the American Beat poets of the 1950s and 60s published frequently in chapbooks, for example.

American poet Allen Ginsberg's ground-breaking work "Howl and Other Poems" was originally published this way by Lawrence Ferlinghetti and City Lights Books, as were works by Kenneth Rexroth, Robert Duncan, William Carlos Williams and Gregory Corso. Today a first edition chapbook of "Howl" sells for about $600, but back in the day probably cost less than a dollar. There's a lively trade in collectible chapbooks these days and many independent booksellers maintain a special section. Not true for chain book stores, however.

But, chapbooks remain one of the world's most widely-accepted forms of publishing poetry. Given the centuries-old tradition of bringing pots and pans, as well as prose and poetry, to customers worldwide, these minimalist, low-cost volumes don't carry the modern stigma of vanity attached to longer, self-published works. Heck, every American poet from Whitman to Frost initially published this way.

Right now there are a number of chapbooks on my bedside table that I turn to when I settle down for a quick read before sleep. I'll highlight them in coming weeks. The author's aren't household names like J.K. Rowling, John Grisham or James Patterson. Instead, the books are small, personal and beautifully made by real people with something to say. Here's an example:

Grand Slam, poet Alan Kleiman's premiere collection features many of his most popular works, offers deceptively light verse that pops with charm and catches the reader off-guard with unexpected insights. He finds poetic occasion in life's ordinary events: Sardines, a barn reflected, feta dip, sliver removers, wanting girls, slow dancing and kisses.

MORE

Kiss me a hundred times

and then a thousand

and then more that that

and then even more

and you will begin

to touch

the spot where

I want to kiss you more.

 "It's a pleasure to praise Alan Kleiman's brave and strange poetry, with its various

strands of innocent yearning and worldly resignation. 'The Emperor's clothes don't fit anymore,' Kleiman has found. The result is a whole new wardrobe, this time, without excuses" -- Jeff Nunokawa, Princeton University. 

Kleiman, who often works under the pen name Ace Mulvihil, lives in New York City and is as an attorney. His poetry has appeared in publications around the world. Grand Slam is available online from Amazon.

Today I join the ranks of chapmen, rattling my wagon from town to town, calling to housewives: "Hot poems. Hot Poems. One a penny, two a dime. Hot Poems!"

THEN and NOW

Foghorns lowing in humid voices, 
ward off terrible nights, just terrible, 
rattling putty-loose panes in your 
windows staring blindly at fronds 
madly slapping at wind but you sleep  
I had been sleeping, my brother 
but now I am awake in my child’s 
room in the night watching twinkle 
lights on boats pitched in the bay’s 
foamy throat, horns calling to us 
to you lost 
in fog wallowing into swells 
it is as if your absence opens  
the sea’s chasm now, it coughs, 
 and you still sleep with deep 
meaning forever through the end,  
carelessly listening to the foghorns 
praying their baritone chorus over 
a signal light flashing from voice 
to voice and I tremble, pull the 
coverlet taut across my child’s  
breast and when I turn from 
the window and from the restless 
sea, from loss, from you, the room 
fills with dark forest lush with vines 
we’ve  never seen, frogs croaking 
songs we’ve never learned, will 
never know, but the anguish we’ll 
never lose in the voices of engulfing 
darkness, moaning your name 
Richard and now that I am alone 
I’m ready  to confess the awful pain 
twisting my conceited heart it 
was some trivial dispute that carries 
 me here, my arms full of ghosts, 
 of roses, to kneel at your feet 
almost ready to see how at each 
turning we grew and I chose this way,  
this place and and you another but 
now this, this converging of ocean 
and earth with horns deeply chanting 
I can keep going if I listen, if I feel 
where I cannot breathe, if I will begin 
without you, horns lowing your name 
east through the fog,  to meet your 
rising light standing at water’s edge 
at this void beyond voids where 
we’ll once again share our child songs 
in this empty space where love speaks 
in the fog, at this place, Land’s End.

If A Real Clown Appeared

If a real clown appeared at the edges

of the fair, silly coat with golden buttons,

floppy hat and shoes, shiny hair and cut

off jeans, would you laugh and stay or

run away or hide beneath a circus truck

pretending not too see? A midget pony

or juggler would be easier to explain,

you think. But, there’s nothing funny about

a girl clown, is there? And, if this she-clown

wore white gloves and hoisted a Japanese

parasol and you realized she had something

pressing to say, would you come and listen

or hunker in disgust? My friend recognized her

urgency, saw a woman out of context, random

and wearing a rope and painted frown,

eyes in permanent surprise. This clown said

she was looking for a home, a bed where

she could lie, a sink to wash her garish face,

and wondered what she’d find. Would you

give her these? Would you? Would you, like

my friend, smile and offer a hand? And, if you

were this clown, when you felt hesitation

in his grip, would you make a silly face, a parody

of comic art, and then depart or what? It turned

out right. I saw them walking in the park, him

leaning on a baby stroller, her twisting pink balloon 

pups for kids, meaning her performance art.

Photo: 1980, Dixon CA Mayfair. For Davis Enterprise, first-person feature on becoming a circus clown. Poem inspired by Stephen Dunn's poem "If A Clown," The New Yorker, Aug. 24, 2009.

Poet Stephen Dunn on "Lines of Defense"

Stephen Dunn was joined by his wife, Barbara Hurd,
who read from her newest book: Stepping into the Same River Twice

Acclaimed poet Stephen Dunn stepped to the podium at the Sacramento Main Library Galleria to read from his new collection: Lines of Defense. It was his first visit of Sacramento and the West Coast premiere reading from his new book. The sold-out event, which included music by the Sonoma County-based ensemble "Take Jack," was sponsored by the Sacramento Poetry Center and the Sacramento Metropolitan Arts Commission.

During a recent NPR interview, Dunn talked about his work, which includes 17 books of poetry, including Different Hours (2000), which won the Pulitzer Prize. He said as a mature writer, he'd changed from poems of "telling" into something more exciting:  "I've been writing hoping that every line is a line of discovery, rather than something experiential that I'm just saying.

"I think one of the great dangers of people who write experiential poems — which I have written many — is that you might just say what happened, as if it were important. You wouldn't be exercising any degrees of selection that you need to exercise if you're going to write a good poem."

How long do you have one poem in the works? Do you let drafts sit before looking at them again?

Dunn: I’m often working on a poem six months to a year. I begin with the premise that a good poem is a very difficult thing to write, that it’s unlikely I’ve succeeded, even though I have many ways of deluding myself in this regard. It helps to have a few good, severe readers who have your interests at heart. I have a few.

If the process is a long or circuitous one, does revisiting an old draft demand forgiveness of your earlier ideas, efforts, self?

I’ll quote myself here. In my self-guided interview in The Georgia Review, I said, “Now, now, I often tell myself, no weeping. There’s always time to revise.” And there is, without regret or any need to forgive myself. I tend to resist even the smart things I might say. There’s usually something better, waiting in the nether world of the white space. My revision practices are ones of refinement, movements toward greater precision.

From The Georgia Review, Dunn says:  "To listen well is an act of curiosity and respect. It presumes that some- one has something to say. But I know it’s not enough to be a good listener.The best listener listens, à la Wallace Stevens, “with the innermost ear of the mind.” Then what he says in response must reflect the quality of his hearing.

"Here’s something that I’d say to writers: At least have the decency to claim your unhappiness. Don’t leave it lying around the house, bleeding like that. Make something of it. Yes, yes, but sometimes the soul is so sick it isn’t able to open the door. What I mean to say is that my soul stays shy when it hears someone spill the 

beans.

"Really, the obfuscators are cowards. So what if language can only approximate? Some writers approximate better than others. Count me as someone who tries to be as clear as he can about what it feels like to be alive while knowing the heart itself resides in the dark."

If a clown

came out of the woods,

a standard-looking clown with oversized

polka-dot clothes, floppy shoes,

a red, bulbous nose, and you saw him

on the edge of your property,

there’d be nothing funny about that,

would there? A bear might be preferable,

especially if black and berry-driven.

And if this clown began waving his hands

with those big white gloves

that clowns wear, and you realized

he wanted your attention, had something

apparently urgent to tell you,

would you pivot and run from him,

or stay put, as my friend did, who seemed

to understand here was a clown

who didn’t know where he was,

a clown without a context?

What could be sadder, my friend thought,

than a clown in need of a context?

If then the clown said to you

that he was on his way to a kid’s

birthday party, his car had broken down,

and he needed a ride, would you give

him one? Or would the connection

between the comic and the appalling,

as it pertained to clowns, be suddenly so clear

that you’d be paralyzed by it?

And if you were the clown, and my friend

hesitated, as he did, would you make

a sad face, and with an enormous finger

wipe away an imaginary tear? How far

would you trust your art? I can tell you

it worked. Most of the guests had gone

when my friend and the clown drove up,

and the family was angry. But the clown

twisted a balloon into the shape of a bird

and gave it to the kid, who smiled,

let it rise to the ceiling. If you were the kid,

the birthday boy, what from then on

would be your relationship with disappointment?

With joy? Whom would you blame or extoll?

                                                            -- Stephen Dunn

Gems of Wisdom?

Where is the wisdom

We have lost in knowledge?

Where is the knowledge

We have lost in information?

T.S. Eliot

 I found myself in an odd place, odd for me, that is. One of my poems was recently collected in an anthology of “elder” poetry, included in what the editors call a community of verse. Thing is, I never thought of myself as old. I’m thinking I can climb mountains and dig ditches, sing and dance and show my underpants!

The reality is I'm getting mail offering half-off on cemetery plots, with the warning that it's never to early to plan ahead.

Writer Virginia Woolf once noted that “One of the signs of passing youth is the birth of a sense of fellowship with other human beings as we take our place among them.” So, guess I've arrived at that place of fellowship.

Don’t know how old Virginia was when she wrote about passing youth, but regret she never took her place in the community of elders. At age 59, depressed and despondent, she filled the pockets of her overcoat with stones, waded into the River Ouse and drowned herself.

We still have her books—my favorites are Orlando and Mrs. Dalloway—but we didn’t have her for as long as we might have wished. Just imagine what wonders she might have produced in her 70s, 80s, even 90s!

In the new anthology from AgeSong, Gems of Wisdom, we have the words of those who’ve lived long and bravely. The poems and lyrical prose come from elders living throughout California. Here's a funny one:

Identity Crisis

by Phylis Ann Warady

Whether the structure is splendid or crass,

Wrought of wood, brick, stucco or glass,

Most modern architecture,

Invites this conjecture.

Should one pray, deposit or buy gas?

Here’s a short list of favorite things from elder residents at AgeSong assisted living community at Lakeside Park in Oakland:

 

People who arrive on time

Big guitars

Planting something and seeing it come up

Dresser drawers and treasurers found

Music and chocolate and poetry

Being with people you love

Elder poet Angelica Chiong had this to say about the beauty of aging in her poem "Afternoon of Our Lives: "

Magically in deep connection with Mother Earth

Purposely re-discovering aging as ascent not decent.

Gems of Wisdom is a collaboration with Barnes & Noble Booksellers and elders and poets throughout California to benefit AgeSong Institute, which is redefining elder living and care. The book honors those who’ve lived long enough to attain culturally cherished virtues—patience, humility, courage and compassion. Order copies from online booksellers, $11.95.