MUSELETTER #9
12/11/99
Hello everyone,
This week our menu includes a tasty sampling of Southwest poetry from Gary Glazner in Santa Fe & a dollop of dessert, an extra link from Shann Palmer in Virginia. We also want to welcome our newest Museletter correspondent, Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz in New York City, author of this week's About.com Poetry feature. Cristin's Museletter report on Northeast poetry goings-on will appear in early January -- her email address is on the masthead at the end of this issue if you'd like to send announcements, gossip or other info her way.
Remember to bookmark these pages to keep up with events in the poetry world:
Poetry Currents
Headlines for all the newest items sent in by our Museletter correspondents
Museletter Archives
Web versions of this email Museletter
Margy Snyder & Bob Holman
Your About.com Poetry Guides
POETRY IS EVERYWHERE AT ABOUT.COM
Poets who are interested in publishing their work will want to visit two other About.com sites in the Arts/Lit channel:
Publishing, where Guide Wendy Butler has compiled an extensive list of poetry organizations, contests & prizes.
Writer's Exchange, where Guide Susan Molthop has gathered a group of volunteers offering advice to writers on her “Ask An Expert” page -- among the experts is Ben Parzybok, “King of Gumball Poetry.”
NEW MEXICO/SOUTHWEST
Gary Snyder & Wendell Berry
Gary Snyder and Wendell Berry were a blast. They sold out the 1000-seat Lensic Theater in downtown Santa Fe. Snyder got off the best line: speaking about ancient cave art, he described one room that was mostly paintings of horses. The beat poet said his wife had speculated that perhaps it was done by a guild of teenage girl artists!
Aztec Café Reading
The hottest new reading in Santa Fe is at the Aztec Café, put together by a group of students and recent graduates of the Institute of American Indian Arts. Yvie Raij started off the series with a piece in which she cast her shadow onto a screen and read the poem to the shadow, at one point placing her hand on the shadow's heart. The middle of the poem reads:
teach me to be silent like you w/
silent walk & silent talk
teach me to be invisible like you
y'know. . . the kind of invisibility where
you are so
taken for granted your movements & intentions pass
w/out notice
Yvie ends the poem:
. . . unnoticed save by the children. . .
remember that game “don't step on my shadow?”
teach me to cloak my Self in the stealth
of the Shadows
teach me cousin to be Black like you
Also reading were Sherwin Bitsui, Gary Stevens, Jody Barnes, and Shawna Shandiin Sunrise who will be included in the show, This Is Not Ceremony, opening at the IAIA Museum January 28th. Hanging out at the reading was the painter Jayon, who has three pieces at the IAIA Museum including the poetically titled painting “The pyroclastic flow of mother earth thru a camera.” His show opens December 10th, 5 to 7 pm.
Here are a few lines from Valentina Rosa Gonzalez Zuniga San Huesa's poem “Eugene,”
Soft breath barely catching
Foggy glimpse of mint
Through an oddly refreshing
gasp of nicotine.
Fireside Reading Series at the Inn
Joanne Young will be the first featured poet on December 10th at 6 pm at the new Fireside reading series at the Inn on the Alameda, hosted by your correspondent. I will also read from Laughing Horse Magazine, which was printed in Santa Fe and Taos 1922 to 1939 by “Spud” Johnson. Here is one of “Spud's” poems:
Early Winter
Now that the leaves are gone,
The trees at night are hung with stars.
And as winter approaches,
My dreams are also starred
With a foliage more beautiful--
And more distant.
The Fireside Reading series will be the second Friday of each month and is part of my being hired as poet in residence at the Inn. They also place my poems on the pillows of the hotel's guests. Whitman McGowan and About.com poetry host Margery Snyder will be the features on January 14th at 6 pm, along with a poetry slam between Robert Frost and Witter Bynner. Seems Bynner poured a mug of beer on Frost's head back in the day. This grudge match will allow the two dead guys to work it out!
Craig Arnold
Craig Arnold, winner in the Yale Series of Younger Poets, was in town and did a couple of readings. His poems are delicious, and if you are hungry for new ways to cook up words check out his book Shells. Meanwhile, whet your appetite with this:
The recipe is written in your voice:
Sauté the rice to the color of a pearl
in oil flavored with pepper, cinnamon bark. .
. . . Such frail red threads,
odd how they bleed so yellow, so contrary
to what a purple flower's genitals
should look like.
Does This Ring a Bell?If you guessed Charles Greenleaf Bell, tutor emeritus at St. John's College and Santa Fe living treasure, you are correct! Bell rocked the house back in November at St. John's with his reading on the history of sonnets entitled “Sonnet Buckling.” He ripped thorough Greek, Latin and Middle English, showing how the rhythm evolved, jumping into his beautiful Italian for the early Sonnet form, rapping out Shakespeare and ending the evening with Gerard Manley Hopkins' sprung snapping which Bell calls buckling!
- What Santa Fe poet had Albert Einstein in the audience of his first poetry reading?
- Was good friends with William Carlos Williams?
- Tutored W.S. Merwin and Galway Kinnell?
- Gave lectures at the legendary Black Mountain College?
- Published his first book of poetry in 1953?
- Is the great-great nephew of Daniel Boone?
- Reads poetry in Ancient Greek, Latin, Middle English, Italian, French, and German?
- Is the special guest at the Fireside Reading on Friday, February 11, 2000 at 6 pm at the Inn on the Alameda?
Let us finish with these lines from Bell's poem “Neighborly”:
She's like an apple tree
that leans
over the wall;
She belongs to him
but her fruits fall
to me.
. . . Bell says upon thinking of the poem while picking fruit he fell to the ground laughing.
VIRGINIA/DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
Beltway Readings -- Dean Blehert
For a great update of more beltway and thereabouts readings, check out Words & Pictures. It's a comprehensive site run by Dean Blehert, a wonderful poet! He was featured last year at the Austin International Poetry Festival and has a great calendar page with links, updates and much, much more! I'm not sure, but you can probably get a Ronco Genuine Poetry Kit there too! (Kidding, Dean, just kidding!)
