The Poet As Art: Raúl Sánchez & Marjorie Manwaring read poetry March 29

The Poet As Art features Raúl Sánchez and Marjorie Manwaring on Friday March 29, 7 pm. Please join us at the Lucia Douglas Gallery in Bellingham.

Please excuse the improper accent in Raúl’s last name in the image above (and poster).

Before we start the interview, it would be good to note, as a quick introduction to Raúl Sánchez, that he read at Elliott Bay Book Company last summer, and we’ve been making attempts to set up a reading with him since his book was published.

His  long-awaited debut collection of poems is titled All Our Brown-Skinned Angels (MoonPath Press, 2012), about which Francisco X. Alarcón says:

“I open All Our Brown-Skinned Angels, the new collection of poems by Raúl Sánchez, as a book of intimate, personal prayers. But the prevailing Judeo-Christian theology is turned upside down in these poems. Here, the Earth is sacred … Raúl Sánchez is the contemporary Netzalhuacóyotl of the Northwest, who lives in damp Seattle … and has come out with wondrous poems in praise of life that are liberating prayers for every day.”

All Our Brown-Skinned Angels cover

Wet is right! The photo on the event poster is from our pond on Noon Road in Bellingham reaching flood level in March. Or was that late February? At any rate, the level moves up and down so much lately, it’s like the pond is breathing. This is the weather we live with. Well, I digress.

At Elliott Bay, Raúl read with MoonPath Press publisher, poet and fiction writer Lana Hechtman Ayers and the musically inclined poet John Burgess—both fogbound poets from around Puget Sound. I would have liked to have been there, because each of these poets is well worth hearing, and such different writers from each other!

While it has always been important, with current events as they are right now, it may be more crucial than ever to hear the poems of Raúl Sánchez. Hear what he says about his poems in the following interview, and you may see what I mean. He is full of seriousness and humor.

An Interview Raúl Sánchez with for The Poet as Art

What aspects of your experience keep you writing poetry?

There are many experiences I’ve had as an immigrant. Those include relationships, employment, political situations and the diaspora away from México.

Are there features of your life that have run contrary to you being, or continuing to be, a poet?

Yes, the first one will be that I do not have formal education from any educational institution in the USA. That makes me feel incapable to write Poetry. However, I started journaling and writing notes from the travels I did between 1981 and 1994. One of those years I spent in India. At one point, I was writing short simple poems that were published in company newsletters and local newspapers. When I was younger, I wrote a couple of political poems for the student movement in Mexico City. In 1996, I decided to join a Latino writers group in Seattle, where I learned more about writing. That is when I decided to get serious about writing poetry.

What is the single most surprising thing you’ve learned about poetry?

Poetry is a medium by which we can express what we see, feel, hear, taste, smell and experience, whether animate or inanimate, in an artistic way by sounding off words in a rhythmic voice.

If you could choose one person, dead or alive, who influenced you as a writer, who would that be? How did he or she impact your writing experience?

Renato Leduc

For me it would be Renato Leduc. A French-Mexican Poet, Journalist and signaler for Francisco Villa.

I remember Renato reciting his poems in the middle of my father’s restaurant in Mexico City. I was a young lad then and had no idea what poetry was. Then one day I discovered his poems and stories in an anthology of Mexican poets and writers. On one of my trips to Mexico City, I found his complete works, which were not translated into English. To my delight, I’ve translated one of his poems into English, which was published on-line by Pirene’s Fountain in 2011.

What kind of non-literary books stimulated your poetry?

Having learned English in Mexico City, I would say Dick and Jane. I still have a couple of those books.

The famous Dick and Jane books

Which book of poetry is most important to you and your work as a poet?

Since I have lived in two countries, from México it would be Jaime Sabines’ Poesía Amorosa, and from the USA, Denise Levertov’s Relearning the Alphabet.

What do you believe your readers enjoy most about your work?

Our personal diaspora, connectivity and ethnic identification. Family, migration, the uncertain future and the certainty of the roots that keep us growing.

Raúl Sánchez, poet

____________________________

Here is one of Raúl Sánchez’s poems, the one I’ll be making into a poetry broadside. The broadside will be available free at the reading, and we hope you’ll make a donation to help us continue bringing poets to Bellingham.

Every Dress a Decisión
after Elizabeth Austen

My older sister could never
ever decide what to wear
on Friday and Saturday nights

My parents told her too short, too tight
what that meant I didn’t understand
all I know is that my older sister

went away wearing her platform shoes
and skin-tight skirts every time
she could sneak out

after my parents went to bed
and I fell asleep
while watching Superman

Raúl’s comments about his poem:

I went to the Richard Hugo House the night Elizabeth Austen read at the “Cheap Wine and Poetry” series after her book release for Every Dress A Decision. The title of the book stayed with me and triggered a poem thinking about my older sister, who doesn’t exist since I’m the oldest. Perhaps wishful thinking lead to the idea that “If I would’ve had an older sister, that’s what she would’ve done” back in 1969. My editor decided to change the word “Decision” to “Decisión” to add flavor to the poem. I gave the poem to Elizabeth handwritten in Spanish on one of the postcards she made to promote her book.

—-

We hope you join us for this poetry reading at the Lucia Douglas Gallery, which is showing collaborations between the artists Thomas Wood and FishBoy (RR Clark). Strange and wonderful art.

Posted by Anita K. Boyle

 

Art and Poetry in Sammamish

Please … Come Sit A While

Enjoy an Evening of Art and Nature
with artist Hannah Viano and poet Anita K. Boyle
Tuesday, April 17
in the Commons Gallery at Sammamish City Hall
and the Sammamish Library.

by Hannah Viano

· Come Look A While at 6:00pm … with artist Hannah Viano touring her exhibit in the Commons Gallery at Sammamish City Hall. Viano offers modern portrayals of locally inspired flora, and landscapes in her exhibition Come Sit A While.
· Come Immerse Yourself A While at 7:00pm … in conversation about nature found around us, extraordinary poetry by Anita K. Boyle and imagine yourself on a Sammamish Walks expedition all in the Sammamish Library. Boyle, author of What the Alder Told Me (MoonPath Press, 2011) will read selected poems.

And Judy Petersen, Sammamish Parks Commission, will share opportunities to come walk a while along the trails.

Notes from Anita K. Boyle:
I am very excited about joining papercut artist Hannah Viano for this event. I love to see the stark and delicate details of papercut art. This event at the gallery is an opportunity for us to hear from an excellent artist who shares her engagement with the natural world through the papercut artform.

by Hannah Viano

I’m looking forward to reading poems at the library as part of this art/poetry event because I’m intrigued with the connections between visual and language art. Knowing that I’m an organizer of a program called “The Poet As Art,” you can easily understand that I enjoy investigating the concepts shared between language and the visual often, including in my own artwork and poetry. The similarities between how an artist renders the world, and how a poet does, can be found in the themes and details they choose to use. How creative people put their works together—using cut paper, watercolor, oil paint, language, or other artistic medium—offers surprising comparisons and contrasts that can build on our understanding of the natural world, as well as each other.

by Hannah Viano

Hannah Viano’s Artist Statement:

In my life art has always been fit in around the edges. It has been a thick roll of paper held open by my bare feet in the sand, with seawater in a dixie cup and the tiny oval watercolors they sell for children. A life filled with boats and islands and oceans left only tidbits of space and time for inks and paper. I was a baby on a cat ketch from block island, and thirty years later had my own son on the water as well. In between I have taught, and rigged, and fished, and lounged, and done science experiments, and felt the lull of the waves on boats of all shapes and sizes from Ketchikan to Cape Horn. I haven’t gotten to art school yet. But, I have tried hard to learn the lessons of how to catch a memory, and save it for another day and another friend to see. Now a mother and sleeping on the land, I have a bit more time and space, and lots of desire to stay a sailor in my heart and in my hands. So I am pouring out those memories old and new .

In this exhibit I took inspiration from voyages and beachcombing done along the shorelines, where waves lap and lash out and leave everything new. To distill these impressions down I use an exacto knife and pieces of black paper. The act of carving out the pictures is a delicious and delicate process that gives itself perfectly to the flowing shapes of wood and water, the way faring a hull feels right in the hands, or a sweetly blossoming bowl on the potters wheel.

Please join Tuesday, April 17 for a journey into our natural and inner landscapes through the perspectives of the artist and poet.

The event is sponsored by the Sammamish Arts Commission, City of Sammamish,
4Culture, the Sammamish Parks Commission and the King County Sammamish Library

by Hannah Viano

For more information:

Hannah Viano – www.devilspursediary.com
Anita Boyle – egressstudiopress.com
Sammamish Walks – www.sammamishwalks.org

 

Working with Ammons

A. R. Ammons

One of my life’s great opportunities was to study with the poet A.R. Ammons as an MFA student at Cornell University between 1971 and 1973. We students knew him as Archie. He received the first of two National Book Awards for his Collected Poems: 1951-1971 while I was there listening to everything he said, and the Yale University critic Harold Bloom was busy making him immortal by writing that “No contemporary poet in America is likelier to become a classic than A.R. Ammons.” His second National Book Award was for Garbage in 1993, after which he was awarded a MacArthur “Genius Fellowship.”

There were two pronouncements I remember as though Ammons had uttered them today: the first was what he said to me in his office: “If a poem isn’t going to add-up to anything, it must be interesting at every point.” While he seemed to be saying that my poems didn’t add-up, he was also describing an aesthetic method that I’ve used hundreds of times since. Later that semester he read aloud to the workshop this poem I had submitted for discussion:

The Storm has come again today,
it rages shrill pins.

I hear a pale child moaning alone
near the bottom rocks
of the field.

I feel the blowing wet
bruise her face.

When finished he observed: “I don’t see any way this poem by Mr. Bertolino could be better than it already is.” I felt pretty cocky after that, and rather enjoyed being glared at by the other MFA students. But I had to wonder why Ammons would make that remark in front of my classmates. I then spent much more time reading his poetry, and soon discovered his work effortlessly accomplished some of the elements I was striving for in my own poetry. Here’s a passage from one of Archie’s poems about poetry:

Poetics

not so much looking for the shape
as being available
to any shape that may be
summoning itself
through me
from the self not mine but ours.

He always had a marvelous way of putting things, and often found very simple shapes to embody dazzling ideas. Those shapes were often found close at hand, and mostly from the natural world. It’s hard to imagine a poem by any poet that could more effectively portray a metaphysical concept than this one:

Reflective

I found a
weed
that had a

mirror in it
and that
mirror

looked in at
a mirror
in

me that
had a
weed in it.

In Ammons’ poem “Small Song,” wind plays a key role: as a phenomenon that acts on, then is revealed by reeds. The reeds first are subject to the wind, then have a kind of power over the wind.

Small Song

The reeds give
way to the

wind and give
the wind away

In this last poem, the wind enables the daisies to more fully experience their own loss as the yellow petals leave their stems and are gone.

Loss

When the sun
falls behind the sumac
thicket the
wild
yellow daisies
in diffuse evening shade
lose their
rigorous attention
and
half-wild with loss
turn
any way the wind does
and lift their
petals up
to float
off their stems
and go.

How could any attentive reader fail to feel how sad, but beautiful, it is when something as attentive as these wild things lose their focus and dissipate. Haven’t we all given ourselves over to a power not our own? Haven’t we experienced loss?

James Bertolino

—James Bertolino
A.R. Ammons’ sample poems can be found in
Collected Poems: 1951-1971.

 

The Poet As Art: Terry Martin and Casey Fuller, and a workshop, too

The Poet As Art presents

A Poetry Reading featuring poets Terry Martin (from Spokane)
and Casey Fuller (from Portland, OR)

featuring Terry Martin and Casey Fuller

When: Friday,February 24th, 7:00 pm
Where: Lucia Douglas Gallery (1415 13th St. in Fairhaven)
This event is free and open to the public. Donations always welcome.

Terry Martin and Casey Fuller write about womanhood and manhood, and reflect on the childhood experiences that lead to those states. Seattle’s Open Books calls Fuller’s poems “sharp-edged, yet tender,” and Lucinda Roy says of Martin’s poems, “the sublime is housed within the domestic: kitchens are cathedrals, and the ‘geometry’ of rituals sustained by women teach us how to sing … about what we dare to love and what dares to love us back.”

ALSO:
A Poetry Writing Workshop with poet James Bertolino
Images On The Edge: a poetry writing workshop where we will develop images that will energize your poems, and create a lasting impact for the reader or listener. We will examine what kind of language is most effective for a given image, and utilize sound repetition and echo to make the image irresistible. Each workshop participant should expect to go home with three new poems.

James Bertolino

When: Saturday, February 25th, 1:00 to 4:30 p.m.
Where: Egress Studio
Registration fee: $45
To register, call: (360)398-7870 or email Jim at jim@jamesbertolino.com
Please mail fee to:
Whatcom Poetery Series
5581 Noon Road
Bellingham WA 98226

About Terry Martin
After teaching middle and high school English Language Arts for a number of years, Terry Martin earned a M.A. and Ph.D. at the University of Oregon. She has been an English

Terry Martin

Professor at Central Washington University since 1986, teaching undergraduate and graduate English courses. She is the recipient of CWU’s Distinguished Professor Teaching Award and Central’s Presidential Leadership Award. In 2003, Martin was honored by the CASE/Carnegie Foundation as Washington Professor of the Year—a national teaching award given to recognize extraordinary commitment and contribution to undergraduate education. An avid reader and writer, she has published over 250 poems, essays, and articles and has edited both journals and anthologies. Her first book of poems, Wishboats, won the Judges’ Choice Award at Bumbershoot Book Fair in 2000. Her most recent book of poetry, The Secret Language of Women, was published by Blue Begonia Press in 2006. Hiker, river-watcher, and lover of the arts, she lives with her partner in Yakima, Washington.

About Casey Fuller
In 2011, Casey Fuller won the Washington State-wide Floating Bridge Chapbook Award for his poetry collection, A Fort Made of Doors. In 2010, he won the Jeanne Lohmann Poetry Prize. In 2009, the city of Olympia awarded him the Here Today art grant. He

Casey Fuller

received his MFA from the Rainier Writing Workshop at Pacific Lutheran University in 2008. His poems have appeared in Crab Creek Review, Switched-On Gutenberg, A River and Sound Review, Palabra, and other publications.
Fuller has lived in the Northwest for 33 years. He was born in Olympia, Washington, where he was educated at pubic schools, and studied literature and cognitive science at The Evergreen State College. He has worked as an auto detailer, burrito roller, fruit vendor, note taker, office worker and, most recently, as a forklift driver in a warehouse where he wrote poems during his breaks. He lives in Portland, Oregon, with his wife Katrina, and two cats, Monty and Garcia Lorca.

###

 

Announcing New Publications by Egress Studio Press, a Pre-Preview

I’m very proud to announce that Egress Studio Press is publishing two more Pacific Northwest poets. Vashon Island poet Ann Spiers’ chapbook is titled What Rain Does. The other publication is Her Story of Fire by Bellingham poet Richard Widerkehr. Look for them in the next week or two.

As soon as I finish printing them, Jim Bertolino and I will score, fold, cut, and sew the books. It’s a fairly relaxing pastime. When the poets finally have copies in their hands, I’ll post more information about the poems, the poets, where to purchase the books, and what they look like.

These are the first Egress Studio Press poetry books to be created completely in the studio: from layout to printing to assembly. I’m pretty excited about that. For now, I have to get back to the last edits before Jim and I start constructing the books.

 

Hiroshima Poems

We are lucky enough to say we have a pal named Garland Richmond, who taught German at Emory University for 37 years, and served as Dean of Student Academic Affairs. He was so valued by the university they named a research award after him! Garland is currently President of Bellingham’s Whatcom Chorale board of directors, and of course contributes his great voice to their programs. His skills as translator were used effectively in translating an entire Chorale program from German into English.

Here’s a beautiful and tragic poem Garland translated from the German with the care we’ve come to expect of him.

Hiroshima
—Maria Luise Kaschnitz
(Translated by Garland Richmond)

The man who threw death down on Hiroshima
Joined a cloister, rings the bells there now.
The man who threw death down on Hiroshima
Jumped in a noose from a stool
And strangled himself.
The man who threw death down on Hiroshima
Went out of his mind, fends off ghosts,
Hundreds of thousands, who come at him nightly,
Resurrected from the dust just for him.

None of that is true.
Not long ago I saw him
In the garden of his house in the suburbs.
The hedges were still young and the rose bushes delicate,
Things don’t grow fast enough for him to hide
In the forest of forgetting. Plain to see was
The naked suburban house, the young wife
Standing beside it in her flowered dress,
Holding the little girl’s hand,
The boy, sitting on the man’s back,
Swinging the whip over his head.
He himself was recognizable
On all fours on the plot of grass, his face
Contorted in laughter, because the photographer
Stood behind the hedge, the eye of the world.

Blueprint by James Bertolino, a broadside. Click on the poem for a larger version.

The poem’s early rhythm and repetition are haunting, and add a kind of urgency to the poem. The second stanza is a simple commentary, with any bitterness justified by what went before. But we still can feel the poet’s fist raised and shaking in the air.

I think one of Garland’s favorite poems may be “Blueprint” by James Bertolino, which is included in Jim’s book Finding Water, Holding Stone. Garland has twice identified New Yorker covers which used the poem’s imagery without crediting the source (he’s such a kidder). I recently made a broadside of this poem to send to Garland as a way of saying “Thank you.” He is a generous soul, active in our community, and very passionate about art, music and literature.

—posted by Anita K. Boyle and James Bertolino

 

Monday Night PoetryNight

PoetryNight

Black cats are less likely to get adopted from an animal shelter than any other cat.

Monday, May 16 at 8:30pm until ten or later with an intermission following feature
Featured poet: Anita K. Boyle
8:00 to 8:30—Sign up to read your poems
Location: Amadeus Project, 1209 Cornwall Avenue, Bellingham, WA

Normally, Monday being a work night, I like to get enough sleep to be fairly awake next morning at 7 or so, after a good cup of coffee and a hot-hot shower. Then there’s PoetryNight, which begins after 8 on a Monday evening and continues until late, or at least past my bedtime, given the extra chores with the horse. But when Robert Huston invited me to feature at PoetryNight May 16, I agreed. PoetryNight features usually have a new book to read from, and that is the case with me—with my new book What the Alder Told Me. I’m pretty excited, and even intimidated by this poetry reading. Have you heard the poets there? The features are excellent, and so are the poets who read at the open mic. In fact, I’ve declined reading at the open mic almost every time I’ve been there because the poets are so good that I just want to hear them, and the sign-in sheet always fills up. I don’t remember when I went away disappointed. So this is an event worth going to, not because I’m featuring (though I’d be very happy to see you there), but because every Monday there is outstanding poetry read live on stage. The quality of the work, the poets and the audience exceeds expectations… by far. This is an invitation to come to PoetryNight May 16 to hear poems from my new book, and the great local and not-so-local poets who will share the mic with me.

 

Loomis Hall Gallery poetry reading

DATE/TIME: Friday, 02/11/2011 @ 7 PM
Loomis Hall Gallery, 288 Martin Street near the waterfront in downtown Blaine

Poetry reading at Loomis Gallery

For an evening full of art and literature, step up to the Loomis Hall Gallery. Poets James Bertolino and Anita K. Boyle will read new poems, old poems, some from books, some not, and they’ll throw in a variety of collaborative poems, too. Plus, Anita will share poems from her brand new published volume, What the Alder Told Me. For this reading, they might even bring in a few of the great poets’ poems about music. Why music? There’s a jazz art show up in the gallery, which includes about a dozen of Anita’s watercolor/ink/gouache portraits of jazz musicians. When is the last time you were at a poetry reading with John Coltrane looking down at you from his place on the wall-stage? They’ll read for fifteen or twenty minutes each, which will give you a chance to take a look around afterward at the artwork by Anita and six other outstanding visual artists.

 

Flood Song by Sherwin Bitsui, 2009, Copper Canyon Press

Sherwin Bitsui isn’t exactly a Pacific Northwest poet, but he read with Sherman Alexie at Elliott Bay Books in August. He also has a connection with James Bertolino. As a judge for the American Book Award this year, Jim chose Flood Song, which is Sherwin Bitsui’s second book and comes from Copper Canyon Press of Port Townsend. So he does have ties to the northwest.

American Book Award winner

Here’s what Jim says about Sherwin Bitsui’s work:

Sherwin Bitsui’s book Flood Song can be experienced as a constantly shifting single poem, or as a rich gathering of individual poems. There are no set borders between the physical details of his world and his capacious imagination, just as his language both deeply honors and leaps beyond his Native American culture. Bitsui’s vision encompasses many versions of beauty. I’m grateful this book exists, and that’s why I chose it for a 2010 American Book Award.
—James Bertolino

I enjoyed reading Flood Song last week. Bitsui’s poems contain what many might consider traditional imagery, color and spirituality. But his poems go further, taking the traditional out of its comfortable contexts, and dropping it into a disconcerting contemporary environment. There is a matter-of-fact, beautifully rendered rage in the poems that transfers to you, the “innocent” reader, until you become, at the very least, a little alarmed. Jim is right when he mentions the constant shifts of the poems. First, you’re given a solid footing, but then “There is no sign of the trail leading out.” Every poem, and almost every line, uses specific, clear language from our natural and contemporary worlds, which is then mixed with varying degrees of violence. For instance, one poem’s first line begins: “It is here that they scoop gr…,” but the poem isn’t talking about grain; that line ends with “[gr]anite stones from your chest.” Ouch. Here’s another more subtle example that comes from about the middle of one of the groups of untitled poems in the book:
—
Scraping rough with smooth,
      the mind pillboxes the scent of cactus wren
         and wraps it with strands of neon vapor.

Dinetah*—scratched out
from the eye with juniper bark—
hunches with engine sweat
curling out of its collar,
its owner—a leash without a hand—
bleeds gasoline
     when lathered with a blur of red bricks.
—
When you’re through reading this poem, you get it, even though you may not understand all the details. Take another look, and it’s possible to understand the details, too. If you read one of Bitsui’s poems as if it were arithmetic, you might come away breathless. By the time you get to the end of a poem, the accumulation of cultural references, nuance and plain speaking, have the effect of leaving one out of breath, or with that strange feeling of semi-asphyxiation. And what about that verb “pillboxes?” What happens in these poems is the same thing that happens when a fist-sized snowball rolls to the bottom of a hill… there is an increase in mass that is wonderful to watch, yet has terrible uncontrollable thrust. The cultural references are sometime obvious, sometimes not, but Bitsui often refers to both the contemporary and the historical at the same time, which is something that can make a lot of sense in poetry. A great novel creates a suspenseful experience, where the reader just can’t wait to get at the next chapter. In Bitsui’s poems, this exhilarating suspense is so condensed, it happens between words. The enjoyment of reading Bitsui’s Flood Song, isn’t just between the lines.

For more information about Sherwin Bitsui, go to his website: www.bitsui.com.

* Dinétah is the homeland of the Navajo.

 

Editing a Vapor Trail

Anita and I recently each received copies of Editing a Vapor Trail by Karen Bonaudi, published this year by Pudding House Publications in Columbus, Ohio. Karen lives in Moses Lake, and over the years has done a lot for poets and poetry in Washington. This 25-poem chapbook is the first opportunity I’ve had to read a complete collection of her poems, and I am smitten! This is a wonderful book, with carefully crafted, intelligent poems that all offer delicious passages and dazzling images. Some of them address pain and loss, others capture unforgettable moments, such as “Out by the woodpile sits a bird / with a song that sounds / like the closing of a door.” Anita and I brought our copies of Editing a Vapor Trail out to the pond, and took turns reading all the poems aloud to each other, inviting her words to brighten us “like sunlight on stones beneath the water.”

—James Bertolino

Jim and I have read many poetry books, magazines and single poems out at our Noon Road pond where the dark water and the reflections of trees and sky mingle with fallen leaves and water lilies. Sometimes the water moves like it’s alive, sometimes a fish jumps, a dragonfly hovers nearby, or a chorus of frogs starts up. There is no better place to read poetry. Karen Bonaudi’s chapbook fit exceptionally well with the pond’s environment. The title, Editing a Vapor Trail, is a great one, because the reader can get several meanings from it, and they’d all be true. Her poems are small contrail metaphors where the subject that once was obvious fades into something else less conspicuous, but just as present. Karen’s poems address revisions of memory, changes in history, alterations within the family and other subjects worth considering.

—Anita K. Boyle

November

The autumn the leaves
all blew away
we didn’t have to rake,
didn’t have to remember
the things we had told
each other in the dark,
for everything was clear.

—Karen Bonaudi
(from Editing a Vapor Trail)