Myth of Arrival

"happy dance!"

The kind folks at 14×14 accepted the sonnet The Bluest of Lips for publication for their "Love and Lust" February issue. O Happy Days!

They say the proof of being a poet is when other people want to publish your work. In that case my friend Erin B. is poetry powerhouse! She has two books of poetry out this year:

My chapbook Body Of Water is now available from Thorngate Road. It was awarded the 2007 Frank O'Hara Award. Body Of Water is a garland of sonnets, fifteen braided ones, from my first manuscript, which interrogates boundaries, desire, & awe.

and:

My chapbook manuscript The Urge To Believe Is Stronger Than Belief Itself has been accepted by Cherry Pie Press. It should be published in time for Summer Solstice. The Urge To Believe Is Stronger Than Belief Itself is a cross-genre work documenting someone very close to me's experience beating cancer & my fumbling & righting as I tried to understand what was happening to her & to me as a result.

That is fantastic, Erin! You are amazing!

So the book is done. There were a few snaggles that occurred along the way. For one, due to the complexities of U.S. copyright law, it is unclear whether all of Federico's work is covered in the Copyright Term Extension Act or not. Technically, legally, are translations their own entity and the property of the translator or are they "variations" of the original poem and thus subject to copyright infringement if published? I don't know, yet. So I did what seemed to be the best choice. I removed all the original Spanish text from the book. Except for the titles the entire book is in English, which is a shame since I had been hoping to publish a bilingual edition. However, the glories of print on demand mean I can simply go into the text itself and replace the Spanish if the Garcia Lorca estate allows me to publish the originals as well. We shall see.

One of the wonderful things about knowing talented people is promoting them so the world can see just how amazing they are! My friend Shelley (her motto is: Life * Love * Coffee) has some fantastic cards up at Cafepress, I urge you all to go look, drool over and buy!

For Aung san Sui Kyi and Burma's Pro-Democracy Movement.

Friend, how will it be to lie
under the sky all eager and
quick as the wind beats

upon the door? Friend,
where will I sleep? tell me
how will I hide without roof
or door? the wind beats upon
our skulls.

The wind is everywhere.

Friend, I have given the wind
an eye and still it beats upon
us. Tomorrow I shall leave
this house. The clouds are out,

they are coming. Something
the wind cannot push about.

My friend Ruelaine sent this note, I pass it along to you all:

It will be "An Evening to Remember," so bring your friends over to the Old Town Poetry Series, this Wednesday, Sept. 12t, 7:30 PM, at the Creole Gallery, 1218 Turner Street in Lansing's Old Town (near the intersection of Grand River Avenue and Turner Street.)

The evening will be a celebration in both poetry and song, of the creativity that sustains us in our daily lives, of the courage and love that sustains us in the face of loss‹even tragic loss, and of the beautiful spirit-filled Creole Gallery that Robert Busby created to celebrate the arts and life itself.

We have a stunning line-up, including musicians Linda Abar & Sally Potter and a star-studded cast of poets ranging in age from 9 to 80.

Poets wishing to read can throw their names in the hat at the door.

Free refreshments. Great conversation! Free parking on the street or in the large lot on the south side of the intersection of Grand River Avenue and Turner Street.

Donation: $5 (students $2).

I am looking for a home for Ma Cat. Technically she is ex-Ma Cat since I took her to the Humane Shelter a year ago and had her fixed. Since I could not keep her (and still can't) I released her back into the wild. She disappeared during wintertime but come spring and now summer she has reappeared and desperately wants to be loved. She waits for me outside my door, has no fear of others and wants nothing more than to sit on my lap and be petted (contrary to the poem she is not bony and doesn't yowl like a turkey and is actually very quiet). I do not know if she is litter trained but I will pay for all her shots; my only concern is that she finds a nice home with someone who loves cats. I would certainly take her back if it didn't work out, she is too loving a soul for someone to take to the shelter to be destroyed … a fate I am afraid of when I finally sell my house and move to Grand Rapids.

If anyone is interested or knows someone who is interested please contact me at: zachary [dot] jean [@] gmail [dot] com. Thank you!

There is a cat with my noisy stutter.
There is a cat with my bony body.
There is a cat I will steal all her fur.
There is a cat yowling like a turkey.

No, muse of poets and daemons, your purr
is the song of comment. Your caterwaul
made my Orpheus weep blood. No, lesser
godling, you come when called. Rain and nightfall
made you slim. The sun fattened you. Yes, squint
as if to say, “I am so brief; are you
mine?” As if to say, “do not go away.”

There is a cat with a callused paw print.
There is a cat that coughs, a stonewall mew.
There is a cat; a stray, a stray, a stray.

My friend Ruelaine just sent this notice to me. Now I share it with you:

It's National Poetry Month, and the poetry scene in the Greater Lansing Area is hot! Join the Old Poets and the NuPoet Collective for a POETRY JAM on Tuesday, April 17th at Gregory's Ice and Smoke, 2510 N. Martin L. King Blvd. in Lansing.

Gregory's is on the south east corner of MLK and Grand River Avenue. If you are driving north on MLK, it is on the left, at the corner before you turn on Grand River to go to the airport ‹ up on the hill on the left (southeast corner of that intersection.

What's "A Poetry Jam," you might ask? ‹ It's a poetry contest in which you won't get slammed. This is an equal opportunity poetry event, will all styles of poetry welcome. During the Jam, poets can recite OR read their poems. Each poet will have a maximum of 4 minutes.

Prizes for the "Jam" include: $60‹1st place, $40‹2nd place, $30‹3rd place & $20‹4th place.

Before the "Jam," there will be an Open Mike session for poets not wishing to take part in the contest and for "Jammers" wishing to warm up.

Poet Ana Cardona, storyteller Charles Thornton, and poet Dennis Hinrichsen have consented to serve as judges for the "Jam."

The schedule for the evening will be as follows:

7-8 pm: Socializing

8 pm: ‹ Open Mike

8:50: Social break

9:30 approximately: the Poetry Jam

Donations for the evening will go to the Robert Busby Old Town Project.

See you there!

Today I see the importance of friends. It is good to have them and it is even better when a friend puts up with your pestering to have your poem translated into his or her language. So today's Shout of Joy and Thanks goes out to my wonderful pen pal who goes by the pen name of Calmfeeler, translating "Narcissus' Lament" into Chinese, all the way from Beijing, China.

水仙的挽歌

看不见
自己 在
这波里 一切
都如此匆匆
海浪花漂来流去
消损了的 是
我的面容

Whenever I start speaking of friends it brings up in my mind one of the great Friends, that is, Shams of Tabriz, the mystic poet Rumi's Beloved. I have heard different versions of the account of how they met, different people will always say what suits them the most, but just know this:

In the 13th Century, in what is now Turkey, Shams of Tabriz stops Rumi one day and asks him a question that rattles his entire world. "Who is greater? Mohammed or Bestami¹?" According to Coleman Barks, "Rumi is reported to have chosen Mohammed as his answer, reasoning that because of him God's greatness was always unfolding, whereas Bestami had 'taken one gulp of the divine and stopped there.'"

Barks continues: "After his initial meeting with Shams, Rumi became a mystic, cupping one hand about a pillar in mosque and speaking in poetry. His followers wrote down his poems - and copied his movements, which today survive in the Mevlevi order of 'whirling dervishes' they eventually founded."

Shams! Shams of Tabriz! If Rumi was the poet, it was Shams who became his key. Rumi says of Shams in Ode 3097: "I won't try to talk about Shams./ Language cannot touch that Presence." But the story ends terribly. Rumi and Shams are inseparable; they discuss theology until all hours, needing no one but themselves. And then one night Shams is called to the door, cries out and … disappears.

It was thought that one of Rumi's sons, or a jealous follower, murdered him. Either way, Rumi's Beloved vanishes from his life, forever. Rumi will spend the rest of his life reciting ode after ode for his Shams; his grief at separation from the divine. And every time I pick up one of his books I ask myself: "how can I say these simple words without their emotional force making me cry? … knowing that they are a prayer for that which will never happen again, rather than a mundane observation about what is to come?"

When Shams comes back from Tabriz,
he'll put just his head around the edge
of the door to surprise us

Like this.

Yes, just like this.

1. Mohammed, the founder of Islam; and Bestami, a Muslim scholar and teacher [back]

Everyone should congradulate wm. rike. for having his poem crone on time appear on The Countdown #20, with Bob Marcacci.

Or better yet, you should go and listen to the MP3. It rocks!

On Valentine's Day ‹ Wednesday, Feb. 14th, 7 PM ‹ the Old Town Poetry Series will host a Valentine's Day Poetry Reading: an evening of love poetry guaranteed to take the chill out of the air and melt the ice around your heart. The event will take place at the Creole Gallery, 1218 Turner Street in Lansing's Old Town.

The event will include some of mid-Michigan's finest performance poets, along with an Open Mike session.

Poets include Zachary Chartkoff, Kate Butler, Rina Risper, Gianni Risper, Joyce Benevenuto, Tim Lane, Ann Andrews, Laura Apol, and Ruelaine Stokes.

Participants wishing to take part in the Open Mike should toss their names into the hat at the door.

Cost: $4 per person or $6 per couple.

Free refreshments. Parking available on the street or in the large lot at the intersection of Turner St. and Grand River Avenue.

Personal Letter No. 3

(Sonia Sanchez)

nothing will keep
us young you know
not young men or
women who spin
their youth on
cool playing sounds.
we are what we
are what we never
think we are.
no more wild geo
graphies of the
flesh. echoes. that
we move in tune
to slower smells.
it is a hard thing
to admit that
sometimes after midnight
i am tired
of it all.

In case you haven't heard, the poets Sharon Olds and Sonia Sanchez will be this year's Fall Arts Celebration-Poetry Night tomorrow at Grand Valley State University in Grand Rapids.

When: October 11, 2006 7:00 p.m.

Where: L.V. Eberhard Center, Second Floor Robert C. Pew Grand Rapids Campus Followed by reception and book signing

Cost: Event is free and open to public.

GVSU's flyer reads as follows:

Sharon Olds, the award-winning author of eight volumes of poetry - most recently Strike Sparks, is a professor and permanent faculty member in New York University's Graduate Creative Writing Program. Sonia Sanchez is the author of more than a dozen book of poetry, including "Shake Loose My Skin: New and Selected Poems" and "Does Your House Have Lions?," which was nominated for both the NAACP image and national Book Critics Circle Awards.

What I like about their poetry is not just their personal themes and/or subject matter they focus in on, but how the various issues each poet burns with are represented and explored. It is poetry that echoes Allen Ginsberg's line from his book "Howl:" [To] stand before you speechless and intelligent and shaking with shame, rejected yet confessing out the soul to conform to the rhythm of thought in his naked and endless head …

I find that fascinating.

Virginal Orgy

(Sharon Olds)

In our Sophomore year, Solomon Wheat,
a Senior, Captain of the high school team,
carried us to the Tournament of Champions,
and we won. I left the game with my friend
the hourglass beauty, and her friend the President
of the Sophomore class. He put an arm
around each of us, as if there were two of him,
one for her one for me, and I felt,
through him, linked to her long, tilted
eyes and Scythian-bow lips
and cinched waist and the large globes of her
breasts. It was almost as if I could look
into a mirror held by Mike
and see myself as Liz, the way we had
seen ourselves as Solomon Wheat.
I felt that Mike was hugging me
partly so he could hug Liz,
as if I were a moderate price
he was paying for embracing her glory. But mostly
I felt his warm, male, popular
arm around me, it was April, we were walking near
a low, flowering tree, and he steered us
into, and under, and up inside it,
and he kissed Liz, I looked into the maze
of the living stems of the wild nosegays,
and then he turned, and kissed me,
and his lips were so much bigger and more tender
than my mother's, each of his lips was larger
than her whole mouth, and the skin of his lips was like
a newborn's skin, and the flesh of his mouth,
underneath, was so liquid that each lip
seemed, to be splashing like a bucket inside.
The back of my head got faint, early
Communion on an empty stomach, and that central
core, down inside me, did
the thing like a heavy gulp, with the rings
of hotness circling out. And then
he was kissing Liz, I was standing within
the standing bouquet, the orb of the tree not
estranged to me, the tightness and loose
burstness of its crowded petals
not unknown to me, and then
he kissed me again, and this time
I had forgotten my mother — this was my first
return, to him, my mouth already
wise in its hunger, feeling as if nothing
it would wish would be forbidden to it.
When he kissed Liz, I stood aside
enchanted in cherry-trance, waiting for what
was promised and would return, as if
by vow of the corporeal, the little central
throat gulping in emotion as if swallowing
tears. I would gaze, in the bower, and see
the twigs and branches of our canopy —
its angles, isosceles and right, and the dropping
down of a tryst hypotenuse —
in the cone of the tree I understood
Geometry, the Trinity,
Triune Love, and the fierce tingle
of the triangle I had whirl-struck
as a child. And now I knew the kiss,
and from it the hour when the other woman
would go her way, and his other arm
would come around, like the other half
of the sky, and all the angles would close, and the
wings of the sphere open, slowly burst open.

Arlie, host of the XM satellite radio show Hand of Grandfather, … a cutting edge weekly program featuring the Music of The First Nations…ALL TRIBAL, ALL THE TIME! posted this on her blog:

South Dakota Indian Leader Wants to Build Tribal Abortion Clinic (Baltimore Sun)

Sunday, April 2, 2006

In South Dakota, where lawmakers last month passed a near-total ban on abortion, the leader of one of the state's American Indian tribes is proposing to circumvent the legislation by establishing an abortion clinic on an Indian reservation — within reach of women who need the service, but outside the reach of the strict new law.

Cecelia Fire Thunder, a former nurse who is the first female president in the history of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, said it was "an eye-opener" when legislators approved a law that prohibits abortion in nearly all cases — even when the pregnancy results from rape or incest. The only exception is to save the woman's life.

"An Indian reservation is a sovereign nation, and we're going to take it as far as we can to exercise our sovereignty," said Fire Thunder, whose Pine Ridge Reservation encompasses 2.7 million acres in southwestern South Dakota. "As Indian women, we fight many battles. This is just another battle we have to fight."

Because federally recognized American Indian tribes are not, in many cases, required to abide by state law, a clinic could operate lawfully at Pine Ridge even with a ban in place, said South Dakota Attorney General Larry Long. Tribes are, in many respects, treated as foreign nations.

Fire Thunder is one of 15 co-chairs of the South Dakota Campaign for Healthy Families, which formed last week with the goal of putting the abortion ban to voters.

The 59-year-old tribal leader, who said she has counseled rape victims, said it was legislators' insistence on prohibiting abortions for women who have become pregnant as the result of rape that drew her to speak out and to propose building "a Planned Parenthood-type clinic" on tribal land.

She first floated the idea to an American Indian columnist in South Dakota last week. Since then, it has been fodder for the local media and national blogs. Her e-mail inbox has filled up with people supporting the idea, she said.

"People need to open up their eyes in this country. Women are being raped at a tremendously high rate in this nation," she said. "In a perfect world, you will report the rape, the police will respond, they will take you to the emergency room. You will tell your story, you will get emergency contraception.

"We don't live in a perfect world. In rural America, that does not happen."

For now, it remains legal to get an abortion in South Dakota. About 800 a year are performed at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Sioux Falls, where doctors fly in once or twice a week from Minnesota, according to Marta Coursey, spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota. It is the only abortion clinic in the state.

The state ban takes effect July 1. Meanwhile, it faces hurdles.

The South Dakota Campaign for Healthy Families last weekend began a drive to collect the 16,728 signatures needed to place a referendum on the law on the November ballot — and gathered nearly 1,100 in a matter of days, said Nathan Peterson, the campaign's petition director. If the group gets the required signatures, the law would be on hold until the fall.

Should that fail, a lawsuit would be inevitable, said Coursey. Many expect a judge would stay the law indefinitely as the case works its way through the courts.

http://www.rapidcityjournal.com/articles/2006/04/01/news/local/news02.txt

Today's blessings go out to Cecelia Fire Thunder, the Oglala Sioux Tribe, Hand of Grandfather and everyone else who cares about women's rights and health. For the rest of you, please support this anyway and while you're at it go to Arlie's this blog and give her the kudos she deserves!

I thought about Hand Of Grandfather radio program yesterday as I sat on the grass at the The Nokomis Learning Center in Okemos, Michigan, listening to a friend of mine perform with Nswi Shkoden Nagamo Kwewag (Three Fires Women Singers) at the Nokomis Learning Center; an Anishinaabe hand drum trio.

What this story lacks, of course, is their music so you can hear how brilliant they sounded. The group hasn't recorded their songs (my friend Q says it might happen and might not) so it's hard to sing the praises of someone (literally) when all you have are words to go by but I loved their harmony, loved the presence they had at the microphone and had a marvelous time.

In passing, I am asking anyone might know for some help. I was told of a CD released this year from Michigan State University of an Ojibwe duo, Diva and Davis (?), who recorded popular rock and roll and country songs in Ojibwa. The CD comes with words both in Ojibwa and in English, so you can learn the language as you go along. I think this is a brilliant idea! I learn so much faster through song than by dry memorization. There is a catch, though …

… I have been combing Google looking for any references to Diva and Davis, but so far nothing. That is the problem with second hand information, I suppose (and the problem with the Internet — you might be very, very close to finding what you are looking for but if the word combinations are not right you might miss it anyway). The woman I was talking to wasn't sure if that was their real name or something close to it. Then someone said they weren't Ojibwa but Chippewa and so I am asking anyone in Cyberland who might read this for help. I would love to find this CD!

There is far too much to tell you in one blog entry. Sunday morning, for example, I was in the mud and rain seeing Robert Bly and Coleman Barks help celebrate the Sufi mystic poet Rumi's 799th birthday with a joint reading. I expected Barks' Southern drawl spicing up the poetry but I had never seen Bly live before. He delighted in interrupting himself to ask the audience if they were following what he was saying. He was a hoot.

(Bly and Barks off-stage before their morning reading)

Barks shared with us what he called, "never been read in America before," new Rumi translations [!] I suppose that means there is a new Rumi book on its way to the publishers. The lines, "Hurry Shams, hurry back to me," got me all teary eyed. Actually, any reference to Rumi's soul-mate, Shams of Tabrizi, who disappeared out of Rumi's life forever, gets me all choked up. Imagine my surprise when I found that the youngest poet at the Dodge Festival, Ekiwah Adler-Belendez, had written a poem about searching for Shams.

(Ekiwah and his father getting set up for a reading)

Ekiwah is 19-year old young man living with cerebral palsy. He is from a small village outside of Mexico City and he is mind-blowing. The Dodge Program had this to say about him:

[Ekiwah] began composing poem fragments aloud by the age of three, and his first poetry collection, Soy (I Am), was released when he was 12. He has written, “In a way cerebral palsy has forced me to do what I love the most: stop dead in my tracks and write.” His other poetry collections include: Palabras Inagotables, (Never-ending Words) (2001); Weaver (2003), his first book in English; and The Coyote’s Trace (2006).

(Kurtis Lamkin playing his kora, a twenty-one-stringed West African harp-lute, Ekiwah singing a poem)

In Search of Shams

When I am teeth and blood
When my eyes are clods of dirt
When my skin is
a pool for tadpoles
When I have no memory
but the one of the mad butterfly
When my muscles are hollows
where squirrels nest
When my mind is
a cut in space
When my blood
turns to vinegar —
then I will lie down
I will know I have found you

My mouth repeats a single word
as it moves like a fish
swimming in the sweet water
of your name

I will get drunk with you
we will drink the wine of the sky

– Ekiwah Adler-Belendez

(Brian Turner, Kurtis Lamkin, Ekiwah Adler-Belendez)

I first saw Ekiwah in the group conversation, Going Public With Private Feelings, featuring the poets Brian Turner and Kurtis Lamkin as well. All three men are fantastic and deserve their own blog entries on their deep, spiritual humanity but it was Ekiwah who left me in awe. When people talk about "an old soul in a new body," I'll think of him.

Blue Flower Arts explains more:

Ekiwah, which means warrior in the language of the Purepecha, is an appropriate appellation. He has been battling cerebral palsy since birth — born 10 weeks early and weighing less than two pounds. Ekiwah writes, "I cannot walk by myself, yet in my poems I not only walk, but give myself license to have eight legs and experience movement. When I read a poem, on an ephemeral level I go to the places the poet describes."

Despite years of hard therapeutic work Ekiwah developed a severe scoliosis that required surgery or would prove fatal. From Mexico, the family sent X-rays to Dr. Roy Nuzzo, a Pediatric Orthopaedist and Surgeon in New Jersey — and included Ekiwah’s books and English translations … upon reading the book of poems that fell out with the X-rays, Dr. Nuzzo said, “Ekiwah is simply an extraordinary talent . . . I was trying to figure just when I was last so taken by a specific series of writings. Who so stunningly allowed the rest of us to experience so internally the feelings of another? I decided … [Ekiwah] has the force of Dante but delivered with the temperament of Poe." Nuzzo declared then that saving Ekiwah’s life was the most important thing he would ever do.

We are all blessed for having Ekiwah with us. He once said, "I think that what poets do is decipher silence." I feel blessed I had the opportunity to be part of that silence and listen to what he had to say.

she wants to write,
all bodies look good
by candlelight, the mood is right,
pen in margins, pen all night.

Melanie Faith

The delight of having friends who are poets is they always surprise you with their wonderful work and new ideas and new ways of seeing the world. My friend Melanie goes under the pen name of Writergal76 recently introduced me to dithyramb poetry, Ancient Greek praise to glorious Dionysus! I had never heard of this form before, but I am very grateful to have been shown it. She wrote a very interesting dithyramb herself, the above lines being a sliver of it. One poetic phrase she used was, a ten karat bling. That got me thinking about our use of pop culture and I wrote to her the following:

I am always amused by pop cultural references that subliminally trickle down through our work. I cannot recall ever making a conscious decision to use "bling, bling" in my poetry too but it certainly does shows up now and then. Ah pop culture! It is everywhere and I keep thinking I might be the most out of touch white guy in America. Still, since I am running with this idea for a second, an interesting poem-cycle might be to dig through the lingo of different decades of popular music. You could have an Old School hip hop poem. I am sure someone has compiled a dictionary of Run DMC-speak, you could have odes to "Sucker MCs" and refer to everything bad as "illin'" … then go back 10 years and use Disco mummery … well, there are entire languages out there in one form or another waiting to be tapped into.

Right. It's an idea. Anyway, speaking of pop culture entering into poetry, tomorrow I will be off-line and gone for a long weekend. It's road time to the Dodge Poetry Festival! Quote:

Nearly 20,000 people are expected to welcome the 11th biennial Dodge Poetry Festival back to Waterloo Village. The Festival will return to a completely new Concert Tent, more spacious satellite performance tents, and expanded free parking facilities in the restored 19th-century canal-lock and riverside village. Join more than 60 poets ―including Ekiwah Adler-Belendez, Taha Muhammad Ali, Lucille Clifton, Billy Collins, Toi Derricotte, Mark Doty, Jorie Graham, Linda Gregg, Tony Hoagland, Linda Hogan, Kurtis Lamkin, Andrew Motion, Taslima Nasreen, Grace Paley, Linda Pastan, Gerald Stern, Sekou Sundiata, Brian Turner, and Ko Un―and dozens of accomplished musicians and storytellers for four days of poetry and music beside the Musconetcong River and among the Village’s lawns, trees, and historic buildings.

If anyone is also going please drop me a line before 7 p.m. Thursday (when I take off … yes, all night driving) and we can finally meet in that large crowd. I will take photos and get gossip and tell you all about it when I get back!

When did Grand Rapids become the poetry mecca of Michigan? Well, at least this October. Grand Valley State University will be bring Sharon Olds and Sonia Sanchez and I just found out that The Grand Rapids Community College will be bringing Sherman Alexie for a lecture (October 18)!! Their "Diversity Lecture Series XII" will feature Alexie this October and Nikki Giovanni on February 7, 2007!

Quote, Free and open to the public, however due to limited space, seating will be on a first come basis. All lectures begin at 7:00 p.m. in the Grand Rapids Community College Applied Technology Center Banquet Rooms (corner of Fountain Street and Ransom Avenue). A book signing will follow each lecture. For information, please call (616) 234-3390.

Isn't life grand?

I need to have more conversations about poetry. Or, rather, I have been enjoying the ones I have had recently so much that I find myself wishing for more. I have a friend currently in a MFA program and we periodically talk about their pros and cons of such programs. A couple of days ago the topic started out with me kvetching about my terrible self-promoting skills and how it seems nowadays I rarely attempt to get anything published. I wrote:

I might have said this before (sorry in that case) but I wish I was a better self-promoter … mainly because I know it's more of a knee-jerk reaction on my part than anything else. When I was a younger Zachary I kept running into people who were middling to poor artists but constantly pushing their work and thus got fame (though a lot of it was momentary). I'd think, "that's terrible, I'll never do that." Be careful what you wish for, I suppose. So my first reaction to the idea a poem needs to find a home other than in my notebook is, "just write, when you're dead you can get published." Usually my line of thinking in those moments is of Gerald Manley Hopkins or Mz. Emily D. who wrote for themselves and never saw fame and sometimes even urged their work be destroyed at their deaths. I don't know if I would go that far, I try to make sure someone is collecting my work as I go along; but on other moments I think, "it wouldn't hurt you to mail things out once in a while." And then I'll get a poem in some college literary magazine somewhere or on-line and feel happy …

Later in the conversation we talked about what made a good MFA program? It is marvelous to live in an age where poetry is not only seen as an art worthy of devoting your life but that there are means of actually attempting to so. The issue to me isn't whether there should or should not be MFA programs turning out poets. There are and that is the end of the conversation. No, what is highly more interesting to me is what low expectations students have of their programs:

… I think if my grad professors had made a bigger deal out of getting published it would have helped me. I was asked a while back what to look for in a MFA program. Was it the professors? Was it the program? And I wrote back (email) and said, "you will be spending $30 - 50,000 dollars to get a MFA degree. For $30,000 you better have an award-winning book at the end … if a program can't promise you that, save your money." … it's amazing to me that I spent $42,000 dollars and still do not have a book of my own poetry to my name. For the same amount of money I could have printed my poems off at iUniverse and sent a copy to every library in America … maybe even to every poet in the directory.

Huh, that is an idea .. isn't it? Well, obviously there are many poets in the world who do get their work published on a regular basis and do not have to wait until they are dead to win fame. Some of them are even coming to Mid-Michigan. I was looking through Grand Rapids' Media Mouse and found some of the following:

Grand Rapids, MI

Fall Arts Celebration-Poetry Night with Sharon Olds! and Sonia Sanchez! October 11, 2006 7:00 @ L.V. Eberhard Center. Quote, Sharon Olds, the award-winning author of eight volumes of poetry - most recently Strike Sparks, is a professor and permanent faculty member in New York University's Graduate Creative Writing Program. Sonia Sanchez is the author of more than a dozen book of poetry, including "Shake Loose My Skin: New and Selected Poems" and "Does Your House Have Lions?," which was nominated for both the NAACP image and national Book Critics Circle Awards.

Lansing, MI

The NuPoets can be found at Gregory's Ice House. Quote, Lansing's longest running urban poetry scene. Everyone is welcome every third Tuesday. $5 cover. Open Microphone @ 7:30.

November Teasers

Li-Young Lee @ Aquinas College, Nov. 7 AND Western Michigan University, Nov. 8

David and Sabrineh Fideler, translators of Love’s Alchemy, will be having a book signing and presentations on Persian Sufi poetry @ Schuler's Books, Grand Rapids, Nov. 9, 7:00.

Date: September 18, 2006

Time: 4:30 PM

Location: Rm 215/216, The Women's Center, Kirkhof Center, GVSU, Grand Rapids, MI.

I urge all and every last one of you to take Monday afternoon off and go to this reading! I first came into contact with Ingrid not because of her amazing poetry but because I was looking for someone who could help me with a question concerning the wily Afrikaans sonnet. Not knowing who she was other than a professor at the University of Cape Town I sent off a letter full of questions and probably a few misspellings.

Then, one morning about two weeks ago in the Muskegon-Hacklet Library, I made a discovery. I had gone there, in part, to look at their copy of The Book of Kells and was delighted with a giant stain-glass window taking up one whole wall with the faces of Shakespeare, Goethe, Longfellow and Prescott in multi-colored glass. On the way out I happened to glance at the New Acquisitions shelf and there was Seasonal Fires (Seven Stories Press, 2006) by none other than Ingrid de Kok! I sat down and read the entire book that morning.

A few days later I wrote her back and told of my discovery. She said she was about to embark on her reading tour of America and would be stopping at Grand Rapids to give a reading at Grand Valley State University. Here is what their Women's Center has to say about her:

Ingrid de Kok is an Associate Professor at the Centre for Extra-Mural Studies at the University of Cape Town. She has published three earlier collections of poetry: Familiar Ground (1988); Transfer (1997); Terrestrial Things (2002). The U S edition of her new volume, Seasonal Fires, was published in May 2006. Poems by Ingrid de Kok appear in over 17 anthologies in South Africa and 14 or so international anthologies. She has been published widely in literary journals in South Africa and abroad, and her poems have been translated into eight other languages, most recently Turkish. She has been awarded the Carapace/Snailpress Poetry Prize (2000); Dalro Poetry Award (2002) and the Herman Charles Bosman Award for English Literature (2003).

I believe in some off-handed way picking up a book of poetry and reading the first poem you come to shapes one's whole view on all the other poems you might read. That might seem unfair if you chose a poor poem but what excitement to discover a new world in a dozen or so lines if the poem is splendid! That was the case for me with Dolphin Eater, a poem that caused all the hairs to go up on the back of my head.

There was nothing else to eat.
So I ate the dolphin
and asked my friend
never ever to tell.

Like lightning
that night
sea struck me
and I screamed in my sleep
for a boat to take me back
to the first shore
where I had eaten no dolphin.

In my eyes dolphins dancing
in the bay close to shore
a gift of the evening tide
to the strollers on the beach.
In my mouth, dolphin.

I tricked the silent ferryman,
gave beads for land,
and the silver cargo of the dhow
discharged into my palm.

Nothing will save me now
in the waves off the cliffs.
I will not be brought home
on the leeside of a dolphin's fin. (32)

The poem immediately places us in the heart of mythology. The dolphin is a mythic creature of good will in almost ever culture it is seen in. In Greece, Dionysus turned the Tyrrhenian pirates into dolphins for kidnapping him; a dolphin rescued Arion the poet from drowning and carried him to safety. In Hindu mythology there is a dolphin associated with Ganga, the protector of the Ganges river. Dolphin and whale gods feature heavily in Polynesian religion. So it is little surprise that the taboo of eating dolphin meat would be harsh; and like many other characters in de Kok's poetry, here too the speaker is damned.

What about this theme of damnation? Let us pause a moment and reflect on not just life under South African apartheid but also the shame and conflict its post-apartheid world created. de Kok's poems in Body Maps (the new selection of her work) range with titles like "Reparation," "Too Long a Sacrifice," "Child Stretching," "Death Notices" and "Kalahari Campsite." Each poem I turn to holds a sense of pressing dread, urgent anticipation, feverish alarm. I recall reading in college the Nobel Laureate J.M. Coetzee's book Disgrace (1999) and not getting it. True, the male protagonist was unappetizing and hard to sympathize with as he womanized his way through the story. But the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that caused him to do the things he did? I knew nothing about that so I could not understand his motives. And if you don't understand the purpose of the Commission or if you forget your history and pretend other things happened during South Africa's dark years, then as de Kok says in Bring The Statues Back, concerning the removal of the monuments of apartheid's architects such as Hendrik Frensch Verwoerd:

Let's put Verwoerd back
on a public corner like a blister on the lips;
let's walk past him and his moulded hat,
direct traffic through his legs,
and the legs of his cronies of steel and stone. (142 - 43)

To understand the conditions South Africa now lives under is to understand the narrator in Dolphin Eater as well. "There was nothing else to eat," we are told and yet still through this terrible neglect the narrator is damned. There is no innocence here, "the first shore/ where I had eaten no dolphin." It is impossible to return. You might be pardoned of your evil but what good is that if it haunts you daily; "in my mouth, dolphin"? You might be cunning. You might trick Charon, "the silent ferryman," who ferries the dead across the river Styx in the underworld of Hades. But even that is pointless when there is no self-salvation. Hearkening back to the Greek myth of Arion rescue, de Kok ends the poem with this apocalyptic pronouncement: "Nothing will save me now/ in the waves off the cliffs./ I will not be brought home/ on the leeside of a dolphin's fin."

I wanted to say something about Dolphin Eater because it is one of her earlier poems, coming from Familiar Ground (1988) and de Kok gets better and better with each book. There is a good chance that this splendor might get overshadowed by many of her newer more political poems. That would be a shame because this is just as good as anything else you will find in Seasonal Fires. I hope she reads it at GVSU next Monday.

Whenever any writer or group of writers proves me wrong and attempts to fight unjust causes I must stand up and take note. I found this on Poets & Writers, Inc.:

Eighteen writers, including three who have won the Nobel Prize, recently signed a letter to the editor published in several newspapers around the world that condemns Israel’s actions in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The letter, which was published in the Independent (England), Le Monde (France), El País (Spain), and La República (Peru), describes Israel's position as an "illegal military occupation of the West Bank" and criticizes "the systematic appropriation of [Palestinian] natural resources.”

The list of writers who signed the letter includes poets Martín Espada, Carolyn Forché, and Jessica Hagedorn; fiction writers Chris Abani, Russell Banks, Arundhati Roy, and Gore Vidal, and Nobel Prize-winning fiction writers Toni Morrison and José Saramago.

To read the full text of the letter, visit the Nation.

My friend, Rina Risper, founder of the NuPoetry Movement, sent me these emails:

Enjoy Lansing's longest running urban poetry scence. Everyone welcome every third Tuesday starting Tuesday, September 19, 2006, the NuPoetry Movement featuring the NuPoets $5.00 cover, Open Mic. begins at 7:30 pm

Gregory's Ice and Smoke
2510 N. Martin Luther King Blvd. Lansing, MI.

A portion of the proceeds will go to Regina Sanchez the wife of our beloved Trinidad Sanchez to assist with funeral and medical expenses. We raised $1,000.00 on August 18, 2006.

We are looking for poets to add to the Nupoets. Must be dedicated to remembering some pieces for some performances to be seriously included in the line up. Interest is welcome from everyone.

Other things going on:

Old School Jazz Cruise presented by Big Boone Production on September 3, 2006 on the Michigan Princess. Live entertainment by Charles and Gwen Scales, Moderntribe
Boarding at 9:00 pm in Lansing, MI, $50 for couples, $30.00 for singles. For the 30 and over crowd. For more information, call 517 862-6773.

And:

The Writers Block — Sunday, September 10, 2006, 200 Block of S. Washington Square. Looking for authors, poets, journalists, songwriters, artists, musicians, booksellers and organizations promoting wares or services. $20 for space $8.00 for table. For more information, go to 223 S. Washington (Way Station Books) or email:

Cheers!

My dear friend, Ruelaine Stokes, the coordinator of the Old Town Poetry Series, sent me this email today, which I am passing on to you:

Right now in the Lansing Area, poets and musicians … are organizing a performance event to celebrate the life of Trinidad Sanchez, Jr. and to raise money for his family. The event will take place on Friday, August 18, 2006, at 8 PM at the Creole Gallery, 1218 Turner Street in Lansing.

Trinidad died without health insurance — of a massive stroke at age 63. His wife has been quite ill this past year. Our plan is to collect as much money as we can on Friday night and send it down to San Antonio with Rina Risper, who will be attending the memorial there for Trinidad on Sunday, August 20. Rina will give our contributions to Regina Chavez y Sanchez, Trinidad’s wife. Similar benefits are taking place in San Antonio, Denver and Detroit.

Sort of like Johnny Appleseed, Trinidad traveled around the country planting the seed of poetry in the hearts of anyone he met—rich or poor, women or men, old or young, black, white or brown. He was a real minstrel, an artist from the inside out.

What impressed me so much is that he took the time to visit every poetry group in Lansing that he could — the Chicano poets, the black poets, the white poets, the young poets, the old poets. He wasn’t afraid to cross the social borders, and he was just an awesome poet.

If you are unable to join us, and you want to contribute something to his family, you could send a check to:

Regina Chavez y Sanchez
2803 Fredericksburg Rd. #1215
San Antonio, TX 78201

But do join us! It will be a real celebration — not only of Trinidad — but also of our own capacity to “shine” and to sing our truth with a powerful voice. That is what he wished for all of us.

I will see you all there!

This is fab-oo news!

My friend Erin posted this fantastic news on her blog:

I'm pleased to announce that my chapbook manuscript Alluvium will be published by dancing girl press in June of 2007. Alluvium is a collection of poems surrounding the necessary struggles of queerness, with the river as an overarching motif.

You rock, Erin!

It has been a long time since I have heard anything from my dear friend Eduardo (as in Mr. E. C. Corral, if you please) … but that has more to do with the fact I have not been keeping up with other people's poetry blog for months and months. So today I clicked over to Lorcaloca and found this (which I rudely stole and am sharing with you) … I am so jealous!

We are looking for five or six more poets for our anthology tentatively titled Collections, Fetishes, & Obsessions. This anthology will be a showcase of poets who often return to the same themes, subject matter, or imagery across a body of work. We have already accepted a large number of outstanding poets from an overwhelming response to our first call for work late last year. Right now as we finish the manuscript and begin sending off proposals to publishers, we are interested in finding five or six additional poets whose writing focuses on one or more of the following categories:

1) a specific actor or actress
2) a specific singer or song
3) a specific writer or artist, or a specific text or artistic work by a writer or artist
4) a specific name-brand item
5) a specific place
6) a specific televison show or movie
7) a specific fictional character
8) a particular kind of food

Please do NOT send us poems about lost or unrequited love, death, motherhood, lust, sex, racism, feminism, home, the environment, the moon, animals, or alcoholism (unless they somehow relate to the eight categories listed above). These were the most popular topics we received in response to our first call for submissions, and we've got those bases covered. The quirkier, funnier, more bizarre, or more specific your particular obsession in your work, the better your chances of being included in our project.

Please also remember that we are most interested in a things that appear over and over again across a wide body of work. We don't necessarily want to see the only 3 poems you've ever written about Archie Bunker. Poets who are accepted will be asked later to also contribute a 300-500 word essay that discusses why their poetic obsession is important to them, their work, and the larger context of contemporary American poetry.

Please send 5-7 of your best poems in one attached document (.doc, .rtf, and .txt formats are fine — please do NOT copy and paste your work in the body of an e-mail, as this makes printing more difficult), along with a short note about yourself, to Stephen Powers & Michalene Mogensen at: . (E-mail submissions only this time, unless you query first for a postal address. The postal address listed in last year's call for submissions is no longer valid.)

DEADLINE: August 1st.

a death a day

"In the first 27 days of June, 27 soldiers and marines were killed [in Anbar Province] . . . New York Times, June 29, 2006

Birdie Jaworski brought this to my attention recently.

For those of you who know or have a loved one in the military; for those of you who wish to speak about our military presence in Iraq; for those of you wishing to do something, Michelle Buchanan has put together Operation Poem, the goal being to write a poem for every soldier that has died so far in combat. She writes:

We will not call you a casualty.
We will not number you. You are
our mothers and fathers, our aunts
and uncles, brothers and sisters,
husbands and wives, friends, lovers
and neighbors, our cousins
and grandparents.

We will remember you.

I encourage everyone to submit to this. Regardless your political stance on what is happening in the Middle East, what we are doing affects all of us.

Thank you.

Ruelaine Stokes, our coordinator of the Old Town Poetry Series, sent me this email yesterday that I am passing along to you. Whatever we can do to help, I am sure we will:

With great saddness, I am passing on the news that our beloved and enormously gifted poet Trinidad Sanchez, Jr. suffered a massive stroke on July 18th and is in the Intensive Care Unit at Methodist Hospital in San Antonio. Trino, as he is known to friends, has worked in the Lansing Schools, has appeared at WayStation Books numerous times, joined the NUpoets at Gregory's, appeared as a poet at the LCC Black History Month reading, and joined the Old Town Poets at the Creole Gallery for a fabulous reading the February before last.

Listening to Trino read, you felt like you had known him all your life. And he is not only a brilliant poet and performer. . . . . . . . . he is an artist who dedicated his life to encouraging and teaching others to write and to perform. . . . "to get out there and do it."

The word on Trino is that the stroke is massive and doctors do not give much hope for his survival. But he is surrounded by people who love him, and poets and friends have come from many places to read poetry to him and to be by his side. On Friday, the 21st, he woke up from the coma he had been in & is responding to those around him although he can only say a few words. . . .

He is not insured. I would be interested in working together with anyone interesting in co-organizing a benefit performance to raise money for his care.

Whatever we can do to help, Ruelaine, I am sure we will.

For a fabulous evening of poetry, join The NuPoet Collective along with the Old Town Poets on Thursday, July 27th, from 7 - 9PM at the Michigan Women's Historical Center (by beautiful Cooley Gardens) at 213 W. Main St. in Lansing. (If you are headed south on Capitol Ave., you will run right into it.)

There will be an open mic for poets and lyricists to perform. Everyone is welcome at this family friendly event. This event is free and open to the public. Please bring a lawn chair or blanket. Of course, out of town poets receive first up on the mic.

Poets are saving the world one word at a time. Poetry in the City at the Michigan Women's Historical Center will be hosted by Ruelaine Stokes of the Old Town Poets & Rina Risper of the NuPoets Collective. Featured poets include Old Town Poets Kate Butler, Zack Chartkoff, Tim Lane, Bob Rentschler, Ruelaine Stokes — plus the fabulous NuPoet Collective.

Make your voice heard. Join us there to either share a word or hear a word. Please invite all that you know. For more information, please call 517 372 8466.

This program is funded in part by Michigan Women's Historical Center, The New Citizens Press, The Lansing Jaycees, Patrick Baker, Dulles Copedge, Gone Wired Cafe and Gregory's Ice and Smoke.

Hi Gang …

… for about a week my computer system was down¹ which I am sure is sad and whatnot but when I got my blog back I happened to notice that I had not updated my "Contests, Submission, Award & Deadlines" section for about four months … (oops!)

I have now fixed this small problem and I invite everyone to write in if they know of a grand ragmag, 'zine or submission deadline that needs our support.

Of the things I have not fixed is our lack of air-conditioning in this house. Even though the heat and humidity only makes me mumble-headed, I feel sorry for my cat, Jellyroll.

I find little piles of damp hair on the floor everywhere he goes. I suppose being 89% fur has its downsides.

1. Virtual Community my left foot! More like Virtual Gated Community; since you can only be a member if your 'puter is working … [back]

Tim Lane will join poets Tiya Kunaiyi, Logic and Pete Vargas in honor of National Poetry Month at the Old Town Poetry Series on Wednesday, April 12, at 7:30 PM in the Creole Gallery, 1218 Turner Street in Lansing's historic Old Town. The four featured poets will demonstrate what many of us already know to be true — that Lansing has one of the hottest poetry scenes around.

An Open Mike Session will be held after the featured readers. Poets wishing to read are invited to "drop their names in the hat" at the front door.

Suggested donation: $3 (sliding scale $2-5). Free refreshments. Parking is available on the street and in the large lot on the south side of the intersection of Turner St. and Grand River Avenue.

Hope to see you there!

Glassy eyed and ready to speak fire?
"Zack Holding Up Wall,"
March 15, 2006

Thank you Dick and Laura for your wonderful comments. I thought a quick, one-note response lost in the comment box would take away from the fun of last night … so I am writing to you both a fuller, heavily spell-checked, two-note response instead.

Pain not withstanding last night was a blast. About twenty people turned up, some friends I bribed into coming (heehee), a couple of people who heard I was doing Spanish poetry and some strangers I'd never seen before. I read four translations of Garcia Lorca, Romance de la Luna, Luna, Prendimiento de Antoñito el Camborio, Muerte De Antoñito El Camborio and Muerto de amor along with little bits of explaining so the audience would understand. Sometimes banter can get out of hand and you listen to more explanation than actual poetry. I think last night there was just enough.

After that I read some of my own poetry, Leviathan Suckling about the time I went to Baja, Mexico, to see the gray whales birth, Oil Rig Nocturne about wishing to buy a decommissioned oil rig from Exxon for a dollar to turn it into a creative writing colony and several of The Syn Sonnets.

Then we opened the floor up to an open mic performance and had a healthy turn out of poets read their own work. I am always fascinated and delighted we have so much talent in Lansing. Several were first time readers at the Creole and they were wonderful! I especially liked Laura's poem based on Fiddler on the Roof.¹

1. One of the more depressing musicals that scarred my childhood, I had nightmares of being sent to Siberia years after my folks took me to see a performance when I was in fifth grade. [back]

Tonight I am calling upon the spirit of duende to help me through with this reading at the Creole Gallery, 7:30 pm. You know all about duende, even though it goes by many different names depending where you live. It is the soul of the Blues, the funk of "funkadelic," it is the silence everyone in a concert hall makes when the diva stops singing and all two thousand people suddenly realize they have been holding their breath.

Every step that an artist takes towards the tower of his perfection is at the cost of a struggle he maintains with a force, a spirit we call duende … The great artists of southern Spain know that no real emotion is possible unless there is duende … It is not a matter of ability but of blood; of ancient culture … The duende has to be aroused in the distant-most chambers of the blood … The duende surges up from the soles of the feet. This mysterious power that everyone feels but that no philosopher has explained is in fact the spirit of the earth.

Those are the words of Federico Garcia Lorca. I will be reading from some translated poems of his, from The Gypsy Ballads I do not mean to call upon duende discourteously; I really am in pain. Two nights ago I pulled a muscle in my shoulder blade at work, or pinched a nerve in my neck, it is one and the same. I can hardly turn my neck and when I do my fingers tingle like they are asleep. I have been gobbling up ibuprofen like candy drops. The down side of pain killers is that while I can function I am also a bit number than wild performances call for.

One must burn, even if they can't swivel the head very far.

Marion Stone's sonnet, Petratch on West 115th Street won first place in the The 2005 Howard Nemerov Sonnet Contest. Congradulations, Marion!

Thank you, all my friends, for helping to make this life wonderful. Thank you!

Today is my birthday. I am 36 years old offically. How curious. I suppose I normally would go on a long ramble about life; how being 36 is both frightening and exciting … but today I will hold off. I won't even post a new poem, though if you have a birthday poem (it doesn't even have to be about me) I'd love to see what you'd want to share.

Anyway, this morning I woke up and stumbled downstairs to feed the noisy birds, wild cats that live in my garage and make coffee. The stray cats get fed in this big bowl I keep by the back door. They are still scared of me (or all humans I guess) but know around the right time of morning I usually stumble out to feed them and hide in the corners of the yard to wait until I have left their food and moved off to re-fill the bird feeder that hangs by my kitchen window. I usually get sparrows and grackles and other dirty-brown birds but there are also a family of tufted titmice (which is fun to say in mixed company) and a woodpecker and a junco which all look like small black and white birds of one shape or another but have fun being messy and knocking all the seeds to the ground so the fat squirrels can lazily gorge themselves below. All this time I have the coffee pot brewing the magic liquid that keeps me going … coffee-like sludge! I like my coffee thick like mud, that way I know I might not get a good breakfast but can eat my coffee if need be (plus I am usually awake by the second cup).

I am going to Columbus, Ohio, for the weekend. Who knows what adventures await me? They say it will be mostly cloudy and windy, tempratures ranging from 41 degrees to 54. Yum! This leads me into the other point I think I should make; there was no snow today as I opened my door and wandered outside. This might not be as exciting to you as it is to me, but the thunder storms last night seem to have brought in warm air and all the water melted the three feet of snow we had on the ground! Now the world is a muddy drab, and all the dead leaves and trash blown in from the neighbor's backyard that had been hidden under the clean white snow are visible for all to see. I think later today I will go out and pick the worse of it up. It is rather bedraggled looking, to be honest.

Three of the first book contests I entered have sent out a list of their winners. While my name does not appear on any of them, the titles alone sound interesting and I hope to get my hands on the winning manuscripts and enjoy what the poets have to say. Congradulations, everyone!

A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize, Judge: Elizabeth Spires

First Place: Janice N. Harrington; From the Shadows' Darkness.

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

James Hearst Poetry Prize, Judge: Joy Harjo

First Place: Jeanne Emmons; Polio Water in 1955

Second Place: Patrick Rosal; Poem for My Extra Nipple
Third Place: Mariette Landry; Tanning

Honorable Mentions:
Dilruba Ahmed; Josiah
Natalie Diaz; Abecedarian Requiring Further Examination

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

TS Eliot Prize, Judge: Naomi Shihab Nye

First Place: Rebecca Dunham, The Miniature Room

Honorable Mentions:
Martin Earl, Obscurity
Moira Linehan, If No Moon
Immy Wallenfels, The Anti-Nostalgia Riots and Other Poems
Bill Wunder, Pointing at the Moon

You know, self-promotion has never been my strong suit.¹ But I try, I try … which is better than being trying, I suppose. However, I will be featured poet of the month at the Old Town Poetry Series in March. The flier reads a little like this:

On Wednesday, March 15th, the Old Town Poetry Series will be throbbing with passion and "duende", as Zachary Jean Chartkoff reads from his new translation of Federico García Lorca's "Romancero Gitano," the celebrated "Gypsy Ballads" at the Creole Gallery, 1218 Turner St. in Lansing's Old Town, 7:30 PM.

Garcia Lorca is possibly the most important modern poet and dramatist of the entire Spanish language. With his immortal lines: "Green, how love you green," he captured the imaginations of his generation by romanticizing the machismo, the sensuality and the deaths of the Spanish Gypsy. Chartkoff has had his poetry published in "The Red Cedar Review," "The Madison Review," "The Hawaii Review," "A Taste of Latex," the Icelandic collection, "A Book of Hope," and the brand new Lansing anthology, "4 Against the Wall," among other publications.

Refreshments will be provided. The event is open to the public at the Creole. Ample free parking is available, both on the street and in the city parking lot on Grand River at the foot of Turner Street.

An Open Mike Session will begin after the featured reader & the break. Poets wishing to read may "toss their names in the hat" at the front desk. Open to all.

Suggested donation: $3 (sliding scale $2 - $5).

1. Or so I am told … "mention your MFA in your press release," was the advice given. But no one is going to show up simply because I have a MFA, I think. [back]

I was going to write a normal blurb about how Sam, Bob, Rue and I are going to perform this Sunday to promote our book, 4 Against the Wall … but I just found out Ruelaine fell earlier this week and fractured her femur/ femora in her leg. Poor Ruelaine!

So this is going to be a Benefit Show for Ruelaine's Femora!! Please come out and join us. Our flier reads:

On Sunday, Feb. 26th, at 2 PM, Schuler Books & Music at the Eastwood Town Center will feature a poetry reading and booksigning by the authors of "4 Against the Wall" — Zack Chartkoff, Sam Mills, Robert Rentschler and Ruelaine Stokes. The books features the photography of Roxanne Frith, a photography teacher at Lansing Community College and a staff member of Schuler's.

The four poets — and their work — in many ways represent the vitality and fresh vision of the Lansing poetry scene. Together their work spans several decades in this city that is simultaneously factory town, university town, state capitol — and, over the years, both a hothouse and a sanctuary for poetry.

Included in the book is a lively set of interviews documenting the state of poetry in the Lansing area over the past three decades, in addition to collections of poetry from each of the four artists. The book will be available at Schuler's.

Even though the deadline is a far from here, I liked the motto of this contest: to further understanding and goodwill through the universal language of the arts. Hurrah! Their blub runs as follows:

Three $100 grand prizes and a video of your poem being performed at the Dancing Poetry Festival in October, plus cash awards for 1st, 2nd and 3rd prizes. Reading fee is $5 for one poem, $10 for three poems. Each poem may have up to 40 lines. Send two copies of each poem. Put your name, address and phone number on one copy only. The anonymous copy will go to the judges. Please send your entries to: Judy Cheung - Chair, 704 Brigham Avenue, Santa Rosa, CA 95404. No entries will be returned.

Postmark Deadline: June 1 (early entries encouraged)

In all the excitment that is the weekend, I seem to have forgotten to say anything about the poetry reading I attended on Sunday. While my friend Sam Mills has been the mastermind behind Burning Desires: an evening of erotic poetry, Lansing very own Rina Risper stepped up to produce the event this year. It was a great show. The only thing that could have made it better was having Sam and Leonora Smith as two of the readers, but sadly they were both out of town. We missed you Sam, Leonora!

Still, a steamy Sunday is a lot of fun and the marvellous news is that we raised nearly $400 for the new Banyan! The gallery had art on the wall by Jim Thompson, an abstract expressionist, and "radio personality" Deb Hart was a wonderful M.C. She had the whole "witty banter" down to a T; got the crowd engaged but didn't overshadow the poets themselves. You rock, Deb! It is hard to single out certain poets for praise over others, there wasn't a bad (or un-sexy) poet there. However, both Diva and Tiya Kunaiyi both had performances that I recalled with admiration later. Catch both them at other Lansing poetry events and you will not be sorry!

Our own local alternative paper, CityPulse, wrote the following blurb about our reading:

The hottest Valentine ticket in Lansing is the annual Burning Desires poetry steambath, produced by the Nupoets Collective and the Old Town Business and Art Development Association. at 1210 Turner St., Lansing. Lansing’s old and new school poets vividly demonstrate the power of words to elicit spiritual, mental and (our favorite) physiological reactions relating to the emotion of love. Ruelaine Stokes, Rina Risper, Zachary Chartkoff, Logic, Tiya Kunaiyi, Diva, Joe Peligro, Daniel Crocker, Adrienne Lewis, Sam Mills, Kate Butler, and Leonora Smith are featured in this year’s reading, a fundraiser for the Banyan Gallery. Doors open at 1 p.m.; verbal flames start licking loinward at 1:30. $5 donation. (517) 371-4600.

A good time was had by all.

My friend Erin just sent me an email with two bits of interesting things I want to pass on to you. One being a new composer I have never heard of, John Corigliano. She writes: I'm at the library, and when I leave I'll be checking out John Corigliano's Symphony No.1 on CD for a listen tonight. You might like it. I heard it a year ago in a class called Art of Listening, and it floored me, wide eyes and everything. Very intense, has to do with illness, a comment on AIDS actually. So, my friend, I am off to my own public library to see if I can find this. Thanks, Erin! You rock!

The other information is a link she sent. It is to the University of Colorado at Boulder's magazine, divide, which just closed its window on submissions for its next issue but I thought posting their request would be interesting. For one, I have yet to meet anyone who actually is "enlightened." I have met a lot of people who think a bit too highly about themselves, but the term "enlightenment" I save for a select few, all of whom are imaginary. For another, I love to travel and these questions have got me thinking.

What do you think?

In the mid-Nineteenth century, during his travels to the Kingdom of Hawaii, Mark Twain wrote "Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrowmindedness." In more recent years, Larry McMurty suggested that "It may be that the availability of speedy travel has mainly worked to make the human animal—or at least the American animal—more impatient." The next issue of "divide #4: Travel and Enlightenment" will be devoted to an exploration of the tension and potential of these two statements. In other words, what is the potential of travel in our global culture? To consider:

Barry Lopez suggested that in order to become a good writer, one ought to "get away from the familiar". But he went on to say that travel to exotic destinations need not be the way to exit the familiar. So what, then, does travel mean?

Etymologically, travel is akin to travail. Is travail, in fact, an imperative element of enlightened travel?

What is the distinction between traveler and tourist? Is this distinction dissolving?

What dangers of cultural appropriation exist? How should a traveler treat a distinct (and foreign) culture? What value exists in preservation of/noninterference with existing cultures?

Is the notion of enlightenment through travel a pretentious intellectual construct? Must one launch into any journey, of any length and type (physical, emotional, etc.) with an existing seed of understanding for the beautiful, for the potential for enlightenment?

What constitutes enlightenment? Does it exist in a lyric moment, or arise in a murky haze? Must it be precise and tangible?

The Old Town Poetry Series will present an Evening in honor of African American culture, this coming Wednesday, February 15th, 7:30 PM, at the Creole Gallery, 1218 Turner St. in Lansing's Old Town. Their flyer reads:

Featuring storyteller Charles Thornton and poets Rina Risper and Harry Reed, the evening will highlight a medley of stories & poems reflecting the African American experience. Thornton is a storyteller both by nature and by profession — also a horse trainer and one of the co-founders of the Charles Drew Science Enrichment Program at Michigan State University. Risper is the founding editor of the New Citizens Press and the coordinator of the popular and dynamic NUpoets group in Lansing. Reed is a history professor, recently retired from MSU and now teaching at the University of Colorado-Boulder in the Dept. of Ethnic Studies.

Open Mike Session will begin after the featured readers & the break. Poets wishing to read may "toss their names in the hat" at the front desk. Open to all.

Free refreshments. Fabulous conversation. Parking available on the street and in the large lot on the south side of the intersection of Grand River Avenue and Turner Street.

Suggested donation: $3 (sliding scale $2 - $5).

Burning Desires
February 12, 2006
1210 Turner St.
1:00 pm

Mark your calendars! If you were ever curious as to what I (or a dozen other local poets for that matter) sound like live, come join us next Sunday:

This Sunday, February 12, Old Town will burn with desire as passionate poetic rhetoric engulfs the area. The Old Town Business & Art Development Association (OTBADA) in conjunction with The Nupoet Collective have joined forces to set ablaze the hearts of poetry enthusiasts everywhere as they present the 2006 Burning Desires poetry showcase.

Burning Desires, an annual poetry event, is one of Lansing’s most talked about events. Known for its
inspiring themes and eclectic display of area talent, the event continues to grow each year in both
programming and attendance.”The poetic legacy and deep roots into the local poetry scene is what Burning Desires is all about,” said Rina Risper, editor in chief of The New Citizens press Newspaper. “The poets performing have all tapped into the raw, and often unnoticed, artistic pool of the capital area.””

Creator Sam Mills has been the main staple in the event’s planning process for 15 years. The event was created in an effort to attract art patrons into Old Town during the slow winter months. He felt that Burning Desire’s intriguing element of mystery is what has made the program most memorable and consequently grow in popularity over the years. “You never know what’s going to happen” he stated. The event has become an excellent and easily accessible avenue for the public to experience the diverse array of poetic voices locally featured. “It’s a great way for audience to see a variety of poets and sample differing taste on the topic the same topic (love)”.

Reception and refreshments will be next door at the Banyan Gallery.

I will be one of four readings from 4 Against the Wall at Schuler's Books in the Eastwood Towne Center on Sunday, Feb 26. at 2 p.m.

Our flier reads:

Four poets, four voices. "4 Against the Wall" is a collection of poems from four poets living in Lansing, Michigan, but their voices speak well past the city boundaries. Their work, both together and separately, spans several decades in a city that is simultaneously factory town, university town, state capitol-and, over the years, both a hothouse and sanctuary for poetry.

This unique collection showcases not only the recent work of Zachary Chartkoff, Sam Mills, Robert Renstchler and Ruelaine Stokes, but also a spirited round table discussion of the state of poetry-and-of-the-times remarkable poetry scene in Lansing - that they have witnessed over three decades.

Win Money — Eat Desserts — Love the Vibe of Entertaining!

I do believe there are only four people helping to keep poetry alive in Lansing, MI. Rina is two of them. She just sent me this note, which I pass on to you:

Calling all poets, MC's and rappers currently enrolled in college and high school — to enter Lansing Community College’s 3rd annual, "Lyrical Slam and Poetry Jam", Wednesday, February 22, 2006 from 6:00 pm to 9:00 pm in the Kennedy Cafeteria in the Arts and Science Building! The winner in both college and high school categories will receives $100, a chance to perform on the radio, and the winning poems will be published in LCC’s annual literary journal, the Washington Square Review.

The Slam will be hosted by the coordinator of the Nupoets and Publisher of The New Citizens Press, Rina Risper. There will also be a special performance by Grammy nominated, Umar bin Hassan, one of the forefathers of urban poetry and a member of The Last Poets. There will also be performances by The Nupoets and other guests.

To enter, e-mail a copy of your poem to or mail it to PO Box 19006 Lansing MI 48901 by February 8, 2006. (Please include "LCC 2006 Poetry Contest" in the subject line of your email or on your envelope.) Please keep it clean. All poet contestants must be at Lansing Community College's Kennedy Cafeteria between 5:00 pm and 5:30 pm.

For those who don’t want to enter the slam, but want to read, there’s an opportunity to participate in an open mic at the end of the program.

This event is free and open to the public. For more information, please call 517 372 8466. (All material must be in spoken word form)

This program is sponsored and produced by Lansing Community College Student Life and Leadership Office, The Lansing Community College Multicultural Event Planning Committee, The New Citizens Press and The Nupoet Collective.

Tim Lane and Ruelaine Stokes are the other two.

Happy Islamic New Year! It's also the 3rd day of the Chinese New Year (year of the dog). Let the world revamp; they say change is painful but I'd like to see some "out and out" changes take place for starts. I want a little vamping.

Today I have been thinking about stories and series and something my brother, Eli, wrote in 2004, When Science And Appliance Meet We All Go Bare:

[The] entry for Douglas Wolk's blog, Lacunae, contained an invitation to its readers to participate in something called "NaSoAlMo:" National Solo Album Month. The idea, in a nutshell, was for readers to write and record an entire LP's worth of music entirely by themselves during the month of November. The album had to be at least 29 minutes long and could contain one cover song.

So I thought, what a neat idea. Why not have a "NaSoAlMo" for poetry as well? After all, what poet wouldn't like the idea of having 28 new pages of work to show case and present to friends, win awards with, get published?

So, since today is the last day of January and tomorrow will be wonderful February, let us set the rules for our NaWUPoBo, National Whomp Up Poetry Book Month:

* The book will be 28 pages long, one poem for each day.

* All poetry is welcome. since we are open to all genres, forms and styles.

I imagined this as something we can post daily on our websites, so we can follow the creative developments, but since not everyone has a website and this is open to any and all who want to participate, just keep your poems together and we can email, snail mail or telephone the poetry to each other at the end of the month.

What do you think of this, my friends?

Poetry Workshop, Saturday, Feb. 4, 2:40-3:40 PM, Hannah Community Center, 819 Abbott Road in East Lansing — in conjunction with the Mid-Winter Singin