The Colorado Poet, #26, Spring 2014
Inside this Issue:
Pandora’s Box--
A Lyric Scan from the San Miguel Watershed
(by Art Goodtimes)
APOLOGIES … Forgive my inconsistent attention to this column. Pandora means “all gifts” in Greek, but I’ve been hunkered down under an avalanche of duties and responsibilities, some politic and others personal … But I’m back. So send me news of poetry doings in your region of the state. I’ll do my best to pass ‘em along.
ROCKING THE MUSE IN BONEDALE … Valerie Haugen and Lon Winston’s Thunder River Theatre of Carbondale hosted the 4th annual Karen Chamberlain Poetry Festival honoring the memory of Roaring Fork poet and mentor Karen Chamberlain. This year’s theme was “Beneath the Surface” and featured Western Slope Poet Laureate Aaron Abeyta of Antonito; performance poet and teacher Judyth Hill of San Miguel de Allende (Mexico); Bourque slam master Don McIver; Minnesota poet, social activist and journalism professor Rich Broderick; New Mexican nurse poet Katherine DiBella Seluja; rowdy rock poet Lenny Chernila of Denver; Aspen’s Neobeat wunderkind Micah Franz; Front Range poet, educator and essayist Jared Smith; and Salida’s Heart of the Rockies poet Barbara Ford
Workshops included Heartlink publisher Stewart Warren’s “Conversing with Sophia” which used the Tarot “to strike up conversations with the divine”; “Persona Poems” with healing poet Airica Parker of Fort Collins; Conifer poet and award-winning teacher F. Reetz’s “Shovel and Pickaxes: Three Surprising Structures for Poetry Writing”; Western State at Gunnison’s poet professor Mark Todd explored playfulness with “The Fun’s In How You Say A Thing”; Santa Fe’s Debbi Brody led “Writing Your Ars Poetica”; the incomparable master teacher, poet and creative genius Judyth Hill did the “Dazzling Wobble”; Aaron Abeyta of the San Luis Valley taught “Going Beneath the Surface of a Poem: Writing Poetry with Dimension, Vision and Sound”; Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer and myself channeled Dolores LaChapelle and William Stafford “Going Deep into Sacred Land”; Glenwood Springs poet, columnist, Forest Service public affairs officer and Roaring Fork elder Bill Knight submerged participants in the creative process “Beneath the Surface Under the Wave”; the brilliant Don McIver crossed the boundaries between slam and verse in asking the question, “What Is Spoken Word?”; Grand Junction’s Latin scholar and poet L. Luis López surprised folks and Carbondale’s own Kim Nuzzo guided them through “The Poetry of Loss and Healing.”
TELLITARTS …
Poets and writers in Telluride have organized under the new banner Telluride Literary Arts. The group is proposing a May literary arts festival the weekend before Memorial Day. Included in the festivities will be a poetry component – a Talking Gourds sharing circle at 2 p.m. on Satyrday, May 17th, at Arroyo’s in Telluride (next door to the hardware store on main street) and at 4 p.m. the legendary Jack Mueller will lead a dialogue on craft. …
This latest collaboration follows on the heels of an active poetry scene in Colorado’s mountain pot paradise. Since 1989, Talking Gourds has morphed from festival into club, holding monthly meetings to the rhythms of , featured readers and the gourd-passing’s lyric camaraderie -- the First Tuesday of every month, at Arroyo’s on Telluride’s main street next door to the Hardware Store. January brought the funny, academic, street-smart and just plain masterful David Rothman of Crested Butte and Boulder as the series’ first guest poet of the year. There’s a Colorado poet laureate in the making, in my book … February our scheduled features from the North Fork got stopped cold with a good snowstorm and hosts Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer and myself improvised on the night’s delicious theme, Sex. We did several rounds of the Gourds Circle before venturing into the foot-deep powder … March ushered in Haz Saïd of Durango and his good friend and former teacher, the carpenter poet of Berkeley, Mark Turpin. Turpin’s book Hammer (Sarabande Books, Louisville, 2003) won praise and he’s at work on a new manuscript that he read from, flipping sandpaper pages of a loose-leaf binder. Haz (rhymes with jazz) has a chapbook on Kindle and a library of video clip prosepoems/flashfiction at the website “Cowbird.” The theme that night was “Taxes” and I got to kick things off with Tennyson’s Godiva …
For April 1, All Fool’s Day in National Poetry Month, we have that North Beach legend living in hermitage on Log Hill Mesa near Ridgway, Jack “Budada” Mueller, whose new book, Amor Fati (Lithic Press, Grand Junction, 2013) has us up all hours pondering his imponderable paradoxy … May 6th Tish Ramirez is coming up from the Navajo Rez … June 3rd it’s Alan Wartes and Issa Forest from Tomichi Creek outside Gunnison … and July 1st the daughter of Mysto the Magi and a former child of Telluride, spoken word poet Aama Harwood of Durango … Also happening nearby – ACE of Norwood is sponsoring a regular Gourd Circle poetry series at the Livery in Norwood on the last Thursday of each month … For more info, call Tellitarts at 970.729.0220
MARK FISCHER POETRY PRIZE … Once again Telluride Arts hosts the 16th annual awards in honor of Telluride’s beloved lawyer-poet-raconteur who died way too young and in whose memory prizes are given out by Mark’s widow, Commissioner Elaine Fischer. Mark was a daring innovator who combined a polyglot’s command of languages with a quirky sense of humor and a passion for obtuse words. In that spirit, winning entries are selected that best exhibit the qualities of originality, novelty, complex meaning, linguistic skill and wit. The wilder the better. Judge this year will be last year’s prize winner, Kyle Harvey of Fruita. Awards of $200 first prize, $150 second prize, $100 third prize, and $50 honorable mention will be presented at a celebratory reading in Telluride on May 17th at 6 p.m. at Arroyo’s Wine Bar & Gallery as part of the first annual Telluride Lit Fest. Deadline for submission is April 30th of 2014. For more information, visit the Telluride Arts website: telluridearts.org/mark-fischer-poetry-prize
THE SHAPE OF CAUGHT WATER … Few wait 30 years to publish their first book of poetry, especially an émigré San Franciscan with Santa Fe roots, who ran with the pack in the Poetry Flash world of the Sixties/Seventies Bay Area and its Renaissance lit scene. This poet joined the Cloud House street bards of the Mission. Knew North Beach and opened her own bookstore and poetry venue in the Duboce Triangle. Now she makes an adobe home of New Mexico with a writer husband and college-age daughter … Robyn Hunt’s The Shape of Caught Water (Red Mountain Press, Santa Fe, 2013) may be a first book, but it’s not the product of youthful practice. Hers is a seasoned voice. Just the title catches us up short. These poems will be interrupting the flow of things -- grabbing a little of the uncatchable to see what shape can be made. They cup their hands in the quotidian rapids and trap what can be pulled out of the net of language -- how life feels, how it flashes a moment before it spills and is gone … Traveling is a central trope of this collection. As it is for most of us. We are a driving culture. Restless. Picking up roots and relocating to places where we find ourselves “alone with our sentences.” On a journey to recollect the moving forward and away that is our modern path. And that way leads through intersections, Bob Dylan at the wheel, traveling mandolins, Eve in Paris, too close tailgates, a man on a bridge in California, nightmare streets, summer swims, and days riding the miraculous animal. We watch a daughter driving, hear “wheels thrum over ridged linoleum.” … Life is on the move. It’s persistent like water. Only curling into eddies and side streams as it gets caught and held. Robyn opens her book of illusory lyrics and lays them before us like a fresh-caught string of rainbows. Gives us enough narrative to hint at place, embed the images in the clay of Santa Fe, the West coast. But her images leap and swirl, bunch and bump, toss themselves across chasms. They mean one thing, and then slip into something else. Elusive as nibbles on the line ... In this mature collection she hammers together “porches that lean one against another.” Grows restless with “arguments like foreplay.” Makes us party to ”lips of truancy” that “ignore night’s instruction.” With her as guide we visit “a widow’s house heavy with keepsakes.” Learn that “this life is made from scratch and prayer.” Voyeurs, we watch ”wrists tied to the bed frame of obligation.” Explore the “expansive torso of the imagination” … Robyn fishes shapes out of the flow -- images and memories, dreams and ashes. We tag along and marvel at the depth of the current, the pull of the song. Like the best women writing today, Hunt is fiercely honest. Her poetry uses a marvelously American cadence. Never static. But often staccato. Elliptic. And then rolling along eloquent. She makes lists. Takes us from one deep pool to another, from anger to pleasure, from longing to remorse. Images linger and fade … This is a brilliant book. Like the works of my friend Michael Daley of the Pacific Northwest. It isn’t a quick read. Nor always an easy one. What of the invisible gets caught and seen depends almost on how much time one spends, swimming in its waters. But the rewards are great. The shapes invigorating. This is a book to take with you, sit beside a stream and ponder. The more you read, the more it will come to mean … Highly recommended.
LOTS OF POETRY …
Northwest of Grand Junction, Lithic Press publisher and astronomer poet Danny Rosen has teamed up with Kyle Harvey of Fruita Pulp Gallery and Cavalcade Nightclub to host a monthly Poetry Night In Fruita. Poet and book reviewer John Nizalowski of Colorado Mesa University joined Jennifer Hancock (a fellow prof at the college) and Grand Junction veterinarian poet H. Frank Coons for a mid-march reading, and your truly and friends are featured in April … Ridgway has its Open Bard series at the Sherbino Theature on the first Thursday of every month. Pam Uschuk and William Pitt Root were featured in March and L. Luis López of Grand Junction in April. A sign-up sheet open mike follows the invited guest. $5 admission … The Sideshow Emporium and Gallery has been sponsoring great poetry readings in Dolores at 411 Central on the town square. Megan Coxwell read from her new chapbook, Darkened Rooms, in mid-March. Donations are welcome. For more info, call 970-739-4646 … In Montrose it’s Meg Nagel, coordinator for Volunteers and Adult Programs, who sponsors poetry readings at the Montrose Regional Library District at 320 South 2nd St.. April 2nd Word Sharks performed, including David Feela of Cortez , Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer of Placerville and yours truly. For more info, 970-964-2548
GARY SNYDER …
Attending the Quivira Coalition in Albuquerque this past fall, I got the chance of a lifetime to have breakfast at the Range Café with one of my forever icons, the Sierra Nevada poet and deep ecologist … Gary’s 83, and a widower, so his physical body is way slowed down. I invited him to Telluride, as Mountainfilm folks would have loved to have hosted him, but he declined, regretfully. Traveling is getting harder, and as a Zen Buddhist sage he has his mountain cabin to take care of … We talked of calendars – something we’ve corresponded about and traded views on for a number of years. He prefers a 50,000 + 13 scan to stretch us back to our human roots in culture. I prefer a North American calendar, 15,000 + 13 -- using the latest DNA info for the appearance of the first human on Turtle Island …
Found out that his maternal grandfather worked in the mines at Leadville for a few years, before moving to Texas. Gary’s grandma divorced and moved her daughter, Gary’s mom, to the Pacific Northwest. Interesting to discover his Colorado connection … I had to ask him why he hadn’t ever written fiction. He explained that it was his goal writing poetry and non-fiction to tell the truth, and that he wasn’t very good at making up stories – although he allowed some folks he knew were … Funny, in a curious kind of way, after 40 years of assiduously following someone, reading everything they’ve ever written, to finally have a meal together and get a chance to share a few words and thoughts.
