Cold
A family burns chairs, clothes, and axes
but nothing stops the silent killer.
Neighbors find them frozen in bed.
Another year trees explode.
Crows fall from trees.
Lakota winter counts show a black-ink crow.
Ben Kindle writes, “K’agi’ o’ta c’uwi’tat’api.”
Crows, they freeze to death.
This enemy seeps through sills and door jambs.
Chimney flues fill with its wrath.
North is its direction.
Nothing stops it from reaching
through flesh to the center of bone.
A Light To Do Shellwork By, by Georgiana Valoyce-Sanchez. (Scarlet Tanager Press. $18.00. ISBN
. . . The morning of my Giveaway
at the Sunrise Ceremony
sprinkling tobacco to the east
of the ceremonial ring
I prayed to my Papago Pima gramma
who died a few years back but is
alive somewhere . . . . (p. 35).
The narrator knows the grandmother is “alive somewhere,” and
the poem adds another dimension to that reality. Another intergenerational work
is “The Red Shawl,” a dramatic poem that works well on the page. Valoyce-Sanchez
has faith the readers will receive her words as living testaments. Her
generosity of spirit pervades the poems.
I am honored to have been asked to write the foreword to
this important book, which includes these comments about the title: “Especially
moving in A Light to Do Shellwork By are the poems about the
narrator’s father, in his nineties, as he finds his way through blindness and
memories. Respect for this man’s life embodies the respect for all the cultural
traditions. His [Chumash] people have survived over five-hundred years of contact
with settlers from the west and the east. Prayers, songs, dances, and poems are
among the techniques of survival, for a people and for the individuals.
Gratitude to Georgiana Valoyce-Sanchez for this magnificent gift” (ix-xi). A stanza
from the title poem “A
Light To Do Shellwork By,” tells about the day the poet’s father died, :
The ocean sang in my father’s hands
abalone pendants shimmered rainbows
from the ears of pretty girls
and shellwork dotted driftwood carvings
cowrie shells, cone shells, volute shells
red, black, white, blue, brown, green shells
the life they once held
sacred
old stories etched on
the lifeline of my father’s palm . . . . (p. 61)
The verse includes culturally based topics as well as recent
political issues, such as tribal terminations by the federal government.
California Indigenous peoples suffered some of the worst persecutions and
violence from settlers. A Light To Do Shellwork By is a healing work
that looks forward without forgetting the past.
Biography: GEORGIANA VALOYCE-SANCHEZ, author of A
Light To Do Shellwork By: Poems (Scarlet Tanager Books, 2022), is
a descendant of Islander and Coastal Chumash Peoples from her father’s lineage,
and O’odham (Akimel and Tohono) from her mother’s lineage. She is currently an
enrolled member of The Coastal Band of the Chumash Nation and chair of the
Chumash Women’s Elders Council for the Wishtoyo Foundation. She taught many
different classes for the American Indian Studies Program at California State
University, Long Beach, including two classes she designed: “World Genocides:
An American Indian Perspective,” with graduate student Anna Nazarian-Peters,
and “Conduits of California Indian Cultures: Art, Music, Dance and
Storytelling.” She retired from CSULB in 2014, after twenty-seven years. She
was a board member for many years at the California Indian Storytelling
Association, and she continues to be an advocate for California Indian
languages and sacred sites. Her poem “I Saw My Father Today” is on display at
the Embarcadero Muni/BART station as one of twelve poems cast in bronze and
placed prominently in San Francisco.
Praise for A Light To Do Shellwork By
— Joy Harjo (Muscogee Creek Nation), 23rd U.S. Poet Laureate
“An illustration of intimate family history that’s a
testament to the continuity of Indigenous life and poetics in California.” Kirkus
Review
JIGSAW PUZZLING: ESSAYS IN A TIME OF PESTILENCE by Denise Low, Meadowlark Press. Games/Essay/Memoir
The 15 essays in this book explore the pop culture of jigsaw puzzlers while reflecting on art, geography, history, and more. Denise Low considers mosaics, reassembled pottery shards, play as rehearsal for life, and more. She quotes other literary jigsaw authors like Susan Sontag, Gaston Bachelard, Margaret Drabble and poets James Merrill and Dick Allen. “I never underestimate the power of a single puzzle piece. It fits within a whole, like each moment of my unfolding life story.” —Denise Low
Online discount 20% off. Click on this link: PAYPAL LINK Also available on Barnes & Noble, Amazon, and the publisher’s page Meadowlark Books. Paperback, retail $20. 122 pages, ISBN 978-1956578263, 6.2 ounces, 5.98 x 0.28 x 9.02 inches.
PRAISE FOR Jigsaw Puzzling
What is a sane, reasonable response to an insane, unreasonable Pandemic? Unlike some of us who lurched into bread baking, home renovation, or exploring the life of the hermit, Denise Low instead challenged a world of logic and symmetry by setting out to master the domain of the jigsaw puzzle. This is a realm of surety: logic within defined boundaries. Solving a puzzle demands concentration and leads to a higher contemplation of morality and ethics, as well. Denise Low has brilliantly accomplished this unfolding of the simple into the multifarious with insight and charm. —Sandy McIntosh, author of Plan B: A Poet’s Survivors Manual
Obsessions never fail to get my attention, especially when they concern things I completely overlook. Jigsaw Puzzling is a dive down unsuspected rabbit holes of jigsaw culture and plague history, lessons in art, geography, and much more. If you know Denise Low’s books–I do, I’ve read them all–you know her as a sharp, droll observer of the natural world, including the world of human nature. Her quiet, poetic voice leads a reader into hidden rooms filled with surprises, striking notes that resonate deeply with the world we live in. A wonderful read with or without a pandemic! –Jim Gilkeson, author of Three Lost Worlds: A Memoir.
LUCILLE LANG DAY
The talented, generous writer Lucille Lang Day is author most recently of Birds of San Pancho and Other Poems of Place (Blue Light Press: First World Publishing, 2020). She contributes to the literary community in so many ways. First, she is publisher of Scarlet Tanager Press, an independent press that publishes Indigenous and other writers. She edits anthologies, including Red Indian Road West: Native American Poetry from California (co-edited with Kurt Schweigman, Scarlet Tanager) and Fire and Rain: Ecopoetry of California (co-edited with Ruth Nolan. She organizes readings, supports Scarlet Tanager authors at the Associated Writing Programs conference, and appears at events. In addition to her support for others, her own poetry is dynamite. The title poem of her latest book Birds of San Pancho begins:
belting its exuberant song
above
the dusty, cobblestone street.
The bird
is masked like a raccoon, its
breast
yellow as the butterflies that
flit
amid hibiscus and
bougainvillea. . . .
The poet describes the scene with
bold brushstrokes, unafraid of interpretive adjectives like “exuberant” and a vivid
comparison of a bird’s head markings to a raccoon’s mask. She is in control of
syntax as she effortlessly progresses through the poem. Her balance of
description and reflection keeps the poem interesting as it builds to its
ending point:
Later, at the lagoon, a great
blue heron,
a little blue heron, a green
heron,
a night heron, two great
egrets, eight
snowy egrets and twenty cattle
egrets
gather while brown pelicans
dive
for fish and the sun’s bright
disk sinks
into the sea. When it
disappears,
the egrets rise in groups and
pairs
to settle in two coconut palms
for the night. Oh, to sit up
there too—
safe, having eaten my
fill—with
folded wings, watching over
creation.
Focus is on the birds and nature’s
patterns, not the poet’s life and ego—until the very end when the poet enters
into the moment to share, not to overwhelm the entire poem. Her “Vincent’s
Bedroom at Arles” is a perfect double ekphrastic poem—about the painting and
about the physical room itself—and then it turns out the Arles citizenry
recreated this room because the original was destroyed during World War II. This gives Day occasion to ponder
intersections of fiction and reality on many levels, made (seemingly)
effortless in her poet’s spell. “At Lake Tahoe” is another well calibrated poem
about the poet’s Wampanoag ancestry set side-by-side with California Indigenous
people of this place, the Washoes. It ends:
Yet in summer Washoes still do the Pine Nut Dance
and Wampanoags do the Grass Dance to keep the world
in balance and remind us that the Earth is living, every
rock is sacred, and every tree and salmon has a soul. (79)
Day is able to tie two coasts together in this ending—the Massachusetts
Wampanoags and the California Washoes. This understanding of unities is one of
the pleasures of the collection. Day has a science Ph.D., and also M.F.A. in
creative writing. She puts these two perspectives to good use in her writing.
It is precise, complete, and transformative.
#
Interview with SF Review of Books Zara's
Blog (zararaabblog.blogspot.com)
Poem by Lucille Lang dYetay, Valpraiso, “Birds of San
Pancho”
Poem by Lucille Lang Day Poetry
Foundation, “Tooth Painter,”
Video of Lucille Lang Day Berkeley Public Library
poetry reading,
Video of Lucille Lang Day “How
to Publish a Memoir,”
Lucille Lang Day is the author of seven
full-length poetry collections and four poetry chapbooks. Her latest collection
is Birds of San Pancho and Other Poems of Place (Blue Light
Press, 2020). She has also edited the anthology Poetry and Science:
Writing Our Way to Discovery, and she coedited Fire and Rain:
Ecopoetry of California and Red Indian Road West: Native
American Poetry from California. Other publications are two children’s
books and a memoir, Married at Fourteen: A True Story. Her many
honors include the Blue Light Poetry Prize, two PEN Oakland-Josephine Miles
Literary Awards, the Joseph Henry Jackson Award, and eleven Pushcart Prize
nominations. She holds an M.F.A. in creative writing from San Francisco State
University, an MA in zoology, and a Ph.D. in science/mathematics education from
the University of California at Berkeley. She lives in Oakland, California. She
is of Wampanoag, British, and Swiss/German descent. www.lucillelangday.com
Denise Low, Kansas Poet Laureate 2007-09, won the
Editor’s Choice Red Mountain Press Poetry Award for Shadow Light.
Other publications are memoirs The Turtle’s Beating Heart: One Family’s
Story of Lenape Survival (U. of Nebraska Press,) and Jigsaw
Puzzling: Essays in a Time of Pestilence (Meadowlark, Sept.
2022); Wing (Red Mountain, Hefner Heitz Award finalist); Casino
Bestiary (Spartan); and Jackalope (fiction, Red
Mountain). She is co-author of Northern Cheyenne Ledger Art by Fort
Robinson Breakout Survivors (U. of Nebraska Press, Ks. Notable Book).
Her PhD in literature and creative writing is from the University of Kansas,
and her MFA is from Wichita State. At Haskell Indian Nations University, she
founded the creative writing program. She teaches for Baker University’s School
of Professional and Graduate Studies. Board memberships include Indigenous
Native Poets (In-Na-Po) and Associated Writers and Writing Programs (past
president and contributing editor). Her heritage includes British Isles,
German, and Lenape/Munsee (Delaware). She lives in California’s Sonoma County.www.deniselow.net
Kathryn Kysar is the author of the poetry books Dark Lake and Pretend the World, and she edited Riding Shotgun: Women Write about Their Mothers. We attended graduate school together at Wichita State University, one of the oldest MFA programs in the country, and we have remained friends. Kysar writes passionately and cares passionately about participating in literary communities. She founded the creative writing program at Anoka-Ramsey Community College, and she has been active as a board member of major literary organizations (AWP, Rain Taxi) as a behind-the-scenes booster. She’s recently published poetry in The Mollyhouse and Sleet (forthcoming). Links to recent poems are “After You Leave” in Voicemail Poems; “Photograph: Little League Practice” in The Under Review; “Lake Superior: Three Scenes of Summer” in About Place Journal. This email interview takes place May 10, 2022.
Denise Low: You are one of the most socially committed people I know. How does this affect your choices in writing?
Kathryn Kysar: I am in a constant state of growth and self-correction in my struggle with internalized racism. I am a product of our patriarchal capitalist society that is based on genocide and slavery, and I continue to learn about this history and how my privilege warps my perceptions. I am currently writing a travelogue about a driving trip I took with my son last summer that examines our family’s settler colonialist past and the false stories conveyed through the generations.
DL: Writing about your second book of
poetry Pretend the World (Holy Cow! Press), Rigoberto
González writes, “Kysar's ability to
politicize parenting and gender offer a gripping but blunt way of seeing
the lives we create, the wars we wage, the things we consume, and the
connections we make without overbearing sentimentality or righteousness.” (Poetry
Foundation). How has being a parent informed your writing subject matter
and your writing process?
KK: Gender inequities continue to be a central focus of my
writing. As the parent of a transgender child, I have closely witnessed the
horrors of transphobia and the deep harm of daily microaggressions. Is the
personal political? Of course. Our lives, including the act of raising children,
take place within our racist, sexist, and classist society. To ignore the
context of within which we parent would be ignoring these truths. One function
of poetry is to unveil the truth, to say the unsaid, hopefully “without
overbearing sentimentality or righteousness.”
DL: Collaboration is one of the ways
you work with community. I remember for Pretend the World that
you collaborated with visual artists to create a show of artworks that
responded to individual poems. What was that like for you, to see your poems
re-envisioned in another genre? What other collaborations have you been
involved in recently?
KK: Thanks for asking about collaboration! The visual art shows that accompanied Pretend the World were astounding to me. I was in awe that my humble poems could trigger such engaging and varied pieces. I invited five artists who work in different mediums to respond to the poems in the book with their artwork. Some pieces, like Jan Elftmann’s sculptural white horse, referenced a single line in a poem. Philip Noyed’s “Dresses Everywhere” is a hanging globe of little dresses that echoed an entire poem as well as the book’s title. The show was presented in several galleries, and Jes Lee’s poetry videos are available on YouTube. It was a joyously fun project. I am currently writing poems in response to a series of Angela Spencer’s tarot card paintings, and we have upcoming shows scheduled for 2022-2023. My last big project was a collaborative recording of the poems from Pretend the World. I invited guest poets, musicians, and singers to record a poem. One of the happiest moments of my life was sitting in the studio sound booth and hearing how others understood and expressed my work so eloquently.
DL: In an interview
for Write On Door County (2017), you wrote: “I deeply enjoy collaborative
creation across the arts: I have had several shows with visual artists, written
poems to pre-recorded music, and regularly perform with an improvisational
poetry/music group called the Sonoglyph
Collective. A sample Sonoglyph performance is “Escape from Paradise Iowa.” The musicians in this group are dynamite!
What have you learned from this project?
KK: Since our
graduation reading when I read my poems accompanied by a musician, I have been
striving to take poetry off the page. The Sonoglyph Collective is an
improvisational jazz/poetry group featuring four poets and three musicians:
Sean Egan on clarinet, Jonathan Townsend on drums, Aaron Kerr on bass, with poets
Lynette Rein-Grandell, Hawona Sullivan Janzen, Ibe Kaba, and myself. We blend the spoken word with music in
improvisational ways. Our performances bring my poetry into the bliss of making
meaningful sound with others. I have always been deeply connected with music—I
worked in the music business for five years before starting my present job—and
had always longed to be in a band. There is a connection, a creative energy, in
the process of musical performance that I do not gain any other way.
DL: I notice you have video
poems on YouTube, “Hand
Sisters” and “Love
Poem.” In addition to poetry, you have written essays and travel writing.
What are some of your current writing projects?
KK: I am always, of course, writing poems, but my recent focus
has been writing creative nonfiction. My lyric essays are constructed much like
poems and weave dense imagery with insights and observations, often about the
past. You can read some of my recent CNF work in Slag Glass City and The
Mollyhouse.
DL: Is there anything else you would like to add?
KK: Thanks so much for this conversation!
Kathryn Kysar is the author of two books of poetry, Dark Lake and Pretend the World, and she edited the anthology Riding Shotgun: Women Write About Their Mothers. She has received fellowships and residencies from the Anderson Center for Interdisciplinary Studies, Banfill-Locke Center for the Arts, the Minnesota State Arts Board, the National Endowment for the Humanities, Tofte Lake Center, and the Oberholtzer Foundation. Her poems have appeared in anthologies such as To Sing Along the Way and Good Poems, American Places. Kysar has served on the board of directors for the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) and Rain Taxi Review. She is the founder of the creative writing program at Anoka-Ramsey Community College and offers manuscript consultations through The Loft Literary Center. Twitter: @darklake Instagram: @Pretendtheworld
Be prepared to rage, sing, cry, and learn from this new hybrid collection Breath Better Spent (Bloomsbury) from one of the most powerful voices in the USA today. Dr. Damaris B. Hill writes about unspeakable atrocities as in "Kamille 'Cupcake' McKinney," a Black child stolen at a birthday party, and the complicity of local law enforcement, ending with "judge slapping his knees has a pocket full/ of opiates and promises for the young girl/ kneeling under his dinner napkin" (p. 87). Hill pulls together stories of Black womanhood, from the opening inscription to Zora Neale Hurston to Whitney Houston to Aretha Franklin ("What You Talkin' Bout") to her own younger self. The result is a book-length tour-de-force. This book deserves a wide audience, especially in times when the Senate hearings of Ketanji Brown Jackson expose the blatant racism of some of the highest USA elected representatives. Thank you, Dr. Hill, for this testament to strength.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/55185/two-gates
And here is Kim Tedrow's poem "after" this one: Zoom Meeting / Kim Tedrow
I look at myself on the screen
Remarks presented at the Watkins Museum celebration of William Stafford's birthday, January 15,
The most important aspect of Stafford’s poetics is his humility, which gives him the ability to step aside from the role of master over the wilderness, which was the biblical tradition. Instead, he took the pose of one who listens and learns, as in this favorite of mine, which suggests his Indigenous background: https://www.ayearofbeinghere.com/2014/06/william-stafford-listening.html
Listening by William Stafford:
My father
could hear a little animal step,
or a moth in
the dark against the screen,
and every far
sound called the listening out
into places
where the rest of us had never been.
More spoke to
him from the soft wild night
than came to
our porch for us on the wind;
we would
watch him look up and his face go keen
till the
walls of the world flared, widened.
My father
heard so much that we still stand
inviting the
quiet by turning the face,
waiting for a
time when something in the night
will touch us
too from that other place.
He mixes the human and natural worlds, with the “moth in the dark against the screen” and the portal between the two realms, the “porch.” The porch becomes the interface between mortality and immortality.
A second point about Stafford’s poetics: his discussion of ethics. “Traveling Through the Dark” is the most well-known example of this, where he pauses and could “hear the wilderness listen.” He reverses the role of judge and makes readers aware that their actions, like his, have moral consequences. And finally, the language is subtle, like the landscape, with deep images that continue to build layers throughout the years. The dead deer by the side of the rode is singular and memorable. Not many details appear in the verse, and the image of the deer is the point, not the poet’s acrobatic use of vocabulary and rhetorical devices. Here is the poem “Traveling Through the Dark by Willilam Stafford: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42775/traveling-through-the-dark
My poem responds to “Listening.”
Variations on
Keening
by Denise Low
We would watch him look up and his face go keen. William Stafford
My father’s face goes keen. Cicadas drone as
darkness walls us in. His eyes are echoes
on fire. He speaks kennings. His wise eyes
turn blue fire. His prophet’s sight pierces
night
with keen perception. Agate rings lie buried
in river mud. His eyes see their spirals.
A sunfish rouges under a keen-bladed knife.
Sequin scales flake. Its eyes darken into a
stare
beyond ken. I keen. My father’s twin-star eyes
gaze equally into and out of the dark.
Wings
(Red Mountain Press, 2021)
My play on “ken” and “keen” emphasizes my wonder at the same cosmos that Stafford knew in the grasslands of Kansas. I conflate him with my father, born a few moths after Stafford and twenty miles away. Stafford is my poetic father. His example of self-effacement, images, and focus on a few key words—these I try to follow. www.deniselow.net
