"San Fransisco Bay Press is a small publisher with two offices - one located in San Francisco and the other in Norfolk, Virginia. We publish 8 to 10 books a year as well as a semi annual literary journal, "Lady Jane's Miscellany". We believe in publishing both established, critically acclaimed poets as well as newly emerging voices in contemporary poetry. You can find our titles below in our online bookstore, as well as on Amazon.com. Our books are also available from bookshops including Barnes and Nobles (in Newport News and Norfolk) as well as Prince Books (in Norfolk)."
"In this highly acclaimed book and live literature event, six daughters speak openly and passionately about mother and daughter relationships. Some Girls’ Mothers features stories from Suzanne Batty, Anne Caldwell, Nell Farrell, Char March, Clare Shaw and River Wolton.
Do daughters step into their mothers’ shoes? How does this central relationship colour women’s lives? The tales in this anthology address these questions with honesty and vigour, weaving humour and warmth into the telling of small but significant tragedies.
Celebrated poets, the writers showcased here explore daughterhood and motherhood in their own unique styles. They speak out in prose that fizzes and crackles, throwing light on these questions and many others. The stories offer a unique set of insights into this relationship. You’ll find plenty to uncover in this irreverent but heartfelt take on an age-old subject.
'Touching, wounding, humbling' - Simon Armitage
'Beautiful writing. A lovely mix of poignant and funny material, it will touch so many chords with so many mothers and daughters' - Polly Thomas (read less) In this highly acclaimed book and live literature event, six daughters speak openly and passionately about mother and daughter relationships.
Some Girls’ Mothers features stories from Suzanne Batty, Anne Caldwell, Nell Farrell, Char March, Clare Shaw and River Wolton"
Journey Anthology includes work by Peter Krok, Mike Amado, Ed Galing, Halima Sussman, Helen Bar-Lev, Phillip E. Burnham, Phil Levy, Susan Tepper, Tom Sheehan, Elizabeth P. Glixman and many others.
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From Editor Anne Brudevold
"Our second anthology Journey is a huge success, in the eyes of the critics who have read the galleys and and I hope it will be with you and the public. We think it is a beautiful book inside and out. The content is thought-provoking, funny, luminous, mysterious and covers all the emotions and brings up important issues. It's beautiful to look at. It's beautiful to read."
Adam Robinson founded the outdoor journal Is Reads. My poem A Mother and Son Conversation is part of the current issue that is posted in public places in Baltimore Maryland. I love the idea that my poem appears in an unlikely place. Not a book. I don't know who read it, if anyone read it and I don't know if the wind blew it away. The randomness of the viewing is exciting. A person might walk into a rest room or by the side of an abandoned building and see a poem never having any interest in reading poetry. What a surprise. It is like finding something ( a jewel, a needle in a haystack, an irritation, a zen koan, nonsense, profundity) in an unexpected environment. Perhaps it has a momentary effect on the reader's consciousness even if only the utterance of the words, What's that doing here? An interaction has taken place.
The online issue my poem is in is not up yet. Enjoy the previous issue.
You can watch Polis IsThis about poet Charles Olson at http://www.polisisthis.com/ . I have an interest in Olson's work for many reasons.
One: He was born in my hometown in Massachusetts along with other notable poets such as Stanley Kunitz and Elizabeth Bishop.
Two: I love Gloucester, Massachusetts. The Maximus Poems were inspired by Olson's love of Gloucester.Gloucester is a beautiful place even though it has changed dramatically in the last four decades. Going to Gloucester on a day trip when I was a teenager was like going to a new world where nature ruled. The air was clean. There was an abundance of light. I felt invigorated. The smell of the sea and the fish, the weathered buildings, the fishing boats, the ocean, the quaintness of it all spoke of another time when people lived off the land, respected it and had roots in community. It was this sense of an enclosed community that held onto tradition that intrigued me.
Three: Olson believed in people's ability to shape their world.
Four: It seems he didn't care what people thought of him ( he was a bit eccentric) and he was humble. He was outspoken, eccentric yet humble. Hmm. Seems like a contradiction. I gathered this from the film Polis Is This.
Five: He had a station wagon that had no reverse. When asked why, he said no one should go backward in life.
I often think that many great poets are like mystic sages, visionaries or teachers who show things to us we do not see because we do not have the capacity or sensitivity to see things as they are in this world. Or because we are stuck in our solo vision of things. Olson gives the people who read his work a different view of what people can achieve.
"He began work on his opus, The Maximus Poems, in the mid-1940s, and continued to expand and revise them until his death in 1970. Formally similar to Ezra Pound's Cantos, the Maximus poems are, in Olson's words, "about a person and a place."
Edward Gorey's drawings One of my favorite " drawers" is Edward Gorey. I love his black and white drawings for their designs, textures, and humour (often bizarre or horrific).
God Particles is my introduction to Thomas Lux' poems. I am not sure how I feel about them. I do know that the title poem "God Particles" made an impression on me. I too wonder if God takes pity on us humans for our inadequacies.
The poems in God Particles do not shy away from the depressing and the ugly. Despite this they are life affirming to read. They are compassionate poems.
Here is a poem from the book
The Hungry Gap-Time
late August, before the harvest, every one of us worn down by the plow, the hoe, rake, and worry over rain. Chicken coop confiscated by the rats and the raptors with nary a mouse to hunt. The corn's too green and hard, and the larder's down to dried apples and double-corned cod. We lie on our backs and stare at the blue; our work is done, our bellies flat. The mold on the wheat killed hardly a sheaf. The lambs fatten on the grass, our pigs we set to forage on their own—they'll be back when they whiff the first shucked ears of corn. Albert's counting bushels in his head to see if there's enough to ask Harriet's father for her hand. Harriet's father is thinking about Harriet's mother's bread pudding. The boys and girls splash in the creek, which is low but cold. Soon, soon there will be food again, and from what our hands have done we shall live another year here by the river in the valley above the fault line beneath the mountain.
My grandmother was one of these people. She immigrated from Lithuania with her parents and sister. Later in her life at the age of fifty due to financial hardship, she opened her own business and in the spirit of many immigrants achieved her own American Dream as a small business owner.
My grandmother worked hard. She had an independent spirit. She represents to me all the hard working women who came to the United States from Ireland, Germany, China, Italy, Eastern Europe during this wave of immigration who paved the way for more equal rights for all women in the U.S. These women who worked in factories, shops, were housewives, supported their husbands' dreams, and or manifested dreams of their own are role models for women of all ages. Many young women in the United States today do not know what their grandmothers and great grandmothers went through to be able to work, vote, or garner equality.
Check these sites out to learn more about the "famous" and "not famous" remarkable women who paved the way for us all. In the twenty-first century women and their families are immigrating to the U.S. They will contribute to the ongoing story of History in new and unique ways.
Photo Essay
Gifts of Age: Portraits and Essays of 32 Remarkable Women
Women Make Movies Films by and about Women A Place Called Home - Women and Immigration
"This extraordinary collection features titles that celebrate the lives and achievements of immigrants in the U.S. and explore ongoing struggles of immigrants today. Includes new release MOTHERLAND and the acclaimed ADIO KERIDA (GOODBYE DEAR LOVE)"
"In her poem The New Colossus, Emma Lazarus created what stood for years as an American credo. You know the words: "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free..."
The words of the poem were engraved on a bronze plaque hung in the Statue of Liberty museum 20 years after her death. To many, the verse expressed the governing U.S. attitude toward immigrants: welcome. But today, a new debate over immigration is dominating the political debate."
Miriam's Daughters: Jewish Latin American Women Poets Majorie AgosÃn
Not only have I carried and continue to carry the languages of my ancestors, but I have also many names. Because I was born in the United States, my mother named me Marjorie, like the character in Howard Fast's novel Marjorie Morningstar. In Chile I was called Margarita; at home Magita; and at the Hebrew school, Miriam.
Let Me Tell You Where I’ve Been :New Writing by Women of the Iranian Diaspora
Edited by Persis M. Karim
Foreword by Al Young
A powerful collection that speaks to history, immigration, and the emergence of a new international literary voice
T.C. Boyle's 2006 novel Talk Talk is about one woman's experience with identity theft. I've heard ads on the radio about how to protect your identity. I never thought much about this type of crime until I read Boyle's book. The book made the whole experience frightening. You will find out it REALLY can happen to anybody!
I read the book quickly. I wanted to know if the deaf woman and her boyfriend (they took it upon themselves to find the thief) would catch him. There were a lot of scenes in cars which made the book seem like one big car chase between cops and robbers.
"Gabriel Garcia Marquezreceived the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1982. He has written numerous books, including One Hundred Years of Solitude (I will never forget this story) and Love in the Time of Cholera. Memories of My Melancholy Whores, his latest novel, is a 115-page, strangely erotic, and spiritual masterpiece. The man is a great writer, but I don't have to tell you that."
Memories of My Melancholy Whores is about more than the relationship between a young prostitute and a ninety year old man. Read morehttp://www.eclectica.org/v10n4/glixman.html
The challenge this week at Inspire Me Thursday is lace. Here is my poem in progress, my first draft. Since it is Valentines Day, I thought about hearts and flowers and lacy things. I guess Cupid loves lace. It is everywhere on this holiday.
Angela's
You might think you've entered a room where everything is covered with luxurious lace. You are right You've entered a space with signs on walls that read for the demure, the daring, the darling The room is full of searching people like your neighbor eighty year old Mrs.Rodriguez hiding her Valentines Day hearts and flower thong trimmed with neon pink lace in her bony hand No one would have ever guessed
This is the way the world should be everyday a shopping spree - a surprise- All women are madonas goddesses mistresses of the dark in black lace and high heels and then there are the women who are told not to be women who need to take care of their deepest yin
This store is not a place of weeping and sighs of threats and phrases I am leaving you Don't expect child support And it is not a place where you pick up dry cleaning or tell the judge how your significant other cheated
It is a place of Revelation Emancipation Freedom A declaration
I am a lover of lace and soft things at Angela's Lingerie store
Robert Frost lived and wrote in New England for part of his life.
"Though his work is principally associated with the life and landscape of New England, and though he was a poet of traditional verse forms and metrics who remained steadfastly aloof from the poetic movements and fashions of his time, Frost is anything but a merely regional or minor poet. The author of searching and often dark meditations on universal themes, he is a quintessentially modern poet in his adherence to language as it is actually spoken, in the psychological complexity of his portraits, and in the degree to which his work is infused with layers of ambiguity and irony."
The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree
Has given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued.
Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening
by Robert Frost
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
An Old Man's Winter Night
by Robert Frost
All out of doors looked darkly in at him
Through the thin frost, almost in separate stars,
That gathers on the pane in empty rooms.
What kept his eyes from giving back the gaze
Was the lamp tilted near them in his hand.
What kept him from remembering what it was
That brought him to that creaking room was age.
He stood with barrels round him -- at a loss.
And having scared the cellar under him
In clomping there, he scared it once again
In clomping off; -- and scared the outer night,
Which has its sounds, familiar, like the roar
Of trees and crack of branches, common things,
But nothing so like beating on a box.
A light he was to no one but himself
Where now he sat, concerned with he knew what,
A quiet light, and then not even that.
He consigned to the moon, such as she was,
So late-arising, to the broken moon
As better than the sun in any case
For such a charge, his snow upon the roof,
His icicles along the wall to keep;
And slept. The log that shifted with a jolt
Once in the stove, disturbed him and he shifted,
And eased his heavy breathing, but still slept.
One aged man -- one man -- can't keep a house,
A farm, a countryside, or if he can,
It's thus he does it of a winter night.
From "Mountain Interval", 1916
I bought this book of Frost's poems and B.A. King photos years ago. I often re-read it. I find it inspiring. See more of King's black and white photos at this link.
"God Is a Chicken" is one of the stories from Beware of God stories (Simon & Schuster March 28, 2006) . Imagine what you would do as an Orthodox Jew if you died and went to heaven and found out God was an actual chicken who did all things chicken. All the practices you observed like keeping kosher were meaningless. You wanted to tell your family to stop being observant because God was a chicken and the practices didn't matter. But you were dead! Esquire Magazine called it "Heretical. Hysterical."Auslander's second book Foreskin's Lament: A Memoir was published in 2007.
Auslander has contributed pieces to The New Yorker, Esquire and The New York Times Magazine and NPR( You Must Read This by Shalom Auslander
I turned on the TV yesterday in time to watch a tape of the November 18, 2008 National Book Awards Ceremony. Poet Mark Doty was accepting the award for his book of poetry Fire to Fire: New and Collected Poems. I also heard Judy Blundell children's book author accept her award for What I Saw and How I Lied.
I know the book business is downsizing and changing due to the economy and also because of new media formats like the Internet, Amazon Kindle, Blackberries etc. I have loved books since I was a toddler. I love the feel, smell and concreteness of a book. I hope that books do not go the way of the dinosaur. For me and many readers that would be a sad day.
Click on the link to read about the awards and to see videos of each winner's acceptance speech.
The bud stands for all things, even for those things that don't flower, for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing; though sometimes it is necessary to reteach a thing its loveliness, to put a hand on its brow of the flower and retell it in words and in touch it is lovely until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing; as Saint Francis put his hand on the creased forehead of the sow, and told her in words and in touch blessings of earth on the sow, and the sow began remembering all down her thick length, from the earthen snout all the way through the fodder and slops to the spiritual curl of the tail, from the hard spininess spiked out from the spine down through the great broken heart to the blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering from the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths sucking and blowing beneath them: the long, perfect loveliness of sow.
"Extraordinary... a vast, ambitious, spiritually lusty, all-guzzling, all-encompassing novel" The New York Times Book Review
I can't watch war movies. The blood and bombs, the hand to hand combat gets to me. I was surprised that I enjoyed this novel. Oh, yes the battle scenes were there (they filled many of the pages of this 860 page novel) but I saw them in the context of the greater story of the life from youth to old age of Alessandro Giullani, soldier and believer in beauty, art, and the spirit.
As an old man, Giuliani tells his life story to his traveling companion, a young man of seventeen, as they walk through the Italian countryside.
"Synopses & Reviews Publisher Comments: For Alessandro Giullani, the young son of a prosperous Roman Lawyer, golden trees shimmer in the sun beneath a sky of perfect blue. At night the moon is amber and the city of Rome seethes with light. He races horses across the country to the sea, and in the Alps he practices the precise and sublime art of mountain climbing. At the ancient university in Bologna he is a student of painting and the science of beauty. And he falls in love. His is a world of adventure and dreams, of music, storm, and the spirit. Then the Great War intervenes."
"Thousand Kites is asking you to call our toll-free line 877-518-0606 and speak directly to those behind bars this holiday season. An answering machine will record your message. Read a poem, sing a song, or just speak directly from your heart. Speak to someone you know or to everyone---make it uplifting. Call anytime, now through December 9, and record your message.
The United States has 2.4 million people behind bars. Thousand Kites wants you to lend your voice to a powerful grassroots radio broadcast that reaches into our nation's prison and lets those inside know they are not forgotten.
We will post each call on our website as it comes in! Check our website http://www.thousandkites.org to listen to your call and others!
CALLS FROM HOME will broadcast on over 200 radio stations across the country and be available for download from our website on December 13. This is a project of Thousand Kites/WMMT-FM/Appalshop and a national network of grassroots organizations working for criminal justice reform. Learn how you can help blog, distribute, broadcast, or support this event (thousandkitesproject@gmail.com)."
by Elizabeth P. Glixman originally published on 2004-05-17
It seems like yesterday I was O.K., breathing, full of life, love, and laughter. I had dreams and purpose.
Sunday nights I watched Mad TV. Monday night I kissed Fluffy and Boo Boo on my dusted TV screen. They were amazing animals on Miracle Pets rescuing their owners from faulty smoke detectors and heart attacks. On Tuesday I saw Simon Cowel ruin people’s dreams.On Wednesday I watched the dreamers sing goodbye, friends and family crying in the audience. Kleenex , please.Thursday was Will and Grace. Friday night Mad TV (redundant, I love that channel) and Nightly News. I avoided the segments where a man from Texas barbecued. Saturday I made fettuccine alfredo, tofu eggplant casserole, and egg foo young. When the cooking shows were over there were the infomercials, educational marvels that titillate us with flatter tummies, larger breasts, bigger pectorals, stainless steel egg cutters, and hair anywhere we want.
I don't know why I thought today was a Bloggers Unite Day. I am embarrassed to say it isn't, but I decided to leave the post up anyways.
Poverty is the theme of Bloggers Unite Day this year. I've chosen to post poems that deal with poverty( in it's various forms) or poems that suggest ways to go beyond poverty.
Olga Angelina Garcia
A Poor People’s Poem
This poem
angry
corajudo
bold
has got
a bad attitude
un genio from hell
and you
you’re afraid
of my poem
afraid of this
deep dark red poem
that bleeds
woman words
you
you’re afraid
cuz even though
this poem
*is*
about survival
it isn’t about
endangered whales
or dying forests
Listen
this is a poor woman’s poem
a Mexicana
Chicana
Mestiza
India
Mujer
Este de Los Angeles
poem
Yeah
this poem’s
got roaches crawling
all over it
and tiny pink mice
nibbling at the edges
and corners of
simple-everyday words
Listen this poem rides the bus
works 12 hours a day
7 days a week
with no medical benefits
and no paid vacations
Listen
this poem
has crossed rivers
and mountains
jumped over
and crawled under
barb-wired fences
this poem
has slaved
in hot-sun pesticide fields
picking
piscando
your lettuce
tomatoes
oranges
onions
picking
piscando
the vegetables
and fruits
that make your meals
nice and balanced
And this poem
has worked all kinds of shifts
in inner-city factories
sewing
packaging
stuffing
cutting
folding
ironing
the clothes you wear
the jeans
the shirts
the jackets
that keep you
in style
Yeah
this is a poor woman’s poem
a brown people’s poem
so you see
right now
we don’t want to talk about
the ozone layer
We
the people in this poem
we wanna talk about where we live
about affordable housing
about how the hot water doesn’t work
and the windows don’t close
about the Never-no-heat-in-the-winter
Sit-u-a-tion
we wanna talk about drugs
about the alcohol cocaine crack heroin
impregnating our communities
making modern colonized brown black slaves of us
we wanna talk about food stamps
about jobs and fair wages
about 12 hour shifts
and working conditions
we wanna talk about the police
about choke-hold
and billy clubs
about busted heads
and handcuffed minds
about sharp-teeth dogs
and shackled freedom
about racist cops
who hate
poor
brown
black
people
we wanna talk about dying
about the river of blood
flowing where we live
about the heads of 2 year old babies
scattered on concrete floors
about the mountain of bodies here
outlined in white chalk
So you see
right now
we don’t wanna hear you preach
about recycling
cuz poor people like us
we’ve always recycled
we invented the damn word
and out of necessity
recycled our papers, cans, bottles
recycled our socially constructed poverty
recycled even our dreams
So you see
we do wanna talk
but talk about lies
about Am er i KKK a
about treaties broken
and lands and people stolen
we wanna talk about
S L A V E R Y
U.S. colonization
Third World penetration
And you
you’re afraid
of my poem
afraid of the East side poem
holding hands
with El Salvador
Nicaragua
Tijuana
Chiapas
Pico-Union
holding hands
with
SWETO
South Africa
South Central L.A.
Yeah
I know
you’re afraid
of this
brown black
poor people’s poem
Me, I'm waiting for something
as soft as my brother's name
to come raining down on me.
I'm waiting for for a miracle
cuz we're 5-to-a-room here
cuz there's a muerta on the 1st floor
and a deaf woman who eats mice on the 3rd.
I wait for miracles cuz here
roaches have wings and fall
from ceings into bowls of soup
and cereal. Here, we can't get
rid of them, even with daily sprays,
those roach motels, that Chinese chalk,
and the manager won't fumigate
says we got roaches cuz we're dirty.
All 126 tenants have roaches
cuz all 126 of us are dirty
and lazy and poor and well
everybody knows that roaches come
with poverty and poverty with roaches.
And the other day
when I told the manager
we needed mouse traps
he told me, aquà no hay ratones
and he said we should
leave him alone because after all
he wasn't God and he couldn't solve
all of our problems and anyways
we were all crazy,
seeing things
all 126 of us who live here,
seeing things
I pray for miracles
cuz I live smack in the middle
of this city's aneurysm,
where drunk disenfranchised men pee
against cracked walls and shoot heroine
up swollen veins, where the unwanted
leave their dreams lying around like syringes
on sidewalks.
I pray for miracles
cuz I'm only 17
and I live among all these roaches
these mice
these men.
Rumi This World Which Is Made of Our Love for Emptiness
Praise to the emptiness that blanks out existence. Existence:
This place made from our love for that emptiness!
Yet somehow comes emptiness,
this existence goes.
Praise to that happening, over and over! For years I pulled my own existence out of emptiness.
Then one swoop, one swing of the arm,
that work is over.
Free of who I was, free of presence, free of dangerous fear, hope,
free of mountainous wanting.
The here-and-now mountain is a tiny piece of a piece of straw
blown off into emptiness.
These words I'm saying so much begin to lose meaning:
Existence, emptiness, mountain, straw:
Words and what they try to say swept
out the window, down the slant of the roof.
"His century was also a century of war and famine, where the Mongol hordes had wrecked havoc in
Asia . Not much different from our own, where the majority of human
race lives below the poverty line and is constantly at war."
"Yusef Komunyakaa was born in 1947 in Bogalusa, Louisiana, where he was raised during the beginning of the Civil Rights movement. He served in the United States Army from 1969 to 1970 as a correspondent and managing editor of the Southern Cross during the Vietnam war, earning him a Bronze Star.
He began writing poetry in 1973, and received his bachelor's degree from the University of Colorado Springs in 1975."
http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/22
Emily Dickinson
Your Riches Taught Me Poverty
Your Riches—taught me—Poverty.
Myself—a Millionaire
In little Wealths, as Girls could boast
Till broad as Buenos Ayre—
You drifted your Dominions—
A Different Peru—
And I esteemed All Poverty
For Life's Estate with you—
Of Mines, I little know—myself—
But just the names, of Gems—
The Colors of the Commonest—
And scarce of Diadems—
So much, that did I meet the Queen—
Her Glory I should know—
But this, must be a different Wealth—
To miss it—beggars so—
I'm sure 'tis India—all Day—
To those who look on You—
Without a stint—without a blame,
Might I—but be the Jew—
I'm sure it is Golconda—
Beyond my power to deem—
To have a smile for Mine—each Day,
How better, than a Gem!
At least, it solaces to know
That there exists—a Gold—
Altho' I prove it, just in time
Its distance—to behold—
Its far—far Treasure to surmise—
And estimate the Pearl—
That slipped my simple fingers through—
While just a Girl at School.
Not just a funny symbol with words following it. It is a legal symbol that states all my work is copyrighted. If you want to link a post go ahead but no using pictures outside this blog unless specifically requested.
I'd love to hear from you.
I write posts on this blog for two reasons. I want to promote my own work (what writer and artist doesn't), and I want to share my love of the written and visual arts. In the past nine years although I've written fiction and non-fiction, I've been focused mainly on poetry. I am interested in hearing from writers, artists and readers. I am actively seeking to expand my vision of what is possible as a poet/writer/artist through shared self expression. The effect of words and images on our psyches can be profound.
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I Am the Flame - Amazon.com. Clic on Cover.
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Pudding House Publications Chapbook. Click Cover.
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Pudding House Publications Chapbook. Click Cover
The Wonder of It All
Contact Alternating Currents for info on this chapbook. https://altcurrentpress.com/
POETRY ANTHOLOGIES
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