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Poetry Flash > front pagepoetry, flash, literature, bay area, berkeley, san francisco, review, calendarPoetry Flash > front page about advertise give guidelines contact mailing list Build Community Through Poetry Support Poetry Flash's year-round literary programs, events, and publishing. Donate Today! Literary Review & Calendar for the West SEPTEMBER 2024 FRONT PAGE 2024 NCBA COLUMNS FEATURES REVIEWS POEMS PROGRAMS | CALENDAR CALLS FOR SUBMISSIONS | ARCHIVE Suzanne Lummis. Photo by Alexis Rhone Fancher. South of the Grapevine: Three Poets, Thirty-Three Lines Lois P. Jones, Jim Natal, and Jeremy Ra by Suzanne Lummis I’ve done a little sleuthing. Yes, I’ve done some detective work, though not through the streets.… My inquiries have determined that up over the grapevine, on the other side of the Tehachapi Mountain range, and across the Great Central Valley, and beyond Livermore, many people don’t know what’s happening here in Los Angeles, poetry-wise. One Northern California poet had heard only of Wanda Coleman, whom he acknowledged is no longer writing, or among us—except in spirit. Another could only think of Bukowski…. read more Linda J. Albertano. Photo by Alexis Rhone Fancher. Tower of Power: The Life of Linda J. Albertano by Suzanne Lummis She was Los Angeles's veteran multi-disciplinary performance artist of the city's Second Wave (who'd found her calling when she studied with Rachel Rosenthal, a leading figure in Los Angeles's performance art movement's First Wave, in the '70s). She was a vocalist, musician and poet, or writer of poem-like things, speaker of witty, surrealist monologues. read more The Corporeal World: An Interview with Michael Walsh by Denise Low Michael Walsh, a 2022 Lambda Gay Poetry finalist, is the editor of Queer Nature: A Poetry Anthology, a 2023 Lambda Award finalist. His poetry books include Creep Love and The Dirt Riddles, winner of the Miller Williams Poetry Prize and Thom Gunn Award. He lives in a valley among coulees and springs in southwest Wisconsin, where his eco-queer and literary works are taking shape. read more I, Not Robot by M.M. Adjarian When ChatGPT came out, I lifted one world-weary eyebrow then returned to the business of my life. This was, after all, the post-human age; AI and robots formed the backbone of an emergent reality of the kind visionary twentieth century science fiction writers Isaac Asimov—and predecessors like Victorian novelist Samuel Butler—had been exploring for 150 years. read more Photo by Miguel Paglieri. The Poet as Mensch A Review by Richard Silberg The Volcano and After: Selected and New Poems, 2002-2019 Alicia Suskin Ostriker German has a word for 'man', Mann; and for 'woman', Frau; but it also has the word Mensch, for which in English we have to go to the sentence-sagger 'human being'. Yiddish uses the same word to mean, also, someone of honor, of great respect. Doubtless this could apply to many other poets, as well, but I've always thought especially of Alicia Ostriker as a 'Mensch' in a blending of those two meanings. read more INTERVIEWS Photo by Douglas Salin. Mother Fire: An Interview with Kim Shuck, 7th Poet Laureate of San Francisco by Lee Rossi Kim Shuck, writer, weaver, and beadwork artist, was San Francisco's seventh poet laureate from 2017-2021. A Native American, a member of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, and a native San Franciscan, she is the author of seven books of poetry, most recently Deer Trails (City Lights Books) and Exile Heart (That Painted Horse Press), as well as a work of prose, Rabbit Stories. In 2019, she published Murdered Missing, a book of poems about violence against indigenous women. Her work appears in When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through, the newly released Norton anthology of Native American poetry edited by Joy Harjo. read more Feminist Carnivalesque and Something Other: An Interview with Gail Wronsky by Ramón García Gail Wronsky is the author, coauthor, or translator of fifteen books of poetry and prose, including Under the Capsized Boat We Fly: New and Selected Poems, Imperfect Pastorals, Poems for Infidels, and Dying for Beauty, a finalist for the Western Arts Federation Poetry Prize. She’s the translator of Argentinean poet Alicia Partnoy’s Fuegos Florales/Flowering Fires and teaches Creative Writing and Women’s Literature at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. read more REMEMBERING Uncle Dog Becomes a Bodhisattva: On Robert Sward’s Work by Jack Foley Robert Sward, Santa Cruz Poet Laureate 2016-2018, died on February 21, 2022. He was born on June 23, 1933. His career began in the late 1950s. Today, he is a well-known poet, but he is not nearly as well-known as he should be. read more Photo by Jerome Robinson. The Sound of Al Young Remembered by Jack Foley The many expressions of grief at the death of poet Al Young (1939-2021) are a testimony to the considerable extent that he was an important and much-loved West Coast figure. His friend Ishmael Reed has called him "one of the most underrated writers in the country." read more FEATURE Michael McClure (1932-2020). Photo by Christopher Felver, 2000. Mule Kick Blues and Last Poems, Michael McClure's final book, has just been published by City Lights Books. A powerful collection written during McClure's last years, it was edited before the poet's death in May 2020. Anne Waldman said of it, "This legendary rockstar eco-poet's gemlike modal structures will keep humming while 'black ants circle a bubble of honey.' A final performance from a master poet." An Everything Man: The Passing of Michael McClure by Bruce Isaacson The world seems filled by madness in the meanwhile, but the passing of Michael McClure at eighty-seven in May merits the consideration of poets. McClure was an everything-man, a star spanning the history of the era that made us—dramatist, novelist, songwriter, actor, theorist, performance artist, art critic, organizer, intellectual, and rock-and-roll performer. read more INTERVIEW The Magic Number An Interview with Margaret Randall by Lee Rossi Margaret Randall, poet and activist, is the author of 150 books. For twenty-five years she lived in Latin America, first in Mexico, then Cuba, and finally Nicaragua, before returning to the United States. Deemed a "subversive," she fought a five-year battle to regain her U.S. citizenship. While in Latin America she raised four children and worked a variety of jobs, always finding time to participate in the literary and political struggles of her host countries. Now in her eighties, she remains incredibly active and engaged. In 2020, she published a book of pandemic poems; translations of Latin American poetry and memoir; a volume of Ecuadorian poetry, which she selected and translated; and two memoirs, one about her life as a poet, feminist and revolutionary and the other, My Life In 100 Objects, a multi-disciplinary work featuring her photographs as well as her writing. read more FEATURE Lucille Lang Day on North Seymour, Galápagos Islands, 2017. To Be a Poet by Lucille Lang Day The first time I heard about the Berkeley Poets Co-op was when my friend Paul Aebersold showed me a set of colorful posters he'd made by silk-screening his photographs and pairing them with quotes from poems by Co-op members. It was the fall of 1971, and I was twenty-three years old. read more FEATURED REVIEW Ursula K. Le Guin. Photo by Eileen Gunn. Walking Deep A review by Richard Silberg So Far So Good: Final Poems, 2014-2018 Ursula K. Le Guin Abandoned Poems Stanley Moss [A] look at two decidedly older poets, Ursula K. Le Guin, who died in 2018 at eighty-nine, and Stanley Moss, still kicking strong now in his nineties. Doubtless this has something to do with my being rather a geezer, myself, but it has more to do, I think, with my perception of depth, a wiry toughness, with two poets, each in their very different ways solitary, idiosyncratic, each trenching richly into their long, fertile pasts. read more Jericho Brown The Bay Area Book Festival features "The Beautiful Witness We Bear," an online conversation with Jericho Brown, The Tradition, 2020 Pulitzer Prize-winner for Poetry, and Nikky Finney, Love Child's Hotbed of Occasional Poetry, National Book Award-winner for Head Off & Split, on the Bay Area Book Festival's YouTube channel. Moderated by Ismail Muhammad, this event premiered in June. Get the link at the Bay Area Book Festival home page, or go to the BABF YouTube page. Here's the trailer: https://youtu.be/6WMX_blWOcI. The poets discuss the murders of Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd, and many others with the current protests against police brutality, racism, and white supremacy. They explore the power of poetry to capture human experience and share their own intense experiences. This is a time for us to listen and learn. Poetry Flash stands, along with the BABF, against police killings of unarmed Black citizens and the militarized response to peaceful protests. The BABF says about their powerful program, "Witnessing this exchange was one way of putting ourselves in a position to find out the truth. We think you'll feel the same." INTERVIEW What We Can Do: An Interview with Carolyn Forché by Lee Rossi Although Carolyn Forché has been writing poetry since the 1970s, she is as well known as a political activist and advocate for human rights. Her recent book, What You Have Heard Is True: A Memoir of Witness and Resistance, an account of her experiences in El Salvador during the early 1980s, reflects that perspective, and was named a finalist for the 2019 National Book Award. Her first book, Gathering the Tribes, won the Yale Younger Poets prize, but her second book, The Country Between Us, which included poems about her experiences in El Salvador, made her famous outside the poetry world, igniting a storm of controversy. read more FEATURED REVIEW Truth Against Lies: Suzanne Lummis Speaks Poetry to Power at Beyond Baroque by Linda J. Albertano It was January 3, the beginning of the election year and one that would decide the fate of the country for four years, or for far longer than that. It was One Poet, One Poem, aka, "Truth Against Lies, Poet Against the Apocalypse"—modest bill, large claim. read more ESSAY Photo by Dorothy Alexander The Chick: Homage for Tony Hoagland by Richard Silberg If there's a poet/critic for our recent decades, one with a name and a following, it was certainly Tony Hoagland. read more Poem Susan Kelly-DeWitt "Elegy for a Beloved Poet," for Dennis Schmitz, 1937-2019 read more TRIBUTE Photo by Christopher Felver. Philip Levine: "I am a Poet of Memory…" by Mari L'Esperance Much has already been written about Philip Levine, a major American poet from Detroit and beloved teacher who published nearly twenty collections of poetry, alongside volumes of essays and translation (his posthumous works are The Last Shift, poems, and My Lost Poets: A Life in Poetry, essays, both from Knopf). Perhaps best known as a poet of elegy who wrote about the lives of working-class people, Levine taught at Fresno State University in California's Central Valley for more than thirty years. read more FEATURED INTERVIEW D. Nurkse. Photo by Jemimah Kuhfeld. Green Birth, Green Death An Interview with D. Nurkse by Lee Rossi D. Nurkse is the author of eleven books of poetry, the latest a re-telling of the story of Tristan and Iseult entitled Love in the Last Days. His poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, Poetry, The American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, and The Times Literary Supplement, among many others. His prizes include fellowships from both the Guggenheim foundation and the NEA, and from 1996-2001 he served as Poet Laureate of Brooklyn. He has taught prison inmates at Rikers Island, as well as students at Sarah Lawrence, Columbia, and the New School. He is an active campaigner for human rights, serving for a time on the board of Amnesty International, and has written frequently on the subject. read more REVIEW Brenda Hillman. Photo by Forrest Gander. Breathe Deeply, A Poetic Resistance to the Unknown A review by Iris Jamahl Dunkle Mississippi Ann Fisher-Wirth, Photographs by Maude Schuyler Clay Extra Hidden Life, among the Days Brenda Hillman Terry Tempest Williams writes in her breakthrough essay, "The Open Space of Democracy," when we experience something fully, it opens us; it "creates a chasm in our heart, an expansion in our lungs…We breathe deeply and remember fear for what it is—a resistance to the unknown." Mississippi by Ann Fisher-Wirth and Extra Hidden Life, among the Days by Brenda Hillman are two stunning new poetry collections that offer us poetic duets with complicated experiences. read more Featured Talk The News from Poems: Why Poetry Matters Now by Susan Cohen I grew up writing poetry. When I was an eighteen-year-old sophomore at Cal, I applied to my first workshop, submitted my poems, and was rejected. I thought that meant I had no talent and I didn't write another poem for almost thirty years. Sometimes I think I had to wait until I was old enough to withstand rejection. We all know, as poets, about rejection. read more Tribute Postscript for Julia Vinograd by Richard Loranger Julia's gone and it feels like the end of an era. I didn't expect that; I knew she would pass soon and it didn't occur to me once, but it really, deeply does feel that way. Julia was the core of something, a beating heart that moved a lot of psyches forward through momentum of poetry. Those psyches will continue to move forward, 'cause that's what psyches do, but they'll have to get used to a different torque, a slightly different engine propelling them. read more Flying with "Julia" Poems: Julia Vinograd (1943-2018) by Richard Silberg Julia Vinograd, locally famous as 'the Bubble Lady of Telegraph Avenue', and 'the unofficial Poet Laureate of Berkeley', died on December 5 at the age of seventy-four.… I can't remember when I first met Julia; it seems as if I had always known her. We were both poets and among the tribe of Berkeley people who used the Med, the Café Mediterranean on Telegraph Avenue, as our living room. read more Julia Vinograd "All the Night Stars" and guidelines for her tribute anthology read poem Jack Foley "For Julia" read poem MORE INTERVIEWS Martín Espada. Photo by Christopher Felver. The Fin in the Water An Interview with Martín Espada by Lee Rossi For nearly forty years Martín Espada has been a voice for the marginalized and oppressed and a key contributor to the formation of Latinx literature. At a time when American poetry was fixated on questions of subjectivity and form, Espada focused on the real world of politics and history. read more And Then There Was a Revolution An Interview with Nancy Morejón by Kathleen Weaver Nancy Morejón is a renowned Cuban poet as well as a critic, translator and cultural worker. She is the author of many volumes of poetry, including translations into English such as Looking Within/Mirar adentro (Selected poems 1954-2000) edited by Juanamaría Cordones-Cook. A recently published selection is Homing Instincts, translated by Pamela Carmell, Cubana Books, 2014. Where the Island Sleeps Like a Wing, Selected Poetry by Nancy Morejón, Black Scholar Press, appeared in 1985, translated by Kathleen Weaver. read more Nancy Morejón From Where the Island Sleeps Like a Wing: Selected Poetry Translated by Kathleen Weaver read poems MORE FEATURES Maurya Simon. Photo by Jamie Clifford. Fireflies in a Jar An Interview with Maurya Simon by Meryl Natchez Maurya Simon has published ten full-length books of poetry, each one of them unique. Her most recent book, The Wilderness: New and Selected Poems, 1980-2006, appeared this year from Red Hen Press, complete with beautiful color illustrations of her ekphrastic "Weavers Series" poems, reproduced from the original paintings by Simon's mother, Baila Goldenthal. She lives in Mt. Baldy, in the Angeles National Forest of the San Gabriel Mountains, in southern California. read more Shakespeare and Company, Paris: A History of the Rag & Bone Shop of the Heart edited by Krista Halverson reviewed by Carl Landauer One of my teachers, Austryn Wainhouse, the translator of De Sade (first under the pseudonym Pieralassandro Casavini in Paris but later as a staple of Grove Press), inspired me on my first trip to Paris to make a pilgrimage to Shakespeare and Company just across from Notre Dame. At the time, I was unaware of the difference between Sylvia Beach's interwar Shakespeare and Company on rue de l'Odéon, which had published Joyce's Ulysses and was second home (sometimes even the mailing address) for the lost generation of Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Dos Passos, and George Whitman's postwar book store, first named Librairie le Mistral, only to be renamed Shakespeare and Company in 1964, reportedly with Sylvia Beach's blessing. read more Photo by Mark Savage. Restless Spirits: An Interview with Cecilia Woloch by Amy Pence It's tough to keep track of the poet Cecilia Woloch. In the spring, you'll find her teaching in a small college in Georgia. By May, she's in a Paris café, surrounded by aspiring poets enrolled in her workshop. July finds her in that small cabin in the Carpathians, tracking down the mystery of her Roma grandmother. The title of her first novel Sur la Route…perfectly captures Woloch's on-the-road lifestyle where travel and poetry interweave. read more Reviews When Your Sky Runs Into Mine Rooja Mohassessy reviewed by Carl Landauer This immensely skilled debut by Iranian-born poet Rooja Mohassessy is broadly autobiographical. We see her engage in the delicate art of survival, dealing with various oppressions and aggressions, beginning with poems relating to the early years of the Islamic Republic and the Iran-Iraq War and ending with her experience in Northern California. read more Sketches from Spain: Homage to the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Peter Neil Carroll reviewed by Philip C. Kolin No one is better qualified than Peter Neil Carroll to write a book of memorial poems about the valiant men and women who volunteered for the Abraham Lincoln Brigade to fight the fascists in the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939. read more What We Were Born For Emilie Lygren reviewed by Dave Seter Lygren sees our complex society through a new lens, one adjusted to this emerging worldview. Heart on her sleeve, she tattoos what she sees onto the page, indelible, hard to forget even when the reader places the book aside. read more An Ordinary Life B.H. Fairchild reviewed by Richard Silberg An Ordinary Life moves in a rush, a fullness of voices and stories….[the] book is set chiefly in Kansas, spanning several generations out of the dust bowl to the present…. The style is both expansive, almost oratory as it unfolds its tale, and yet at the same time clipped and matter-of-fact in its payoff finish. read more A Map of Every Undoing Alicia Elkort reviewed by Peggy Dobreer [This] is a first book wrought with lace and steel, reimagined tales and rich feminist declaratives. It draws the reader into a complex cartography of abundant bullies, cruel infractions, acts of disappearance, and finally, always, love, nature, and restoration. read more A Poem Is a House Linda Ravenswood reviewed by Lee Rossi The sections are various, yet form an urgent whole…a poem is a house, the poet tells us, a house floating on water…a poem is a woman, a slave, a footnote; a poem is history, genocide, diaspora; a poem is a husband who is also stranger and ghost. read more A Country of Strangers, New and Selected Poems D. Nurkse reviewed by Richard Silberg Nurkse’s compelling, unusual voice…resists acceptance, an easy embrace, insists on its otherness, even remoteness, while pursuing its parallel realms, so persuasive and engaging, so workably close. Orienting and disorienting, offering a bare, glinting beauty. read more Simultaneities and Lyric Chemisms Ardengo Soffici, translation by Olivia Sears reviewed by Dave Seter Reading Olivia Sears’s recent translation is a little like visiting an art museum. Each poem fills the mind in the way a large-scale canvas fills a museum wall. There may be a focal point or central theme, but at the margins of the page or canvas, subplots abound. read more Pandemic Soul Music S.A. Griffin reviewed by Daniel Yaryan S.A. Griffin’s new book is an eclectic jukebox of cross-pollinating poetic hits that traverse many different genres. There’s Venice West Beat Generation lineage, strong DADA DNA, and a foundation springboard from West Coast punk rock lyricism sent into the future via Jello Biafra era Dead Kennedys or the Los Angeles band X. read more In the Cities of Sleep Elizabeth C. Herron reviewed by Jonah Raskin If you didn't have the inclination or the pizzazz to celebrate National Poetry in April, not to worry. There's still lots of time to enjoy [this] new book of poems by Sonoma County's newest Poet Laureate, Elizabeth C. Herron. read more Burns Susan Gevirtz reviewed by Andrew Joron The title of Susan Gevirtz's new poetry collection, Burns, is both noun and verb. As noun, it could refer to injuries or damage caused by fire; as verb, it proposes the action of fire in the present tense, as ongoing transmutation. read more Creativity: Where Poems Begin Mary Mackey reviewed by Tom Goff Poet and novelist Mary Mackey's Creativity is both effervescent and analytical. Her new book serves as part memoir, part guide to the "inner poet" in her readers, part wisdom literature; but ultimately, Creativity resists easy classification or precisely limited function, and that resistance is a virtue. read more cityscapes: a quilt of poetry A.D. Winans reviewed by Jack Foley There are things A.D. Winans doesn’t do. He doesn’t write sonnets, for instance. But you don’t go to A.D. Winans for sonnets. You go to him for truth—or at least a side of the truth that isn’t usually expressed in a poem. read more Are You Afraid? Brian Strang reviewed by Andrew Joron Poetic Minimalism—spare wording, formal reduction—can sometimes achieve maximal effect, as in the mystical poems of Robert Lax. This holds true for the poetry of Brian Strang, whose minimalism leads not to mysticism but to a sense of rootedness in the hard ground of existence. read more The 5150 Poems Sandra McPherson reviewed by Lucille Lang Day The 5150 Poems is a book about mental breakdown and recovery. Section 5150 of the California Welfare and Institutions Code, which went into full effect in 1972, authorizes police officers and medical professionals to involuntarily confine people with a suspected mental illness for 72 hours if they are considered a danger to themselves or others. read more The Blank Page Iván Argüelles reviewed by Carl Landauer With The Blank Page, Iván Argüelles brings us another volume of poems, written in daily increments, marshaling a vast expanse of literature and myth with wonderfully imaginative juxtapositions, while venturing into the most significant questions of life and death. read more Record George Keenen reviewed by Jack Foley RECORD was written in a burst, in two nights in 1976, "with time off for coffee at Terminal Lunch in San Francisco." In its original form it was hand printed with rubber stamps. read more Fossils in the Making Kristin George Bagdanov reviewed by Rosalinda Monroy Bodies are the focal point of Kristin Bagdanov's debut poetry collection, Fossils in the Making. In it, she explores not just the human body, but animal bodies, non-sentient bodies, bodies of water, and earth bodies (landforms). read more Catwalk Meryl Natchez reviewed by Susan E. Gunter Meryl Natchez's latest volume of poetry contains seventy-nine poems, poems employing an abundance of forms, including haibuns, cinquains, looseplexes, odes, free verse, and prose poems. The poet's roving consciousness twists through the narrow catwalks of these varied lyrics. read more At Work on the Garments of Refuge Daniel Marlin and Ralph Dranow reviewed by Lucille Lang Day One of the things I like best about [this book] is the accessibility of the poems. There is nothing here of the aesthetic some contemporary poets have adopted that calls for making poems so difficult that you need to parse them like Schrödinger's equation. read more Letters To A Young Brown Girl Barbara Jane Reyes reviewed by Catalina Cariaga "That little girl was me," quipped now Vice President Kamala Harris in an early 2020 primary debate with Joe Biden, when she blasted him for his previously held opinions on busing in schools during the mid-1970s. That moment reminded all listening how race directly affects people of color in some of the most basic aspects of life in their communities. read more A Folio for the Dark Camille Norton reviewed by Lee Rossi In a recent interview poet Camille Norton tells us that although she is a lesbian feminist, she reads and enjoys the white heterosexual males of English poetry. A working-class, East Coast Catholic who teaches at the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California, she says, "Education saved me from a chaotic family background." read more Deaf Republic Ilya Kaminsky reviewed by Rob Lipton Like a screenplay written by Samuel Beckett, there is a cinematic level of description: a town being invaded, a town fighting back, and then a kind of reckoning…the deeper spirits of language, imagery and silence are conjured. read more Time Crunch Cathy Colman reviewed by Keith Shein I should make my bias known: I love lyric poetry, its emotion, directness, its address of the human condition. And I hate what it's mostly become: confession, reportage, diary entries broken into verse lines that can't get off the page. read more Storage Unit for the Spirit House Maw Shein Win reviewed by Seth Amos The opening line of Maw Shein Win's most recent collection of poems declares, "the nats have stolen my hair." With this line, Win immediately places us in the action. We have no time to ask questions or figure out where we are or how we got there. One detail is already made clear, though: the barrier between spiritual and physical has been destroyed. read more Gravitational Tug Susan Kelly-DeWitt reviewed by Tom Goff Gravitational Tug, with its fifty-one poems selected from different phases of Susan Kelly-DeWitt's career, is a good introduction to an important body of verse. A writer who can take subjects large or "small" and turn them into accomplished poetry, Kelly-DeWitt has been published in prestigious magazines, yet she deserves an even larger audience than she now enjoys. read more Transformer Kathleen Winter reviewed by John Johnson The first section begins with an epigraph by Larry Levis, in which he warns that "the nicest guy in the world" carries a switchblade. read more Shahr-e-jaanaan: The City of the Beloved Adeeba Shahid Talukder reviewed by Lee Rossi Whenever I encounter a poet new to me, one of the first questions I ask myself is, what is her tradition?…We remember that T.S. Eliot, in his famous essay "Tradition and the Individual Talent," argued that a poet cannot be evaluated simply in terms of his own work or of that of his contemporaries; "he must inevitably be judged by the standards of the past." But what if the standards of the past preclude the poet from even opening her mouth? read more Blood Memory Gail Newman reviewed by Gail Rudd Entrekin For those of us who are not Jewish, no matter how extensively we may have read about the Holocaust and been led into imagining the unthinkable, it is always ultimately not something that happened to us, to our own. read more Decoding Sparrows Mariano Zaro reviewed by Peggy Dobreer Decoding Sparrows levies a kind of spare elegance on simple acts that elevate them to the miraculous. Mariano Zaro has given us yet another exquisite folio of resplendence made evident through language. read more A Little More Red Sun on the Human Gillian Conoley reviewed by Iris Jamahl Dunkle I can still remember the first time I read the poetry of Gertrude Stein, or Jack Spicer or Michael Palmer. How when I read their work, I became unmoored, as if on a dark sea where the narrative map I'd come to know as the standard for navigating a poem dissolved in my hands. read more In the Next Life Joan Baranow reviewed by Terry Lucas In Baranow's new collection, the poet assures us that we need not even leave our rooms to experience the totality of existence, because all worlds are available through poetry. read more Kerouac: The Last Quarter Century Gerald Nicosia reviewed by Mick Parsons Gerald Nicosia, who became known in 1983 with the publication of his acclaimed Kerouac biography Memory Babe, spent several decades both as a post-Beat poet living and working among Beat poets, many of whom became his friends, and championing the rights of Kerouac's own family. read more Inner East: Illuminated Poems and Blessings Marcia Falk reviewed by Lucille Lang Day Marcia Falk is best known as a poet, translator, and Judaic scholar, but she is also an artist who has had many solo exhibitions of her oil pastel paintings, and who has created her own art form based on the traditional decorative Jewish plaques called mizrachs. read more Conscience Place Joyce Thompson reviewed by Ann Harleman In the autumn of 1976 I went to live in the Soviet Union for six months. A U.S. citizen, I was on an academic exchange between two bitterly opposed governments. read more Haiku Diane di Prima, illustrations George Herms reviewed by Andy Brumer A Japanese haiku contains three lines with a 5-7-5 syllabic sequence; it presents a juxtaposition of (usually) two ideas or feelings that join them together transcendentally without losing the individuality or tension between them. read more BEAT: The Latter Days of the Beat Generation Andy Clausen reviewed by Bruce Isaacson Andy Clausen has written a wild, wide-spirited, and thoughtful memoir of his life as an after-Beat, full of authentic intensity, joy, and sad insight into America of our era. read more Magellan's Reveries R. Nemo Hill reviewed by Richard Loranger I would like to introduce you to this enthralling book, which holds a cargo of thirty-three discrete yet interlinked poems. read more Only as the Day Is Long Dorianne Laux reviewed by Meryl Natchez When you enter the world of Dorianne Laux as revealed in Only as the Day Is Long: New and Selected Poems, you enter a world rich with domestic imagery. Much of that imagery is fraught with violence. read more Güera Rebecca Gaydos reviewed by Rosalinda Monroy Rebecca Gaydos's latest poetry collection is a fearless dive into the world of the making and unmaking of identity through language, of our own, and that of others. read more Everything Hurts Juliana McCarthy reviewed by Peggy Dobreer Juliana McCarthy (who once played the matriarch on an iconic soap opera and had a recurring role on Star Trek) is known for saying that her son, poet Brendan Constantine, mentored her into her autumnal poetry career. read more Things That Go Trump in the Night Paul Fericano reviewed by Jack Foley Among the many aspects of Donald John Trump, the pride and/or embarrassment of Queens, is his function as Muse. read more The Last Mosaic Elizabeth Cooperman and Thomas Walton reviewed by Jesse Morse Early on in The Last Mosaic, the narrator proclaims "Writing imitates other media that express things better." Directly following the proclamation is an invitation to "feel free to cut these out and arrange them pictorially however you like." The "these" the narrator refers to are the vignettes/fragments/ sentences/quotes that comprise the entirety of [the work]. read more Like Flesh Covers Bone Jan Steckel reviewed by Jack Foley Can you name a warm, extremely intelligent, caring, loving, funny, good humored, Jewish, married, ex-medical doctor, bisexual woman who writes unfailingly excellent poetry? (Why was she never a nun?) This riddle is no riddle if you happen to possess Jan Steckel's new book. read more If Wants To Be The Same As Is: Essential Poems of David Bromige edited by Bob Perelman, Ron Silliman, Jack Krick reviewed by Pat Nolan Rarely do collected poems have titles that capture the fundamental nature of the poet whose work is gathered between two covers. The reader has to be content with a generic The Collected Poems of (insert name here). Not so with David Bromige's collected poems. read more The Elements of San Joaquin Gary Soto reviewed by Lee Rossi Nowadays Gary Soto is best known for his penetrating and good-humored evocations of Latino life. In the course of a long and productive career, he has written or edited over forty books, as well as two films and a play. Soto's focus throughout this immense oeuvre is to depict the challenges of growing up brown and poor. read more The Day You Miss Your Exit Jacqueline Berger reviewed by Joan Gelfand If a successful book cover telegraphs what is inside—then Jackie Sackheim's photograph on The Day You Miss Your Exit does its job: a wide Los Angeles boulevard at a mysterious in-between time, dusk. Are we Mid-City? San Fernando Valley? Or, perhaps, on "Pedestrian Pico"? read more Invisible Gifts: Poems Maw Shein Win reviewed by Jack Foley A "Glittering Palace" may be a place or a mind—or a book. Maw Shein Win's phrase, "ruins of a glittering palace" (my emphasis) might refer as well to the sorrows of the ancient country of her ancestry. That the reference is multiple and not specifically tied down is typical of this book. read more One Gerald Fleming reviewed by Lee Rossi We all recall what Robert Frost said about poetry and tennis. With each new book, Gerald Fleming seems determined to raise Frost's 'net' higher and higher. In the afterword to his latest volume, Fleming tells us, "This book began accidentally," in response to a challenge to write something in form. Instead of attempting the usual sonnet or sestina, he decided to use only one-syllable words. read more Bullets into Bells: Poets & Citizens Respond to Gun Violence edited by Brian Clements, Alexandra Teague, Dean Rader reviewed by Meryl Natchez I picked up Bullets into Bells with some trepidation. An anthology of poems and responses about gun violence could be pretty grim. But because many major poets are included, I started leafing through. Pretty soon I was hooked. read more Poetas de Café Adelaida Las Santas reviewed by John Oliver Simon We've seen some hella poetry reading scenes in the Bay Area. None of us are old enough to remember the Berkeley Renaissance with Duncan and Spicer in the late forties…but I was there in June 1968 when Andy Clausen read interminably dressed only in an American Flag necktie, and then there was the Grand Piano series in the late 1970s that birthed Language Poetry, the Café Babar series in the '80s featuring a punk affect of "poetry you can actually read," and so on down to the Woolsey Heights series a couple of years ago with young MFAs overflowing people's houses in North Oakland. read more Liner Notes Andy Mister reviewed by Dan Alter Andy Mister's slim first book encompasses contradictions. It is beguilingly readable, despite many opaque passages; it burrows into despair and self-destruction, and emerges redemptive. Though unquestionably a book of poetry, Mister's volume stakes itself at an angle to the medium. read more Land of My Father's War Phyllis Meshulam reviewed by Shelley Armitage Like its book cover—a collage—Land of My Father's War speaks through layers of experience, memory, and imagination. The lines of a pillared landscape, wintered over grape vines, and a detail from the Florence Baptistry ceiling merge between brackets of World War II letters, signaling the rich and complex voicing to follow… read more The Moons of August Danusha Laméris reviewed by Lee Rossi Danusha Laméris offers us a book of losses. "I've buried a lover, a brother, a son," she tells us early on. But loss is only the starting point. Following the trail of poets such as Ellen Bass and Dorianne Laux, Laméris explores a woman's experience, shaping its timeless (and often neglected) mysteries into song. read more How to Be Perfect, An Illustrated Guide Ron Padgett, pictures by Jason Novak reviewed by G.P. Skratz Ron Padgett is one of the most playful of the playful New York School poets, & Jason Novak's work has graced the pages of The New Yorker, The Paris Review, & other sturdy venues. They have produced a frightening book to review: if one judges it, one doesn't really "get" it. read more Obliterations Erasures from The New York Times Heather Aimee O'Neill and Jessica Piazza reviewed by Peggy Dobreer When I received Obliterations in the mail, I was immediately struck by its visual elegance and cover detail, an abundance of clear white space out of which every other element leapt. And those elements? All of New York represented in the soft confines of an enormous block letter "O." read more The Market Wonders Susan Briante reviewed by Richard Silberg Eco-poetics, referring to the growing body of work addressed to our fevered planet—as opposed to the perennial 'nature poetry'—is probably a twenty-first century term. But recently I've been noting another kind of eco-poetry, writing that chews over, not the ecology but the economy. read more MORE REVIEWS > Daily Listings SMTWTFS 123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930 Featured Events Matthew Zapruder9/26, Berkeleymore infoAn Evening with Renee Gladman10/1, San Franciscomore infoKim Shuck and guests celebrate Mary TallMountain10/10, San Franciscomore infoHernan Diaz10/16, Fairfaxmore infoPoetry Writing Workshop: Ron Koertge10/16, South Pasadenamore info Poetry Flash Reading Series Celebrating poetry's best since 1982. about the series Upcoming Events Annie Stenzel and Patricia Caspers10/13, Berkeleymore info Poems Sally Ashton Poems from Listening to Mars read poems Lynn Strongin A Selection from Ukrainian Blues read poems Alan Soldofsky Three Poems read poems David Shaddock "On the Biden Inauguration" read poem Gerald Fleming Poems from The Bastard and the Bishop read poems Lynn Ungar "Pandemic" read poem Judy Halebsky Poems from Spring and a Thousand Years (Unabridged) read poems MORE POEMS > Northern California Book Awards Join us at the 43rd Annual Northern California Book Awards, September 7, 2024. NCBA Translation Awards now honor literary translators state-wide! California's vibrant literary scene will be celebrated on Saturday, September 7, 2024, 2 pm, when the Northern California Book Awards recognize the best published works of 2023 by Northern California authors and California translators, presented by Northern California Book Reviewers, Poetry Flash, and the San Francisco Public Library, with our community partners Mechanics' Institute Library and Women's National Book Association-San Francisco Chapter. 2024 Northern California Book Awards Jane Hirshfield Fred Cody Award for Lifetime Achievement & Service, 2024 Transit Books NCBA Groundbreaker Award, 2024 Dear California: The Golden State in Diaries and Letters Edited by David Kipen NCBA Recognition Award, 2024 More information: NCBA Information 2024 NCBA Awards 2023 NCBA Awards 2022 NCBA Awards 2021 NCBA Awards 29th ANNUAL WATERSHED ENVIRONMENTAL POETRY FESTIVAL 2024 The 29th Annual Watershed Poetry Festival will be held Saturday, October 5, 2024, Civic Center Park in Berkeley! The festival will showcase a day of poetry for the Earth and our sense of self and place, with music and commentary on climate change, climate action, and our place in nature. We Are Nature Open Reading, bookselling, exhibitors, poetry broadsides, and more, with more poetry and talk on the legendary Strawberry Creek Walk, 10 am, UC Berkeley campus. Watch for updates! More information: 2023 Festival Information 2022 IN-PERSON Festival Information 2022 Festival Information join our mailing list Get selected timely event updates and news about Poetry Flash in your email inbox. Email Address (required) First Name Last Name ZIP Code (required) x © 1972-2021 Poetry Flash. All rights reserved.  |  enusen-US1727116329https://poetryflash.org

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