A Poem for John Mansfield

 a fine woodworker polishes his roughcut to best accentuate the grain

poets do that too, tinkering with words

here's my latest version of Golly John

Golly John

We made folks in this county get development permits

Be it fixing a roof or replacing a window

But you just off & die on us?

On the way home to Colorado from Cali

No permit. No notice

That big fat Buddhist ensō of no thing

You knew the heart sutra

Nothing's permanent about 

a Zen cleaver

Chuckled along with the rest of us 

when the Blues Brothers 

bombed on the Valley Floor

You took risks

Worked with kids who said they wanted a lifeline

Tossed them into rafts & ran the rapids

I liked you best over coffee 

in the morning's repartee at Mesa Rose

Pioneer old-timers. Ex-Telluriders

Feisty Floridian short-timers 

who loved to crocodile 

& then told great snapping stories

You took leadership

Wore your advocate jeans. Mixed drinks

& mediums

Some saw you as a fine art cartoonist

who illustrated our absurdities

 Watercolored in the silences

But golly, John. You took a damn quick exit

After shuffling up & down Grand Avenue 

for the last ten years

Manifesting 

that wry savvy calm 

behind the half-smile

Coyote artist. Trustee. Officer of the Peace

Tickling wit out of whim

Fancy out of the angler's cast & spin

One fine spring day, all of a sudden

you spun on an eddy in Whitewater 

& left

Leaving us now unable to imagine

a Wrights Mesa without your

ambling shoes. Your tinkering brushes

Western Slope Poet Laureate

 

Wendy Videlock accepts Western Slope Poet Laureate
trophy at the Center for the Arts in Grand Junction
(Photo by Todd Videlock)

Telluride Institute names Wendy Videlock sixth Western Slope Poet Laureate

Poetry is a niche art. Not a lot of folks practice it, nor are there many who pay much attention. But a consistent few do, as good poetry is mostly good storytelling, shaped by thousands of years of Western lyric traditions.

For a dozen years the Western Slope has had its own Poet Laureate, an honorary title started in Carbondale at the Karen Chamberlain Poetry Festival. This year the Western Slope Poet Laureate baton is changing hands as it does every two years.

The Telluride Institute’s Talking Gourds Poetry Program named Wendy Videlock of Palisade as the sixth Western Slope Poet Laureate during a reception at the Grand Valley Creative Alliance’s “Art After Hours – With A Twist” event at the Art Center of Western Colorado Saturday May 20th.

The Telluride Institute also honored Dr. L. Luis López of Grand Junction, the outgoing Western Slope Poet Laureate.              

A professor emeritus at Colorado Mesa University, Dr. López taught English, Latin, Ancient Greek and Mythology, as well as serving as Director of the Academic Honors Program. He was awarded two National Endowment for the Humanities fellowships -- one to study lyric poetry with Dr. Helen Vendler at Harvard University and a second one to study the literature of innocent suffering with Dr. Terrence Tilley at St. Michael's College in Vermont.

Dr. López has published five books of poetry, including Musings of a Barrio Sack Boy, A Painting of Sand, and Each Month I Sing (2008), which won the American Book Award and the Colorado Independent Publishers Association annual Best Poetry award.

A widely published Colorado poet, Videlock’s work has appeared in the New York Times, Poetry, Oprah Magazine, Hudson Review, the anthology Best American Poetry and Ted Kooser's syndicated poetry column American Life in Poetry. She performs her work around the region, hosts many regional poetry gatherings and publishes a Trickster Ridge newsletter of poetry events and announcements.

A respected visual artist whose paintings are featured in a number of galleries, Videlock has published four books of poetry with the Able Muse Press of California: Nevertheless (2010), The Dark Gnu and Other Poems (2011), Slingshots and Love Plums (2015) and Wise to the West (2022). She also published a chapbook, What’s That Supposed to Mean, with EXOT Press of New York (2010). And Lithic Press of Fruita has just brought out her latest, a collection of poetry & prose as a mixture of lyric, critical essay, review and memoir, The Poetic Imaginarium: A Worthy Difficulty.

Past Western Slope Poet Laureates include Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer of Placerville, David Rothman of Crested Butte, Art Goodtimes of Norwood and Aaron Abeyta of Antonito.

Art Center of Western Colorado's ballroom

JOHN SCOTT MANSFIELD [1943-2023]

John Mansfield and Art Goodtimes after taping a KOTO-FM
radio interview at the media room in the Norwood Public School, 2019.
[Photo by Cara Pallone]

Whitewater ... Coming back to San Miguel County where he'd made his home. Didn't feel good. Something wrong. Pulled over in time. Not crashing. Hands on the wheel. Expired. Samaritans lifted him out of the car. Laid him by the road. Tried CPR. Nothing ... Couple months before he'd found his Mesa Rose coffee club buddy, Charlie, face-down on the ice where alone he'd slipped, carrying firewood. Six hours. Neck broken. Unable to reach the phone. His lifeline since his wife had died. Hypothermic. Frost-bit. Hospitalized. Transferred. Nothing left. He died.  ... My last email to John asking about Charlie's memorial. Celebration of Life. The wake of his passing from our lives ... Now John too. Gone ... His wry smiling zen eye on the day's promenade. "Hello," we call to each other, lost in our meanders, shuffling by. Waving. All of itki, passing. Pastiche of time & place. Interwoven fabric. Needle & thread. Rapids around the bend & then calm. And the slow deep pull of memory's currents.

 

May Day

 

May Day morning at Wrenheim in Naturita Canyon

May Day

“Let the millionaire go naked, stark naked!”

                     —César Vallejo

May the multi-billionaires bankrolling proxy cock rockets for the 1% to escape stop.

May they instead fund food desert grocery stores, wellness checks, dental exams, universal health care, apprenticeships, journalists, trade school, college, trains, buses, marching bands, drumlines, symphonies, poetry readings, and neighborhood puppet shows, two free cold drinks per attendee.

May solar panel and wind turbine farms replace golf courses and parking lots.

May megachurches, shopping malls, and munitions factories shelter the shelterless.

May corporations and the rich pay their taxes like any entry-level janitor.

May minimum income let no one hunger.

May guns become curios.  

May not one more child be shot.

May all go garmented as wanted.

May no one struggle between lights or groceries, groceries or medicine, medicine or rent.

May throwing money at problems solve them.

Unlimited music streaming services, tiny homes, and spicy vegan snacks for everyone!

My brain’s a pessimist, my heart a Marxist, stomach an anarchist, feet the downtrodden.

My soul’s on the side of kids throwing rocks at cops.

May only their helmets and shields be thumped.

May anyone ill be healed.

May the North Atlantic garbage patch—marine debris and microplastics hundreds of miles across—be engineered to serve as refuge paradise for everyone whose islands rising waters overwhelm.

May personal solar-powered cooling suits be distributed to the populace, embroidered with one of three slogans in Esperanto: “Hot and bothered,” “Just chilling,” and “Sorry!”

May hands exert themselves for common purpose.

May the sleep of the people be bountiful.

May the dreams of those sleeping in work clothes contain no labor.

May we wake with the happy idea of infinite wishes.

Sheep Mountain

The Heavenly Tree Grows Downward

 

Colorado Times-Recorder

Denver media progressive Jason Salzman is putting out an in-depth on-line newspaper with Colorado news and op-ed.  Here's one poem of mine that just appeared as opinion. For the published version, go HERE

Day After

April Fool's

almost missed 

the subtleties of circle fractures

in the poled skin of the snow

As Gerrit Lansing once told us

The Heavenly Tree Grows Downward

"All life long/the dew falls from heaven

... trees climb up from underground waters"

Holding palm up on the unburnt trunk

of a Thunder Trails yellowleg pine

in morning tai chi -- chanting

 needles, rootlets, hyphae

News alive again

with Mar-a-lago shenanigans

blowing ill-will like a militia howl 

before a Rocky Mountain storm

Not surprised really, Irate, saddened. Right

& left, vicious or vicarious, some furious

li bingeing on outlaw fantasies. We

Americans love our bully pulpits. Our puppets

Ziggie's Open Mike Zoom Series

 Julie Cummings is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

Topic: Ziggies Poetry Open Mic Featuring Art Goodtimes
Time: Apr 6, 2023 05:45 PM Mountain Time (US and Canada)

Join Zoom Meeting HERE


Meeting ID: 830 9558 4158

BARDIC TRAILS APRIL 13023

 

Talking Gourds Broadside by Daiva Chesonis

Diana Whitney

Fischer Prize Finalist 2022

 Happy National Poetry Month!

If you missed registering to join us for tonight's Bardic Trails at 7 pm Mountain Time, find the zoom link below  

After Diana reads, host Joanna Spindler will lead a Q&A session

followed by our Passing of the Gourd for those wanting to read a poem

 Bardic Trails is held on the first Tuesday of every month as a collaboration of the Telluride Institute's Talking Gourds poetry program and the Wilkinson Public Library

Topic: Bardic Trails

Time: Apr 4, 2023 07:00 PM Mountain Time (US and Canada)

JOIN ZOOM HERE

Meeting ID: 820 8592 7190 

Diana Whitney writes across the genres with a focus on feminism, sexuality, and motherhood. She is editor of the bestselling anthology YOU DON'T HAVE TO BE EVERYTHING: POEMS FOR GIRLS BECOMING THEMSELVES, a Best Book of 2021 and winner of the 2022 Claudia Lewis Award. As the longtime poetry critic for the San Francisco Chronicle, Diana featured women poets and LGBTQ voices in her column. Her nonfiction and poetry have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Kenyon Review, Glamour, Tinderbox, and many more. Her poetry debut, WANTING IT, became an indie bestseller and won the Rubery Book Award. She is finishing a new collection, GIRL TROUBLE, supported by a Creation Grant from the Vermont Arts Council. Find out more HERE