Mountain Gazette #180

Way of the Mountain #180

         Publication and performance are the twin pillars of the poetry world. Personally, I’m a fan of crossovers, but I dig reading written poems and I love hearing performance poetry – slam, hip-hop, open mike. Or the Gourd Circle – a gathering of friends for dinner and several rounds of telling stories, poetry & song.

But poetry can be more than just outreach to an audience. For some it is valuable personal practice. Valerie Haugen of Glenwood Springs falls in love with a new poet a day. Lorine Niedecker. Amy Lowell. Gerard Manley Hopkins. Their words, insights and stylistic breakthroughs inform her poetry. Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer of Placerville has made a lyric practice of writing a poem a day. After going on three years of this, she’s become a master of capturing language and experience. Both great personal practices. And both poets take advantage of the Web’s blogosphere to “publish” their work and explorations.

Another bright exploratory star flames out … Gregory Greyhawk was one of those giant souls, huge-hearted, a string of his own hockey teeth pearled around his neck. Brilliant, erratic. I loved being around him. Anything could happen, and sometimes did …. Just ordered his book, Wailing Heaven, Whistling in Hell (Howling Dog Press, Berthoud, Colorado, 1996) … Gonna miss the wrap of his big arm as we caromed down a Denver sidewalk, and the wild grin of his gap-toothed smile.

-Art Goodtimes

Cloud Acre

Remembering Karen Chamberlain

lanky stalk of grass

singing in the autumn wind

your voice packed with seeds

-Carol Bell

Ft. Collins

Cool Dad

My dad, who never blows his cool

the day i left for Vietnam

sat down to a stack of homemade buttermilk pancakes

and poured vinegar on them, by mistake.

-Dennis Fritzinger

Earth First! Journal editor

Berkeley

P.S.

As for us, yes, the young still go to war,

And wars continue at the speed of darkness,

Not the world wars you expected, but the others,

Wars of despisals in our countries, in our cities, in other countries and cities.

Promises and solidarity collapsed, and in the confusion

justice circles this sweating planet, looking for somewhere to land.

-Jackie St. Joan

excerpt Letter to Muriel Rukeyser at the End of the 20^th Century

Denver

Rainforest Bedroom

(excerpt)

…jaguar has moved into the bedroom

meadowlarks are nesting in the corner

sunfish swim in the water glass on the nightstand

black widow makes a web in your shoe

the bed is a jungle

and it’s raining emeralds

-Galaxy Dancer

Durango

While Considering Demolition

I ask my teacher

about walls.

She says, Notice them.

I ask,

What´s on the other side?

 She says, You are.

-Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

Placerville

Mountain Gazette

Way of the Mountain #179

After being named poet laureate of Colorado’s Western Slope, it’s been wonderful to hook up with poet laureate of the Colorado Springs region, Jim Ciletti. David Mason of that same area is Colorado’s state poet laureate. My good friend Joan Logghe is poet laureate of Santa Fe (her new book, “The Singing Bowl,” from the University of New Mexico Press in Albuquerque, is a dazzler). California’s poet laureate was a classmate of mine in the writing department of San Francisco State, Carol Muske-Dukes. And finally, Elle Metrick of Norwood (who’s editor of the local paper, the Post) has taken the baton from Rosemerry Wahtola-Trommer and is the new San Miguel County poet laureate. It’s a nice way to honor poets who are often invisible to the community at large. This puts them out in the public eye. If your town or county wants to create such an honorary position, get a hold of me at poetry@mountaingazette.com and I can send you some draft resolutions.
This month’s featured book and poet is Norman Shaefer’s “The Sunny Top of California: Sierra Nevada Poems & A Story” (La Alameda Press, Albuquerque, 2010). It’s beautifully designed by master bookmaker JB Bryant, has an Obata woodblock on the cover and lively poems (and a story) that will charm lovers of mountains and verse in the same way that Chinese poets memorialized the mountains of their land

— Art Goodtimes

Caveat

My stubble grows white
among a hundred granite peaks.
Passions are never easily put aside.
Edging across a narrow arête,
manteling an airy summit block;
the same thing that makes you live
can kill you in the end.

— Norman Schaefer
from “The Sunny Top of California”  

(La Alameda Press, Albuquerque, 2010)

Two-liner

Easy to say,
hard to clean

— Jack Mueller
Hermit of Log Hill
Colorado

Visible

I see you. Yes. You are
the impossible route
up granite, seen only
one move at a time,
found more by fingertip
than eye.

I see you. Yes. You are
the line through trees
in deep powder, seen
then lost, visible
to the knees, a sense
of give, then ground.

I see you. Yes. You are
the smooth tongue,
the reflection of sky
leading the way through
white churn water
where the line is fine,
a single oar-dip
between slide
and flip.

— Elle Metrick
San Miguel County Poet Laureate
Norwood

At the Karen Chamberlain Poetry Festival

like wild hummingbirds
we gather at the feeder
gulping poetry

— Carol Bell  
Haiku a Day Practice  
Fort Collins

The Road

May the road
rise up to greet you
as you face down
fall upon it.

— Danny Rosen
Stargazing Mage of Lithic Press
Fruita