POETREE is the heART at LIBER TEA

I'M  BACK 

& HAVING A GREAT TIME DYING

or itki felt like  dying 13020-13022 [Western Slope Calendar]

after throat cancer, surgery, chemo, radiation  hell-in-a-handbasket

hernia, mild 1-day Covid, nasty 3-week Front Range cold, prostate surgery

& then two weeks  purgatory tethered  by my shrunken urethra to  a urine bag

now itki's back to feeling like a great time  again

'cuz I got that goddam'  catheter out in spite of the morning's crystogram scare

where a leaky bladder showed up  again & I expected -- going cross town from Grand

Junkyard's St. Mary's to the Urological Associates  of Western Colorado by the Mall

I expected to be sent down  hell's escalator into the self-swamp of (at last) depression

but where instead hell's bells  a swarm of good docs conferred & gave the good nurse 

the greenlight to pull the fucker out.  Or the fuck-stopper.  Or whatever 

was left of my onceuponatime major pleasure center

Now itki's back to having a  great time again

 

until the next inferno disaster mass killing catastrophe brings me

bring us

face-to-face with DEATH that for some lucky few 

sits on our left shoulder like an angel

EXPECTED NON-EXEMPT NINTH LIFE  DEMISE 

RESURRECTED

I've re-energized this  dormant sleepingbear Art Goodtimes blogspot 

with itki's cache of  old Telluride UP BEAR CREEK columns from years past

that have outlasted the vagaries of  shape-shifting hometown newspapers

cutthroat  corporate publishers, a challenging Job-esque Scylla&Charybdus two-years

& my deep-rooted, pre-scholastic procilivity for an archive of congeries

The idea? 

To start sharing with friends & family what's most important to me

POETREE

which as my good bardic  condor compadre Kush might say

Is the Heart at LIBER TEA

Here's a  new performance work-in-progress that plays off of 

the etymological explorations of the late Tom Jay of the Pacific Northwest 

& my big stage run-on rant style, with repetitive structural tropes scattered about.

Itki goes after Christianity 

& our American obsession with comfort & "happy" endings

as if there was nothing we couldn't fix

HAPPY NEW YEAR'S

Folks
I'm not longer Poet Laureate of the Western Slope.
That lasted from 13011 to 13013 (2011-13 CE).
Been too busy to blog, but my column Up Bear Creek appears in the MontroseMirror.com weekly and my column Looking South from Lone Cone appears in the Four Corners Free Press monthly
Come check out our Talking Gourds poetry program under the umbrella of the Telluride Institute
www.tellurideinstitute.org
The many projects there -- Ute Reconciliation, Fen Advisory, the Telluride Mushroom Festival and Talking Gourds -- keep me plenty busy...
Thanks, Art Goodtimes
pictured here in SF with with AmanitaScoot out at Fort Point near the Golden Gate

Aaron Abeyta Named New Western Slope Poet Laureate

Aaron Abeyta reading at the Karen Chamberlain Poetry Festival, 2012

Colorado, Denver, the Pike’s Peak Region, San Miguel County – many regions and jurisdictions have begun honoring poets by naming them to the honorary position of poet laureate. San Miguel County has Elle Metrick of Norwood as its laureate, the Pike’s Peak Region has Price Strobridge, Chris Ransick’s term as Denver’s laureate ended in 2010 but funding cuts have precluded the naming of another so far, and Colorado College poet/prof Dave Mason is the state’s much-esteemed laureate.

Elle Metrick

Western Colorado has always been a long ways from the urban centers of the Front Range, and has sometimes been overlooked in the field of arts. But poetry has been a vibrant and powerful practice on the Western Slope – hosting a number of poetry festivals over the years: Talking Gourds in Telluride, Sparrows in Salida, the Festival of the Imagination in Del Norte, and now the Karen Chamberlain Poetry Festival in Carbondale.

Chris Ransick

By way of celebrating that fact, the festival named a Western Slope Poet Laureate two years ago. In a stealth move that caught me by surprise, I was honored with that title. And now, the laurels pass over to a new Western Slope Poet Laureate – Aaron Abeyta. Award-winning poet and professor at Adams State College in Alamosa, Aaron’s family hails from many generations in the San Luis Valley’s Antonito community.

Dave Mason

Here's a letter poem for Aaron that I read at the festival when we made the laureate announcement.

a letter to Aaron

as the sun rises en nuestros corazones

hermano

let us begin with a prayer

because everything we invite into our lives

sits at the table of the sacred

in nomine madre tierra

et padre cielo

et spiritus pueblo

here at Cloud Acre

on the cusp of the San Juan Mountains

and the Colorado Plateau

the grass still sleeps in its gray and gold

though change is in the air

the wild punishing winds

that test our allegiance to spring

gusts that sweep the mesa clean

like a mad dowser searching for water

the flowering we can’t see yet

but that we wind-blown ones

believe will come

and humbly share as a ray of hope

this is the time of year

when our eyes search for anything green

some sign of life born of water

and sun

that golden orb of all our inspirations

reflected in the light that pours

from our body’s solar plexus

to protect us from the harm

that spins its devils in the dust

and to warm the world

into yielding us its cornucopia of gifts

the mantle of this award comes

from just such a gifting

the promise of Colcha you wove

into our minds as a cape of many colors

a path of many ways

a multi-ethnic design flourishing

out of the fabric of many craftings

Aaron, I have seen a horse’s eye

the galaxies and nebulae

in that deepest brown

that is skin and mud and the land

that we love

married as we are to earth

to each other

to this place called Colorado

its ancient reds its skies beyond blue

and the invading whites of winter

your voice is la primavera

four syllables that inspire us

to bud

to bring our best green into being

yours are the seeds our love is made of

in the sunlight of your lyric valuables

in the poems you fashion for us

like a child’s mud cakes

on the banks of the San Miguel

we grow playful

and are inspired to work

at what is most important

the messy pigments of truth-telling

those lessons nature affords us

the real opportunity to learn

and so we share this honor with you

amigo

that you may go on inspiring

the many adams and eves

longing for los colores en sus ojos

the fire in your belly

and this green we set above your brow

is meant not so much as crown

but as beacon

un rayo de esperanza

 

Signage

EUPHEMISMS … Hey, CDOT, what was wrong with those old “Deer Crossing” signs? … Okay, maybe “Wildlife Crossing” -- if it had to change … But did we really need the yellow hazard sign outside Colona that reads “Wildlife Detection Zone”?

SPEAKING OF SIGNS … Had to smile near San Luis Valley’s Casita Park heading east of Moffat at the highway sign for the White Eagle Lodge atCrestone: “Lodging/Tarot”. In Crestone I guess getting a room and a reading pairs like chicken and white wine.

SPEAKING OF FOOD … If you do find yourself at the foot of the Sangre de Cristo Range, wandering Sedona North in search of sustenance, let me recommend the Bliss Café … Delicious food, simple setting, welcoming service. Highly recommended.

Windfall

A Portland-based “Journal of Poetry of Place” offered a critique of modernism in their spring 2009 issue, which I just happened upon in my midden heap at Cloud Acre.

Editors Bill Silverly and Michael McDowell include an Afterword with each issue, and this one was entitled: “Gardener Poets.” I loved Windfall, subscribed for a year, and was only disappointed in that they limited their submissions to poets of the Pacific West Coast states. Though hardly a fault. Best to keep things regional and not try to get too big – that’s my resiliency model these days.

But I’m a gardener poet. I wish the Southern Rockies had its own Journal of Poetry of Place, or maybe it does and I just haven’t learned of it yet.

Anyway, lot of the theoretical underpinnings for the Windfall critique rest with Robert Pogue Harrison’s Gardens: An Essay on the Human Condition (Univ. of Chicago, 2008).

As Harrison puts it, “Modernism found its objective correlative in the wasteland rather than the garden”.

Here’s some short excerpts from Silverly and McDowell’s Afterword … Harrison also contrasts the gardener’s perspective with the cult of consumerism that has seemed to dominate life from mid-twentieth century until now. Harrison borrows the phrase “more life” from Lionel Trilling to characterize our craving to turn the earth into “a consumerist paradise where everything is given spontaneously, without labor, suffering or husbandry”.

Then Silverly and McDowell quote Harrison directly – and I find it a quite serviceable rationale why I continue to grow 50+ varieties of potatoes in a busy public and private life… Our attempts to re-create Eden amount to an assault on creation. That is the danger of the era. Precisely because our frenzy is fundamentally aimless while remaining driven, we set ourselves goals whose main purpose is to keep the frenzy going until it consummates itself in sloth … If at present we are seeking to render the totality of the earth’s resources endlessly available, endlessly usable, endlessly disposable, it is because endless consumption is the proximate goal of a production without end … Or, better, consumption is what justifies the frenzy of production, which in turn justifies consumption, the entire cycle serving more to keep us busy than to satisfy our real needs

Reg Saner Receives first Chamberlain Award in Carbondale Aaron Abeyta named second Western Slope Poet Laureate

 

        Thanks to the dedication and drive of Valerie Haugen and Lon Winston of the Thunder River Theatre Company, Carbondale hosted its third annual Western Slope poetry festival this past weekend. Named for Karen Chamberlain, the event celebrates the continuing inspiration that Karen provided for many poets – not only in the Roaring Fork Valley where she made her home, but around Colorado and the region.

Uche Ogbuchi leads workshop outside

       Karen was founder of the Aspen Writers’ Foundation, coordinator of the Canyonlands Field Institute Desert Writers Workshop near Moab, winner of the 1983 The Nation Discovery Prize and the 1989 Colorado Council on the Arts Poetry Fellowship, and poetry editor of the Mountain Gazette for five years. She was often a visitor to Telluride, as well as a colleague and personal friend of mine. As Valerie is quoted in the Aspen Times as saying, ““What struck me about Karen was how wise she was and how kind she was. She thought everyone should write. In the last week of her life, she even helped someone finish his book”

Judyth Hill

       This year's fest squeezed in lots of performance slots for established veterans and all ages of newbies. While of course there were stand-outs, the reigning ethos honored everyone willing to perform, and the audience listened attentively to each and every diverse voice.

       It was great to catch the dazzling wobble that is Judyth Hill of Mexico’s San Miguel de Allende, the trickster/heckler/sage Jack Mueller of Ridgway, fellow emcee Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer of Placerville,  Stewart Warren of Albuquerque, Wendy Videlock, Uche Ogbuchi, Rachel Kellum, Kit Muldoon, Trinity La Fay, Danny Rosen, Bob King, Jimi Bernath, Airica Parker, M.D. Friedman, Laurie James, Jared Smith, Erika Moss Gordon, Valerie Szarek, Debbi Brody, SETH, Jeff Spahr-Summers, Roseanna Frechette, Eric and Jacob Walter, Bill Kight, Sandra Dorr, Rick Kempa, Mark Todd, Word Horde, Patrick Curry, and more.

Young performer

I could spend the rest of the column just naming names. It was an amazing collection of state and regional poets -- all of whom gave short but spirited presentations.

And the Gourd Circle finale on Sunday morning was among the more powerful listening and shining sessions I’ve ever participated in. For poetry on Colorado's Western Slope, this was a landmark event.

New Western Slope Poet Laureate Aaron Abeyta

CHAMBERLAIN AWARD 

       I’ve long admired Reg Saner. He’s published widely in national and regional magazines, been invited to international poetry festivals, and won lots of awards already. I’ve been wanting to bring him out to the Western Slope for years. In fact, almost 30, since I first heard him read from So This Is The Map (Random House) at the former Mesa State College in Grand Junction in 1984, the year my oldest daughter was born.

Reg Saner

       His poetry has been a powerful influence on me and those familiar with his work. His books of poetry and essays employ a rich forest of language tossed into the furnace of the natural world to bring us heat, and warmth, and insight. It was a great honor to be able to award him the first Chamberlain Award for Lifetime Poetic Achievement here in Colorado.

       On top of everything, Reg is an exceedingly kind, genuinely humble, wisely humorous elder who spent more time listening to the young and old others at the festival than in shining himself, although when he read, he really did shine. There’s a lot of Reg's friends who will be lobbying the Governor to appoint him as Colorado’s next state Poet Laureate once the wonderful term of current PL Dave Mason has expired. I would encourage you to join us in that effort. 

Valerie Szarek and Jimi Bernath doing flute and haiku

CHANGE ALERT / soon

this is not a joke

my term as western slope poet laureate has changed
with the announcement of aaron abeyta's selection
as colorado's new western slope poet laureate
at the karen chamberlain poetry festival in carbondale
this past weekend...

so i'm planning on a new blog addy
changing this site from
goodtimespoetlaureate.blogspot.com
to
artgoodtimes.blogspot.com
or maybe cloudacre.blogspot.com
or maybe even deviantbonbonz.blogspot.com

stay alert
things will change