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

UBC1313 .... Spring Hoedown in Mancos

SPRING HOEDOWN … Tami Graham of Mancos sure knows how to put on a great show. Her family-friendly benefit for the Montezuma County School-to-Farm Project (and her own non-profit The Pay It Forward Fund) packed the Mancos Opera House March 16th.

As emcee, I got to auction off two live humans (for three and a half hours of gardening work). A neophyte as auctioneer, the calling was slow but the bidding was spirited – Farm Boy Harrison went for $70 and Farm Girl Blaize for $88.

We square-danced up a storm with Carla Roberts and the Wild West Squares. My Rainbow buddy (and former Durango Mayor) Michael Rendon led his Caruta Roma Gypsy Band in a slurry of rousing dance tunes. Ashley Edwards of Hello Dollface delighted the crowd with indie soul, and Robby Overfield and the Breaks did their soulful music for the late-evening dancers.

MANCOS … I have to say, this is the second time I’ve been down to Mancos for a great party and huge turnout of tykes and crones, steers and queers, and everything in between – rural Colorado as it moves from red to blue. Some of this energy seems to be La Plata County spillover – Mancos playing Carbondale to Durango’s Aspen. But some of it seems targeted to this rural pocket of Montezuma County, with its back up against Mesa Verde and the San Juans in the distant north. What used to be very conservative, predominately Mormon country, and has now become a haven for alternative lifestyle folks from all over – Santa Cruz to Abilene.

Absolute Bakery in Mancos

Check out Zuma’s the next time you’re passing through on the highway, or maybe make a little detour for breakfast at the Absolute Bakery.

Up Bear Creek 1313 ... The musical Hair

Sixties extravaganza draws crowds

to Telluride's Palm Theatre

HURRAY FOR HAIR … Sasha Sullivan has done the unbelievable. She’s pushed Telluride theater into the next generation … A friend confided in me before the play, “I hate musicals.” But there was nothing to hate in the finale production of Telluride Theatre’s Hair Sunday night, and everything to like. Especially for a long-haired paleohippie like me … Heavy doses of peace and love, some unbelievable singers, marvelous dancing and acting, great staging, lighting, live music, and choreography that was over the top … To single any one person out would be unfair to an amazing cast, top to bottom. And truly, Hair is an ensemble piece, a puzzle in which – if all the pieces fit – it works beautifully … Suzan Beraza was in the audience the night I saw it. She’d played a big part a dozen or so years ago in Telluride’s first production of this paean to “Hippie Power” (which, as a bumper sticker, still flies its flag on my 300,000+ mile Honda Civic) … “It was wonderful to sit in the audience,” she laughed. “I felt like I was watching the torch pass” … Some of us were still dancing coming out of the Palm, and I was whistling show tunes all the way up Norwood Hill.

UBC1113 The Talking Gourd

Lois Hayna

LOIS BEEBE HAYNA … Speaking of Phenomenal Women, this grand dame of Colorado Springs poets is still observing nature and creating lyrics at 100 years of age. You can find a video of her 100^th birthday party this past January on YouTube. An amazing woman, I met her through Poetry West – the largest community of poets and writers in the Pikes Peak Region.

Regis University maintains an archival collection of Hayna’s papers. As the site explains, It begins with poetry from her college days, and … essays and short stories she wrote in the 1970 -- 1980s. Of significance is a very comprehensive collection of her poems from the 1970s to the present. Also among her writing are drafts for an unpublished book on herbs, entitled “The Casual Herbist,”  as well as her notes on herbs and a bibliography … Her poetry books include Never Trust a Crow (1990), Keeping Still (2008), and her latest The Praying Mantis(2012) – published when Lois was 99 years old!

A mutual friend, Liz Lewis, has written a lovely tribute to her, appearing this week as the Talking Gourd.

Dirt, Sky and Things Between

-for Lois Hayna at 100

A birder must watch her foot’s

solid placement between roots, prickly pear.

It’s slow progress through poplars,

willows so leaf laden each twig

holds silver/green birds

in a pre-Audubon hallucination.

Real warblers escape the lens,

magpies klatsch in ponderosa tops

and heat distilled sandalwood scent rises

above the ant-chewed underworlds.

She stumbles on a cedar branch, loses

her footing, her binoculars, language:

place and birds, coyote slipping into shadow,

no words for this desperate joy.

-Liz Lewis

Colorado Springs

 

Violence Against Women Act

Pres. Obama speaks at signing of VAWA in D.C. (U.S. News & World Report)

UBC1013 ... There’s a big push on right now to support the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act. The Senate has voted strongly in favor (thank you Bennet and Udall), but the House is dragging its feet, and I can’t imagine Tea Party Tipton voting on anything progressive, let alone in favor of women.

UBC1113… Okay, time for me to eat crow … My friend Kevin Kell pointed out that most of his fellow Republicans in the Colorado delegation, including Scott Tipton (our Third District U.S. Representative), Mike Coffman and Cory Gardner, voted FOR reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act in the House. Only Tea Party Repub Lamborn voted against the act … I admit to being prematurely dismissive of Tipton’s willingness to entertain this piece of progressive legislation … So, let me apologize, and hope that U.S. Rep. Tipton and his staff continue to find common ground with Democrats (and Greens) on select issues, as citizens of his district so earnestly hope for.