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Reciprocity in Nature

Examples of reciprocity in nature are at the heart of indigenous wisdom, according to author and scientist Robin Wall Kimmamer . In The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World (Scribner, 2024), she writes that “to replenish the possibility of mutual flourishing…we need an economy that shares the gifts of the earth, following the lead of our oldest teachers, the plants.” An enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, Kimmamer is the best-selling author of Braiding Sweetgrass and a SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor of Environmental Biology. Pointing to the Serviceberry tree as a model, she observes that “Materials move through ecosystems in a circular economy and are constantly transformed.” The leaves of the tree draw carbon dioxide, which becomes sugar in the berry, which becomes food for the Cedar Waxwings, which animate their songs and colors their feathers, which become food for beetles, and so on. In this clear and concisely written book, Kimmamer spells out the risks of current practices based on profit alone and invites readers to “consider how you can reciprocate the gifts of the Earth in your own way.” Illustrations by John Burgoyne  

Burningword Literary Journal

My thanks to the editors of Burningword for accepting the poem, “Lost Places” for their January issue. Established in June 2000, this is a quarterly publication featuring an array of poetry, short fiction, nonfiction, and visual art, according to their website. Issues are published in January, April, July, and October; selected work is included in an annual “best of” issue and nominations are submitted for both the Pushcart and Best of Net awards. www.burningword.com

“In an age of distraction, nothing can feel more luxurious than paying attention.”  – Pico Iyer, The Art of Stillness: Adventures in Going Nowhere

Poetry Open Submissions

Frontier Poetry is currently accepting online poetry submissions in their New Voices category and welcomes “underrepresented and marginalized voices.” They also offer an optional editorial letter with one to two pages of feedback. Payment is from $50 to $150 per poem. www.frontierpoetry.com

About Place Journal is now accepting “artistic collaborations” of poetry and other genres that explore the experience of cooperative work. Until March 10th. www.aboutplacejournal.org

The Lascaux Review is open for submissions of poetry and other work (up to five poems) and will consider previously published material. They’re seeking accessible poetry “that can be appreciated without notation.” www.lascauxreview.com

Contests

The Harold Morton Landon Translation Award is for “a poetry collection translated from any language into English and published in the previous calendar year.” Submissions are accepted through February 15th. www.poets.org

The Center for African American Poetry and Poetics and Autumn House Press are co-sponsoring a contest for a first or second poetry/hybrid collection. The prize is $3,000 and publication; submissions will be accepted through February 15th. www.caapp.pitt.edu

Arts and Letters is now accepting submissions (up to four poems) for the Rumi Poetry Prize. The award is $1,000 and publication on their website. (They “prefer” that entries not be simultaneously submitted.) Through February 20th. www.artsandletters.submittable.com

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The Comfort of Haiku

The practice of haiku cultivates awareness of what is, and this awareness can offer a kind of psychological comfort for what ails us. Shiki, who suffered from tuberculosis, rarely addressed his condition directly in haiku.  Yet, his verses provided him with a more expansive lens with which to view his condition and the world, one that encompassed both light and dark.  I like this one:*

winter cold —

gulping medicine, saving

the tangerine for later

Here, the tangerine suggests a healing purpose as much as whatever formula Shiki was ingesting: beauty is medicine, too, and so is color, shape, and texture.  And then, what a comfort to hold a small, perfectly ripe tangerine, to peel it, expose the pulp, release the pungent scent, and taste the juicy tartness.  Even on his sickbed, Shiki noted the allure of all this.

African-American novelist Richard Wright (“Native Son”) was introduced to haiku through the translations of R. H. Blythe in 1959 and, during the last eighteen months of his life, he wrote hundreds of them.  Struggling to recover from amoebic dysentery and often bedridden, “he was never without his haiku binder under his arm,” writes his daughter, Julia, in the introduction to Wright’s collection, “Haiku, The Last Poems of an American Icon,” (Arcade, 2012).  “I believe his haiku were a self-developed antidote against illness, and that breaking down words into syllables matched the shortness of his breath…”, she observes.  Others have suggested that his passion for haiku was something more than therapeutic, that it offered the structure (and brevity) for deep contemplation, and for transcending the political and racial boundaries of his work.  I think that both of these suggestions are probably true — that writing haiku kept the streams of Wright’s creative imagination alive during a time of stress and suffering, and helped to allieve that suffering, as well.

*version by j.g.

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Joy Harjo Appointed 23rd U.S. Poet Laureate

For Joy Harjo, newly appointed U.S. Poet Laureate, poems are “carriers of dreams, knowledge, and wisdom,” and have the power to change lives.  The author of eight books, including the recently released collection, An American Sunrise, Harjo is the first Native American to serve in the position.  She hails from the Muscogee Creek Nation and lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma.  In her memoir, Crazy Brave, she recalls growing up in poverty, her alcoholic father, and a first, failed marriage.  Poetry, she believes, “is a kind of music” that can “transform experiences that could potentially destroy people, a family, a person, to experiences that build connections and community.”  “Humanizing” and “healing” are two of her goals as poet laureate, Harjo told Lynn Neary in an interview with NPR   “I really believe that if people sit together and hear their deepest feelings and thoughts beyond political divisiveness, it makes connections,” she said.

In Memoriam

New York poet, performer, and artist John Giorno, 82, whose early poetry broke conventional boundaries and whose recent “text art” features graphic phrases against bold backgrounds, has died.  In 1967, he started Dial-a-Poem, a service that presented callers with short poems by Manhattan poets, and went on to collaborate with artist Brion Gysin and writer William Burroughs, among others.  A gay man, he spearheaded efforts to raise funds for people with HIV/AIDS and, in the 1970s, studied with exiled Tibetan teacher Dudjom Rinpoche in India, converting to Buddhism.  A retrospective of his work, organized by his husband, Ugo Rondinone, opened at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris in 2015, later traveling to venues in New York.  “John was filled with extraordinary generosity, presence, and humor, not to mention a deep drive to be part of conversations and collaborations with artists…we may never see the likes of someone like him again,” commented art dealer Elizabeth Dee to Art News.

Submissions

Reed Magazine, “California’s oldest literary journal” is currently open until November 1st for submissions of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and visual art.  www.reedmag.org/submit…..Emry’s Journal is open until November 1st for submissions in poetry, short fiction, and creative nonfiction.  For more information, visit www.emrys.org…..Crazyhorse, out of the College of Charleston, is open for general submissions until December 31st  and will also be accepting submissions for prizes in poetry, fiction, and nonfiction during the month of January.  www.crazyhorse.cofc.edu…..Allegro Poetry Magazine is currently accepting submissions for poems on the theme of “Home” until October 31.  www.allegropoetry.org   The Haiku Poets of Northern California is sponsoring a contest for haiku, senryu, and tanka (until October 31st), and rengay (until January 31st).  Prizes will be awarded and the winning poems will be published in the organization’s journal, Mariposa; for guidelines, visit www.hpnc.org. 

New Poems

Night Song received the grand prize in the TallGrass Writers Guild Contest and will appear in their anthology, Loon Magic and Other Night Sounds, available this month from Outrider Press (www.outriderpress.net).  My sincere gratitude to Editor Whitney Scott and to the judge, Diane Williams, for this award…..Invisible Ocean will appear in the October issue (volume 19) of The Healing Muse, the nonprofit literary and visual arts journal published by SUNY Upstate Medical University’s Center for Bioethics and Humanities (www.upstate.edu).  Founded by the late poet, BA St. Andrews, the journal focuses on themes of medicine, illness, disability, and healing…..White Camellias in November and Walking Among Redwoods will appear in the fall issue of California Quarterly, 45:4.  Edited by Pearl Karrer, it’s published by the California Sate Poetry Society (www.californiastatepoetrysociety.org)…..After Beauty will appear in the December issue of Linden Avenue Journal.  Founded by poet and essayist Athena Dixon in 2012, Linden Avenue offers a venue for “daughters of the diaspora” as well as others, and seeks work “that highlights the intersections between art and everyday life and gifts us with extraordinary imagery.” (www.lindenavelit.com)…..When it Appears will appear in Spiritus, A Journal of Christian Spirituality, Fall, 2019.  Published semi-annually by John Hopkins University Press, the peer-reviewed journal “covers research on Christian spirituality while fostering creative dialogue with non-Christian traditions.”  (www.press.jhu.edu)…..Thinking About Not Thinking will appear in issue #34 of Urthona, A Journal of Buddhism and the Arts, that includes in-depth essays, art features, and interviews (www.urthona.com).  Thanks to the editors and staff of all of these publications!

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A Celebration of Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Poets Shauna Hannibal, Fernando Marti, and Zack Rogow will read from their new books, as well as from the poetry of Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who recently turned 100.  “New Poetry and 100 Years of Ferlinghetti” will take place on April 15 at 7pm at Folio Books, 3957 24th Street in San Francisco.  Birthday cake will be served.

American Haiku Archives

According to their website, the American Haiku Archives in Sacramento, California, houses the “largest collection of haiku and related poetry books and papers outside of Japan.”  Founded in 1996, it’s the official archive of the Haiku Society of America.  Current AHA exhibits include a special tribute to Kiyoko and Kiyoshi Tokutomi.  Located in the California State Library Historical Room in Sacramento, CA, the exhibit is open to the public.  To learn more about the archives and their current exhibits, visit www.americanhaikuarchives.org.

Submissions

Reed Magazine, California’s oldest literary journal, will be accepting submissions for their annual contest from June 1 to November 1.  Prizes and publication are offered for fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and art.  www.reedmagazine.org…..Jericho Brown will judge this year’s poetry contest for the Crab Creek Review.  Submit up to 4 poems.  Winner receives $500 plus publication. www.crabcreekreview.org/contests.html ….. Beech Street Review, a quarterly online poetry journal, is accepting poetry submissions through the month of April.  Submit 3-5 poems.  www.beechstreetreview.com

W. S. Merwin

It’s hard to believe W. S. Merwin is gone.  It almost seemed as if his incomparable poems with their unexpected twists and turns would go on forever.  The former U.S. Poet Laureate and Pulitzer Prize winner died March 15thon Maui.  He was 91. In their citation for his 2005 collection, Migration, New & Selected Poems, the National Book Award judges wrote: “The poems in Migration speak from a life-long belief in the power of words to awaken our drowsy souls and see the world with passionate interconnection.”  A conservationist, Merwin and his late wife, Paula Schwartz, restored a former pineapple farm near Haiku, Maui, planting approximately 2700 trees.

Gabriel Okara

Nigerian poet and novelist Gabriel Okara died on March 25th in Nigeria.  He was 98.  His poem, “The Call of the River Nell,” won the Silver Cup for Poetry at the 1953 Nigerian Festival of the Arts and was published in Black Orpheus, the first English language journal of African literature.  Brenda Marie Osbey, editor of his Collected Poems, has written that, “It is with the publication of Gabriel Okara’s first poem that Nigerian literature in English and modern African poetry in this language can be said truly to have begun.”  He also wrote an experimental novel, The Voice (1964), the award-winning collection, The Fisherman’s Invocation (1978), and The Dreamer, His Vision (2005).

 

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Poets Illya Kaminsky, Bruce Beasley, and Alexandra Teague are among the faculty of the Centrum Port Townsend Writers’ Conference, which will take place July 15 – 23 at Fort Worden State Park in Washington.  Scholarships are available. For more information, visit www.centrum.org/theport-townsend-writers-conference.

It was fun returning to SFSU to attend the Creative Writing Student Awards Reading and Reception, and to share my memories of Kay Boyle.  The campus never looked better, just the way a bustling urban campus should look: the expanded library sparkles in its glass skin and the new humanities building adds a note of verticality.  My thanks to Paul Hoover and Maxine Chernoff of the Poetry Center for making me feel so welcome, and congratulations to all of this year’s graduates and honorees. I thought that all of the students who read were amazing, and everyone showed the kind of originality and attention to detail that can make a writing life.       

The Southern Humanities Review is sponsoring the Auburn Witness Poetry Prize, open through June, to honor the late Jake Adam York…WaterWood Press is sponsoring the Carolyn Forche’ Prize for Humanitarian Poetry, open through mid-August…The Spokane Prize for Short Fiction offers an award of $2,000 and publication, open until June 15th…Information on hundreds of writing grants and awards can be found at www.pw.org.

Reading Reynolds Price’s preface to his Collected Poems (1997), I came across a reference to Poetry as a Means of Grace, by C.G. Osgood.  “Conceived in the 1940s as lectures to young Princeton theologians, Osgood’s still keenly provocative chapters propose that, in a hectic and book-filled world, a thoughtful person might well choose a single inexhaustible poet and fix upon that poet’s work as a lifelong spring of refreshment in the driest times.”  Price’s choice, early on, was Milton, but he also had a special kinship with Dickenson. When I met him, Price was fresh from his first literary success and teaching a class in fiction writing. At the time, I had no idea he wrote poetry, that you could do both, but it’s clear that poetry remained for him a saving grace through youth and old age, health and disability.  In “Pears,” he depicts the ephemerality of experience and memory with quick brushstrokes, and in “Neighbors,” inhabits his dilemma in the form of inquiry:

“My name is Edward Reynolds Price,

So here on the ward, I’m Edward Price.

 

Last night I looked at my new neighbor’s door.

He’s Edward Reynolds, plain as ink.

 

Which one is the other’s doppelganger?

Scapegoat?  Porter of an alternate fate?”

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Just received the Spring/Summer issue of The Journal of the Academy of American Poets.  In addition to poems by Kwame Dawes, Marie Howe, and Aimee Nezhukumatathil, there are essays by Jane Hirshfield and Jenny Xie, a conversation, “Why Poetry, Why Now?” between Elizabeth Alexander and Maria Popova, and a selection of “Books Noted” by Major Jackson.  A good read and one of the best resources for becoming better acquainted with the range of contemporary American poetry. If you’re not already a subscriber and want to learn more, visit www.poets.org.

Congratulations to Kim Reyes, winner of the first annual Kay Boyle Poetry of Witness Award for her poem, “The Body.”  The contest was judged by Paul Hoover, Acting Director of the Poetry Center at San Francisco State University. Reyes, who is completing her MFA in Creative Writing at SFSU, has “just received an offer of her first book publication by noted Bay Area publisher, Omnidawn Publishing,” according to Hoover.

The National Association for Poetry Therapy will take place April 26 – 29 in Chaska, MN.  This year’s theme is “Poetry Therapy in a Changing World: Pathways to Growth, Healing, and Social Justice.”  Visit www.poetrytherapy.org.

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freewinter

“Scene from an Untended Garden,” “Christmas in the Yard,” and “December Mushrooms” appeared December 1st in Dodging the Rain (IE). 

https://dodgingtherain.wordpress.com

“It’s impossible to consider the landscape of the last 50 years of American poetry without Kinnell,” Craig Teicher writes in the Los Angeles Times of Galway Kinnell’s posthumous “Collected Poems” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017).  Citing the well-known, “After Making Love We Hear Footsteps” and “Blackberry Eating,” Teicher says that, at their best, Kinnell’s poems evoke intimacy with nature, self, and other, yet he wonders if younger readers will accept such “secular spiritualisms” as the line, “everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing.”  My guess is that many will, especially when such a line is read in context.  Citing “When the Towers Fell” (regarding 9/11), Teicher suggests that we need more poems like this one “which ache to understand others’ suffering.”

Many of the selected poems in Mary Oliver’s “Devotions,” (Penguin Press, 2017) will be familiar to followers of her work.  What I like about this volume is that the voice in the newer poems is informal, even conversational.  “Do Stones Feel?” (from Felicity, 2015), for instance, has a lightheartedness to it, and yet it has depth, too.  Like the koan, “Does a dog have Buddha nature or not?,” it invites the reader to go beyond the limitations of opposites and enter a world of delight.  As Oliver writes in “Three Things to Remember”: “As long as you’re dancing, you can/ break the rules/ Sometimes breaking the rules is just extending the rules./ Sometimes there are no rules.”              

Wishing you all the joys of the season, and a happy and healthy new year!