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After The Book Shop closed its doors for good, former manager Renee’ Rettig raised $70,000 through Indiegogo to open a new store across the street.  Dubbed Books on B, the independently owned store in Hayward, California, is a light-filled space that’s a testament to Rettig’s dedication and the generosity of booklovers.  You can read more at www.sfgate.com.

Pleased to hear that my new poem, “Pilgrimage,” was selected by editor Mark S. Burrows for the journal, ARTS.  Along with Jon M. Sweeney, Burrows is co-translator of “Meister Eckhart’s Book of the Heart, Meditations for a Restless Soul” (Hampton Roads, 2017).  These are short, sometimes ecstatic meditations that speak directly to the heart.

Photographer Fred Lyon’s visual essay, “San Francisco Noir” (Princeton Architectural Press) was released earlier this month and it’s a joy to take in.  But just as evocative as the after dark images of The City, lit by neon and shrouded in fog, are Lyon’s photos of San Francisco by day — an old man playing a harmonica on the sidewalk, rickety backstairs, and wash hanging out to dry.        

Reading Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s, “San Francisco Poems” (City Lights Foundation), I came across “They Were Putting Up a Statue (of St. Francis),” which originally appeared in “Coney Island of the Mind.”  It was recorded on Fantasy records back in the day and can now be heard on You Tube.  Still rocks.

Poet Aline Soules (Meditation on Woman) writes about her recent visit to Seamus Heaney’s Home Place, a small museum in Ulster devoted to the Irish poet’s life and work, and provides links to podcasts and videos.  If you haven’t heard Heaney’s poems, pour yourself a cup of tea (or something stronger) and settle in.  https://alinesoules.com

Words of Witness: Remembering Kay Boyle (1902 – 1992)

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Although it was a few years ago, it feels like yesterday when I ran into Kay Boyle’s former secretary, David Ryan, while working at a bookstore on the edge of the Tenderloin in San Francisco.  It was a happy reunion.  He channeled her in a spot on impersonation that got me laughing and thinking back.

As a student at San Francisco State University, I was lucky enough to spend time with some amazing writing teachers.  Kay was the most memorable of them.  She was — for me, at least — larger than life, even though she was quite thin and in her early seventies when I met her.  Having lived as an expatriate in Europe in the 1920s and 30s with the likes of James Joyce and Ernest Hemingway, she had stories to tell.  When I expressed my admiration for the poet Hart Crane, she said, “Oh, yes, Hart,” and told me a story about one of his little-known escapades.

I remember a class I attended at her Victorian house on Frederick Street in the Haight Ashbury District.  On the hall table was a surreal looking “tree of hands” that Jean Cocteau had bought for her at the Paris flea market.  “It’s for holding calling cards,” she explained.  But for me it was pure magic, evoking daydreams of Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas.  I got a sense of her mindset early on, though, when she responded to a student who complained that he didn’t have enough time to work on a story.  “Andre Malraux found time to write, even when he was working with the French Resistance and helping Jewish children escape from the Nazis,” she said crisply.  “If you’re serious about writing, you’ll find time.”     

Boyle’s growth from an idealistic young writer to a savvy witness of political realities can be seen in her early novel, “Death of a Man,” which exposed the threat of fascism to a largely unsuspecting world.  It can also be seen in her long story “The White Horses of Vienna” (winner of the O. Henry Award), which depicts the need for artists to engage in the political and social conditions around them.  It’s a theme that shaped much of her poetry over the years, too.  Her poem, “A Testament to My Students,” supports student demands for a Black Studies program and other reforms in the 1960s; “Dedicated to Terre Des Hommes” laments thwarted efforts to transport wounded Vietnamese children to European hospitals ” (Doubleday & Company, 1970).

A critic once faulted Boyle for a tendency toward romanticism, to which she responded with atypical indifference, “This may very well be true.”  At its core, though, her work reminds us that people need to speak out, to stand against injustice in every era.  The message couldn’t be timelier.  The opening lines from “A Poem for the Teesto Dine’ of Arizona,” below, suggest that the source of Boyle’s commitment wasn’t simply anger, although that was part of it, but respect for others and a deep reverence for life.  The complete poem can be found in “This is Not a Letter and Other Poems” (Sun & Moon Press, Los Angeles, 1985).  

“The Mountain is old.  They say she is a female mountain.

The women who know her are not young, yet they call her

The Mother.  She stands tall against the sky, fragrant with herbs,

embellished by shrubs…”

“…She is The Mother who stands in silence

when the land is fettered and barbed with wire, when it is parched

to dust by the drought of uniformed men…”

– Kay Boyle

Two of my favorite books are Boyle’s memoir, “Being Geniuses Together, 1920 – 1930,” written with alternating chapters by Robert McAlmon, and her collection of short stories, “Nothing Ever Breaks Except the Heart.”  Both evoke the world of pre- and post-war Europe through the voice of an insightful narrator who was ahead of her time.

Writing “Spell of the Ordinary”

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The poems in this collection are about paying attention to ordinary things and the activities going on around me.  A barometer hanging on a wall, a bowl of lemons, an aphid on my arm.  Looking for the connections they sometimes evoke.  Usually they were prompted by a recognition or memory that I’d seen something in a new way.  Sometimes a line would come to me and I just went with it, not knowing where it would go.  Sometimes I found myself confronting loss (“Cranking the Wheel”), sometimes a sense of gratitude (“Gifts”).  Sometimes, what I would call paradox or mystery (“Spotting Turkeys,” “Crow Makes a Scene”).

Although most of the poems required polishing, they generally came as a single piece, or slice of life.  (Happy day!)  I didn’t add or take away much.  Sometimes I got stuck.  “Crow,” for instance was all about pronoun usage.  Should I refer to the crow as he or she?  Or should I address the whole experience as “You?”  I think I finally got it right and was pleased that editor Daniel Rice of Riverfeet Press selected it for the recent anthology, “Awake in the World.”

Lately, I’ve found myself more invested in the idea of shaping a poem.  I’ve let go of the idea of expecting them to arrive in any sort of finished form.  The process of polishing is a time for making associations, and possibly for finding some kind of personal meaning, as much as it’s an opportunity to experiment with form.  For me, the moments of “Spell of the Ordinary” were openings to go below the surface but also to appreciate that surface, to savor the penumbra around a pear, or the light off frost.