“The Beat Goes On: Celebrating the Bay Poetry Collection” is the title of an exhibit at California State University East Bay (Hayward, CA), featuring publications from the library’s special collections.  Highlighting the work of “Beat” luminaries such as Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Allen Ginsberg, and Gary Snyder, it traces the development of contemporary poetry in San Francisco and the Bay Area. While Ferlinghetti’s City Lights Publishing has played a pivotal role on the local literary scene since the early 1950’s, contributions by others such as Panjandrum Press and Sixteen Rivers Press are also featured.  (Runs through December.)

“Cherries, After,” a sense-memory poem that pulls together images from my visit to a small farm near Dartmouth, Massachusetts, was selected for the 2018 Robert Frost Poetry Prize, sponsored by the Frost Foundation.  Many thanks to the judges for this honor, and my gratitude to Executive Director Jessica Sanchez and President Jim Knowles for their efforts in promoting this annual contest in celebration of Frost’s poetry. Like a lot of people, the first time I encountered his work was in a high school English class.  We were studying “The Road Not Taken” and “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.” Although I admired both poems, it was “Snowy” that held me with its imagery, the resonance of its rhyme scheme, and the tinkle of harness bells.

Poet, translator, and founder of Copper Canyon Press, Sam Hamill, “died on April 14th at his home in Anacortes, Washington,” according to an obituary by Daniel E. Slotnik of the New York Times.  He was seventy-four years old. As a teenager in Utah, Hamill ran away from an abusive environment and made his way to San Francisco where he met poet Kenneth Rexroth who “helped him give up drugs and taught him about poetry — kindnesses that Hamill said changed his life,” Slotnik wrote.  Known for his sensitive translations of poets such as Wang Wei and Matsuo Basho, Hamill went on to publish several collections of his own poetry and initiated a national protest by poets and others against the Iraq war. In his poem, “True Peace,” he wrote, “Not for me, Nirvana./ This suffering world is mine,/ mine to suffer in it’s grief.”  Recipient of PEN’s Freedom to Write First Amendment Award, among other honors, his most recent collection, After Morning Rain, will be published later this year by Tiger Bark Press, according to the Times.    

“Longing has its own quiet place

in the human heart, but love

is sometimes rapturous, noisy,

almost uncivilized, and knows

no boundaries, no borders.”

from After Morning Rain,

          by Sam Hamill

Headlands Center for the Arts is now accepting applications through June for residencies in 2019.  Poets, fiction and creative nonfiction writers, and other artists are eligible. Located on the scenic coast of Marin County, CA, just outside of San Francisco, “Headlands” offers airfare for qualified applicants, a private room in a shared house, studio space, five meals per week, and a monthly stipend of $500.  Residencies are for periods of from four to ten weeks. For details, visit www.headlands.org.