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Who are you that you prompt such ready poetry,
your hands at my back in a hug already famous?
Kiss the butter from my lips, October. Toast us.
– Al Young,
“Like Butter”
from Coastal Nights and Inland Afternoons
(Poems 2001-2006)

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© Kent & Cindy Crockett

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Photo-collage © AlYoung.org

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The samba chorus line for Chino Espinoza y Los Dueños del Son (salsa, Brazilian, Afro-Cuban) jump-kicks Sunday into action on the Latin Stage at the Art & Soul Festival in Frank Ogawa Plaza, Oakland 2009. | Photo: Al Young

A vacationing Luciano Federighi — eminent scholar of African American culture and longtime translator of Al Young’s books in Italy — enjoys a Blues Stage afternoon at Oakland’s Art & Soul with Al. Seated directly behind them: Valeria Federighi, Luciano and Rita’s songster-architect daughter, and her boyfriend Walter Patella.  | © Rita Federighi

Another POV  |  Photo: PC Mack

© Walter Patella

Valeria Federighi, Al Young, Rita Federighi, Luciano Federighi at the entrance to the Cathedral of Christ the Light by Oakland’s Lake Merritt.

The portion of Puget Sound that Al faced when he stepped out onto his deck at Cascade Harbor Inn on Orcas Island off the coast of Seattle. | Al Young

(L-R) Jody Gladding, Matthew Goodman, Ellen Lesser, Deb Lund,
Al Young, Barbara Lewis, Diane Lefer, Rik Nelson, Nance Van Winckel, Brian Lewis — and way in the background at piano onstage: Ron Myers
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AlYoung.org thanks the savvy, practiced waitress who herded the Orcas Island Writers Festival faculty and staff into position to capture this mellow after-dinner moment at the popular Ecotopian Restaurant & Theater.

© Susan Slapin

THE BIG READ

To demonstrate the call-and-response dynamic of African American cultural tradition, Al Young preaches James Weldon Johnson‘s sermon-poem, The Creation, urging the audience to respond aloud to the sounded text. This was a way of getting readers of Zora Neale Hurston‘s celebrated novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, to experience one of countless ways in which the oral and the aural intertwine, which is where community begins.

© Susan Slapin

As seductive a flautist as he is a pianist, clarinetist and saxophonist, Martin Lund beguiles a foot-tapping Al and the Saturday night Orcas Island Writers Festival audience. After meeting for the first time and 15 minutes of rehearsal, the two artists delivered a stirring 90-minute show of poetry, jazz and song.

© Susan Slapin

Floating on the charged sea-clouds of Martin Lund’s piano, Al, adrift in song, reminds the hushed crowd and himself that the moment alone exists, and that there can be no such place as “away.” To Jerome Kern/Oscar Hammerstein’s “All the Things You Are” he and Martin storm heaven.

© Craig Strang

“How lucky can I be to have this beautiful man as my friend!” poet-anthologist Persis Karim writes in her Facebook album, Goodbye Summer, Hello Autumn. Her husband Craig captured this shot in the post-equinox light of a September morning in their Berkeley backyard. Al was Persis’ teacher in Community Studies in the 1980s at UC Santa Cruz. Both writers have become passionate tomato gardeners.
[Persis Karim at FORA.tv]

© Al Young

Bananas, tomatoes: unbeatable beauty

© Susan Slapin

“A note from Madroña Land … ” (Orcas Island, WA |  October 2009)

© Sally Walker

Al Young with poet and kora player Kurt Lamkin in performance at Ashley Hall (Charleston, SC), where they were featured October 5 in the 100-year-old girl preparatory school’s Guest Writers Program.

Poet and world traveler Kurt Lamkin, playing the 21-string West African kora, holds a student and faculty audience rapt as he recites and sings his poetry in Recital Hall at Charleston’s stately Ashley Hall.   |   Al Young

©  Barbara Allega

Al Young with Nick Bozanic, poet and Dean of Faculty, on a rainy Monday morning at Ashley Hall, South Carolina’s only all-girl college preparatory school, now celebrating its 100th anniversary.

Al Young

Backed by the compelling shrine of an office bulletin board, poet Nick Bozanic, Ashley Hall’s Dean of Faculty, reflects on his wife and sons and his student days and teaching life in Europe and Hawai’i.

PC Mack         

Captive in flight, Al makes the most of a storm-plagued journey from Charleston to Jackson, Mississippi.

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© Al Young

The Fairview Inn, where Al Young will stay and join fellow novelists Clyde Edgerton and Alice Elliott Dark for two days of panels, talks and readings for Mississippi high school students bussed statewide to the Millsaps College campus for the ongoing Eudora Welty Centennial Celebration.

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Al Young

Alexandra Franklin, a Jackson Prep junior — 2009 winner of the national gold key and American Voices Award as well as the Scholastic Art and Writing Award — reads her short short story, “The Rites of Spring” to kindred high schoolers and other visitors to Millsaps College.

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Al Young

Al Young

Millsaps honors graduate Katie Hamm, who currently manages the Visitors Center for Eudora Welty House.

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Al Young took this flashless shot of Eudora Welty reading “Why I Live at the P.O.,” her celebrated short story, during a screening of the rarely viewed 1975 PBS documentary at the Ford Academic Complex Recital Hall at Millsaps College, Jackson, MS

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Al Young

Mike Craver and Clyde Edgerton in their brilliant two-man performance of The Bible Salesman, Edgerton’s latest novel whose naive title character hires himself out to an itinerant car thief.

(L-R) Novelist Clyde Edgerton, Welty biographer Suzanne Marrs, Al Young, filmmaker and Welty Foundation head Jeanne Luckett, and novelist Alice Elliott Dark (Jackson, MS, October 2009)   © C.B. Carroll

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© Kara Wright

Michael Young with Johnny Echols at Spaceland, L.A., November 2009. “There was a Love reunion show with original guitarist Johnny Echols,” Michael writes, “and the later incarnation of the band that Arthur Lee toured with before he passed. They were smokin’!” Photographer Kara Wright adds: “What a memorable night.”

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“I know I am but summer to your heart,
and not the full four seasons of the year.”
– Edna St. Vincent Millay

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© AlYoung.org

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Early tomato champ |    Al Young

Al Young

Date Palm afternoon

Photo courtesy of Bo’s Barbecue & Catering, Lafayette, CA

(L-R) Four Nerds: Al Young, Mark Cohen, Alan Fambrini, Dan I. Slobin (all but Fambrini have been pals since Central High School, Detroit, the 1950′s)

Photo: PC Mack

Photo: Al Young

Sharon Coleman conducting her three-day Summer Creative Writing Intensive at Berkeley City College, June 2009

Sharon Coleman

Invited guest poets Lorna Dee Cervantes and Al Young at Berkeley City College’s Summer Creative Writing Intensive, June 2009

Dan and Kate Robbins at their Santa Cruz digs, Bastille Day 2009
Al Young

Al Young

Milo Robbins nuts out on sock cymbal.

PC Mack

Al Young and Dan Robbins relax before rehearsing new poetry & jazz material on a hot Santa Cruz afternoon near the Pacific.

Poet-novelist Kate Evans, Al Young, and poet-essayist Persis Karim pose on the Berkeley Pier following lunch at Skates on a gorgeous afternoon by San Francisco Bay.
Kind Stranger Photo

Emerging sundeck tomato, mid-July 2009
Al Young

Perennial newlyweds Lisa Alvarez and Andrew Tonkovich at Squaw Valley Community of Writers, August 2009. | Al Young

Al Young with Stacey Knapp (glasses off, glasses on): writer, bookseller, and a joy every summer to Squaw Valley’s visiting authors, readers, editors and literary agents as well as fanciers of baseball caps, T-shirts, sweatshirts and ski vests.  | Photos: Louis B. Jones

Amy Tan and Al Young in August light, Squaw Valley 2009
Photo: Kim Palchikoff

(L-R) Alan Cheuse, Kris O’Shea, Gabrielle Houston, Al Young, Cori Houston,and Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston gather for a shot hours before the memorial tribute to James D. Houston at Squaw Valley Community of Writers, August 2009.  | John Neville

Diana Fuller, Squaw Valley’s screenwriting program director, with Al Young and Dr. Harold Weaver in a toast to the Weavers’ 70th wedding anniversary, 2009. | Photo: Brett Hall Jones

Blair Fuller, co-founder with Oakley Hall of Squaw Valley Community of Writers, relaxing at the annual Argentine asado hosted by Eddie and Osvaldo Ancinas. With George Plimpton, Fuller also co-founded the Paris Review. | Al Young

Truckee River residence bouquet
Al Young

The spiderwalk in full summer splendor   | Al Young

August tomatoes
Al Young

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© Al Young

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Three photographs by Carl Martineau

French Hotel, Berkeley, 3 June 2009

Moe’s Books, 15 June 2009

Taj Mahal revisits his North Carolina origins to explain to Al Young why, unlike most of his musical colleagues, he wasn’t held spellbound when he first heard the classic, now sacred recordings of blues legend Robert Johnson.

Taj Mahal listens to Al’s comments on poetry as a spoken force and its links to song and dance and the world-altering power of sound.

Poet and novelist Owen Hill (The Incredible Double) captured by Carl Martineau’s cell/cam following a mid-June reading with fiction writer Summer Brenner (Crime, Transport and Sex) at Moe’s Books, now celebrating its 50th year. In the background Brenner autographs a book while guitarist Howard Barkan makes music.

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Leimert Park Village Book Fair,
5-6 June 2009   <<The Poet’s Cut>>

© Al Young

Friday night full moon, early June, L.A.

Al Young

Some twilight salsa jazz

© Conney

Al Young with public relations strategist Rae Jones at the Friday night opener before Saturday’s all-day Leimert Park Village Book Fair.

Photo © Al Young

A Family Affair: Tangela Sanders, Chance Sanders and poet Bryan Sanders at the Leimert Park Book Fair.

© Al Young

L.A. poets Saria Idana, Conney and Rafael Alvarado hook up and catch up at Leimert Park Book Fair.

© Veronica Rivera

Poet Anthony Kenneth (A.K.) Toney and Al look up from a chat about the L.A. arts scene.

© Conney

Al with poet Saria Idana

Al Young

On the midway at Leimert Park Book Fair, 6 June 2009

Five poets (left to right): Syama Sundara Das, Al Young, Andrew M. Lopas, Douglas Kearney, Rafael Alvarado

© Veronica Rivera

Douglas Kearney delivers “Live/Evil,” his poem about Miles Davis’ dark side.

© Veronica Rivera

Corrie Greathouse in full poem bloom at Leimert Park Village Book Fair.

Photo © Veronica Rivera

Al still in action while the Polyester Players jam band sets up.

© Rafael Alvarado

Poet-book reviewer Veronica Rivera enjoying with Al the retro-funk of G Mack & the Polyester Players – (“We play all the hood festivals”) — at Leimert Park.

Chance Sanders, age two, warms at last to the Book Fair.

© Al Young

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Opening day at Art House Gallery & Cultural Center, Berkeley, 13 June 2009

Al Young

Artist/Photographer Harold Adler officially welcomes everyone to Art House Gallery & Cultural Center, which he created and opened Saturday the 13th of June 2009 at 2905 Shattuck near the bustling Berkeley Bowl.

Sarafina Brown and Steve Webber perform Harold Arlen and Yip Harburg‘s (“It Is Only) A Paper Moon”   |   Al Young

Al Young

The legendary, Berkeley-born Richard Krech reads from We Are on the Verge of Ecstacy: Selected Early Poems, 1965-1970.

© Karin Wertheim

Al and Richard Krech listen to poet Luis García.

Al Young

The unflappable Luis García, another Berkeley native, reads some of his new politically vibrant poems at Art House Gallery & Cultural Center.

Al Young

Steven Webber, composer Skip Yoder, Yana Zegri Yoder, and Sarafina Brown perform some of Skip’s crisp originals at Art House.

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A Whole New Moon | © Al Young

I have borrowed the title for this cycle of photos from a 1968 book by the late Manhattan poet Joseph Ceravolo, recipient of the very first Frank O’Hara Award. Like the season itself, Spring in This World of Poor Mutts still makes me sigh. Read Jim Ceravolo’s remembrance of his father and how these poems still link the two of them by heart.
–  A.Y.

Poppy | © Kathy Sloane

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A Kathy Sloane Spring

All photographs subject to copyright restrictions

Spring Garden

Trillum and Wood Sorrell at Muir Woods

Blue Heron

Spring Stretch (Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most)

Woman Rising

Poppy (Shameless Hussy)

All photos in Kathy Sloane’s Spring © 2009 Kathy Sloane

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At San Francisco’s Chadwyck Dolby Gallery Al Young reunites with Katayoon Zandvakili, his former Squaw Valley workshop enrollee, whose memoir appears in Persis M. Karim’s Let Me Tell You Where I’ve Been: New Writing by Women of the Iranian Diaspora. The occasion was a fundraiser benefit reading for Saint Mary’s College MFA Creative Writing Program. | Photo: Mark Cohen

Carroll Peery interrupts his nightly game of scrabble at Caffè Mediterraneum to greet Al Young, a former performer at the Cabal, Berkeley’s legendary folk music club, where Al performed regularly between 1962 and 1965. Towards the end, Peery owned and managed the Cabal, founded by Debbie Green and Howard Ziehm.
Photo: Carl Martineau

Al Young, Bobby Theseeker, and Diane Di Pisa at the March opening of Berkeley in the Sixties, an exhibit of black and white photographs of Berkeley’s lively Telegraph Avenue denizens taken by the late Elio Di Pisa, who managed the Caffé Mediterraneum from the 1960s through the 1990s.
Carl Martineau

Official opening for exhibit of Elio Di Pisa’s Berkeley in the Sixties photo show at the Med.   | Al Young

Photo: Al Young

Elio Di Pisa’s portrait of  the late Joe Agos, who frequented the Caffé Med from its inception. Ethiopian-born, Joe — a pleasant, pensive man — spoke fluent Italian. As a youthful frequenter of the Med in the early 1960s, I remember the fiery, vibrant conversations that Joe regularly got into with café owners Elio and Gianni.

Lynn Jehle, Marc “Moose” Silber, and George Pappas bask in an impromtu spring serenade served up by Esteban Bello (Stephen Bell) at Berkeley’s French Hotel in late March of 2009.  | Carl Martineau

Easter offering from North Carolina |  © Vivian Torrence

Photo © Ginger Bennett Griffin

Al Young with novelist and astrologer Antoinette May at the Gold Rush Writers Retreat in Mokelumne Hill, the heart of California’s Gold Country, in early May of 2009. In the 1970s and 80s, before computers became common, the two prolific writers shared the same superb typist: Joye Crespo, who never hesitated to voice her personal opinion on manuscripts she was hired to type.

© Ginger Bennett Griffin

With poet Sally Ashton (co-founder of Gold Rush Writers Retreat), who edits DMQ Review, and teaches writing and literature at San José State University.

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Click on the picture-frame to view an old-fashioned photo-collage (assembled by Diem Jones): Al Young with such friends and acquaintances as Toi Derricotte, Ernest J. Gaines, Lawson Fusao Inada, Wallace Stegner, Nikki Giovanni, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Amiri Baraka, James D. Houston, Jane Hirshfield, Quincy Troupe, blues great Charles Brown, Ishmael Reed, Elmaz Abinader, John Handy, Dana Gioia, and Wynton Marsalis

FLASHBACKS

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© Vivian Torrence

Winter window

Google headquarters, Mountain View, CA   | © Google

Assim Shankar

Julia Li, Google Strategic Partner, hosts Al Young, December 2008

Prelude to Al’s Authors@Google presentation

Now retrievable 24/7 at YouTube, the Al Young Authors@Google talk recedes in time — but not in memory.

Publisher Malcolm Margolin; Gary Snyder, legendary Pulitzer poet-bodhisattva, and Al Young at the second annual Heyday Books fundraiser, the Hillside Club, Berkeley 2008
Jim Dennis

Al and Dan Robbins in ardent performance for Heyday Books Night at the Hillside Club
Jim Dennis

Dan Robbins and Al Young smiling to know that The Sea, The Sky & You & I, their long-awaited compact disc, will come out on Bardo Digital in February 2009 .
© Jim Dennis

December moon shot from sundeck   | Al Young

Michael Young and composer-saxophonist-educator Roscoe Mitchell at Koret Auditorium, San Francisco Public Library, December 13, 2008.   “Roscoe was great,” Michael writes. “Serene, graceful,
even austere — like a mystic zen priest with a horn.” The occasion was a commemorative celebration of poet Bob Kaufman — Does the Secret Mind Whisper? — produced by Justin Desmangles.
Photo: Jenifer Nogaki

Holiday window with ice lights, December 2008 |     Al Young

Taj Mahal and Al at Anna’s Jazz Island, December 2008
Photo: Adelle Foley

Al Young and Ishmael Reed converse with (backs turned) Taj Mahal and Anna de León following the 2008 American Book Awards presentations at Anna’s Jazz Island |   © 2008 Carl Martineau

Al Young outside Anna’s Jazz Island, December 2008 |   © Carl Martineau

With wife-husband authors Persis Karim and Craig Strang at their 2008 Christmas/Chanukah gathering to celebrate Craig and his birthday. |   Photo: Xochitil Seguera

Trumpeter-bandleader David Hardiman, drummers Willis Kirk and Akira Tana with poet Al Young backstage at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music during the January 12, 2009 celebration of the life and work of percussionist-composer Omar Clay (1935-2008). | Photo © Kathy Sloane

Master pianist Larry Vukovich with Al Young following their Omar Clay Tribute at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, January 2009

Big moon, San Francisco, January 2009   | Al Young

Aimee Allison hosting the 5th Annual KPFA Peace Awards to nine outstanding members of the peace and social justice community, Oakland, CA, 18 January 2009 | Photo: Al Young

KPFA’s Aimee Allison with Al Young following the KPFA Peace Awards |  Photo: Brian Edwards-Tiekert

Blues-Eyed, the Marc Silber Trio, plays to a packed house at Strings in Berkeley, CA, February 2009. Marc Silber at left (vocals and guitar), Michael Hubbert, middle (cuattro, harmonica, clarinet), Rod Glaubman at right (guitar soloist).   | Photo: Al Young

Photo: Carl Martineau

Al Young and Marc Silber captured again by cell phone cam in front of Berkeley’s French Hotel, February 2009

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