LISTEN NOW | Day to Day, August 13, 2008 · James D. Houston’s latest book, WHERE LIGHT TAKES ITS COLOR FROM THE SEA, is filled with stories and essays about his native California, and particularly Santa Cruz. He lives there with his family in a roomy Victorian house with a water view. Karen Joy Fowler, author of THE JANE AUSTEN BOOK CLUB, also lives in Santa Cruz, and has set her new novel, WIT’S END, in a house very much based on Houston’s home. (Rick Kleffel reports for member station KUSP.)

LISTEN NOW | James D. Houston in conversation with Andrew Tonkovich at KPFK’s Bibliocracy
30 mins (give or take)

Click images

Photo © Paul Kitagawa | Sacramento Bee

Cover image: Monterey Bay from Santa Cruz Pogonip © Tom Killion

By James D. Houston
Foreword by Alan Cheuse

A stirring collection of short prose by the author of Snow Mountain Passage and Bird of Another Heaven.

Taking inspiration from California’s breathtaking landscapes, history, and distinctive ways of life, Where Light Takes Its Color from the Sea reveals a writer’s keen appreciation of place. This selection of James D. Houston’s essays and short stories illuminates the themes and styles he has explored in his forty years as a writer.

Heyday Books
Spring 2008 release

________________________________________________________

Monday, May 5 at noon on KPFK
My guest [was] novelist and essayist, short story and travel writer James D. Houston. Like Joan Didion and John Steinbeck, Jim Houston has chronicled life in the West, California, the Pacific Rim over a career as a writer that has spanned forty years. He is author of the prizewinning novels Snow Mountain Passage, a telling of the story of the Donner Party and Bird of Another Heaven, about the last king of Hawaii; nonfiction classics including The Men in My Life and Californians: Searching for the Golden State. He is author of one of our country’s most influencial and enduring books, another classic, Farewell to Manzanar, with Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston, read and studied as part of the public school curriculum. Now in its 63^rd printing, it is the singular story of the internment of Japanese-Americans as told from the perspective of young Jeanne Wakatsuki. Jim Houston was a Stegner Fellow at Stanford and has written on family, surfing, Hawaii, and in every medium so that it’s a real pleasure to welcome him to Bibliocracy on the occasion of the publication of his career-defining collection from Heyday Books, Where Light Takes Its Color from the Sea.

– Andrew Tonkovich (Host of Pacifica Radio’s Bibliocracy; editor of Santa Monica Review)

Bibliocracy Radio Blogspot
KPFK
James D. Houston’s Web Site

How do I love thee? / Let me count the ways.

I have measured out my life in coffee spoons.

Courtesy Nancy Reagan and Mister T in 1983

Kay Ryan interview with Michael Krasny | KQED San Francisco

Kay Ryan

Photo: Jane Hirshfield

Go to the PBS.Org original

The Library of Congress announced Thursday the appointment of Kay Ryan as the 16th Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry for 2008-2009.
Kay Ryan; Library of Congress

The native Californian will take up her duties Oct. 16 by reading her work at the opening of the Library’s annual literary series. She also will be a featured guest at the Library of Congress National Book Festival in the Poetry pavilion Sept. 27 on the National Mall.

“Kay Ryan is a distinctive and original voice within the rich variety of contemporary American poetry,” Librarian of Congress James H. Billington said a statement. “She writes easily understandable short poems on improbable subjects. Within her compact compositions there are many surprises in rhyme and rhythm and in sly wit pointing to subtle wisdom.”

Ryan was born in 1945 in San Jose and was raised in the Central Valley of California, where her father was an oil driller. In 1971, she moved to Marin County, where she still lives. For 33 years, Ryan has taught remedial English at the College of Marin.

“In our home, something like being a poet would be thought of as putting on airs,” Ryan told the NewsHour in June 2006. “It would be embarrassingly pretentious, and educated, and snobbish. And so that, as a writer, I’ve always been very sensitive to not being pretentious and to being sure that I didn’t put on airs. I mean, it’s all right to be intelligent and to use every possible aspect of language, but never to be pompous.”

Her poems, which are often brief and ponderous, are also characterized by their wit and unusual perspectives and wisdom. She counts William Carlos Williams, Philip Larkin and John Donne among her favorites.

“Silence means a great deal to me, and I’ve learned to distinguish a great number of forms of silence,” Ryan said. “My poems talk about a palpable silence, that creamy, latexy kind of silence that we know, even when we’re experiencing it as a giant luxury, like a dream luxury.”

Ryan is the author of six books of poetry. Her awards include the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize from the Poetry Foundation; a Guggenheim fellowship; a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship; and four Pushcart Prizes. She has been a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets since 2006.

“It’s kind of a thrill to go from nothing to this,” she told The Associated Press. “This is probably going to keep me so occupied that it will discourage any contact with the deeper mind. But my deeper mind needs a break.”

Ryan told the AP that she was “delighted and surprised” to receive the job. Upon hearing that the Library of Congress had called, she thought to herself, “I can’t have that many overdue books.”

Ryan succeeds Charles Simic, who served for one year.

© 2008 by PBS.Org

___________________

KAY RYAN: A Brief Bio

Kay Ryan was born in California in 1945 and grew up in the small towns of the San Joaquin Valley and the Mojave Desert. She received both a bachelor’s and master’s degree from UCLA.

Ryan has published several collections of poetry, including The Niagara River (Grove Press, 2005); Say Uncle (2000); Elephant Rocks (1996); Flamingo Watching (1994), which was a finalist for both the Lamont Poetry Selection and the Lenore Marshall Prize; Strangely Marked Metal (1985); and Dragon Acts to Dragon Ends (1983).

About her work, J. D. McClatchy has said: “Her poems are compact, exhilarating, strange affairs, like Erik Satie miniatures or Joseph Cornell boxes. She is an anomaly in today’s literary culture: as intense and elliptical as Dickinson, as buoyant and rueful as Frost.”

Ryan’s awards include the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, a Guggenheim fellowship, an Ingram Merrill Award, a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Union League Poetry Prize, the Maurice English Poetry Award, and three Pushcart Prizes. Her work has been selected four times for The Best American Poetry and was included in The Best of the Best American Poetry 1988-1997.

Ryan’s poems and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Poetry, The Yale Review, Paris Review, The American Scholar, The Threepenny Review, Parnassus, among other journals and anthologies. She was named to the “It List” by Entertainment Weekly and one of her poems has been permanently installed at New York’s Central Park Zoo. Ryan was elected a Chancellor of The Academy of American Poets in 2006. In 2008, Ryan was appointed the Library of Congress’s sixteenth Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry. Since 1971, she has lived in Marin County in California.

© 2008 Poets.Org

Click book image for additional information about Kay Ryan

Kay Ryan’s widely praised The Niagara River won the 2005 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize

AL YOUNG & DARTANYAN BROWN’S IOWA BLUES ALL-STARS Concert DVD

If you’ve attended one of Al’s readings/performances you know what a special gift he has. In 2005 Dartanyan Brown collaborated with him to create several very special performances. Al is offering a DVD concert featuring his transcendent poetry with some of the most soulful blues and jazz that you’ll ever want to hear. This performance features selections from Al’s immense body of work including Heaven and Coastal Nights and Inland Afternoons. He reads unaccompanied but is backed on several selections by the guitar and scat singing of Dartanyan and drummer Jaimeo Brown. After Al’s reading, you can enjoy a set of world-class blues played by Hall of Fame-class musicians. It’s not often that the blues gets together with poetry and Al has been quite excited about offering this DVD to his growing legion of fans worldwide.

Please mail a check for $20 (California residents) or $25 for other U.S. residents to:
Dartanyan Brown Music
526 C Street
San Rafael, CA 94901

(Prices include shipping, but be sure to include a shipping address)

If you have questions, email me:
dartanyan@dartanyan.com
Or call 415.740.7115

Al Young with Jorge Molina (right), Sly Randolph (above left) and Dartanyan Brown (above right). Smiling in the background: Jaimeo Brown, percussionist son of Marcia Miget and Dartanyan Brown.

JAIMEO BROWN PERFORMS AT PEARL’S

Time & Date: Sunday, July 20, 8 & 10 p.m.
Price: $10-$15

Jazz at Pearl’s
256 Columbus Ave.
San Francisco CA 94133
San Francisco
415.291.8255
JazzatPearls.com

Family affair

Go to the San Francisco Chronicle original

California Poet Laureate Al Young, a vocalist in his spare time, will join rising young jazz drummer Jaimeo Brown and his father, San Francisco bassist Dartanyan Brown - for two shows Sunday at Jazz at Pearl’s. The younger Brown, 26, is a master’s degree candidate at Rutgers University who has already played with jazz greats such as Wynton Marsalis and Bobby Hutcherson. His San Francisco band will feature pianist Michael Aaberg, tenor saxophonist Dana Stephens and bassist Dave Ewell.

“This is a homecoming of sorts for our boy,” says proud father Dartanyan Brown. “His mother, Marcia Miget” - a pianist and woodwind specialist who has played with Carlos Santana, among others - “will be joining us, too.”

For information or tickets to the 8 p.m. or 10 p.m. show at Jazz at Pearl’s, 256 Columbus Ave., San Francisco, call 415. 291.8255 or go to www.jazzatpearls.com.

– Heidi Benson

<a href=’http://www.spongecell.com/online_calendar_for_website’>Event Calendar by Spongecell</a><a href=’http://spongecell.com/boxed_calendar/16798′>Upcoming Events</a>

Announces the Final Event of Our 2008 Season

Al Young: Poetry and Psychoanalysis

Photo: Elizabeth Dayton

Please join our lively and informative program in which a widely published guest poet discusses his or her work informally with one of the poet/psychoanalysts of the San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis. The conversation about the poet’s process and poems and about poetry and its interface with psychoanalysis is followed by a reading of some of the poems and a discussion with the audience.

An offering of the Outreach Committee of the San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis, Poetry and Psychoanalysis is free and open to the public. After each event, those who wish to do so may purchase books by the poet and have these signed.

Sunday July 20 AL YOUNG

California Poet Laureate Al Young is the author most recently of Something About the Blues: An Unlikely Collection of Poetry and Coastal Nights and Inland Afternoons: Poems 2001-2006. Throughout his literary career, Al Young has been a poet, writer, teacher and lecturer. He will be interviewed by Forrest Hamer.

When: Sunday, July 20, 2008
Time: 4:00 P.M. - 5:30 P.M.
Where: SFCP Auditorium, 2340 Jackson St., 4th Fl., S.F. 94115 (enter on Webster St.)
To register: Call 415-563-5815 or email finance@sf-cp.org.

We distribute copies of the poems to be discussed, so it’s helpful to know in advance how many people will attend. To RSVP, please call the Center at (415) 563-5815 by the Friday before the event. Thank you.

Page Under Construction

Clickable

Langston Hughes

February 1, 1901-May 22, 1967

A pack of smokes, a desk, a lamp, a typewriter, a telephone, and a nimble-fingered Langston Hughes

James P. Johnson | 1894-1955

SNOWY MORNING BLUES

in tribute to James P. Johnson & Langston Hughes

New York, you know, has its New Yorks,
Manhattan her Queens, the Bronx
keepers of flames with all their names intact.
Now that’s a fact. Upside it, though,
you’ll put your heart and everything
you know or thought you knew of snow.

When Snowy Morning Blues plays James P. Johnson’s
game of catch-me-if-you-can, you can. He could, too.
New York ain’t no last word, you know.
Nothing’s what it used to be. And you, the you who sees
out past the end of the world, this snow, this wee wind-
fall he fells us with under eaves the way we all fall
under suspicion in detective movies. Blam!
Blame it on the blues, blame in on a blizzard.

Diamonded, grounded in its ice cream crisscross,
snow makes you take to the country again, harmonica in hand,
craving the guitar of a pianistic You-Gotta-Be-Modernistic
genius — you can’t get into this. Let snow tell its own story.
Let the blues roll on. Let snow fall right on time this time
blue, blank, blackening the city-within-a-city christened
in Dutch: Harlem, Haarlem,
Haaaarrrrrlem.
Vermeer, beware.

© 2001 and 2006 by Al Young
from The Sound of Dreams Remembered: Poems 1990-2000
and Coastal Nights and Inland Afternoons: Poems 2001-2006

• TEACHER RESOURCE FILE
  • Internet School Library Media Center
    Compiled by Inez Ramsey, James Madison University
    E-mail: ramseyil@jmu.edu

Reading in my late teens I Wonder As I Wander — Langston Hughes’ autobiographical follow-up to The Big Sea – I was enthralled and inspired by the tales he weaves of his travels throughout the U.S., Mexico, Cuba, Europe, the USSR, Soviet Asia, and China. One of Hughes’ lingering memoirs describes a voyage that he and 20 other African Americans took to Russia during the Great Depression to make a movie called Black and White. While his 1956 account of this episode does not match up with documents lately uncovered in the U.S. and in Russia, Hughes’ socio-romantic flashback lives on in imagination. This sunny picture invites us to peer into the faces of some amazingly contemporary-looking passengers, who made that fabledcrossing: Langston Hughes with his friends aboard the Europa-Bremen, June 17, 1932. Seated front center from left to right are Louise Thompson Patterson and Dorothy West. On board ship was also Ralph Bunche, who was visiting Paris with Alain Locke.
Photograph courtesy of Yale University Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library

Hughes poses with neighborhood kids in the cramped, flowering confines of “Our Block’s Childrens Garden”

 

• AVAILABLE BOOKS BY LANGSTON HUGHES
  Compiled by Google

Langston Hughes testifies before the House Un-American Activities Committee, 1953

• POLITICS AND POETRY
  Hughes viewed through the prism of Red Scare America
  Excerpt from The Life of Langston Hughes, Volume II (1941-1967)
  © 1988, 1989, 2002 by Arnold Rampersad

 

SHIRLEY EMBRACING SAM, 1952

Gelatin Silver Print
by Roy DeCarava

Nothing in black and white to decipher, no diction
to master, just the tenderest picture – pur fiction.
While Captain Marvel’s alter ego shouted “Shazam!”
Shirley was throwing her arms around Sam.
Not only this: her fresh-done air deserves a kiss,
too, just because a hug, well, how can you miss
your target when you know you know your man?
Sam, he looks like he might have some other plan
up that soft, slow sleeve he is suddenly knuckling.

To keep their domestic economy from buckling,
Korea waged war on Korea. General Ike held forth,
while America glazed over her own South-North
struggle. “Are you now or have you ever been?”
Senator Joseph McCarthy, ugly as homemade sin,
asked over and over and over again. “You can tell
just by looking at him,” Shirley told Sam. “Hell,”
Sam said, “I can tell he prejudiced by the way he talk.
He knows who to strike out, he knows who to walk.”

On some jukebox down the street Roy Hamilton sang
“You’ll Never Walk Alone.” The new song rang
up through the window and rested on Sam’s mind.
Just back happy from his Saturday morning grind
(a job is a job is a job), he’s gotten home early,
even to his own delight. And there stood Shirley,
fragrant, glad to see him again, to have him to herself
for the rest of the weekend. There on a dusted shelf
in the next room, the kitchen, next to the dream-book,
she’s got two tickets for them. Tonight she’ll cook
his favorite supper: meatloaf, rice and butterbeans,

Tonight they’ll duck out on these domestic scenes
their pal Roy DeCarava likes to hang out and shoot.
They’ll put on the dog, get up off some loot,
sip them some Four Roses, some cold Champ Ale.
The dress in the closet she bought at that sale,
Shirley will put the thing on and let her hair down.
They’ll go out and party, catch them some Dinah –
the hell with Korea, the U.S., McCarthy, Red China!
Did Shirley go curl her hair just for Sam? Partly.
Will they miss church tomorrow? No, not hardly.

© 2001 and 2006 by Al Young
from Coastal Nights and Inland Afternoons: Poems 2001-2006

Commissioned by the Museum of Modern Art, this poem was composed to celebrate the beautiful, yea-saying spirit of “Shirley Embracing Sam,” one of the many Roy DeCarava photographs that illustrate Langston Hughes’ text for The Sweet Flypaper of Life, a book for younger readers published after the poet’s death.

Poets Marianne Moore and Langston Hughes, New York 1952

Gwendolyn Brooks with Langston Hughes, promoting The Poetry of the Negro (1746-1949), Chicago 1949
Courtesy University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaigne

Snapshot of Ralph Ellison, Langston Hughes and James Baldwin

Read the rest of this entry »

Is proud to present the following shows:
Listen live or later.
Feel free to download any of our archived shows at
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/onword/
Call-in number 718.508.9717

Thursday June 19
5:30 pm Pacific 7:30 pm Eastern

FOR THE LOVE OF POETRY
Hosted by Cassandra Love:
A conversation with Naomi Shihab Nye

Naomi Shihab Nye is author or editor of more than 27 books — poems, essays, children’s books, seven anthologies of poetry from around the world for young readers and, most recently, Honeybee. Palestinian-American, and a resident of San Antonio, Texas, she travels widely for talks and workshops.

______________________________________________

EASY SPEAK with Doug Knott in conversation with Robert Pinsky, former Poet Laureate of the United States (1997-2000), and author of Gulf Music.

_____________________________________________

THE MOE GREEN POETRY HOUR

Join Rafael F. J. Alvarado (a.k.a. Moe Green) and Kate Durbin as they feature the poetry of Lisa Alvarado.

____________________________________________

Sunday, June 22

A SUNDAY AFTERNOON OF POETRY AT THE AMSTERDAM CAFÉ
hosted By Rafael F J Alvarado
at 3 pm

Amaranth Borsuk
Hélène Cardona
Kate Durbin
John M. FitzGerald

Amaranth Borsuk is a Ph.D. candidate in Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Southern California. Her poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in ZYZZYVA, Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art, Denver Quarterly, POOL, and thedrunkenboat.com. She recently placed third in The Atlantic’s student poetry contest, and her manuscript, Pomegranate Eater, has been a semifinalist for the Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets, the Four Way Books intro prize, and the Saturnalia Books poetry prize.

A citizen of the United States, France and Spain, Hélène Cardona is fluent in English, French, Spanish, German, Greek and Italian. Born in Paris of a Greek mother and Spanish father and raised all over Europe, she studied English Philology and Literature in Cambridge, England; Spanish at the International Universities of Santander and Baeza, Spain; and German at the Goethe Institute in Bremen, Germany. She attended Hamilton College, New York, where she also taught French and Spanish, and the Sorbonne, Paris, where she wrote her thesis on Henry James for her Master’s in American Literature. She has worked as a translator/interpreter for the Canadian Embassy and the French Chamber of Commerce. She is also a teacher and dream analyst and has appeared in many films. Her first book, The Astonished Universe, an uplifting and luminous collection of poetry about consciousness, is the first bilingual edition in English and French from Red Hen Press. Richard Wilbur writes that “each poem fully exists in two tongues at once, and this adds to the book’s great charm and visionary quality.”

Kate Durbin’s first collection of poetry, The Ravenous Audience, is forthcoming from Black Goat Press/Akashic Books in Fall 2009. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Drunken Boat, The Ledge Poetry and Fiction Magazine, The Elegant Variation and Boxcar Poetry Review. Currently, Durbin is a staff writer for Asian American Poetry and Writing (http://www.aapw-la.org). Durbin received her MFA from the University of California in Riverside, and is working on a novel.

A dual citizen of the United States and Ireland, John M. FitzGerald is a poet and attorney in Los Angeles. He attended UCLA and the University of West Los Angeles School of Law, where he was editor of the Law Review. His poems have been published in numerous journals and anthologies. Spring Water, a novel in verse, was a Turning Point Prize selection. His second book of poetry,Telling Time by the Shadows, came out in April 2008 from Turning Point Books. His other collections include The Mind, The Charter of Effects, and Question Creation. He has just completed his first novel, Primate, and has turned it into a screenplay. He has lived in England and Italy, and currently resides in Santa Monica. Robert Nazarene, editor of the American Journal of Poetry, says: “Spring Water is to poetry what The Silence of The Lambs is to filmdom: a harrowing, horrifying narrative trip which makes for an absolutely compelling read…brilliantly delivered by one of America’s most promising new poets.”

WARMLY ARCHIVED

Joy Harjo

Cassandra Love interviews Joy Harjo (45 minutes)

Sascha Feinstein

Yusef Komunyakaa

Sascha Feinstein interviews Yusef Komunyakaa (2 hours)

Don’t miss this chance to hear some of our greatest poets read their work.

Friday, July 18, 2008 7:30 PM

First Unitarian Universalist Center
of San Francisco
1187 Franklin Street at Geary
415.776.4580

LUCILLE CLIFTON

ROBERT HASS

SHARON OLDS

C.D. WRIGHT

DEAN YOUNG

Doors will open at 6:30 pm, and seating is general admission. The venue is wheelchair accessible.

ADVANCE TICKETS ARE AVAILABLE FOR PURCHASE. Click here to purchase your tickets from Brown Paper Tickets. If we do not sell out in advance of the reading, there will be tickets available at the door.

TICKET PRICES
Premium Seating (An unreserved seat in the first 3 rows): $30
General Admission: $20
Student: $15
Group discounts available.

Books by the poets will be available for purchase before and after the reading, and the poets will be available to sign books after the reading.

Bring a friend and join us Friday, July 18.

Help our Scholarship Fund while experiencing great poetry.

* Hotel Rex has generously provided hotel rooms for our poets the night of the reading for the last 6 years.

* The Mill Valley Book Depot will generously provide books for sale the evening of the event and will donate a percentage of the evening’s proceeds. Visit them in Mill Valley or online.

* Rev. Audrey González, a volunteer probation officer, CASA worker, and prison chaplain for Shelby County juvenile court in Tennessee, an art collector, theatrical entrepeneur, former award winning journalist, and resident of Uruguay for 20 years, is attempting to be a poet.

* Deborah and Leo Ruth have been supporters of the Community of Writers for many years. Deborah is a poet and a many-time Poetry Program participant. They are sponsoring this event to help poets who, without the financial aid this event provides, would be unable to attend.

For more information on the venue and its location, visit www.uusf.org.

Community of Writers at Squaw Valley - A Non Profit Corporation
PO Box 1416
Nevada City, CA 95959

530.470.8440
530.581.5200

brett@squawvalleywriters.org
www.squawvalleywriters.org

Click cover image to order

(i) Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
(ii) Never use a long word where a short one will do.
(iii) If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
(iv) Never use the passive where you can use the active.
(v) Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
(vi) Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

– George Orwell: “Politics and the English Language,” 1946

“Violent language as a manner of speech amongst right-wing pundits reached a crescendo in the days leading up to the 2006 midterm elections. I remember flipping through TV channels one day, attempting to avoid pundits’ violent rhetoric. But such language was everywhere. Anne Coulter joked about ‘nuking’ Iran, Bill O’Reilly talked about the ‘war on Christmas,’ Pat Buchanan and Lou Dobbs spoke of the ‘invasion’ and ‘conquest’ of America by immigrants. I even came across a discussion of the ‘war against the war,’ in which an anti-war protest was discussed as if it was a war.”

–Jeffrey Feldman, author of Outright Barbarous

NEW YEARS DAY 2004

The word we get now is Wow!
Orwell was only off by twenty years,
Twin towers was only off by a nine
and two ones. Happy New Year to you,
lucky duck, literate survivor and imbiber
of print. Plato, please! O say can’t you see
democracy for what it used to be?
Unjustified, dawn hangs around the corner.
What can dawn mean?

– Al Young