Archive for the ‘writing’ Category

I’ve just posted a piece on the Mendocino Writers Blog about the growing connections between our local arts, business, and social services organizations.

Poetry lives. I’ve just spent the morning helping to judge the Poetry Out Loud contest at our local high school. From the excited buzz of student voices as they entered the auditorium at Mendocino High School, to the respectful silence with which they heard each contestant, to the enthusiastic applause, it was clear that poetry has an important place in these kids’ lives.

Launched in 2005 by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and the Poetry Foundation, Poetry Out Loud is a national competition  that “encourages the nation’s youth to learn about great poetry through exploration, memorization and performance.” Participating schools begin in the classroom, where students select poems to memorize from an anthology containing a huge and varied selection. This morning, for instance, I heard poems by Theodore Roethke, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Rudyard Kipling, Sherman Alexie and Kim Addonnizio, to name just a few. Advancing through school, regional and state competitions, winners get an all-expenses paid trip to Washington, DC for the high-profile national finals. The states are high: the national champion receives a purse large enough to finance a good portion of a college education. More than 300,000 students participate each year.

Whether or not a student advances beyond the classroom competition, the program has value as an entry point to a lifetime interest in poetry. “I’m so envious,” a fellow judge murmured to me. “We had nothing like this when I was in school.”

Mid-morning the sky clears, a break between storms. Our generator rumbles. The power is out, a downed line somewhere back in the forest. So is our cable internet service. From the house we can see spume lifting high over the cliffs. Nothing for it but to go there, to walk the cliff path around the Mendocino Headlands, to exult in the roar, the tumble of white, the spritz of salt spray on our faces. At the big blowhole near Main Street, huge plumes of water rise with a satisfying ker-thump.

We decide to avoid the muddy parts of the trail further on, and head up to Main Street. Nearly all the stores are closed because of the power outage. But Gallery Bookshop, on the corner of Main and Kasten, is open, though unlit. We step in to say hi.

“Electricity, schmelectricity,” laughs Christie, the owner. “We never close. We just do everything on paper and input it later. We have the little swipe-swipe machine for credit cards. The only thing that’s hard to do without the computer is book searches.”

Tony finds a novel he wants, Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall, winner of the 2009 Man Booker Prize. At the checkstand in the center of the store we chat with Christie and two other staff members, Johanna and Jane, about this book and another we’ve been reading lately, A.S. Byatt’s The Children’s Book. I love the cosiness of these conversations about books. I love being a local in this remote and beautiful place.

The book arrived in the mail, unexpected. Return address BkMk Press. Oh yes, I remembered, one of those poetry manuscript competitions I entered ages ago, where they send all contestants a copy of the winning book. I opened it to skim, and was immediately reading it cover to cover. Tony Barnstone’s Tongue of War: from Pearl Harbor to Nagasaki, is the most powerful anti-war testament I have ever read. I’d like to quote B.H. Fairchild, who awarded this book the John Ciardi Prize:

“…It is written in forms, especially the sonnet, and of course the meter of those forms, the pulse of human feeling unable to name itself… The diction and syntax are often blunt with the exhaustion and terror of human voices—American and Japanese, soldiers and civilians—struggling to articulate the unspeakable, to make visible that to which we have learned to blind ourselves. …I cannot help but think that having read it, an American President who has himself been privileged to avoid the horrors of the battlefield might be less inclined to send young men and women off to face them.”

First, a big thank you to my husband, Tony Eppstein of Monday Graphics, who designed my beautiful website and the theme for this journal. I will try to fill this space with language that fits its surroundings. My plan is to share a little about the projects I’m working on, such as the Mendocino Coast Writers Conference and my poetry workshop at College of the Redwoods, Mendocino campus.  I’ll include observations about the natural world here between the forest and the sea on the Mendocino Coast and talk about what’s growing in my garden. Occasionally I’ll throw in a poem or two. I hope we can start some conversations about writing, and about living close to the earth.