Some notes from Waverley

From last Friday. I can't transcribe all my notes, but I thought it might be fun to mention the people who read.

Intro by Karen Grosman.

Willy
Kit - her first time reading here. We all applaud and give her The Love. "Shepherded".
Tony - poem about the Mekong river
Anita Holzburg - "Chances"
Jayne Kos - "Road Trip"
Charlotte Muse - I don't have a title but it was something memoir-ish. I often really enjoy Charlotte's pensive musings.
Karen Grosman
Brucey Slama - poem about the Holocaust.
Jackie Marderossian - Abomb, steamer trunk, small girl named Yoko, Magritte's attitude towards objects. I follow Jackie's work with interest. She experiments quite hardworkingly with form and subject material and I always think she is on the edge of finding a solid voice. Sometimes she catches the bus and sometimes not. More and more often, yes.
Steven Riddle - a quirky poem and I am not sure if he said "K9 Down" or "Canine Down" or something else, but I thought of that William Burroughs poem where he starts rambling about "Pilot K9, you are cut off." A really wonderful last line in this poem that I wish I had written down or retained but it had something to do with marigolds and calendula.
Mel - the guy I think of as "The Anchorman". A poem, rhyming & hilarious, to Anatole Lubovich.
Lu Pettus - grandchild in front of the mirror. Good. blank verse. Or, dips in and out of blank verse. Lu usually writes long narrative fantasy poems that seem to be set in some kind of consistent mythical world of her own invention. This mirror poem is a departure from that and it is quite good.
Rob N. - A villanelle. Kachina's keep.
Tom Digby - Christmas on Terra. I always enjoy Digby's flights of fancy. They are not "good" poems by literary snootypants standards and are often prosy, a thing which normally bugs me. But in his case it doesn't bug me. They are vignettes and explorations of a wacky idea - in a way that entertains. (Therefore they ARE good.) Often people quietly roll their eyes or don't know what to make of his stuff.
Sharon Olson - she reads "Blood Soup". (Which was in Composite#2). I think last year Sharon joined the Sixteen Rivers collective. Her work is meditative, page-poety, naturey. I think of Sharon, Charlotte, Jean Chacona, Christine Holland, Patrick Daly, David Cummings, and some others as representative of the core of Waverley's thing. Thing. But it's a tight, odd community and in so many ways I'm an outsider in it. I think there are people who have been poeting and workshoping together for 20 years and I never understand those nuances. And for god's sake, their work is so good, but it seems like it never gets published anywhere, which makes me crazy when so much inferior work gets published. Anyway - Sharon also is a founder and organizer for the Art21 reading series.
Marie Solis - a sonnet.
*** BREAK ***
Thanks to everyone who bought my little magazines! Yay, lunch money. I put some right back into Jackie M.'s fund for gas money etc.

Steve Arntson - Portal of Bones poem. I prompt. Actually during some of the above readings I was puzzling out Steve's splotchy handwriting in his tiny notebook. I love this poem. He left out a lot of bits. I could feel its layered rush.
Me - a translation of nestor Perlongher's poem "Para Camila O'Gorman". It is weird and nonlinear. I can't remember if I've read it before, here. I kind of garbled it. Oh well. All my recent work is way too long to read here so it's translations away!
Person whose name I just can't remember. OMG. I should. I have only known her for 4 years. Judith? Oh hell. I'm senile. She read 2 poems. Prophecies and healings. Katrina. Streetcar.
Mary Marcia Casoly - Pomo poem written at/about Asilomar. about objects and stuff. I often like her poems' odd jumping around, very ethereal. They come at you sideways. This one did not grab me... a couple of lines did but I can't remember thm.
Kathy Abelson - family poem. a memoir about moving to Los Altos or Sunnyvale back when it was all orchards. Actually, this is another very typical thread of what I think of as typical Waverley poems. It's a thing they have going on. Exploration of memoir and family memories, especially connections with the dead and time. Everyone quick go read "Remembrance of Things Past."
Jean Chacona - "Unity" . Jean has a very strong particular individual voice, quiet and definite. She works in an orchid greenhouse, I think. Or used to. She's right in there with the meditative nature poem and Zen bonding with flowers or one particular leaf. She should team up with a painter for a poem/painting series.

At this reading I missed hearing Robert Pesich, David Cummings, Christine Holland, and Patrick Daly. I haven't been able to come to Waverley very often this year because of my school schedule in the spring, and then doing hurricane relief work and getting really sick this fall. So I felt like I didn't get my fix! They had better all read next time or there will be hell to pay.

Oh yeah I have one more slightly catty thing to say. It doesn't make it poetry just 'cause you leave out the "the"s. Remember that now. If you're doing that to make your poetry seem less prosy - a noble goal - you need more radical surgery. Leaving out pronouns is just as bad. I'm not sure exactly what to tell people. Go read some super tight good poetry and diagram its sentences? Or its lack of sentences? Rewrite two of your lines 10 different ways? Maybe take that good poem and mess it up by rewriting two of its lines to be as bad as possible? I should come up with an exercise for it.