IN THE WINTER GARDEN –
FEATURING CSPS POETS SAINE, EHRET, & HARVEY
We started honoring “our” poets working as volunteers for California State Poetry Society with the previous issue of the Poetry Letter, featuring our Monthly Contest Judge, Alice Pero; Annual Contest Judge in 2022, Frank Iosue; and the newest Editor of the California Quarterly, Nicholas Skaldetvind. This time, we are saying farewell to three former Editors of the California Quarterly: Life Member, Margaret Saine, as well as Terry Ehret and Maura Harvey; the latter two continue to assist us on the CSPS Board. Since Maura is a painter and Margaret – a photographer, some of their artwork serves as illustrations. The issue also presents one of the Honorary Mentions from the 2023 Annual Contest by Gurupreet Khalsa, too lengthy for our journal, an ekphrastic poem by Michael Escoubas, three poems by Hedy Habra, as well as three book reviews: two by Michael Escoubas – of No Matter How It Ends by E.J. Rode, and of Genica by Neth Hass – and the third one by Joan Leotta, of a new book by Hedy Habra, Or Did You Ever See the Other Side? Did you? No? So, enjoy!
The book reviews will be posted in Part II.
FEATURED POET - MAURA HARVEY
MAURA HARVEY is a bilingual poet, author and artist who has lived in California since 1950. She holds a Ph.D. in Latin American Literature from UC Irvine. Her poetry in both Spanish and English has appeared widely. Dr. Harvey is a founder of Taller del mar, a monthly poetry workshop with members from Tijuana and San Diego. She feels very proud to have published a poetry anthology in Barinas, Venezuela, in 1993 and to have been able to meet Venezuelan and Cuban poets personally while travelling in those countries. She has exhibited her art in many venues in California and had a show in Istanbul, Turkey, in 2006. She joined the editorial board of the California Quarterly in 1999, editing many issues and serving for years also as Secretary of the CSPS and as the CSPS Annual Contest Chair. Most recently, she edited the second issue of the CQ for 2017 (Vol. 43, No. 2). In September 2023 she stepped down from the role of the CQ Editor and become a CSPS Director-at-Large.
TONY BENNETT SINGS FOR MY MOTHER
he croons a dream crescendo
better days swell with joy
Tony sings to the crowd
yet I feel he sings
just for me
his eyes lock with mine
but you
Mother
you see
the kid
who likes art best
tries extra hard
stays after class
to clean brushes for Dad
you and Dad invite Anthony
for dinner
the opera
Anthony Domenic Benedetto
ripens into talent
khaki G I songster
he becomes Tony Bennett
tonight
Mother
you hear
the voice of the kid from Astoria
Tony tells the audience that this night is special
his Julia is here
in dazzling white you wave from your seat
your smile sings an old love song
you give him back
his dream
Maura Harvey
THE LIGHT IN GUERNICA
Spain bombed
numbers of dead
ciphers burned into horseflesh
brother against brother
mi hermano ya no es mi hermano
Picasso paints
in black white-hot slashes
His stallion rages against his master
a soldier cremated alive
light of interrogation cross-examines
battle nightmare crucifies the canvas
La bombilla burning bulb of war
illuminates a small pueblo giant
on the map of war
house ablaze
burning bodies heap into a pyramid of flesh
families joined again in death
Pablo paints the darkening
eyes that look but
do not see the oil lamp’s small flame
hands that grasp but
cannot reach the white blossom
brothers in blood
carnales
White bull stares ahead to a world
LUZ
EN GUERNICA
España bombardeada
suma de los muertos
cifras quemadas en carne de caballo
hermano contra hermano
mi hermano ya no es mi hermano
Picasso pinta
en blanco y negro al rojo vivo
Su semental patea
brama contra su amo
un soldado incinerado vivo
luz de contrainterrogación
batalla pesadilla crucifica el lienzo
La bombilla luz quemante de guerra
ilumina un pueblo chico gigante
en el mapa de la guerra
casa en llamas
cuerpos ardientes en una pirámide de carne
familias unidas de nuevo en la muerte
Pablo pinta la penumbra
ojos que miran pero
no ven la llama pequeña del candil
manos que buscan pero
no alcanzan la flor blanca
hermanos en sangre
carnales
El toro blanco mira hacia un mundo
THE DETANGLING
In the ivy I found a string of white lights,
it was the shortest day of the year.
Hill Deer, I did not see you,
I barely know you.
The lights looked like leaves,
frozen in the long frigid night.
You had snagged your antlers
in the long braid of Christmas lights,
but you freed yourself
and left a trail for me.
Garden Squire, subjugated
by festive lights,
slave of a calendar that isn’t yours,
you ascended the hill to rest
in your thicket.
Deer, you are a gift.
Every day and every night
the deer climb up and down,
their ivy route.
Messenger Deer, today
I follow your quiet path.
~ Maura Harvey, Dec. 2023
WAKING IN FIRE SEASON
Remember when you waken to be still.
Whatever dream you have been wearing
in the dark body of sleep
still lies near, a deep fold
of pleasure, a sleeve of old trouble,
a name on a grave. Leave the dream-clothes
under your skin that now you wash
and lotion and paint. Dress slowly for the day
just dawning in the smoky east. Remember
from time to time to touch the prayer fringe
of dream-fragments as you walk
down the path under the falling sycamore leaves.
Remember the sound they make
rattling all night in the wind.
~ Terry Ehret
MUSTARD BATHING AT HALF MOON BAY
After “let there be new flowering”
by Lucille Clifton
First blue in weeks and the flowering
mustard sings its sweet seduction in the fields
all along the ragged Pacific edge. Grown men
have pulled onto the shoulder of the highway, needing
the tender touch of yellow. They walk in slow time,
arms outstretched, smiling as if our long war
were over. As if all sides had won.
Come, walk the deep paths to the sun. Be
ready. Something inside wants to mend.
~ Terry Ehret
Published in Reverberations II: A Visual Conversation,
Sebastopol Center for the Arts, 2022. reprinted in Women
Artists Datebook, Syracuse Cultural Workers, 2022
INTIMATE IMMENSITY
The world is large, but in us
It is deep as the sea.
—Ranier Maria Rilke
Say the sky.
Say the wind galloping across the grass.
Say the grass by the sea by the sea waves
and their own rising and falling
eternity. Say the turning planet.
Say the fall of the most recent evening.
Say lie down now and say
much sooner than you thought
the stars have all re-arranged themselves in the
night
while I was -- What was I doing? What?
Say then the darkness behind the stars,
wherever it is going. Back to the first moment
the tiny weight shifted toward
my body or yours, and the intimate
explosion of love. Say, in all this immensity,
who.
~ Terry Ehret,
from Lucky Break, Sixteen Rivers Press, 2008
ON THE GREEN ROAD, COUNTY CLARE
Out the back door and over
the cattle guard, down the walled lane,
past the abandoned farm house
with its rambling sweetbriar,
through a stone stile where evening
opens to the silver rock of the Burren,
my only company the cows in their caramel coats,
one leggy hare, the call of a mourning dove,
and the bells of the church away in the village.
Oh, the relief and comfort
of setting out alone!
My thoughts keep turning
widdershins. I might try the Irish
remedy of wearing my coat
inside out till my mind
rights itself. Or walk far from anyone’s
eyes or judgment, far from troubles
and their urgencies, or questions,
however kindly meant, that tug at my sleeve,
leaving me thin as milk on stone.
Solitude, they say, is an art, a gift,
a hand reaching over the old stone fence
to pull me through, one shoulder at a time,
like a foal or calf, into a new story.
At the crest of the hill, the wind
tears with an ancient chill, like secrets
in a box blown open, and the herald
of an about-to-rise moon
fanfares the eastern clouds, casting smooth stones of light
across the bay of Bell Harbor.
~ Terry Ehret
RAIN WOMEN
after Robinson Jeffers
I saw them once off the coast of Monterey.
The rain women, walking above the horizon
in a slow procession, each carrying
the low and heavy sky.
Each carrying an urn of air and ash.
I saw them again in the Canyonlands of southern Utah.
Miles away out over the New Mexico desert,
the sky a black hand of approaching storm,
the air between them singed with blue light.
Their long, gray dresses billowing,
shifting, disappearing, reforming high above the Escalante.
The walking rain, someone called them,
carrying on their heads the dark and weighted sky.
Carrying in their arms the memory of their dead,
the ashes of what wants to be born.
~ Terry Ehret
FEATURED POET - MARGARET SAINE
MARGARET SAINE was born in Germany and lives in Southern California. After a Yale Ph.D. in French and Spanish, she taught languages, literature, and culture in California and Arizona, while writing and translating poetry in five languages. Her books include Bodyscapes, Words of Art, Lit Angels (Moonrise Press, 2017), Gardens of the Earth (Moonrise Press, 2018), and six haiku chapbooks. In 1991-2021, she has been a board member of the CSPS, serving in the roles of Secretary, Annual Contest Chair, and the CSPS Poetry Letter. She was CQ Editor in 1994-2020. Saine was honored with CSPS Life Membership in 2021. Her poems have appeared in many journals here and abroad. Three books of poems and a Postwar childhood memoir were published in Germany – Das Flüchtige bleibt (The Ephemeral Remains), Das Weite suchen (A Yen to Travel), Atem der Stille (The Breath of Silence), and Das ungeschickte Kind (Awkward Child). Searching for Bridges is a bilingual English-Arabic book of her poems edited by poet and critic Nizar Sartawi. Several books are awaiting their publication.
NEW YEAR’S EVE
In the snowy blankness
figures dissolve into words
with rain as runoff
All of the stars shine
heaven drones blue and for a while
leaving us deathless
All of the women
and all of the men move in
violent antics
When death surprises
our only swan song will be
engraved on silence
Margaret Saine
From A Curtain Call of Desire
VOYAGE
The feeling of rivers inside
feeling them unite
as they wrap us
into their smooth flow
carry us entwined
beyond ourselves
far along and far out
to the seas
to other lands
where we long to be
bodies
to know and love
embracing the world
and being embraced
Margaret Saine
From A Curtain Call of Desire
LANDSCAPES UNDER THE SKY
Rivers
vertical hands
branching with
fingers entwined
in gestures of supplication
Stillness of thought
passed through by a wind
embedded in the scape
of rivers and mountains
a world of houses
of rivers and forests
Lying seemingly eternal
under the sky
Margaret Saine,
From a Curtain Call of Desire
MIDWINTER EARLY SPRING
C'était un jour / A la gloire de l'herbe.
It was a day / In the glory of plants.
~ Edouard Glissant
Now the garden receives
the explosive winter sun
green jewels break out
on each twig and leaf:
A new green spring air
erupts in our hearts
what appeared already dead
gains a new lease on life
And I’m inclined to think
I experience a miracle
sprung from that sudden rain
that inundated us yesterday
A water bluer than any lake
or river, a water blue like
a piece of sky washed by the sun
after the tempest is over
I gratefully view the life
that wasn’t there last
night
CLIMBING ROSE
El silencio profundo de la vida en la tierra,
nos lo enseña la rosa / abierta en el rosal.
The profound silence of life on earth,
the rose open on the rosebush teaches it to us.
Lorca
Time
a song sung to us
a ballad of simple
and complicated life
phrases and lapses sustained
on a ferry boat of feelings
on the river of days
With pauses
for the banal
the eventless
the trivial not powerful
yet reaching at times
for the poetic
Time
a song to consciousness
the climbing rose
that twists and turns
and in the end
carries the roof
~ Margaret Saine
ACCORDING TO
NATURE
Introduction to Gardens of the Earth - According to Nature by Margaret Saine
But one learns with regret that gardens don’t last forever. First they grow and are arranged, with large empty spaces still in between small growing plants and trees; then they have their heyday; but soon they may almost imperceptibly fall into neglect and alteration. They may go wild, haywire, go to seed, during one of those long trips one takes, or they may be downright abolished by others, the authority. Bulldozed, paved over.
So, true to their etymology of being “guarded”, being the “ward” of someone, gardens need to be guarded in order to exist, to perform and provide their “guarding” function of human well-being and happiness.
A garden is ever-changing, I say. Someone may object that this is true only of nature herself, nature always changes, and they conclude that, because a garden is subject to human agency, it would change less. Or perhaps change more, arbitrarily, beyond rhyme or reason! This thought suggests a truth that may once have been valid, but strikes me as facetious today. First of all, as far as nature is concerned, we now know-- unlike Enlightenment writers, who believed they knew— that as a whole, nature is beholden to ecological changes, including those wrought by humans in the last five hundred years. And before someone suggests that changes of any kind are all bad, let us examine the paradox that several formerly rural species now live in cities. The countryside with its high-efficiency agribusiness has wrought disastrous changes that make badgers, owls, robins, coyotes, raccoons, opossums and hedgehogs seek refuge in formerly inhospitable urban places, but which are now relatively more tranquil, its green spaces not exploited for maximum efficiency. A garden that leaves a lot to the plants’ devices, such as mine, also qualifies as such a sanctuary. What with all my travels, the plants in my garden sometimes have to fend for themselves.
What I was trying to point out is that in the garden, the mix of elements—sun, light, rain and watering, wind, hot and cold, soil amended or self-amending, insects and birds, and many more—is just as unpredictable as elsewhere and therefore transforms the garden’s entire appearance, its “feel,” as it were. I don’t think I exaggerate when I say that the different growth of plants creates a different garden every year. Sun and shade are of special concern in the summer, when changes are more noticeable, especially at noon, for the more extreme conditions might benefit or harm plants that were, only last year, out of harm’s way or growing indifferently along, whereas now they are truly “blooming” and “blossoming,” providing light or shade, providing color. Or their opposite, glorious last year, they are now floundering, flopping, and dying.
My garden is my sky lab, made up of star dust. It is an adventure that does not entirely depend on me, but has its own—always surprising—dynamic. After I set it up, give it the basics, it begins to follow its own rules and laws and continues to surprise me. Each interference by me—ripping out and putting in, weeding, pruning and shaping, coaxing and tying up, lowering and stretching—is minor compared to what looks like the garden’s own will, and which is none other than the interaction of all elements of this ambience according to nature. Including the plants themselves, who affect other plants and the environment, and are affected by them in return.
I like it when my garden does so much better than I had thought, or at least when it does unexpected things, in an intriguing, overall good way. But when the emperor vine or morning glory, which blooms on its white shelf when I wake up, begins winding across the stone path like a snake and crawling over other plants and strangling them, I have to interfere and strangle the strangler, so to speak, limiting her to her place.
I live, we live, on this earth. Flowers are a gift, they seek and elicit beauty in us and from us. Gardens are always “according to nature,” environmental nature as well as human. There are no human beings who don’t like gardens. And all gardens like and welcome humans. After all, we and the plants are each other’s fondest breath.
~ Margaret Saine
Published by Moonrise Press, https://moonrisepress.com/saine---gardens-of-the-earth.html
FIRST SNOW BY MICHAEL ESCOUBAS
An ekphrastic poem inspired by an image found on the internet
FIRST SNOW
It began while we slept,
and continued as we awakened . . .
softly falling
as if sifted from a sugar-shaker
by Heaven’s unseen Hand.
Feathery flakes fastened themselves
to branches shorn of leaves
by a recent wind. The branches
welcomed them as flake after flake
settled in its own predestined place.
Standing amidst the changing season,
I am reminded that few things
in life remain the same.
For in life, as in nature, the unseen
Hand in charge of change, changes me.
~ Michael Escoubas
THREE POEMS BY HEDY HABRA
OR DID YOU EVER SEE THE OTHER SIDE OF THINGS?
After Disturbing Presence by Remedios Varo
Seated at her table, her fingertips run over
the knots where branches
once grew, feel the crevices
of the aged oak’s grain, its porous surface
about to peel open
like the pages of a book. She watches wavy
lines swirl and burls’ eyes
sprout in threadlike tendrils ...
Does a tree feel pain in its phantom limbs?
Could the table remember
the carpenter’s hands that carved it with love,
the many times it was stained
and rubbed with oils, would
these hands erase the memory of trees
pregnant with bird trills?
And what of the movement of her pen, her
unanswered questions, the songs
she sang to herself? A heavy
breath in the nape of her neck rarefies the air.
The chair’s damask fabric,
woven with fleur-de-lis disintegrates, scattering
petals wet with tears. Her open scars
exposed, she feels the pull
of a body against hers, her hunger unveiled as
the moment recedes.
Hedy Habra, first published by The Bitter Oleander
From Or Did You Ever See The Other Side? (Press 53,
2023
OR WEREN’T WE ALWAYS TOLD TO REMOVE OUR MAKEUP AT NIGHT?
After We Had Many Faces by Juanita Guccione
On certain evenings when the sun turns ebony, my heart becomes an obsidian pendant hanging between my breasts, conjuring old lovers’ touch, my newborn’s avid lips. I can then freely perform, peeling off face after face the masks that haunted me all my life, each dangling from a strand of my graying hair, caught within a self-woven web of conflicting feelings brimming with sap and dew. I become a puppeteer pulling threads of time, braiding throbbing heartbeats with the stillness of empty silences. That’s when I realize how much care was taken in recreating myself as though with stage makeup. Or else how could I have coped with the different roles allotted to me at every crossroad, each gilded with a false sense of free will?
Hedy Habra, first published by The MockingHeart Review
From Or Did You Ever See The Other Side? (Press 53,
2023
OR CALL ME A HOARDER IF YOU WILL BUT TRY TO UNDERSTAND
After Harmony by Remedios Varo
Each and every object in my drawers has a story of its own.
When I revisit the selves I once was, minute black silhouettes
Align themselves over the power lines of my mind as on a score
Until the outline of an alter ego irrupts, adding a silent note.
When I revisit the selves I once was, minute black silhouettes
Rub over every object's skin, absorbing smells and vibrations
Until the outline of an alter ego irrupts, adding a silent note
And would they engage in a dialogue in the utmost darkness?
Rub over every object's skin, absorbing smells and vibrations
Like the rosary stringed with pearls my mom loved so much
And would they engage in a dialogue in the utmost darkness
Map the vestibules of memory, run fingers over shining veins?
Like the rosary stringed with pearls my mom loved so much
Boxes of left-over yarn, her crocheted creations tucked into drawers
Map the vestibules of memory, run fingers over shining veins
Call it a bric-a-brac fit for those of us prone to engage in bricolage.
Boxes of left-over yarn, her crocheted creations tucked into drawers
A bleached sand dollar that might become your grandson's treasure.
Call it a bric-a-brac fit for those of us prone to engage in bricolage.
Nothing is what it seems, only the meaning invested in its arcane language
A bleached sand dollar that might become your grandson's treasure
And just the sight of a handwriting triggers the deepest emotions
Nothing is what it seems, only the meaning invested in its arcane language.
I keep digging as I become the archeologist of my own experience
Hedy Habra, first published by The MacQueen Quinterly
From Or Did You Ever See The Other Side? (Press 53 2023)
ANNUAL CONTEST 2023 - HONORARY MENTION BY G. KHALSA
The 2023 CSPS Annual Contest, adjudicated by Anna Maria Mickiewicz of London, England, had four winners: Sharon Chmielarz (first prize), Susan Wolbarst and Claire Scott (two equivalent second prizes) and Mark G. Hammerschick (third prize). Their poems were published in the California Quarterly 49, no. 4 along with two Honorary Mentions, by Mark G. Hammerschick and rg cantalupo. Other Honorary Mentions will be published in the next CQ in the spring (Claire Scott, Christine Horner, rg cantalupo), below is the Honorary Mention by Gurupreet K. Khalsa, long for publication in the CQ, exceeding its allowable line limits. Congratulations to all the winners!
WANDERING BRUME TO SPARKS
by Gurupreet K. Khalsa
1. Young Juan wander’d by the glassy brooks/ Thinking unutterable things…/ …so pursued/ His self-communion with his own high soul. Losing track of time in wanderings, wanting, restless, dissatisfied, seeking, reflexive thoughts about the nature of science and man/woman/all variations in between, metaphysical elements, such as are angels male or female or neither, the nature of the world, the nature of love, all pondered in wanderings in nature (Thoreau’s absolute freedom and wildness), wanderings and wonderings of soul. Paratactic: where meaning germinates in the spaces, peripheral shadowed niggling (trapdoors that when triggered propel one down a chute into something unknown – is it a field of flowers, a cave of spiky quartz crystals upon which to impale oneself? A mirrored fun room with a rubber floor? The depths of Lake Baikal where the Rusalka lurks?). One must know the correct texture in which to commune with high souls.
2. A walkway in Amsterdam glows Starry Night when trod upon. No one who wonders what the night contains, where the stars go, could ever be lost because the path glides on ahead.
round and round they dance in tandem
dance together till their hearts swell
leap in harmony and gladness
3. Instead of insight, maybe all a man gets is strength to wander for a while. A box: what is outside it, what is inside it (insight and outsight): in systems theory, a closed system, but once opened its molecules and content (Pandora?) interact with other systems. The box as the universe and stars and galaxies and we are all their toys in it and God is counting his marbles as they roll around, and once in a while he will open the box and take one out and roll it outside of the box, or dress a paper doll in different outfits. How do I feel about it? Safe knowing my walls but eager to wander outside of them. And how far could two photons wander when they share a single quantum state, one measured and fixed and thus the other spooky and entangled, according to Einstein? You might think then that no wandering is even possible. Gedanken experiment: breaking entanglement as you shoot off beyond the event horizon and I sit on the fence wondering.
4. The plain was full of ghosts/ I wandered up, I wandered down. An image at the center of a dream that is symbolic: a doll with its head missing, and now much time must be devoted to searching for it (by glassy brooks), knowing it is important for continuity to restore its head. So the quest for wholeness ensues, propelled by underlying anxiety about how we as a society have not kept our head, feeling the need to proclaim I am this or I am that (as St. Augustine wrote, we pass by ourselves without wondering), as opposed to we are this and we are that, and we need the guiding power of reason, or as the scientist said, like all sentient civilizations we are doomed to failure and extinction in a constant cycle of ego and destruction unless we return to completeness where we can present ourselves as assembled of many parts but ultimately working together (wandering through space together) to move forward because arms cannot shape and legs cannot move forward without meaning and direction from conscious awareness.
tethered by glowing threads
to the record of all being and beings.
I know not how I may seem to others, but to myself I am but a small child wandering upon the vast shores of knowledge, every now and then finding a small bright pebble to content myself with. The child perceives no wide shores, no world beyond the present, little doubt about enduring promises of parents and love, at least if she is a lucky child; fear of meaninglessness has not intruded. In this world of the child, sixty-four is unimaginable, today and yesterday and tomorrow the box containing all marbles and rainbows. Not yet is there a beyond.
6. Water wanders, you know, but always downhill toward the place where it joins together, unless it wants to work a while to dissolve stone and make art. A conscious wanderer finds herself looking up, to find networks arching overhead, tapping into the Akashic Records (the life-thread of consciousness) where wandering produces an electric thrill of connection to discover that all things are connected, really, don’t argue with me, all things ARE connected, even as I touch your hand and molecules leap one to another and I touch the tree trunk and find that it recognizes me, and I lay my hand upon the water and it caresses, understanding my moisture and grinning in companionship. Why are raindrops not the size of swimming pools, we wonder.
7. Love is the star to every wandering bark. We wandered once in Mussoorie along the Mall, looking in Cambridge Books and sipping our mango shakes and browsing the Kullu shawl shop at Picture Palace. John Muir said to wander the whole summer and when you do, you find a mirror shard of memory, no destination but that of harmony. Idyllic, perhaps, yet idylls seem to populate the wanderer’s world.
I dart up my thread to a glimmer
of light and find your thread
shining, where we meet in a spark.
~ Gurupreet K. Khalsa
Honorary Mention, CSPS Annual Contest 202
(a) George Gordon, Lord Byron, Don Juan, I, XC-XCI
(713-14, 721-22); (b) William Least Heat-Moon;
(c) Emerson, Dirge; (d) Plato; (e) Shakespeare, Sonnet
116.
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