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TABLE OF CONTENTS
California Quarterly, Volume 50, Number 2, Summer 2024
That’s the Trouble — Casey Fuller 7
To Money and Material — Phil Linz 8
Static — Emily Barton Altman 8
After Brecht: Those Who Eat Their Fill — Jim Ellis 9
A Poem for Portraits — Anselm Berrigan 10
Stealing a Car with Eric Snyder — Casey Fuller 12
Villanelle No. One — Jeremy Rendina 14
Promotions are for Suckers — Anselm Berrigan 15
What Good is a Fist? — Maja Trochimczyk 16
Na co ci ta pięść? (in Polish) — Maja Trochimczyk, tr. 17
Evening Storm, New Mexico — Kate Partridge 18
Down on Land — Kate Partridge 20
The Turn Towards Winter — Bruce Bennett 21
Somehow the Ghost Tree Still Blooms — Melinda Palacio 22
Statues — Aidan Coleman 23
The Hamptons — Casey Fuller 24
Orcas Biting Propellers — Anselm Berrigan 25
Fault Lines — Sara Hailstone 26
Insula — Phillip Newton 27
Speculative Futures (#3) — Anthony Caleshu 28
A Thousand Noises — Bruce Bennett 29
Pectus Excavatum — Barrett Warner 30
Bedchamber with Bright’s — Rosa Lane 31
Ode to the Plumeria in Her Hair — Melinda Palacio 32
Nesting in Love’s Wildness — Ambika Talwar 33
Fulgurite Love — Sara Hailstone 34
Coffee — Alessio Zanelli 36
Anoint Anoint Anoint — Linda Saccoccio 37
Deer Pause — Candace Walsh 39
Static 2 — Emily Barton Altman 40
Tacit Accidents — Candace Walsh 40
A Colleague Remembers — Bruce Bennett 41
Let’s Meet Somewhere — Candace Walsh 42
Both Camps — Thomas McGrath 43
Song — Thomas McGrath 43
Winter Crows — Don Heneghan 44
Winter A Time Machine — Linda Saccoccio 44
Pieces of String — Thomas McGrath 45
Möbius — Phillip Newton 45
Art—A Deep Slice — Henry HeartSong 46
Augury — Kate Partridge 47
On Cherche l’Afrique — Jane Stuart 48
Susan’s Calls are Like Anthony’s Supper — Rosa Lane 49
Manna in Our Palms — Ambika Talwar 50
Sprouting Wings — Jane Stuart 51
No I Did Not Want To Write An Essay So — shilo virginia previti 52
Far Reach — Rosa Lane 54
Madonna of Music — Anne-Marie Brumm 55
Dragon Fruit Awareness — Maja Trochimczyk 56
Evening by the Fire — Jane Stuart 57
Static No. 3 — Emily Barton Altman 58
Contributors in Alphabetical
Order
59
CSPS Contest Opportunities
60
CSPS Newsbriefs
2024, No. 2 by Maja Trochimczyk
63
Publishing Opportunities with CSPS 65
2022 CSPS Donors, Patrons, and Membership 66
CSPS Membership Form 68
EDITOR’S NOTE
As Robert Frost wrote elsewhere: “No
surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.” So, I’ve set out to present
an example of poets’ vertical investigations abstracting from the muck and
confusing murk a clattering of time, of place, of history, making the reader
giddy with notions of the numinous, of names, of feeling. A good poem rewards
this kind of looking. These poets place themselves at the center of all time in
that self-perpetuating way great mythic-figures have always done without
border, age, limit and within a labyrinthine wonder.
What’s a reflection? A chance to see
two. The reward is this terrific group singing the relationship they share with
the world: Shilo Virginia Previti, Jeremy Rendina, Emilly Barton Altman, Casey
Fuller, Rosa Lane, Candace Walsh, Anselm Berrigan, Kate Partridge. Songs in
which there is the recognizable sound of a human voice inducing you to continue
reading. There’s an ordered movement of the experience, an esthetic
quality au fond.
Reflecting on these poems, I am
reminded of what Susan Howe wrote elsewhere: “Poetry is love for the felt fact.” Discovering how each poem continues the other’s
story. My aim has been to place them into a shape of communal feeling. And, as
with any decent anthology, you are able to open at random and Dame Fortune will
enfold you in the language’s sheer beauty of resonance.
Lastly, thanks to the people
involved with the Chester Fritz Library for having made a selection of Thomas
McGrath available to me. Thanks to Crystal Alberts. Thanks are due to the Board
of the California State Poetry Society for trusting my judgment. Thanks also to the keen Maja Trochimczyk for
every little thing she does. Thanks to the poets for offering such a rich
assortment of verse. And thanks are due to you. We are in society.
Ojai, CA / Owasco, NY
NICHOLAS SKALDETVIND, EDITOR
Nicholas Skaldetvind is an Italian-American poet and paper-maker. He holds a M.A. (2019) from Stockholm University, Department of English and Transnational Creative Writing (thesis "The Spontaneous Poetics of Jack Kerouac’s Letters from 1947-1956: Repetition, Language, and Narration.”) In 2015 he received B.A degree from Saint Louis University, Madrid, Department of Spanish Language and Literature, Department of International Studies, and Department of Ibero-American Studies. He is a recipient of numerous scholarships and grants, including Graduate ERASMUS Merit Scholarship (September 2018 – January 2019) at Bath Spa University. Department of English and Creative Writing in Bath, England; as well as scholarships at creative writing workshops at Berkeley, CA; Naropa University, Colorado and book arts and papermaking workshop at Wells College in Aurora, New York. He also was an undergraduate Exchange Student at the University of Copenhagen, Department of Political Sciences, English Literature, Spanish Literature, and Historical Linguistics (August 2012 – May 2016) and took a writing course in Danish in 2015.
Skaldetvind's research and teaching interests include: Twentieth-century American Literature, Transnational Studies, Epistolary Poetics, Life Writing, Literature of the American West, Papermaking and Book Arts, Fibers and Shrinkage, and Paper Drying Process. He is a multilingual poet and writer: native speaker in English, with advanced knowledge of Spanish, Danish, intermediate knowledge of Swedish, Portuguese, Italian, and French. He joined the Editorial Board in September 2023.
NEWSBRIEFS 2024, NO. 2, SUMMER
2024
The CSPS ANNUAL POETRY CONTEST 2024 is in progress.
The judge is Marlene Hitt, an author of two books (Clocks and Water Drops,
2015, and Yellow Tree Alone, 2022) and multiple chapbooks. She is a true
community poet, who has done much to promote poetry writing, reading, and
recognition in the Los Angeles area. In the era of poetic rants and manifestos,
we value the unique, sometimes sardonic, sometimes bewildered poetic voice of
Hitt, focused on finding inspiration and beauty in the quotidian—the seed stuck
between the teeth, the plodding of beetles, the lone yellow tree of autumn that
reminds her, and us, of the inherent loneliness of all human beings. Only
original, hitherto unpublished work is eligible for submission.
The CALIFORNIA QUARTERLY welcomed a new guest editor for its spring 2024 issue: Beverly M. Collins, a noted poet and photographer, brought together many new authors and fascinating poems in the CQ vol. 50, no. 1, an issue graced with her nature photograph on the cover. While editing the CQ, she found that two poems she meant to include in the Quarterly were plagiarized by their purported author, a certain John Kucera. Maybe the name was not real either? After receiving the notification from Ms. Collins, I conducted a quick internet search and found two poetry periodicals that were deceived by the same plagiarist. One of them replaced the ripped-off work that they had already published with original poems that were stolen plus a note about the sad state of affairs. Luckily, these were online, not print journals.
I’m so glad we avoided the same
fate for the California Quarterly, thanks to Beverly’s vigilance! I later
sent proof of the wrongdoing to Submittable.com and the plagiarist (or
prankster) was banned from the platform. However, this case made me wonder: why
would anyone plagiarize poetry? I understand term papers: lazy students want
better grades without effort. I even can comprehend plagiarism of scholarly or scientific
papers: the stakes are career and money. But poetry? Very strange, indeed.
Unless it was a test and a project of someone bent to prove that modern poetry
is all gobbledygook and nobody reads anything… Similarly, some people seek to prove
that modern “critical theory” papers in the humanities are pure nonsense, since
their fake, jargon-filled writings get published. Actually, the state of
scientific journals these days is a horror story. An academic publisher
Wiley had retracted over 11,000 papers in the past few years and had closed 19
journals that were the most affected. The censorship of scholarly dissent and
non-conforming views is yet another issue that the “scientific” community,
captured by corrupt corporations and global ideologues, has to deal with. We
are so happy to be penniless poets in such a crazy world!
POETRY LETTER. The first issue of the Poetry Letter in 2024 presented prize-winning poems from 2023 Monthly Contests, illustrated with paintings from the Smithsonian Museum of American Art: folk art by Josephine Joy (1869-1948), anonymous rural paintings, and California landscape art by Elmer Wachtel (1864-1939), Paul Dougherty (1877-1947), and Edward Bruce (1879-1943). According to the Smithsonian, “Josephine Joy grew up on an Illinois farm, where she loved to sketch birds, trees, and flowers. Circumstances prevented her from following her artistic calling until 1927, after her children were grown and her husband had died. Joy lived in California then, and the WPA’s California Art Project afforded her the opportunity to work gainfully as an artist.” I like “naïve” art of amateur artist like Ociepka in Poland, taking a place of honor at a recent Surrealism exhibition at the National Museum in Warsaw. Colorful and imaginative, it is art not constrained by convention—be it traditional modes of representation, or narrowly defined modernist trends. The poets of Poetry Letter 1/2024 also included CQ Editor Konrad Tademar Wilk, a prolific creator of sonnets in English and Polish. We presented a selection from his forthcoming book of 164 sonnets, Trafficking of Time.
The Poetry Letter No. 2 of 2024
featured eminent California poets Sharmagne Leland-St. John (author of many books and publisher of The Quill and Parchment monthly online poetry journal) and Mary Torregrossa, plus artwork by Hanna
Kulenty, a noted Polish composer of large scale “surrealist music” who recently
started painting. Her work reminds us that all artists were once “self-taught”
and did not need diplomas and academic credentials to create great art. The Poetry
Letter was rounded up by reviews of books by Kathy Lohrum Cotton, Ann Fox
Chandonnet, Anna Maria Mickiewicz and Deborah P Kolodji. The reviewers were Michael Escoubas and
Zbigniew Mirosławski. Incidentally, by happenstance all featured authors
were female, while both reviewers were male. "The feminine" in action as creators, and "the masculine" as passive observers... A reversal of traditional roles, long past. . .
Maja Trochimczyk, CSPS President
