California Quarterly 45:1, Spring 2019, Edited by Maura Harvey

California Quarterly 45:1, Spring 2019

Cover Art: Blue Ice by Marion Wang

EDITOR'S NOTE

Poets from many parts of the United States and the world send work to California Quarterly, and so the task of editing became an international experience as I read and edited, sitting here in the southernmost tip of our state. The poets have responded with passion to what they see and feel.

Some poems sing of California life, as does Clara McGill in “Scenes by the Pepper Tree”; others range as far as the Middle East, like L. B. Miller in “Game of Plastic.” Several consider the art of writing as in David Anderson’s “a pantoum to be titled” and Claudia Chapline’s “Here Now.”

Many write about the state of our world and its future, as we see in Sharon Fain’s “What Will You Do” and Joanne Sharp’s “don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.” Those of us who live near the border with Mexico feel keenly the situations facing other parts of the world. The entire state of California, along the Pacific Coast, relates to and connects to Asia and beyond in a singular and powerful way.

Two poets included here have chosen action through poetry to express their concern for the larger world. Joe Milosch, in “Great Uncle Tierney,” and Jim Moreno, in “A Lifetime in a Cup of Tea,” are members of the San Diego/Tijuana ReEvolutionary Poets Brigade, a bilingual/binational poetry circle. The Brigade collects food and holds poetry readings at Enclave Caracol in Tijuana; then they donate the collection made to that cafe to “Food Not Bombs, Tijuana,” which feeds the homeless in that city. Along with Tijuana poets, these Californians help counter racism against Mexico.

As poets share their work, we see the power that poetry can exert. I am grateful to play a part in this common experience as we continue our poetic journey together.

Maura Harvey California Quarterly

Oceanside, California Volume 45, Number 1

TABLE OF CONTENTS

California Quarterly, Volume 45, Number 1

Go to the Blue Oak - Dave Seter 7
Prism at Sunrise - Marganne Glasser 8
My Clarity - Lea Aschkenas 9
Scenes by the Pepper Tree - Carla McGill 10
Here Now - Claudia Chapline 12
Untitled Haiku - Elizabeth Yahn Williams 12
a pantoum yet to be titled - David Anderson 13
Who Will Inherit Our Earth? - James Deahl 14
Phoenix - Steve Denehan 15
The Formula for Success - Matthew J. Spireng 15
અક્ષર - Piyush Thakkar 16
Letter -  Dileep Jhaveri (Tr.) 17
Old Westerns and a Fistful...- Neal Zirn 18
Autumn Sunlight - 3 Tanka - Jane Stuart 19
Sixty - Doris Padilla 20
Day Dream - Michael J. Shepley 20
A Man at Sixty - Warren Slesinger 21
Great Uncle Tierney - Joseph Milosch 22
What Will You Do - Sharon Fain 23
Recordando Sus Pasos - Brian Kirven 24
Remembering His Steps - Brian Kirven (Tr.) 25
Assisted Living - Joanne Sharp 26
A Walk in the Woods - Diane Funston 27
Brevity - Brenda Yates 28
Untitled Haiku - Elizabeth Yahn Williams 29
Dawn - Liz Dossa 30
A Sense of Direction - Mai-Lon Gittelsohn 31
A Lifetime in a Cup of Tea - Jim Moreno 32
On a Painting by Chagall - David Denny 33
Game of Plastic - L. B. Miller 34
Fall Sweep - Gwen Monohan 35
Seagulls - Dion O’Reilly 36
Out of the Blind - Stephen Ajay 37
Investment Advice - AE Hines 38
My Head Under Construction - Amanda Lewis 39
An Old Story - Al Zolynas 40
Sometimes I Can’t Watch... - Marty Walsh 41
The Bears - Kristin Ruth Lawrence 42
Collecting Cuyas - Tomás Gayton 43
Mt. San Jacinto, Sunrise - Peter Hein 44
The Cruel One - Dennis B. Ledden 44
Bats at Twilight Penny Perry 45
don’t know what you’ve got... - Joanne Sharp 46
Widow Ellen - Tovatt Leary 47
It’s Her Way - Gary Metheny 48
* - Simon Perchik 49
Customer Service Has Its Limits - George J. Searles 50
Hoarding Time - Claire Scott 51
The Dance - Sandy Carpenter 52
Winding Down - John Forrest Harrell 52
Untitled Haiku - Elizabeth Yahn Williams 53
Farewell to Bristol - Michael J. Shepley 53
Hollywood Glamour V... - David E. Spiering 54
Nasturtium - Patricia Nelson 55
Assumptions - Cathy Porter 56
Without Rain - 4 - Daniel Thomas 57
Solstice - John P. Kristofco 58

ABOUT THE EDITOR

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 Instanbul, 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).

Call for Submissions - Annual Poetry Contest 2019

California State Poetry Society announces its Annual Poetry Contest 2019

Submissions  are accepted March 1st – June 30th, 2019. The winners receive $100, $50, $25 awards for 1st, 2nd and 3rd Places, plus publication in the California Quarterly, Vol. 45 No. 4 (2019 Fall)
The winners will be announced in October 2019.

The Annual Poetry Contest Judge is Lisa Rosenberg.  She holds degrees in physics and creative
writing and worked for many years in engineering. A former Wallace Stegner Fellow in Poetry Stanford University, she was San Mateo County Poet Laureate in 2017-2018. Her poetry appears
in The Threepenny Review, Poetry Magazine, Southwest Review and elsewhere. Her poetry collection A Different Physics was awarded the 2017 Red Mountain Poetry Prize.
https://www.pw.org/directory/writers/lisa_rosenberg

Upload your poems and pay reading fees at: http://www.californiastatepoetrysociety.org. In order to submit your poems you have to first REGISTER as a site user, after that more windows open and the submission is easy...

OR

Send a cover letter with all poet information and a list of the submitted poems, one copy of each poem with no poet identification to:

CSPS Annual Contest Chair
3371 Thomas Drive
Palo Alto, California 94303

Reading fees: Members, $3.00/poem; Non-members, $6.00/poem
80-line (two-page) limit/poem

Newsbriefs 45:1, Spring 2019

It is with great pleasure that I’m sharing with all of the California poets news about recent activities of the California State Poetry Society and its members. I have been elected Acting President of the CSPS in late February 2019, taking over this position from Dr. John F. Harrell, who remains on the Executive Board as Treasurer and Web Master, but will no longer serve as one of two Managing Editors of the California Quarterly, nor as the Acting President of CSPS.

I’m honored and grateful to be selected to this important position and I will do my best to serve all poets associated with the CSPS and the CQ. I hope to help everyone share the best of their poetry with the world of readers. In my work, I will continue to rely on the support and guidance of John F. Harrell, Pearl Karrer, Margaret Saine, Richard Deets, and all the editors of our wonderful journal. I am especially grateful to Margaret Saine, who invited me first to submit to the CQ, then to become one of the editors. I owe thanks to Pearl Karrer who helped me format my very first issue of CQ, and to Dr. John F. Harrell who shared some of his rich knowledge about the history and workings of this wonderful organization.

The second major personnel change has been caused by the retirement of Keith Van Vliet from his twin positions of Vice President of Communications and Chair of Monthly Contests. I am delighted to share with you the news that our new Vice President of Communications will be Richard Modiano, Director Emeritus of Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center in Venice, CA.

Elected Executive Director of Beyond Baroque in 2010, Modiano is a writer, curator, and editor. In 2007 he produced Beyond Baroque’s “On the Road” 50th Anniversary Production and in 2009 he produced the marathon reading and panel discussion of “William Burroughs’ Naked Lunch at 50.” He was on Board of Directors for Valley Contemporary Poets from 1997-2005 and served as Board President in 2004-2005. His poems have been published in Blue Satellite, Big Scream, Maintenant, Mas Tequila Review, Malpais Review, the Los Angeles Cultural Weekly, and he is a contributor to The Bukowski Anthology. Modiano has been elected unanimously by e-mail vote and we are very pleased to gain his expertise and experience to help CSPS spread its wings. He will also serve as the Chair of Monthly Poetry Contests, and will be assisted in judging the submissions by another wonderful California poet, Alice Pero as Co-Chair of Monthly Contests.

Alice Pero’s work has been published in over 40 journals and anthologies (including CQ 44:1) and her first book of poetry, Thawed Stars (1999), was hailed by Kenneth Koch as having "clarity and surprises." Her recent chapbook Sunland Park Poems, co-written with Elsa Frausto, is a lovely example of what poetry of place could be at its best. Pero is also an accomplished flutist as well as a teacher of poetry to grade school children and she has developed a unique curriculum that utilizes her experience with music. In October 2002, she founded a poetry reading, Moonday (now at Flintridge Bookstore in La Canada), which she co-produces with Lois P. Jones.

The third major news item about CSPS is the use of Submittable as the preferred way of submitting poems to the CQ editors. With six to eight editors and rotating contact information, poems have been submitted for publication in many different ways – snail mail, email to various editors, and online submissions. The Executive and Editorial Boards voted “YES” and we are shifting to the electronic format for one year in order to try it out. In the transition period, we will still accept other submission formats, while encouraging the use of Submittable (www.submittable.com).

The most recent issue of the California Quarterly, edited by Margaret Saine was welcomed with praise by readers, including the following comment from contributor Terrence Sykes: “Many thanks to you again for both my appearances in this little gem of a journal.” I praised the volume as “passionate and courageous” and revealing the diversity of poetic interests of our Editors that is one of the strengths of the CQ – Saine’s passion being translations.

NEWS ABOUT CSPS MEMBERS 

Fire and Rain: Ecopoetry of California, edited by Lucille Lang Day (long time CSPS member) and Ruth Nolan, has been published by Scarlet Tanager Press. Here’s a link to a review: https://baynature.org/…/an-ecopoetry-collection-that-artic…/.

CSPS member Stephanie Pressman has had her long poem, “Lovebirdman,” published in an illustrated volume, available on Amazon.

CQ Managing Editor, Pearl Karrer will have her poem, “The Leather Shoe,” appear in the May/June 2019 issue of SLANT. 

CSPS member Kathabela Wilson continues her poetry column in Pasadena newspaper, Colorado Boulevard, www.coloradoboulevard.net, and her service as Secretary of Tanka Society of America, and as President of Poets of Site group in Pasadena, that published over 30 anthologies of poetry inspired by art.

CSPS member Pamela Shea, Poet Laureate of Sunland Tujunga, continues bringing poetry to the most unlikely places – not just schools, libraries, and art exhibits, but also relay races or coffee shops.

Our CQ poet Alun Rees now has his poems available online at https://poetalunwilliamrees.wordpress.com/.

A CQ poet and new member of CSPS, Eliecer Almaguer has founded a Latino poetry group in Santa Ana. It is called Taller Literario Arymex and introduces poets wanting to write in Spanish to the plethora of Spanish and Latin American poets they were never able to read during their school years.

Finally, some news about your President: In June 2018, I was elected President of Helena Modjeska Art and Culture Club in Los Angeles for 2018-2020 and, due to this role, I was invited to give a talk “Who Was Helena Modjeska?” on March 28, 2019 to over 100 attendees at the Laguna Art Museum in Laguna Beach, on the occasion of an exhibit of a unique fairy-tale written and illustrated in 1896 by the famous Polish-American actress, director, producer, and celebrity.

After editing CQ 44:1 I finished editing (with Kathi Stafford) the Grateful Conversations anthology of my writing group, Westside Women Writers (Moonrise Press, May 2018). A wonderful review has just been published by Michael Escoubas in Quill and Parchment, April 2019. Then, I translated Andrzej Wendland’s Górecki, Penderecki. Diptych (Moonrise Press, 2018). Three essays about Polish American composers appeared in 100 lat muzycznej emigracji, a dictionary edited by Marlena Wieczorek in Polish (MEA Kultura, 2018). My article on “American Years of Alexandre Tansman (1941-1946)” was published in English and Polish in Homage to Tansman by the University of Wrocław, Poland (2018, 2019, ed. Anna Granat-Janki). My poems appeared in Spectrum, vol. 17 (December 2018) and vol. 18 (April 2019); Quill and Parchment (August 2018); Collateral Damage anthology from Glass Lyre Press (2018); Eclipse Moon, anthology of Southern California Haiku Study Group (2018), and other collections and journals.

As you see I like being busy, and I’ll be very content to work with all of you to strengthen and grow the CSPS and our wonderful California Quarterly.

~ Maja Trochimczyk, Ph.D., Acting President of CSPS