Village Poets of Sunland & Tujunga: August 2018

Margaret Saine with Bo Kyung, Kathabela and Rick Wilson, 2016.

On Sunday, September 23, 2018 at 4:30 p.m. the Village Poets Monthly Reading at Bolton Hall Museum (10110 Commerce Avenue, Tujunga, CA 91042) will present Margaret Saine with her new book Gardens of the Earth (Moonrise Press, 2018), and Eliecer Almaguer. The reading will last for 40 min. and will include two open mike segments.

Refreshments are served and $3 donations collected for the cost of the venue, the second historical landmark in the City of Los Angeles, that celebrated its centennial in 2013. The Museum is managed by the Little Landers Historical Society, named after the "little land" that each settler received in the Tujunga and Sunland foothills when the area was settled.

The readings adhere to a self-imposed PG-13 rating, without extreme depictions of sex or violence, and with an air of kindness and gentility, so that poets use their words to bless this world that we all love.

MARGARET SAINE

Margaret Saine at Bolton Hall, 2016

Margaret Saine is a literature buff who was born in Germany and lives in Los Angeles. After a French Ph. D. from Yale, she taught Spanish and French at Californian universities. She writes poetry in five languages and also translates poets in those languages. Her books are “Bodyscapes,” “Words of Art,” and 5 haiku chapbooks. She has been writing haiku daily since October 2008. Her most recent poems in English are Lit Angels, published in 2016 by Moonrise Press and presented at Bolton Hall in the same year.

Wind in the Pepper Tree

The wind flows through the tree

brushing brashly all leaves aside

he makes them dance

pulls them this way and that

bends, pushes, rips, presses and pulls again

Green fingers circle in motion

gyrate whip flutter caress the air

flop gracefully down

Wind limbers the limbs of the tree

he tests her arboreal essence

assures her survival, her wholeness

her roundness in future cycles

of growth, to hold her volatile crown

like a cloud, to flex at all comings

Assuming her fixed and pliable

place in the landscape

From the ms. “Gardens of the Earth” published by Moonrise Press, Sunland-Tujunga, editor Maja Trochimcyk, 2018.

The All Poem

New Year’s Eve 2016/17

all the lights

of the stars

of the sky

and of heaven

moments between

the all of me

and the all of you

the all of women and men

WHO ARE THEY?

all our rides together—ha!

all of the trees

the loves if dreams

ours of whole cloth

all things considered

AND WHO IS TO SAY

all stories told

all time and space

all sound

and all silence

stories we have

inside us becoming

from the ms. “Breathing Underwater,” currently being translated into Spanish by Khedija Gadhoum.

Departure

Só sei que tinha o poder duma criança

I only knew that I had the power of a child

Ruy Belo, Homem de Palavra[s]

The afternoon is silent

I barely feel a gentle breeze

the way this particular world is

thoughts float ahead

of the car

to airport and plane

My feet stirring

in a desire to flee

to cope

a tearing away

with one eye laughing

the other in tears

Letter to the

unknown

duo and trifecta

from my

unconscious

And the trees above

rain confidence

and courage

they speak my language

they say to me

you will see

eye to eye

[as an eye chart is

to seeing]

you will find some

something to love again

something on the forest floor

for ever and evermore

And here I stand

to see you coming back

you are my windfall

from the ms. “A Book of Travel”

Photo by Margaret Saine

I have been writing at least one haiku a day since November 2008 and the count is at ca. 4500. I write them in five languages and sometimes combine them to cycles or stories.

THEATER~~A STORY IN HAIKU

curtains, a trumpet

theater decorations

we sit in the dark

characters do things

submerge us in their feelings

we’re bright with thinking

the woman, the man

the child, the watchman, the fool

our hearts aglimmer

we drown in their pain

and we rejoice, their success

changes us inside

changed ever after changed

we return home until we

fall into the next

plot, well, pit, surprise

calamity, to play with

and rise again changed

ELIECER ALMAGUER

Eliécer Almaguer is a poet and author of fiction who was born in Holguín, Cuba and has been living in Santa Ana, California. For many years Almaguer worked to organize literary workshops for diverse public groups. He has published the books “Canción para despertar al forastero” [A Song to Waken the Stranger], “Si Dios voltease el rostro” [If God Turned His Head], “La flauta del solitario” [The Flute of the Lonely Man], and “Distorsiones del shamisen” [Distortions of the Shamisén]. He has received, among others, the national poetry prize Adelaida del Mármol, and the prize Puerta de Papel.

A sample of his poems translated by Margaret Saine:

Acupunturas

Alguien dijo: existe un tejido central en tus versos, una idea obsesiva laborada febrilmente, con puntillismo, como esos artistas que hacen finas acupunturas en la piel del grabado. Me gustaría entender realmente cómo escribo. Cómo logro nombrar sin que me asfixien las palabras. Imagino que llegarán encapuchadas para sofocarme. Ella también quería oprimirse contra mí, como las envolturas donde los antiguos momificaban sus cadáveres. Estoy escribiendo un libro de poesía, quizás haga un silencio grande luego de su escritura, un silencio ancho y hermoso, en el cual no haya esta urgencia de renombrarlo todo. Deseo una soledad mía, no compartida ni con ella, que cuando suceda tenga el poder de anularme. Estoy escribiendo un libro extraño, no por original, todo lo rayaron en sus cavernas nuestros precursores. Lo auténtico es la entrega, que me desnudo siempre, que me desenvuelvo ante los ojos atónitos del auditorio.

Acupunctures

Somebody said: there exists a central fabric in your poetry, an obsessive idea feverishly elaborated, with pointillism, like those artists who do fine acupunctures on the skin of the engraving. I would really like to understand how I write. How I manage to name words, without them asphyxiating me. I imagine they might arrive hooded in order to suffocate me. She also wanted to weigh me down with herself, like the wraps with which the Ancients mummified their cadavers. I am writing a book of poetry, maybe I will create a big silence after having written it, a silence wide and beautiful, in which there would not be this urgency to rename everything. I want a solitude of my own, not shared with her at all, that when it happens it would have the power to annul me. I am writing a strange book, not because it is original, they have erased everything in their caves, our predecessors. The authentic thing is the engagement, I need to undress always, I need to put myself forth before the astonished eyes of the public.

De poetas y de césares

La poesía no necesita beneficencias

o caridad alguna

al poeta lo que es del poeta

al César lo que del César sea.

Of Poets and Cesars

Poetry does not need any beneficence

or charity

to the poet what is the poet’s

to Cesar what is Cesar’s.

Aromas

He visto cómo algunas mujeres se registran y aspiran hasta que su propio olor las mortifica. Escribir es también buscar un aroma entre la obscenidad de aromas y retenerlo.

Scents

I have noticed how some women check and breathe themselves until their own scent mortifies them. Writing is also searching for a scent among an obscenity of aromas, and retaining it.

VILLAGE POETS NEWS

The Art of Tanka reading presented by Kathabela Wilson and a team of tanka poet on August 26, 2018 was filled with talented artist and new information. Painter Jennifer Benston discussed her art, portraying the notable oaks of California, with a large portrait of a 400 year old oak tree on the campus of the California Institute of Technology, that died not long after the tanka poet immortalized it in verse.

CalTech oak by Jennifer Bentson

Jennifer Bentson with her artwork

Jennifer Bentson Presents her Oak-Themed Art, accompanied by Kathabela Wilson, with Briny James, Dr. Mira Mataric, Joyce Futa, Jackie Chou, Taura Scott, Dalton Perry, Charles Harmon, and Rick Wilson in the back.

Kathabela Wilson commented on Facebook:

We had a "Tanka Sunday" in Tujunga! We read of Ribbons, Atlas Poetica and I sold some of my Owl Still Asking (Tanka for Troubled Times) as a donation to Village Poets and Bolton Hall. I gave short intros to each reader and commented in dialogue during the whole program. Then as the finale of the first half, I led a writing session with handout, an interesting page of unique instructions and examples. After our second half performance concluded, I gave newly created handouts for cherita writing to the audience as time was predictably short. The second half open readers continued with free verse.