As it happens, this reading took over 40 years to happen. Nearly 50 years ago, Chuck Corbisiero and Bill Cushing grew up across the street from each other. After Bill began serving in the Navy in 1970, the two found their lives on separate paths. Now they have joined forces to present a show blending Bill’s poetry with Chuck’s musical talents dubbed “Notes and Letters.”
The two reconnected at the end of 2015 when Bill participated in a reading commemorating his publication in the award-winning anthology Stories of Music. Bill, an MFA graduate from Goddard College in Vermont, has lived in the Los Angeles area since 1996 and teaches English at area community colleges. He has been publishing professionally since 1987 and began poetry as a serious avocation two years later.
Chuck, a guitarist who plays Jazz, Blues, Brazilian and various other musical genres, earned his B.F.A. in Musical Performance and Arranging at the City University of New York - The City College during Gil Evans' tenure as Artist in Residence. He also plays stand-up bass and worked as Eddy Arnold's guitarist. He moved to the area in 1991.
Copies of an accompanying chapbook will be available for purchase during the event.
SAILING
for Joseph Conrad
I have always taken
the four a.m. watch:
the four a.m. watch:
those
three hours before dawn when,
inhaling
the moist sweetness
of
a new day, we awake
and
escape last night’s darkness,
leaving
technology
to
experience
quiet
and primitive satisfaction.
The
ocean rushing underneath,
its
volume
dependent
upon current hull speed,
spills
a phosphorescent wake —
the
only natural source of light
besides
the moon.
Rolling
up and down,
swaying
into balance
on
the balls of my feet while
cradling
the warmth
of
a mug’s contents.
Soon
an
orange sliver appears
and
grows, as the sun
finds
the seam in the weld
that
fixes sea to sky.
By Bill Cushing, published in River Poets Journal Signature Poem Anthology
By Bill Cushing, published in River Poets Journal Signature Poem Anthology
CUSQUEÑOS
Up where
the mountains
curl
like sleeping dragons,
peaks
piercing
far
above the clouds,
in
another world
two
miles
above
sea level sits
the
center of the Incan empire,
Cusco: a
pupute,
bellybutton
of the world.
Like a
crouching panther
this
place,
all
diagonal
slopes,
everything
hard
stone: boulders, smooth squares
of grey
granite the size
of a
room; cobblestones,
loose
ovals of softer pastels;
and of
course, interrupting
the
landscape is the weighted
masonry
of churches with arches
lifting
statues
promising
spirituality
but
instead
delivering
conquest.
In the
morning comes
the
hammering from the town square:
a
stonemason crouches amid
rocks,
boulders, and stones.
His song
rings out
with
each ping of the steel
striking
the rock
he works
on. Not far,
the
finisher chips
discretely
on the rough work,
trimming
the rock into shapes
that
could easily
have
come from a lathe.
Then
there are the people,
the cusqueños:
Trudging
along
the
sloping roads and paths,
they
carry belongings
or wares
in the lliclla—
colorful
blankets sprouting
babies,
flowers, hay,
or more
stones,
the
wraps that
wrap
around
stooping shoulders
and seem
to push the carriers
into
their own incline
as they
make their shuffling way
up these
narrow and steep
streets
while we tourists steep
coca tea
in our rooms,
attempting
to adjust
to the
heights.
At
midnight
we bolt
awake, our bodies
gulping
air to catch breath; feeling
a
tingling in fingers,
we drown
in thin air.
The cusqueños,
like the
stones surrounding them,
are
squat, browned,
with
hearts enlarged
and
noses slightly widened:
equipment
for the altitude.
The old
ones peer
through
occidental eyes
cracked
and peeling
from age
and
knowledge,
knowledge
ancient
and
pure.
The look
says,
"Nokanchis ocmanta causanchis:”
we will
endure."
by Bill Cushing, published in Metaphor in 2015
_________________________________________
GUEST APPEARANCE BY MARIKO KITAKUBO
Prior to the main feature, we will welcome Mariko Kitakubo with Kathabela Wilson and Rick Wilson (flutes), in a special appearance dedicated to Asian music, instruments and the art-form of tanka. Village Poets featured them together in March 2014, and we are looking forward to the new program. In June 2016 Mariko, Kathabela and Rick were together for almost two weeks in Kamakura and Karuizawa Japan. On June 5, they performed tanka together at the 8th International Tanka Festival in Karuizawa, Japan. Her new book of tanka, "Indigo" has just been published by Shabda Press, 2016.
Born in Tokyo, Japan, Mariko Kitakubo lives in Mitaka-city, Tokyo and is an accomplished poet. She is a member of the Association of Contemporary Tanka Poets, Kokoro no Hana, The Japan Writers' Association, Japan PEN Club, Japan Tanka Poets Club, Tanka Society of America, and Tanka Online Project. She published 6 books of tanka including 2 bilingual ones: On This Same Star and Cicada Forest. She has also produced a CD of her tanka, entitled Messages. her most recent book of tanka was issued by Shabda Press in California.
Mariko is an experienced performer who has presented her poetry on at least 100 occasions, 50 of them overseas. Tanka as a form pre-dates haiku, in fact haiku was born from it. It is emotional, musical, lyrical. and free. Mariko hopes by her presentations to encourage more poetry lovers worldwide to appreciate and practice tanka. tanka.kitakubo.com/english
KATHABELA WILSON
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