Fast Car Fireman

Drawing Jim Spitzer/Poem Ed Coletti

Fast Car Fireman
returns to LA in uniform.
Fast Car, old unafraid,
careens Watts back alleys
like renegade surfer, crazed spelunker
amazed no sniper shoots at him.
Fast Car finds no fires to engage.
Fast Car Fireman slams into inch of space
just that short of wall of words
unfamiliar tagged chineselike symbols.
He won’t confront ineffability.
Fast Car Fireman’s turning radius
even at this high speed—Amazes.
Fast Car Fireman facing another wall opposite.
He’s staring into smile of starlet advertiser
selling something he hasn’t time for,
some computer this or that,
he’s hurtling into this gaping smile Fast Car
Fireman understands he wants no part of.
His reflexes astonish as he executes
yet another u-turn
towards the once undecipherable
now clearly exhorting
"Abandon hope all ye who enter here."
Enter here?" Enter what? No entrance here.
Fast Car Fireman’s
a half-pipe skater,
a ping pong ball,
psychotic metronome, flight of bumblebee,
heatcrazed sewer monkey,
centrifuging astronaut,
stoned guitar riff, endless looping,
Fast Car
Fireman Fast
Car Fireman
Fast Car
Fireman Fast
Car
Fireman

Ed Coletti, 63, graduated from Georgetown University and the Creative Writing Graduate Program at San Francisco  State University
(under Robert Creeley). In addition to the usual national journals and
anthologies, he has published 4 books and also found time for a career
as a counselor. More recently he founded Round Barn Press and the
SoCoCo Reading Series. Ed lives with his wife Joyce in Santa Rosa, California.

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3 baby poems/spitzer/dec. sococo/erica

3 Baby Poems

Juggling

A juggler seeking rest
must never begin
juggling.

A juggler juggling
rests juggling
never seeking.







After Eating Squab

If I come back as a pigeon,
at least I won’t have
to live very long,
although I suspect
I might want to—    
all that flying after all!

Which of these 2 versions of "Softer Now" works better?

1.) Softer Now

When you lose something which defines you
as you knew yourself, a cloud obscures more
than may have shone so brightly it never was
much of anything more than a small part 
of the entire learning, all to you, once
lost it looms for a time valuable as life itself,
guitar out front of its combo riffing
softer now bass bumping drums brushing
scratching out a wistful smile—reminded
you fall smoothly into nodding tempo.


2.) Softer Now

When you lose something which defines you
as you knew yourself, a cloud obscures more
than may have shone so brightly it never was
much of anything more than a small part 
of the entire learning, then little by little,
guitar out front of its combo riffing
softer now bass bumping drums brushing
scratching out a wistful smile, thus informed,
you swing smoothly into easy nodding tempo.

See "Erica" in The Harrow

http://www.theharrow.com/journal/index.php/journal/article/view/2456/707

4th SoCoCo Poetry Reading

Friends of Bill Vartnaw

Thursday December 6th

7:30 PM

Sonoma Coffee Company

521 4th Street

Santa Rosa-Free Admission

(Jack Crimmins)

Sonoma County Poet Ed Coletti invites you to a

reading by 6 poets including

Jack Crimmins,

Bill Vartnaw

Jeanne Powell, Nancy Wakeman,

Geri DiGiorno, and Q.R. Hand, Jr.

First SoCoCo Reading of 2008 will include James Tracy, Cameron McHenry, Ed Coletti, David Madgalene, Ananda Esteva, and bSue Stephenson on Thursday February 7th, 2008.




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http://jimspitzerart.com

Beckman&Coletti/Poem/Birkerts

David Beckman &

Ed Coletti

Poems From the Edge

Wednesday October 24, 2007

7:30 PM

Sonoma Coffee Company

521 4th Street

Santa Rosa

A Sonoma Word-Crossing Borders Event

"Everything about our private and collective systems 
of meaning is bound up in language—  and we don't have a clue 
about its origins.  This may mean ultimately that we do not 
have a clue about ourselves either."

- Sven Birkerts in The Electric Life


Quest For a Perch

Ice dagger dive.
World’s rudder where?
Jib, mizzen, bowsprit.
Athena’s the figurehead.
Maelstrom the medium.
Margin the message.
Minced mink is functional
as fur fried fluke
or fresh flounder’s flop.
Fleshy phalanges flashing.
Colored words splashing.
Amidst shallow eucylptus
rabble, a single deep-root
lodgepole pine’s perfume
overstretches reach.

(Ed Coletti-Sept. 2007)


"The transaction that we call the experience of poetry
always takes place between one being and another.
The energy circulates from privacy to privacy.
Far flung though they may be in space and time, the poet
and his reader are, for the duration of the experience,
adjacent souls with permeable boundaries.  Language can render
the inward experience so persuasively that the space/time axis
yields.  Poetry has no larger 'public' function—  its limits are set.
Poetry readings may be good advertising but they can't alter the monogamous
character of the real event.  In poetry, as in love,
two is company, three is always a crowd."

-Sven Birkerts in his essay "The Poet In An Age Of Distraction"


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Upcoming Readings/dPress Website/SoCoCo,etc

Backyard Appeal

Bluest sky moment,
I paint you as words
spring maple yellow.

Photinia bush
redden my flesh, be my sun,
rain memory has fled.

Mirror of sea,
sky unblemished blue,
sing your song.

Copper fields slip
green to cyan,
oxygen’s funny magic.

Black dog come to me.
Tell me what you fathom
beneath this our common ground.

(Ed Coletti in Blueline vol xxviii)










Check 3 of Ed Coletti's books at the dPress website. Press the link
below, then press the logo, and go to "Stable." Then look for me and my
books. www.dpress.net



My Own Upcoming Readings

SoCoCo - Thurs Aug. 2 - David Bromige, Katherine Hastings, Jonah Raskin, Ed Coletti,
Shannon de Jong, Mark Eckert - Sonoma Coffee Company, 521 4th St, S. Rosa - 7:30 PM

Petaluma Poetry Walk - Sun Sept 23 - Ed Coletti, Richard Denner, David Bromige, Q.R. Hand - Brick's
16 Kentucky St, Petaluma - 6PM

Sonoma Word - Thurs Oct. 24 - Ed Coletti and David Beckman - Poems From the Edge - Sonoma Coffee
Company, 521 4th St, S. Rosa - 7:30 PM

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New Book & 2nd SoCoCo Reading

March 

Adobe Clay
sponging full
inland sea
since receded
grows within
when waters fall
earth lies still
swelling up,
sleepy actor,
trusting gourd,
no sense of
soon or when
It or What
will come to
sprout and bloom,
It simply
will anew
amaze

from Quiet Now by Ed Coletti
Kapala Press June 2006

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First SoCoCo Reading and First Reading Together With My Son John Coletti

May 3d was truly memorable for the two headlined reasons. Sonoma Coffee Company worked out as a wonderfully intimate venue. Readers pictured below were all "on." Bliss prevailed. Pictured (l to r top row) John Coletti, Ed Coletti, Kathleen Winter and (l to r bottom row) David Beckman, Richard Denner, Jodi Hottel. Next SoCoCo Reading will be July 5th at 7:30 and with a whole new slate to be announced soon.

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Check Out This Website

Logalalia/Ars Poetica

Dan Waber has initiated a wonderful project and website. By the time many of you read this blog posting, 5 of my (Ed Coletti) poems will have been added to the site. Please take a look at

http://www.logolalia.com/arspoetica/

This is a themed blog (poems about poetry) that will lead to a print anthology. Dan Waber invited five of his favorite poets to send him an ars poetica they'd written along with the names and email addresses of five other poets. He then invited those twenty-five poets to do the same. He then invited those hundred and twenty-five poets to do the same. He then invited...you get the picture.

Every poem submitted will appear on this blog, one per day. The print anthology will be published by Paper Kite Press when the editors (Jennifer Hill-Kaucher and Dan Waber) determine that a book length collection of the very best of these poems exists, which, at a poem a day, is likely to take a year or more.

This is not an open call for submissions. The only way to submit is to be invited as a result of a previous submission.

Questions? Send an email to your favorite word, whatever that may be, at logolalia dot com.

Ed Coletti is a graduate of Georgetown University and the Creative Writing Masters Program at San Francisco State University (under Robert Creeley). He is also a Vietnam veteran, fiction writer, vocational rehab counselor and business consultant.

Publication credits include two separate editions of Light Year (Bits Press Anthology), Tucumcari Literary Review, Blueline, Lilliput Review, The New Verse News, Orphic Lute, Kickass Review, InterGalactic Poetry Messenger, Riverrun, Blueline, Parting Gifts, Green's Magazine, Mediphors, Gryphon, The Pedestal, etc. Mr. Coletti is also indexed in Granger's American Poets (Columbia Univ.) and was Sonoma County, California’s Featured Writer.

Information about his book, thawts: selected poems of Edward Coletti, is contained at Amazon.com. Between Trellis & Glass was published by dPress April 2006. Bringing Home the Bones, an epic exploration of war, death, remains, superstition, belief, and closure will be published by dPress in June of 2006.

Ed, who also runs his own Round Barn Press, lives with his wife Joyce in Santa Rosa, California and can be reached by email at edcoletti@sbcglobal.net.

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edcoletti@sbcglobal.net.

SoCoCo Poetry Readings

Come To Poetry Reading Thursday May 3rd 7:30-9PM in Santa Rosa

Ed Coletti will be hosting a Poetry Reading at

Sonoma Coffee Company

521  4 St
Santa Rosa,  CA  95401-6323

Ed hopes to turn this into a regular reading series if the venue proves to be a good one. Please come on Thursday May 3d to enjoy the poets and register your vote regarding the future of the series.


Among the readers will be my son, John Coletti who is well-known in New York's Poetry Project at St. Mark's in Greenwich Village. The impressive array of other poets includes Richard Denner, Kathleen Winter, David Beckman, Jodi Hottel, and Ed Coletti, among expected others.


Additionally, should you like to read at future readings, please email edcoletti@sbcglobal.net.

Poetry Reading At the County Dump

Studying English on his break Salvador reads
my poems filled with typos tossed to recycle.

Lying On a Swing in August transports Sal
to the sky and partial respite.

Bologna Station Caffe reminds him
of the Zocolo in Oaxaca Centro.

Quantum Leap confuses him
with its weeping shape.

He can smell the familiar carcasses rotting
in Much More Than Roadkill.

"What" easily translates to "Que," but
"Como se dice 'Treatise' en Espanol?

"A Treatise On What...
what does it matter why
the pigeon disturbs Coletti?

"Why does this Edward worry
no one will read him?
There is an address,

phone number, email...
should I dare contact him?
Would he become angry?"

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New Round Barn Title From Richard Krech

Ed Coletti's Round Barn Press happily announces publication of Albany, CA poet Richard Krech's latest book, Some Global Positioning Dharma (March 2007)

Richard Krech

(1946- )
California

[Photo by Briana Miller, used with the gracious permission of Richard Krech]

Richard Krech was born in 1946 and grew up in Berkeley, California. He started writing poetry in 1965, and in 1966 founded, The Avalanche, a poetry magazine which lasted five issues. Along with the The Avalanche, Krech published several chapbooks under his Undermine Press imprint and sponsored weekly poetry readings at a Telegraph Avenue bookstore in Berkeley from 1966 to 1969. Krech's first poetry chapbook was published in 1967. His poetry appeared in various small magazines around the country including Work (from John Sinclair's Artists Workshop Press in Detroit), Ole, Manhattan Review, City Light's Journal for the Protection of all Beings, and Kauri.

Krech stopped writing poetry in the mid-1970s. In 1976, The Incompleat Works of Richard Krech ( Litmus Press) was published and he started law school. Krech graduated from New College of California School of Law, and in 1980 began criminal defense work in Oakland where he maintains his practice today. He has also done pro bono work for the past twenty-five years for those arrested during the course of protest and anti-war demonstrations. In his criminal practice, Krech's cases involve everything from shoplifting to murder. His practice also includes appellate work.

In 2001, Krech started writing poetry again. His second generation poems have appeared in Exit 13, Ecstatic Peace Poetry Journal, Van Gogh's Ear (Paris), California Defender (publication of the California Public Defender's Association), and the Legal Studies Forum, among other magazines and journals.

Krech lives with his wife, Mary Holbrook, a former lawyer and now a therapist, in Albany, California. Krech travels have taken to Europe, Africa, Asia & Latin America, to Laos, Burma, Nepal, Algeria, Iran, Libya and more prosaic destinations like Jamaica, Mexico, Great Britain, and France. Somewhere along the way he took up Buddhist teachings, which he tells us, he finds relevant and helpful in his life. [Source: Personal communication with Richard Krech, 2005-2006]

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