Your responses to anything in this blog are most welcome and invited. I've decided to switch away from using the Blogger interface for this purpose. Instead, please email me edjcoletti(at)gmail.com. I look forward to hearing from you.
Praise For Ada Limon Upon Becoming Poet Laureate of The United States
I recall watching and listening to Ada Limon reading some time ago at The Sebastopol Center For The Arts. I found her to be very engaging, one of those poets who establishes immediate contact with her audience. Most important is the quality of her work. She has become one of my favorite poets. I particularly enjoy her thoroughbred horse poems. Limon explained that she had moved with her husband from Brooklyn to Kentucky, the horse breeding mecca. Here follows one of those poems from seven years ago.
How to Triumph Like a Girl
I like the lady horses best,
Ada Limon, "How to Triumph Like a Girl" from Bright
Dead Things. Copyright © 2015 by Ada Limon.
3d Cafe Frida poetry Festival Reading July 27
with David Madgalene filling in for Ed Coletti who then was undergoing heart surgery but who now is feeling great and raring to go!
Thank you for hosting, David!
I, Ed, am personally gratified for having been able to choose and interact with a most energetic group of readers. and I have completed recruitment for the Sunday October 30th Noon reading. Prospective readers continue to respond most enthusiastically!
July partipants included Maya Khosla, Donna Emerson, Raphael Block, Elizabeth Herron, Doug Von Koss, Ron Thomas, Jim Shere, and Amy Glynn.
Cheers,
Ed Coletti
and next
Cafe Frida Festival Outdoor Reading Oct. 30
The Fourth Event in Ed Coletti's Cafe Frida Gallery Outdoor Poetry Festival
Sunday October 30, Noon to 2PM /food and drinks available/
Cafe Frida Gallery - 300 South A Street #4, Santa Rosa, CA 95401
From the June 2022 edition of Neologisms
Ed ColettiJust Before the Evening’s Fight
This shoddy shebang
a shanty for their wild salad days
two broad beamed railroaders
sweaty drain
four Jasper beers
while
like Sam Patch
the falling sun
turns lager amber
almost time for the skin flint keeper
to be skunked again
by a gandy dancer’s
casually ferocious
sockdolager.
Ed Coletti is a poet widely published internationally and holds Masters Degrees in Creative Writing and in Business Management. Ed also is a painter and middling chess player. He has published a dozen books. Journals include ZYZZYVA, Volt, Spillway, and North American Review. Ed curates the blog “No Money In Poetry.”
From Two Sylvias Press & Two Sylvias' Weekly Muse: September 25, 2022
"On how to repair our poetry-damaged (adult) population"
Issue 22
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We hope your autumn is off to an inspiring and creative start! We would like to thank you for being a Muse Subscriber and for helping us keep Two Sylvias printing books and offering writing tools so that we can continue to share poetry with a world thirsty for art and beauty.
Speaking of sharing poetry, with whom do you share your poems? Most of us have “poet friends” and poetry writing groups (in real life and/or online) who read our poems, but how many of us feel comfortable sharing our work with our significant other, our parents, our kids, or our close friends?
We often don’t regularly share our poems with the people who are closest to us because we aren’t sure they will “get it” and because they may have told us bluntly they aren’t fans of poetry. Maybe your best friend has revealed her trauma at having been assigned a Gertrude Stein poem in her sophomore year of high school (perhaps the Stein classic “Susie Asado”), and she froze in class when asked to explain the line: This is a please this is a please there are the saids to jelly. Since that afternoon in a classroom in 1985, your BFF has never been able to read another poem, including anything you have written.
- Tell them that poetry in school was probably introduced to them incorrectly. You can enjoy a poem without having to take it apart line by line, without writing an essay on it, and without knowledge of iambic pentameter and rhyme schemes. You can enjoy a poem when you don’t fully understand how it is constructed.
- Take them to an in-person poetry reading or watch a poetry reading on Zoom or YouTube with them. Show them that the poetry world is much more inclusive and accessible than Shakespeare, Tennyson, and Donne.
- Read some of your poems aloud to them and discuss what prompted you to write those particular pieces—giving an insight into the process is enlightening.
- Explain to them that they don’t have to fully understand the poem’s meaning—they can simply read or listen to the poem, allowing associations, images, and feelings to arise. Poems can have multiple meanings and are very subjective. It’s okay for a poem to wash over you, leaving a deep impression that can’t quite be put into logical words.
- Gift a poetry book to them. Do some research and find a book of poems they would find interesting. Do they like nature, ancestry, pop-culture, or are they going through a grieving process? Find an appropriate book of contemporary and accessible poems. Are they really into food or horses? Search out an anthology of food poems or horse poems.
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We so appreciate your support of our small press! Thank you for subscribing to the Weekly Muse! If you come across any issues involving the Muse or if you have any questions, you can email us at: twosylviasweeklymuse@gmail.com
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