Twenty-five Cent Stories

Dear Friends and Poets,

Here is the latest from WordTemple and beyond:

Location, Location, Location.  A reminder that the Fall ‘09 season of the WordTemple Poetry Series will be held at the Sonoma County Museum, 425-7th Street, in Santa Rosa.  The Museum is located directly across the street from the Santa Rosa Plaza parking garage.  Although the Museum initially said all readings would take place in the main gallery, they had to change their plans this week due to exhibit needs; all readings will take place in the newly painted reading room downstairs. 

Still Free.  All WordTemple events are free, free, free.  There is no change here.  What has changed is that you will see a receptacle provided by the Museum for “Donations.”  This has nothing to do with WordTemple but is a way you can donate directly to the Museum for providing space and staff if you would like.

Copperfield’s.  Many people have asked why WordTemple is not being held at Copperfield’s this season.   The only reason is that there was a serious scheduling problem, the first in four years.  In order to have the readings there, I would have had to ask several poets to cancel their readings; I just couldn’t do this.  Everyone has been looking forward to reading at WordTemple for a long time, some traveling from New York and Michigan.  Copperfield’s is still our good friend and has offered to advertise WordTemple events this season even though the events aren’t being held in their store.  I hope you will continue to support this lovely, community-minded, independent bookstore in Montgomery Village.  We definitely don’t want them to go away.

OPENING READING OF THE SEASON:  FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 11th at 7 p.m.

GEORGE STENGER will be the opening poet of the night.  Stenger, a Santa Rosa poet, has had poems published in the anthology Present at the Creation and in Intersection, the journal for the Guild of Psychological Studies.

JOHN OLIVARES ESPINOZA  Espinoza’s first book of poetry, The Date Fruit Elegies, was the inaugural publication of Bilingual Press’s new series, Canto Cosas. The book was a 2009 nominee for the Northern California Book Award in Poetry. Espinoza is the son of Mexican parents who settled in the densely working-class parts of Southern California where he and his brothers worked as landscapers with his father in the resort towns. Espinoza holds degrees in creative writing from UC Riverside (B.A.) and Arizona State University (M.F.A.).

RUSTY MORRISON  Morrison’s the true keeps calm biding its story won the James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets, the Northern California Book Award, and the Ahsahta Press Sawtooth Prize. Whethering won the Colorado Prize for Poetry. She has received the Poetry Society of America’s George Bogin (09), Alice Fay DiCastagnola (07), Cecil Hemley (06), and Robert H. Winner (03) Memorial Awards, as well as the 2008 Patricia Goedicke Prize in Poetry from Cutbank, the University of Montana’s literary magazine.  She is co-publisher of Omnidawn Publishing (www.omnidawn.com).

WordTemple on KRCB    Wednesday, September 19 at 7:00 p.m.

BRYAN TSO JONES and ANNE SEXTON

Many of you heard Bryan Tso Jones give a wonderful reading at the WordTemple Poetry Series earlier this year.  Tonight on KRCB: an in-depth interview with Jones, author of the award winning collection, Raking the Hollow Bones.  Jones’ poems explore the two cultures in which he grew up, interweaving mythological stories and folk tales shared by both sides of his Chinese-American family.  The poems, organized in sections such as JIA (Family), GUI/SHEN (Ghosts), REN (Humanity), and more, echo ideas postulated in Confucian philosophies.  “Readers of this impressive book may often feel that they are on the verge of stumbling across the ‘gold key/we have misplaced./It opens the door/we shut in our youth.’  But by the end of the book, they will realize that they possessed the key all along: it is the poems themselves.” — Troy Jollimore

Following Bryan Tso Jones, I introduce the life of Pulitzer Prize winning poet Anne Sexton and play recordings of Sexton reading her work.  Poems include “Old Dwarf Heart,” “For My Lover Returning to His Wife,” “You, Dr. Martin,” and more.  “(Sexton) drew her poems from a great depth in herself, and they continue to stir us…Her voice remains a distinctive one in American poetry of the past half century.” — J.D. McClatchy

FOR MORE INFORMATION on the WordTemple Poetry Series and WordTemple on KRCB, go to www.wordtemple.com or contact me directly.

Other News:

SONOMA COUNTY BOOK FESTIVAL   Saturday, September 19 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. in Courthouse Square, Santa Rosa.  Check out the schedule at www.sonomacountybookfest.org.   (Thanks to Gwynn O’Gara for organizing the poetry stage this year!)

–Katherine Hastings

Today I mailed out my submission for the Kate Tufts Discovery Award for a first book of poetry. I’ve always wanted to win this book prize ever since I was a kid of 22 years of age. Not just because of its prestige and the prize money that comes with it, but because it is one of the few–if not, the only–major book prize to come out of Southern California (Claremont Graduate College to be exact, in Claremont, CA). C’mon SoCal institutions, step up your game!