Tonight was the annual Fundraiser for the Squaw Valley Poetry Conference. The two hour reading takes place at The Starr King Room of the Unitarian Church in San Francisco. The poets were Forrest Gander, Brenda Hillman, Evie Schockley and Dean Young. Also Kazim Ali, whom I wanted to meet. Last year I got his book, The Far Mosque, and liked some of the poems there. He was born in 1971, which makes him almost forty, and his manner is easy and relaxed, with poetic presence that makes me sense he will continue to shine. After he read the poem Dear Shams –which appeared on the back page of APR Volume 39 – I shouted, YES! (Oh yes!) Here it is: my favorite poem of the evening.
Dear Shams
There’s no answer to winter
watching the sun set over water
it falls so quickly
you have not been lost
branches, oligarchs of the sky
everybody listening for silence
where and where did you go
twelve-stringed music, rejoin me
in the sun-year I swelled long shadows
in the moon-year the valley folded itself up
you are the beloved I would not love
at the fountain witless and still
a stream pours over rocks making music
could the water rush over me
the sun drops so quickly into its banishment
could I please forget to breathe and drown
will the ocean rejoin me
you have not been lost
can I be reborn as a guitar
will you be reborn as music and hum inside me
one day you stopped looking at me
and I knew
the last note is lingering in the box
of my body
you did not vanish in the marketplace
I still imagine you in me as my breath
broken in thirds
corded to sound
I took your name when the sun came up
sun of winter, sun windless and wistful
come down across the water
undone sun give me the drunk go-ahead
last time I searched for you
this time I become wooden and resonant
prepare yourself in pure sound
last time I raved without senses
oh pluck me my angel my paper-maker
I want to feel you hum inside me
pluck me pluck me
and hum
<> <> …and he read the poem, Dear Rumi with the lines:
…At the fountain in the village square,/ the books are still sinking, bereft of your hands.
Even the mountains are bending down trying to save them... [This guy is amazing!]
But there were other poets and poems.
Last time I went to this event, Lucille Clifton read. Tonight was a series of tributes and remembrances by the featured poets. Brenda Hillman read a couple of fox poems, both hers and Lucille’s poem:
one year later
what if,
then,
entering my room,
brushing against the shadows,
lapping them into rust,
her soft paw extended,
she had called me out?
what if,
then,
i had reared up baying,
and followed her off
into vixen country?
what then of the moon,
the room, the bed, the poetry
of regret?
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A wonderful evening of poetry from excellent poets! Lucille, you are missed!