Category: Poetry

RWB Workshop Poem of the Week – Oct 04

Red Wheelbarrow Poets
Poem of the Week 10/04/2016

Arthur Russell

Faces

He was the brother to whom it fell
to sell his parents’ house, travelling down
to Charlottesville all those years, to visit
both, then one of them, then just the house.
In the room where he’d read books as a child,
other than the oxygen tank beside the recliner
that replaced the wing chair he liked,
very little had changed.

The innocence and scent had long since drained
from the dried hydrangeas and lilacs
in Roycroft vases on the glass front bookcase.
Floor-length brocade drapes hung shut, as always.
Light from leaded glass sconces above the mantle,
the same lamps he’d read by, lit an oil painting
of a clipper ship, square rigged, lunging forward
under a white sky and a chopped, green sea.

There were secret faces in the abstract pattern
of the wallpaper. He saw the first one
when he was seven, partial as the moon
behind a scrim of trees. He froze,
pretended to ignore, then peeked again, and saw
a whole tribe of faces around the room,
with crayon jaws and heavy eyes,

most somewhat obscured by drapes or chairs;
but the first one, over the radiator,
like an Easter Island moai, was his man,
the one he stared down, the one he reckoned
and then parlayed with, his counterpart,
the general and chief of the faces,
and though they never spoke, they did confer,
with eyes, on the articles of his leaving.

When, married, divorced and married again,
with a stepson playing football for State,
he returned to empty and sell the house,
he made his phone calls from the chair
beside the oxygen tank across from the chief
of the faces, who had a scarred cheek
from a raised seam in the paper after
years of darkening heat from the radiator.

This is how life found him that November,
talking to his sister in New York, to a broker
from Weichert and to Goodwill for a pickup date,
and gazing at the moai on the walls,
a sort of a class photograph.

The books he’d read were safe within him,
although dispersed by time.

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Launch reading at the Williams Center in Rutherford, Wednesday Oct. 5

Wednesday, October 5, 2016, 7 p.m.

Williams Center for the Arts
One Williams Plaza, Rutherford NJ

The Red Wheelbarrow Poets will launch the gorgeous 9th edition of their yearly publication, The Rutherford Red Wheelbarrow, at a reading at the Williams Center in Rutherford Wednesday, Oct. 5. The launch starts at 7 PM.

The book features a stunning cover illustration by editor Jim Klein (cover designed by Claudia Serea) and the poetry and prose of more than 40 area writers who have either participated in the RWP’s long-running weekly poetry workshop or who have read their work at the Williams Center or GainVille Café (also in Rutherford) in the past year.

Interior drawings have been supplied by Don Zirilli and Janet Kolstein (section cover pages). Mark Fogarty, John Barrale and Melanie Klein are managing editors of the book.

The overall theme of the book again is Dr. Williams’ observation that the epic is the local fully realized. Many of the writers in the volume adhere to Williams’ groundbreaking poetic philosophy of writing about the everyday in vibrant, “live” language.

This year’s featured poet is Anton Yakovlev. He is a Russian-born New Jersey poet and filmmaker who is the author of two books of poetry, Neptune Court and The Ghost of Grant Wood. Anton has also contributed two short essays on the work of Dr. Williams to the book and translations of two poems by Russian writer Sergei Esenin. The book features an interview with Anton by Loren Kleinman and a review of The Ghost of Grant Wood by Mark Fogarty.

The revival of poetry in Rutherford, Dr. Williams’ home town, began when poet John J. Trause, along with Jane Fisher, director of the Rutherford Public Library, founded the Williams Carlos Williams Poetry Cooperative of Southern Bergen County. From 2006 through 2012, Trause ran the monthly readings at the Williams Center, featuring poets from the tri-state area as well as from further afield. This First Wednesday series now is run by the “Gang of Five” (Claudia Serea, John Barrale, Don Zirilli, Anton Yakovlev and Arthur Russell). Mark Fogarty curates the monthly reading series at GainVille, which started in 2009.

The RWP weekly poetry workshop at the Williams Center, now in its tenth year, is run by Jim Klein, the leader of the Red Wheelbarrow Poets. It is free and open to all local poets every Tuesday at 7 PM.

Both the Williams Center and the GainVille offer an open mic to poets who are also invited to submit their work for next year’s publication. Copies of the book will be on sale at the Williams Center and are also available online at http://www.lulu.com/shop/red-wheelbarrow-poets/the-red-wheelbarrow-9/paperback/product-22857853.html. The book will be available on Amazon.com and other Internet retailers in about two months.

Launch of The Rutherford Red Wheelbarrow Number 9

Hello Poets, Poetry Lovers, Family and Friends,

Come experience the launch of The Rutherford Red Wheelbarrow Number 9! Contributors will be reading their poems and celebrating this local phenomenon slash collective.

Please join us on Wednesday October 5th, 2016, 7:00 PM at the William Carlos Williams Center, One Williams Plaza in Rutherford NJ. Admission is free and there is an open mic if time allows.

https://www.facebook.com/events/884601318291911/

Please Note: you can follow everything about the Red Wheelbarrow, its events and poets at the following sites:
Blog – https://redwheelbarrowpoets.wordpress.com
Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/RWBPoets
Twitter – @RWBPoets.

Best Regards,
John Barrale
Arthur Russell
Claudia Serea
Anton Yakovlev
Don Zirilli

RWB Workshop Poem of the Week – Sep 27

Red Wheelbarrow Poets
Poem of the Week 9/27/2016

Mark Fogarty

Waiting to Cross the Water near the San Juan Islands

At Port Townshend, Washington,
I saw the best sunset there ever was.
Fire red, rippled by clouds
That made the reds dance like northern lights.

Now I’m ready to die.

But the skin doctor has taken a divot
From my hand, and I’d like to see it heal.
So, maybe not just yet.

There was time, waiting for the ferry,
To eat a meal by the waterside,
Scan the margins of the bay for riprap.

Georgia went ahead
To see about the car. We’d driven
Around the whole peninsula,
Seen the rain clouds in the rain forest,
Dipped a toe into the Pacific like Lewis and Clark.

I wish I’d valued her as much as she deserved.

There was time to see the sunset
Amid the riprap of bouncing thoughts
As we waited, becalmed, in the line of cars.

The San Juan Islands, bruited as
The loveliest on earth,
Do not start there, but they’re not far.

Georgia was killed by a drunk driver,
Some riffraff who walked away untouched.
I never think anyone will die.

If you take a divot from the land,
You must replace it. That’s the rule.

So I’d like to return to the bay,
Add a stone or two
To buttress the wall that holds back the sea.

Most times the most beautiful islands on earth
Are right where you are.

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GV – Red Wheelbarrow #9 & The Electric Poets Gathering


RED WHEELBARROW 9 IS HERE!

The Red Wheelbarrow Poets will launch their ninth anthology at GainVille Café in Rutherford on Friday, Sept. 30. Copies of the book will be available for sale. Musical feature: The Electric Poets Gathering featuring George Pereny. Poetry feature: Poets will read from their work published in RWB9.

Gainville Cafe
17 Ames Ave., Rutherford. 7 PM
$8 donation at the door includes coffee/tea and dessert
(201) 507-1800

RWB Workshop Poem of the Week – Sep 14

Red Wheelbarrow Poets
Poem of the Week 9/14/2016

Janet Kolstein

Pound of Poems

I wish the piano
could gun the engine
under the hood,
and the choir could
raise the roof on
a fortress of words.

I wish the drums
could pound out
a pound of poems
without spilling
a drop of blood.

Let the theremin
quiver in my hands,
shaping a heart
with a dagger
written in it.

Blog – http://redwheelbarrowpoets.org (192 followers)
Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/RWBPoets (325 likes)
Twitter – https://twitter.com/RWBPoets (82 followers)

RWB Workshop Poem of the Week – Aug 31

Red Wheelbarrow Poets
Poem of the Week 8/31/2016

Mark Fogarty

Thin Blooded

I don’t know if I’m thin skinned or not
But there isn’t any doubt I’m thin blooded.
In the hospital once the CNA roused me
As I was lying in a puddle of blood.
I’d slept on the IV works
And enough blood had started out
I thought someone had stabbed me,
Or put a horse’s head in my narrow bed.

The thin blood keeps the clots in place
So they don’t break away like Baltic republics
And steer for your heart, brain or lungs.
I netted two out of three, and it wasn’t good.

No razors on me, I tell the barber.
Be careful if you floss your teeth.
That blood bubble on your hand, beware.

I need to be more thick skinned,
If just to keep the allotted blood in.

Here’s my song on the internet:
I’m thin blooded, check it and see
I’ve got a fever of a hundred and three.

I’ve had a fever every day for three months
As my body wrestles down the invaders.
It’s nothing to sing about, really.

In narrow sleep I dream of Lara, and Zhivago,
Writing poetry with the wolves at the door,
The commies not far behind.
The wolf came to my door, growled a couple of times,
And settled for a bowl of blood.

My God, says the father.
They’ve killed the Czar and his family.
I think of the Czarevich, who bled
At every fall, and his sexy madman monk,
Whose blood was so thick they had to poison,
Shoot and drown him. Son, it doesn’t do
To be thinblooded in this world,
Where night brings the night horses,
The bloody sheets, the empty wells.

Blog – http://redwheelbarrowpoets.org (189 followers)
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Twitter – https://twitter.com/RWBPoets (80 followers)

RWB Workshop Poem of the Week – Aug 17

Red Wheelbarrow Poets
Poem of the Week 8/17/2016

Arthur Russell

Summer Solstice, 1974

On West 36th Street,
in the strange, back apartment
over the wholesale button shop
you took me home to,
and pissed with the bathroom door open,
and returned to bed when we
should have been dressing to go,
the dirty window blurred
the crazy view up the air shaft
to the top of the Empire State Building,
while the radio insisted
that its love was like a ship on the ocean,
and my cheek lay on your thigh.

Blog – http://redwheelbarrowpoets.org (187 followers)
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Twitter – https://twitter.com/RWBPoets (80 followers)

RWB Workshop Poem of the Week – Aug 10

Red Wheelbarrow Poets
Poem of the Week 8/10/2016

Janet Kolstein

Zarafa

In captivity, she sailed down the Nile
far, far away from her home
and across the Mediterranean Sea,
Africa behind her, Marseille ahead,
the first giraffe ever seen in France.

A sight of wonder and delight
the moment her hooves touched land,
she walked to Paris to be
another jeune fille
in the king’s menagerie
in the Jardin des Plantes.

A star, an oddity, an obsession,
alone in her sphere,
she would live out her life
in solitude
among the hundreds of thousands
who came to stare
and buy wares with her likeness.

Was there a man, woman, or child
who pitied her plight,
looked into her unguarded gaze and wondered
if giraffes can dream of herds on savannas
and other long necks to nibble
and twine?

(A gift from Muhammed Ali Pasha to King Charles X, Zarafa (“lovely one”) landed in Marseille on October 1826 and inspired “giraffemania” until becoming passe. She died in 1845.)

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WCW & National Translation Month – Carmen-Francesca Banciu

Wednesday, September 7, 2016, 7 p.m.

Williams Center for the Arts
Cinema 3

Plus the words of William Carlos Williams
and open readings from the floor

Free

Carmen-Francesca Banciu was born in Romania and studied religious painting and foreign trade in Bucharest. As a result of being awarded the International Short Story Award of the City of Arnsberg for the story “Das strahlende Ghetto” (“The Radiant Ghetto,” 1985), she was banned from publishing her work in Romania. In 1991, she accepted an invitation extended by the DAAD Berlin Artists-in-Residence program and came to Germany. She was a writer-in-Residence at Rutgers University (2004-2005) and at the University of Bath in 2009. Banciu currently lives in Berlin and works as a freelance author and co-editor of the multilingual e-magazine Levure Littéraire. She is the author of four novels and four collections of short stories. Her work draws from the experience of writing under Communist dictatorship and from geographic and linguistic migrations. Her new books, the poetry collection Leichter Wind im Paradies and Mother´s Day—Song of a Sad Mother, were both published in 2015 by PalmArtPress.

Homesick

Last night I forgot to close the lid of the rubbish bin.
The ants appeared in front of me.
They have built an ant road. They crawl up to
the rubbish in a thin line.
Still no road below.
I close the lid and break the road.
Some ants are locked inside. They
will be taken to the rubbish dump. On the other side
of the village. Where the rubbish containers sit.
Far away from here.
Will they find their way back to the house?
Will they create a new home?
Will other ants accept them?
Adopt them?
Or will they be lost in foreign lands?
I keep the lid closed.

Contact: John Barrale – john.barrale@gmail.com