Crawdad Nelson, Margery Snyder, and Whitman McGowan
Monday, August 15, 2011 at 7:00 PM
Fremont Park, Between P and Q and 15th and 16th
Please feel free to bring a picnic dinner to enjoy while listening to the performances.
Sponsored by the Sacramento Poetry Center and Poets and Writers, Inc., with support it has received from the James Irvine Foundation.
Free.
Host: Rebecca Moos
Crawdad Nelson is a journalist, an author of fiction, and especially a poet. He has written substantively and thoughtfully on a great many cultural and environmental issues. His books of poetry include Big Drink, poems, (24th Street Irregular Press, 2009); Bigfoot Lives, poems, (Flyway Press, 2005); 100 Poems Against The War, (24th Street Irregular Press, 2005); Poems-For-All, several titles 2003-; The Bull of the Woods, poems and stories, (Gorda Plate Press, 1997); Truth Rides to Work, poems, (Poetic Space Books, 1993); Fresh Water, poems, (Pygmy Forest Press, 1989). His poetry and essays have also appeared in many literary journals, including The Sacramento News & Review, Rosebud, Susurrus, Liberty Hill Poetry Review, White Pelican Review, Kerf, Cedar Hill Review and Rattlesnake Review. He has twice been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and he is a frequent speaker at college creative writing classes. He currently works as a tutor at Sacramento City College.
Nothing Burns Hotter Than Manzanita by Crawdad Nelson
Whereas alchemy is desire
punched into the sponge
of need, therefore blended
by sparkling ash and waiting
upon forthcoming loaves;
and satisfaction is the butter,
limp and liquid, last reaction
on the fine elastic crumb
and crust, turned out
steaming, on our common table,
so the fire (come and gone,
carried home, kindled
and consumed, a restless
conjuration in a firebox:
manzanita joints nested
like rebroken bones)
is the combination of an oath,
and a practice, and what is wanted.
Margery Snyder is a poet, Web poetry guide & flute-player who pronounces her first name with a hard ‘g’. She was born in Washtucna, Washington, a small town amid the dry wheatlands in the downwind shadow of the Hanford Atomic Reservation, grew up in southern California, and studied literature in Santa Barbara, Boston & Chicago. She started her writing life in short stories, and began to write & perform poems only after she settled in San Francisco in 1985 and came under the influence of the city’s community of performing poets. Since 1997 she has worked on the Internet creating the About Poetry site (http://poetry.about.com/), in partnership with Bob Holman of United States of Poetry fame.
Falling Through Air by Margery Snyder
Events are irrevocable
Some thoughts, once thought
Cannot be undone, once
Encoded in synaptic pathways
Come to the same end
However often re-enacted.
Gravity and time move
In one direction
As those people fell but once
Through awe and smoke
But are ever dead
No matter how often
The moment of their fall
Plays through my nerves…
So I fall through air
Between these scented trees
My feet dangling to gravity
As did theirs, but once,
This time, however often
I run down this hill.
Even the littlest moments
Are irrevocable, words said,
Once said, cannot be recalled.
They clasped hands and chose
Fire or falling. They chose
To fall together, tiny specks
Through air that fed the fire
Preceding the towers’ greater crash.
So I, too, fall through air
This moment and the next
I love this life and let it pass
I’m still and always falling
I say to you,
Ever irrevocably
I love you.
Leap with me.
Whitman McGowan is a spoken word artist, satirist, speech maker, spieler, scop, skald, a man who goes around trying not to sing. His mostly comic & muscularly ironic paramythological constructions are expressed via a tour de force of techniques. This unique and unruly storytelling mix bespeaks an interesting background of influences. After studying poetry and song in Santa Barbara with Kenneth Rexroth and then working in Hollywood for eight years and rubbing shoulders with people like Mort Sahl and Richard Pryor, he got back to reading his poetry at The Espresso Bar, a Pasadena coffeehouse which he managed in the early eighties, where he put poetry on the menu. For a buck he would go out the back and come bursting in the front door with a poem! When he became known as a character in the Pasadena Weekly’s “Dr. Duck” comic strip, he decided he’d better leave town and head for San Francisco, where the poets hadn’t become cartoons yet. After over 400 performances in North America and Europe he is known to a special cadre of bohemians, rock and rollers, aficionados of high literary culture and other members of the general public who have been exposed to his books, recordings and live performances. Visit his website at http://www.whitmanmcgowan.com/.
Daddy Peace Bucks by Whitman McGowan
(utilizing the hook to Edwin Starr’s “War,” words & music by Norman Whitfield & Barrett Strong…)
Peace, huh! Yeah, what is it good for?
Absolutely everything.
I’ll say it again now
Peace, huh! Good God! What is it good for?
Absolutely something.
That’s enough.
When I was just a poet
I thought only of myself
what I was feeling & thinking
how I reacted to everything
but now I play the stock market
I think about the whole wide world.
And what in the world is the world gonna do?
Color me glad, color me green
I’m the hippest investor you ever seen
Daddy Peace Bucks, peacetime profiteer
Daddy Peace Bucks, funtime financier
Peace, huh! Yeah, what is it good for?
Absolutely everything.
I’ll say it again now
Peace, huh! Good God! What is it good for?
Absolutely something.
That’s enough.
One thing bothers me about poetry.
It’s difficult to know just where you stand.
With stocks you get statistics
you can hold right in your hand.
And after you buy a book of poetry
you’re never invited to bookholders’ meetings
where you can squawk about weak poems.
I’m a mega merger man, yo
Jumpin’ on an IPO!
Call me Daddy Peace Bucks, daddyo
Daddy Peace Bucks, wo!
Daddy Peace Bucks
Now the muse might be laughing at herself
when the market is down
but the Goddess parties with us
when Lady Luck’s in town.
Peace, huh! Yeah, what is it good for?
Absolutely everything.
I’ll say it again now
Peace, huh! Good God! What is it good for?
Absolutely something.
That’s enough.
I’m watching that moving average
Finding out how much you’re leveraged
Daddy Peace Bucks, doing the math
Daddy Peace Bucks, yeah, yeah Daddy Peace Bucks…
One other thing I don’t miss from the poetry world
-the insane need of poets to share their poems.
If you sell some of your stock, the guy who bought it
doesn’t wake you at six in the morning
to give you some of his own goddamn stock
‘cause he liked the stock you sold him so much.
Gotta buy low, gotta sell high
And don’t forget that I know how to fly
Daddy Peace Bucks, capitalist pig
Daddy Peace Bucks, got it all rigged
Daddy Peace Bucks, Daddy Peace Bucks
I’m Daddy Peace Bucks…
