clarahsu – Page 32

In The Seasons Of My Eye

Last night Uphook Press had a reading by its contributors at Virachocha, a venue in the Mission that is actively supporting artists and poets. I came in, tired from work, and by 9:30 was anxious for the featured poet to finish so I could slip out and go home.

“Do any of you know the poetry of Marty Matz?” He asked on the stage, not expecting any kind of response, went on to say that he was influenced by Marty’s work and would like to read a poem by him.

I do know about Marty Matz and have his book, In the Season Of My Eye. My ears perked up as he read I Know Where Rainbows Go To Die, a poem Marty wrote on the death of Bob Kaufman. The unmistakable rhythm, the hallucinatory imagery and I remembered he wrote all his poems in capital letters.

I walked away feeling satisfied, being reminded of an “old friend” that has been sitting on my shelves. I looked for Marty when I came home and reacquainted with the big bearded man holding a bottle in one hand and a cigarette and plastic bag in another, toasting life.

On Dublin Street

Jack Foley played me a recording of James Joyce reading Finnegans Wake. I had no expectation, as I had never read the book nor heard Joyce read. The voice came on, gentle, musical, drawling and at times whimsical. Joyce was impersonating two women washing by the river bank. I found myself nodding at the rhythm of the words without understanding, laughing at a vague impression of women talk while shlepping clothes into the water, or on a rock, or a washer board. I fell in love with Joyce.

That was a timely opening, and I’m more convinced than ever that things don’t happen as isolated incidents. A week later I found out about a Finnegans Wake reading group from Sydney Clemens. The group has been meeting once a month. Last night I joined them. They were up to page 79 after two years. Someone read a paragraph. We then freely associate and wildly interpreted with the help of two books of analyses/commentaries. After two hours we stopped on the top of page 81, before an extra long paragraph that would carry on and on for pages.

The Voice of Baaba Maal

I first saw Baaba Maal some years ago at the Filllmore. He looked princely in his white Babariga outfit that flowed all the way to the floor. But it was his voice that mesmerized me—dark, strong coffee, tender and earthy. The kora with its relentless and clear, plucking sound; the talking drums, the various gourds and seeds shakers accompanied him and the tender rhythms of Africa carried the audience like waves lapping on the shore.

Last night he sang at Oakland Yoshi’s. This time he wore a very nice tailored suit. Baaba in his early fifties retains the face of a twenty year old. Before he played he spoke about his musical journey. It was unusual to have a lengthy talk before a show, but Baaba was engaging and captivating in his story-telling. The man and the musician came together and when he played I was right there with the griots, the women playing the calabashes, the blues, the classical traditions of Europe and Africa. And Baaba, the chosen one, took me back to the cradle of Africa and rocked me.

Photo by Jon Klemm.

Len Irving and The Bird Poems

Leonard Irving led a double life—one in Vermont, another in San Francisco. When in Vermont he was a husband. When in San Francisco he was a poet. Not that he didn’t write when he was with his wife. They got married when Leonard turned 89 because Randy his wife didn’t want to marry a 90 year old man. When Leonard was in town he had a single rented room in downtown San Francisco, took the bus, went to readings and lived a pure poetic existence. I met Leonard at the fateful Sacred Grounds. He had Scottish roots, white hair , blue piercing eyes, spoke with a musical accent.

Many of Leonard’s poems were about city life. Many bus poems–the waiting and waiting of it. But when his first book came out it was all about birds. Published in 1995 in Vermont, it included Randy’s drawings of wildlife. The book was dedicated to Finnegan.

Leonard stopped coming to San Francisco about three years ago. He had invited me to Vermont. They live in a farm. I like to imagine myself snuggling beside a fire while the outside is blanketed with snow. He and Stephanie Manning correspond from time to time and Stephanie would read his letters to us. Well into his nineties now, Leonard is still jolly.

Rainy Night in October

Our first, and it seemed all too early, especially when most of the summer had been cool. I walked into Bird and Beckett Books to a gathering before my reading with Bill Mercer and Peter Sherburn-Zimmer. There were old friends who were part of the “movable feast”, new faces who were introduced, and friends from other connections also appeared. Then Richard Beban, a wonderful Californian poet friend who has turned Parisian, stepped up and held me in his arms. Time and space collapsed in a most unexpected and exhilarating way and the night turned magical.

Richard comes back to the Bay Area for a friend who is in his last stage of life. At the reading we remembered Mel Clay, actor, playwright and poet, who passed away unexpectedly at the end of September; and Susie Birkeland, who had been “resurrected” by her friends reading her poetry at the Antwerp International Poetry Festival. I looked out to the audience as I read, grateful that once again we were together in body. At the open mike, poems ranged from an elegy to the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass to the execution of Troy Davis. The rain had stopped when we made our way out of the bookstore. I forgot to pick up my umbrella.

Eric’s Tentacles

BB-nighttime-storefront — click to Bird and Beckett's website

For a tiny bookstore, Eric Whittington puts in long hours and grows tentacles to keep Bird and Beckett running in the heart of Glen Park. Breakfast cookouts, jazz nights, poetry readings, book clubs, and fundraising events are some of what he does beside selling books. When I first met Eric he was still at his old place on Diamond. After narrowly escaping a fire that broke out in the building next to his, he moved the store to the old public library location on Chenery Street.

With more room Eric builds a stage in the back of the store, elevating musicians and poets to their proper height. He has created and maintained a vibrant community, something that cannot be competed by internet businesses. People gather, touch, speak, listen, feel—all the essential human experiences are for the taking within this space. Eric’s tentacles bring the herd together. We buy books from bookstores.

When We Can Read

I won’t tell a student to let go of his prejudice. As long as he comes into my studio at the appointed hour and shows a willingness to work, it is all that I ask of him. I’m talking about a piano student who doesn’t like to read music. At a certain point his playing suffers because he can no longer memorize all the notes. Learning becomes tedious and frustrating. I decide to stop everything that we have been doing and just focus on improving his sight-reading ability.

It seems a long time, and parents are worried that their son plays the same song over and over for nearly a year. But his real work is during the lessons, when he is drilled to make his fingers “see” the keys on the piano. It is eye-hand coordination. Some of us do it better than others, but all of us can do it given time and persistence. My student had a break-through yesterday, playing something the very first time correctly by sight. All at once time and grievances melted away. We reveled in the unsuspected moment. I watched him walked away with silent pride.

Body Memory

At China Dance School, teacher Kaiwen You has to settle with the lot of older women (in our fifties and sixties) every Friday morning and make something out of us. We are chatty and opinionated, awkward and stiff in our movements and hopelessly enthusiastic. For someone like me, who had always dreamed to be a dancer but had to quit when I was four, I look to teacher You as the one who can possibly help me to attain my last hurrah.

He does it by repetition. We follow him, a group of geese waddling on the dance floor taking care not to hurt our knees when we jump or twist our backs. He is tireless and determined, compassionate when one of us falls down and can’t keep up. Although our spines never quite straighten up, there are moments when we all move together the way we’re told, and we can feel our bodies forgetting themselves, stepping into a zone that is unbounded and complete.

Due to illness I have not taken the class for two years. Yesterday I went back. The school has moved to Clement and 32nd Ave. I walked into the spacious studio and when my feet touched the new floor the body remembered. The body moved and was happy again

The Temptress

I was prepared for the conservatism in Kilis, a city in Southern Turkey that was steps away from the Syrian border. If anyone should question why I was traveling with a white man (Dore) I would show my mother’s engagement ring. When we arrived at our hotel we presented our passports to the clerk. It was the eve of Ramadan. Maybe the clerk was in a bad mood or maybe his wits were sharpened because of the fast; he was dismayed that my last name was not the same as Dore’s.

“You’re not married.” He said to me.

“Yes I am.” I replied, showing him the ring on my finger. “In America, many women keep their family names instead of changing to their husbands’.”

He shook his head. Another man came and they discussed the situation. Then, as expected, many more men arrived and the discussion at times turned vehement. Dore and I looked on with amusement, wondering how the situation would be resolved.

There was always a wise man who came up with a solution that everyone thought was agreeable. “Look,” The clerk came back to us. “This is what the elders have decided. You may have a room with two beds for 40 liras. But if you want to sleep together in one bed, it’ll cost you 60 liras.”

We gladly took the room with two beds. It was big and spacious and the men must have thought they had prevented some kind of led act in their hotel.

In the morning I greeted the clerk at the front desk and gave him a candy. He popped it in his mouth without thinking when the man next to him reminded him that it was Ramadan. He promptly spitted the candy out. I wondered if he thought I was a temptress.

Flowers For The Poets

The night was unusually warm and inside the Sacred Grounds Cafe it was even warmer. The reading was about to begin when my father’s neighbor Devi and I walked in with two huge arrangements of dahlias. Some of the blossoms were as big as my head, some dainty like pompoms on a clown’s tunic. We put them down on the host’s table next to the mike. Their grandiose presence stunned everyone.

Devi wanted to bring the flowers when I read my dahlia poem, which was published in the Bulletin of the American Dahlia Society. I selected my reading based on a flower theme, which means any poem with the faintest suggestion of flower was a qualified candidate. As the night went on the dahlia looked even more vibrant as we melted slowly in the heat.

The poetic diehards hung on to the very end. When the reading was concluded I invited everyone to pick a dahlia. The room suddenly came alive again. Eager hands reached out and the vases were promptly emptied. We walked out of the cafe into the cooling night each holding what could have been mistaken as gigantic lollipops. I watched the dahlias floated away in all directions. It was beautiful.