Keeper of the Fire: Ten years ago, poet and Santa Rosa Junior College instructor Brian Bold inherited the editorship of "Green Fuse," the county's most enduring poetry journal.
Green Day
The tiny "Green Fuse" poetry journal isn't exactly setting the world afire-or is it? By Mauren Hurley
"The force that through the green fuse drives the flower/ Drives my green age. —DYLAN THOMAS
The poems found in Sonomas longest-lived literary magazine, Green Fuse, are not coyly veiled in the dusty deep-throat metaphor of academia; they explode the DNA of words onto the world, they take
to the streets, they broadcast the news in the tradition of the doctor poet William Carlos Williams, who said, "It is difficult getting the news from poetry/ but men die miserably/ every day /for lack of what is found there."
It's impossible to write about the driving force behind Green Fuse without mentioning its founding editor, progressive psychologist/poet/artist Ralph Smith, who befriended many of the poets whose work appeared in his magazine.
The current editor in chief, Santa Rosa poet Brian Boldt--a Santa Rosa Junior College instructor who was a frequent contributor to Green Fuse-recalls his first meeting with Smith: "I met Ralph at the Peace and Justice Center, and the first thing he asked me was “What do you think of Ferlinghetti's work?' It was a test.
FROM THE BEGINNING, Green Fuse was a strictly grassroots affair. Smith, who founded the magazine in 1983 while in his late 70s, collected all the material often discovered by word of mouth. He typed the poems, coordinated the printing, and scheduled collating and book parties, all on a shoestring budget and with assistance from his wife, Marcia Keller-Smith, and a handful of faithful followers.
In 1988, Smith invited Boldt to become an associate editor. The following year, Boldt inherited the editorship from Smith who, dying of can-cer, wanted to ensure the magazine's continued survival. "I did three issues with Ralph and suddenly he was gone," Bold says, adding that Smith spent a significant portion of the last day of life going over the pedantic details of operating the journal he loved so much.
The biannual Green Fuse celebrates a full decade of publishing this month with issue No. 21, and the number of poets represented in each issue has jumped from approximately 35 poets to some 50. Smith envisioned bringing many Sonoma County poets and artists into the fold. The result was mostly good poetry and funky art. Under the guidance of Boldt, Green Fuse has evolved from a funky, stapled chapbook (printed on copy machines liberated from the mundane, late at night when the office was closed) to a handsomely bound 64-page format with a press run of 600 copies.
It is now more sophisticated in appearance; the upscale cover of one recent Green Fuse issue was chosen to illustrate an article on small mag. azines in the prestigious Writer's Digest. Green Fuse also is listed in several other trade magazines, including The Poet's Market and Fact Sheet Five. Bookpeople, an Oakland distributor for small presses, distributes Green Fuse nationally. The magazine is also available in Paris and London. And the poets represented are no longer limited to Sonoma County. Poets nationwide and around the world- Hungary, Costa Rica, Great Britain, Sweden, New Zealand, Australia, Cambodia submit over 1,000 poems a year, but the vision first set forth by Smith continues to shape the magazine
"The best poetry always surfaces," Boldt says, "and is timeless."
For many writers, Green Fuse continues to serve as a platform to voice not only environmental concerns, but currently hot political and social issues as well. According to Boldt, "Themes are not chosen, they arise." Popular themes have included land use in Costa Rica, U.S. involvement in Nicaragua, Vietnam veterans' crises, the effects of logging on the spotted owl, the Gulf War. But these polemic kinds of issues often evoke diatribes, not poetry.
"Green Fuse poems are well-crafted lyrical works that also get the message across comments associate editor Marianne Ware. "Green Fuse reflects my own philosophical and political leanings. But I want to be associated with the magazine if the poems were didactic, or if the message were more important than the craft, the poem. “It’s the message in the craft working together in harmony that singles out a green fuse poem.
Says associate editor, Karen Eberhart on future trends: “I’d love to see green fruits, really get big, become a first flight rate top flight environmental poetry magazine.
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SIDEBAR Rest of article is missing….
Sonoma Zine Scene
THE TRADITION of publishing small literary magazines in the Bay Area exploded in the late '50s in response to the elitism of the corporate publishing world in New York, which preferred its poets dead or academic preferably both at the same time.
Poets on the West Coast got tired of waiting for New York to notice them and created hundreds of small of magazines. Some of them, like Sonoma County's Green Fuse, are enduring. It evolved as a reaction to the ecological devastation sanctioned during the Reagan-era. Others rise up like randy weeds poking through pavement, only to quickly go to seed for lack of funds or energy.
Petaluma poet Richard Benbrook's The Tomcat, and such other fine publications as First Leaves, Grandmother Spider, Loon, Backroads, Life of Crime, Windmill, Paper Pudding, and California Oranges all are history now. And dozens of new punk and spoken-word 'zines with prosaic names like Wyrd Zar Joose, Neurotic Girl, Bread, and First Person have emerged and died like mayflies before the frost.
Poets who want to get down to the business end of writing may submit three to five typed poems (include a self- addressed stamped envelope to the following:
AVEC c/o Cydney Chadwick, Editor, P.O. Box 1059, Penngrove
95495. Published twice a year. Tends toward "language poetry" and avant-garde French and Russian translation.
Copperfield's Literary Magazine c/o Editor, 153 Kentucky St, Petaluma 94952. Published sporadically; year-round submissions. Free at all Copperfield's bookstores.
Cyanosis c/o Darin de Stefano, Editor, 318 Mendocino Ave., Suite 30, Santa Rosa 95401. Published very sporadically.
Green Fuse c/o Brian Boldt, Editor, 3365 Holland Drive, Santa Rosa 95404. $5 an issue (includes postage). Published twice a year. Submit poems by Jan. 15 and July 15.
Mother Earth Journal c/o Maureen Hurley, National Poetry Association …
Rest of article is missing…. Also Brian wrote a nasty letter to the editor because I mentioned Kay Ryan.
MIA Sonoma Mandala & Tight
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