I, Poet (personal essay)

By MAUREEN HURLEY

Great nations write their autobiographies in three manuscripts: the book of their deeds, the book of their words, and the book of their art. Not one of these books can be under. stood unless we read the two others, but of the three, the only trustworthy one is the last.  —John Ruskin

When I was 10, I first heard my muse. I recall savoring une moment, a small Joycean epiphany, looking west, late afternoon. Out of the blue, a voice said: "Remember everything about your childhood because someday you'll become a writer.Startled, I looked around me. Not a being, except for my cat Winky who wandered by; surely he didn't suggest I become a writer. The resonant voice immediately amended that statement: not a famous one, of course." The muse then mumbled something about being known in small, but important circles. Important to whom?

1 was the only one filling the visible air, spiced with the pungency of black-green oaks and bay trees, clay dust, horse manure, and dry summer oat grasses seething in the afternoon heat. Panic-stricken, I felt guilty because at an early age—somewhere in the eternity between ages 3-1/2 and 4-I promised to become a visual artist like my mother. I remember watching her make India-ink lines on creamy paper magically transform into a three-dimensional object even I could recognize: a broken Christmas ornament. Much to her annoyance, I was literally drooling on her drawing, but I was hooked. All through school I declared myself an artist, even though one didn't major in a given field until college, as my school counselor so aptly pointed out. It took nearly 20 years before the prophecy of the pen took root.

Where do creative ideas come from? Life experience, pain, conflict—an attempt to give order to the chaos of the universe. Sometimes lines or words come to me in dreams, I say them over and over until I wake up, and then write them down. Easter Island is a mathematical equation of the mind. To trace back an idea is sometimes more cumbersome than just accepting it as a gift from the gods. Sometimes I just hear voices. No. 1 don't need psychoanalysis--it's merely a mater of tuning in to a particular channel. We all talk to ourselves. My grandmother wasn’t so silent about her internal dialogs. Often she discussed her facts with the empty room- usually a rant against the English, or the Anglo-Saxons, who, according to her, were responsible for all the world's woes. Perhaps it helps to have an eccentric Irish grandmother to stimulate the writing process. Or nostalgia for the past, and a desire to find order. I suspect my dyslexia has a lot to do with how I perceive the world. I hear things differently; it both helps and hinders the process. 

The computer has made a vast difference in my life as a writer—that doesn't stop my fingers from typing the wrong letters, though; shape-changers p, b, g, q still refuse to toe the line. I can think all jumbled up and it's OK, because later I can unravel the tangled ideas and give them a logical order. Perhaps it was the computer that allowed me to blossom as a writer. But I began writing by longhand, transcribing everything to calligraphy because I couldn't type. (I now type with four fingers and an occasional thumb.) 

This room, with its indirect morning light, a permeable membrane, like the boundaries of skin, translates the air with origins. We each bring with us the burden from earlier fires, but here we unwrap genetic coals, and though there's no longer a hearth, it is a placeholder for an idea. We can’t quite let go up. Late at night when there’s a little else to sustain us, words burn across the page. —From "Stacking Wood for Celia" —by Maurcen Hurley

I refused to take typing in school because I didn't want to be a secretary or a teacher. So now I make my living as a writer and a teacher as an artist in residence. I've been lucker than most writers in that I’ve been able to survive at my craft. Eventually the computer helped me to think logically enough to write my grants for six California Arts Council artist-in-residency projects at Mark West School, and a short project at Napa State Hospital, Another grant gave me a year's worth of work exploring Sonoma County heritage at Matanzas School in Santa Rosa eventally launching me into the Soviet poetry and art exchange, which has absorbed nearly all my available time for the past two years. A poem from that journey, “Country of Origin," recently won the San Francisco Bay Guardian's Poetry Award. It seemed funny that the award chock presented to me was from the investigative journalism fund—yet many poets and writers were journalists as well.

Hemingway comes to mind. He said, "Trivel broadens the mind. Writing broadens the ass. I write standing up." Though I tend to write lying down, travel always stimulates my writing process, because the newness is a sharp foil against the complacency of what is known. I started wandering at an early age. Macy’s in San Francisco with its escalators hiding dragons beneath the bottom step, scared, but didn’t deter me. I wound up smothered in the coat racks, ghostly rattle of hangers whispering among themselves. On horseback or anything similar (we rode anything on four hooves), we explored the long north-south ridges that traversed West Marin, where you can see the bell curve of the ocean arching beyond Tomales, headlands and Point Reyes Peninsula, a floating island. Later, the Sierras, Canada, the Caribbean, Latin America, the Galapagos, Europe, and Russia beckoned. 

Our family has always maintained a fierce, unsellable love for the land. I suppose I inherited it without really knowing what it encompassed. The land itself, shapes, culture, art, and cuisine. Growing up in a pristine area, strikingly similar to Coleman Valley, shaped my art. I remember my neighbors visiting sister, Borg, exclaiming on, and on how beautiful it was, where we lived, the fresh air, etc. I suppose we were spoiled, but we knew no other life. The horses took us across the boundaries of freedom and change in the form of fences and county lines and home. I had to leave west Marin to stand the concept of beauty; by understanding the loss, after the fact. Maybe that who was responsible for the distillation of vague ideas into tangible writing. Is my story any different from that of an inner city rider? Other than locale, I suspect the primary impulses are the same, my story is any writers story. 

VARIATIONS IN WHITE AND BLACK

       Language is the music of thought.
 —Andrei Vosnesenski

The composer Satie, who ate only what was white
would've loved this cavernous room suspended from dark beams
with its white rug, walls and venetian blinds of white linen.
The hostess, the guests, even the keyboards of the baby grands
and our poems—all in variations of white and black.
Sighting down the vault created by the raised piano lids
snuggled in each other's curves like tired lovers,
Kirk and Marilyn play a four-handed improvisation
on Pachelbel's Canon in D. Dah dada dá dah-dum. . .  I think: gun barrel.
Just after the war we are overly sensitive to images of war.
Sasha, a Soviet vet who survived fire, reads about Afghanistan.
More piano wires taut around the slender necks of poems
of those who can never break free or go back:
Marilyn to Cuba, Oleg to the Ukraine, Sasha to his unscarred face.
We prepare to read translations, but because each line
requires a leap of faith from one image to the next,
we fine-tune them mid-air. Music is the mother of mathematics.
At one point, near the end of Haydn's Variations by Brahms,
the notes begin to merge, forming new ones like hawks mating mid-flight.
At the right moment a chorus of frogs joins in
but there's a hole in the sky; how do they measure time?
As the last note descends, it is silent; they say frogs
are the living barometers of the earth's health.
They say Gaia's final chorus will be silence in spring.
They say in some places it's already begun.
Where does a Möibius strip begin and end?
Sasha transliterates Kirk's name, and we are drunk on this music,
the sum of this defenseless layer of human culture.
Notes leaping over the small mossy stones in our ears
add up to a temporary respite from the shadows of raptors—
useless angels of the war, any war.
Even the frogs are listening to the Hallelujah Chorus.
3/29/91
Santa Rosa 1991 The Paper Sasha: Alexandr Karpenko

Why, I write is to heal something within myself. It’s the most vulnerable act I know of, to be a poet. Perhaps it’s also the most practical of the art. As a painter, I turned my back on the world, working in isolation. I was mute and shy; communicating was the hardest thing I could choose, and so, having no words for what was boiling over, I began to write reams and reams—not calling it poetry. That came later. Perhaps it was the dissatisfaction with the pimping and whoring of the art world that made me turn my back on it. Or it was a time to grow in another direction, to become literate. Once, I interviewed KPFA talk show host, Joan Marler, who said the reason why she got into radio programming was to prove to herself she was intelligent. As a practicing dyslexic, I know the story all too well. The supreme challenge for me is to paint pictures with words. To string two ideas together, to prove that I have a brain.

 

Dostoevsky said everyone is an artist. I like working with children in poetry and art because they’re closest to the creative process. As a writer, I keep going back to early childhood memories, and I wish I hadn’t waited until I was 27 before writing, my first poem, such as it was. Everyone has a poetic, voice (or creativity), it’s merely a matter of finding, and uncovering it—sort of like being a detective. I belong to a “detective agency” (code name: private, Irish), we meet once a year to read poetry, and to play softball. What we have in common is the love of language; this is what bonds us. I tell students, “as artists we’re  spies. We record what’s around us.” Poetic license to snoop. In art there is no one “right “answer. In fact, there are multiple solutions. Sometimes the third or 10th solution is better than the first. Art requires going back again, working with material until it feels “right,” it requires persistence. As with science, it comes from those hunches and intuition. If we always knew what we are going to say, or paint, why bother? 

Poetry is not limited to what is “poetic. “Poetry, the apex of culture, is the distillation of human expression. The integration of the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual selves should coalesce in a poem. The Mayans and Aztecs called it the flowered word. Poetry is a form of activism that took me into the schools – to effect change, to make sure the children were getting the tools to help them put their feelings in perspective with the logical world. Poetry is empowerment. It’s political. It saves lives. 

To be a poet, one must live life fully. You have to have something to write about, a need to tell someone the story, and a reason to write it. If you’re stuck, ask yourself: who is my audience? Whom do I write for and why? It could be to yourself, to your peers, or to the tribe at large. We spend a lifetime designing an imposed order on this chaos of thought. One can feel so alone in the midst of the personal journey of the creative process. I think we need both aloneness and fear— some inner conflict to hone the creative process, forcing us to write. I have to write, it’s not a matter of choice. There’s no magical formula used. You just do it and do it and do it. It’s also about self empowerment. It offers another perspective on responding to the painter Gauguin’s question about who and what we are, and where we are going. An interesting study was done on art and madness. Of course, writers, artist, and schizophrenics shared similar symptoms. All the artists weren’t clinically insane, they just seem that way. It’s because we delve deeper into the unconscious and utilize it in our craft. We render it, give it shape; a byproduct to heal ourselves. Art is a process, not a product. This is why art is a mirror reflecting back to who we are. The only trustworthy mirror we have. 

The battle of the sexes continues to operate between the sheets making no distinction between lines of gender, the shore line, midline, line of declination, the screen phosphor line, a line fed to us from the psyche, the gods, or another man or woman wanting something other than commitment between church and state, war and peace, enemy and friend. —From "Sunday Morning, Berth 1-Il" —by Maureen Hurley

A poem is like a stone thrown into the pond of our collective unconsciousness. A small splash—concentric ripples spreading out into the conscious dimensions of the larger pond of humanity—can affect change.

Plato said "all knowledge is recollection." Keats said poetry is what is recollected in tranquility. And now, in this technological revolution, when we re barraged with facts, it's hard to string them together, to make a deeper sense of them beyond the shallow impressions. The role of the poet is to reinvent the myths. We've been on a crash course, destroying what we believe in, and as a species, we need the myths in order to survive. Like dreaming. Otherwise we enter inton world of nihilism, of denial. This is why there are gangs in search of identity, they form tribes in order to know who they are. Pocts are the keepers of the conscience of the larger tribe of man; they give shape and meaning to our existence. These small stones thrown inte the pool of the world leave concentric ripples lapping on the near and far shores of our thoughts. As the good doctor-post William Carlos Williams said: it is difficult getting the news from poetry but men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there.

• 
  
• Why I Am A Writer (MA paper)
• See Letter to the editor on my memoir, I, Poet
• 
  

Journal entry, 6/29/91, Oleg calls from Indio, California

 6/29/91 Oleg calls from on the road, Indio California. I tell him he’s in the San Andreas Fault bed. The Salton Sea, the Sea of Cortez. He asks if the San Bernardino Mountains are the Rockies. He has no idea. No, I say the Sierras, simplifying geography a bit. I tell him how the peninsula of Point Reyes came from there along the fault, though it was probably from the Tehachapes, or at least that’s what geologist say. But most of those same granite outcroppings extend all the way to Cabo San Lucas. At Point Reyes I saw the same kind of rock as I did in Cabo. How I love the story of rocks.

Anyway, finally, I think I made a geologic impression on him after all this time. He’s never fully grasped the magnitude of the idea of how living along the fault line has shaped our culture and our coastline. He doesn’t think of the earth is moving because we can’t measure it with the naked eye.
When he called, he said he was in Forestville, he said he couldn’t leave me, then he amended it by saying he was in Indio. It was a joke maybe not in the best of taste, considering the circumstances. I had mixed reactions.

I was willing to go and pick him up, but I had a pang of dread, thinking of all I had to do before I left for Hawaii at 5 AM on Monday morning. Both of us were trying to pack at the same time. It wasn’t working. So I said squelched my needs in order to meet his needs. I still haven’t physically packed though I did all my bills and chores.

I couldn’t pack with him in the house. He was ending a way of life, while I was merely preparing for a short respite from the interruptions of the past nine months.

Having Oleg in my tiny house was definitely a pattern breaker. So, my life was turned upside down. Rather than face the emptiness of his not being here, I opted to get out of the house. A complete change of scene. Hawaii. The eclipse will take my mind off the past year’s events, and hopefully it will launch me into the next stage of my life, whatever that is.

And so, his call was welcome, though I fought down the guilty beasts rising within myself. Why don’t I like to answer the phone? Fear of responsibility, and of what is to come. I hated it when he called, asking me of my plans and is pathetic hangdog voice. I’d love to make over his telephone voice too, because I knew I always had to come and get him wherever he was. Beck and call. I was always responsible like a mother to a child, and I hated it. I loved it when he was self-reliant, which wasn’t often, but it seems we fight too hard to get there. My secondary emotions, resentment and anger included all the primary emotions.

I just re-learn the word sublime from the ground up. To pass from solid to gaseous state without going through ice to steam. Turner’s paintings are sublime landscapes, Wind, steam and fog. I too learned to pass from one state to another, bypassing logical progression, into the sublime state. Pavlovian emotions. How to stop the roller coaster heart now?

He forgot five rolled cigarettes In the Bugler can on top of the clock radio. Women are more sensitive to smell, than men—it’s biogenetic. We are born that way. It makes sense—food, danger, sex, all carrying odor with a message of one kind or another like the on/off binary code of computers. Pixels. Danger/no danger. I hated the smell of tobacco, rolled, unrolled, loose, burnt, etc. Nothing to do. My nose smells the minutest particles. I could smell him rolling cigarettes in the kitchen while I stood in the bedroom doorway 8 feet away. Sometimes it made me sneeze.

The past few months I’ve had to take allergy pills day and night to suppress my allergies as it was an unusually bad pollen season. His cigarettes, my down comforter, and pollen were too much for my immune system. I kept getting short term viruses with a duration of a few days to a week, the worst part is the low grade fevers and the night sweats. Of course it scares me, AIDS foremost on my mind. None of us can completely rest assured when it comes to our sexual past. I saw a gripping documentary Absolutely Positive, how HIV affects lives, both straight and gay. I guess the hardest part is to get to the no blame section as the I Ching says.

No, I never got to the no blame, or at least it was pretty rare. I did it times achieve that state, saying to him, no blame, but when you do A, B, or C, this is what happens within me…
How can we avoid this möbius loop? Issues of time being the most prevalent.

I took Oleg to meet my family after we went to Point Reyes. He said he wanted to. I didn’t suggest it, but I pointed out landmarks dear to me— my hill, Mount Barnabe, and the Olema Hill Road. We were on our way to Bolinas and Mount Tam for the solstice. As it turned out, we hiked to the other end of the point, Chimney Rock at 4:47 PM, or whenever the precise moment the solstice was, and missed it. I wasn’t aware that the solstice happened at a certain time, I was waiting for sunset to celebrate.

At the solstice I was alone, enclosed within the circle overlook, a wooden fence, very much like a wooden Stonehenge watching the sun set due west behind the lighthouse. I was alone on the edge of the continent, celebrating the sun, something far older than me within, and across the naked fields, a small black dot, man’s torso, Oleg always lagging far behind.

I had gotten tired of waiting for him and forged on ahead, alone, but this is the way I experience the openness of nature best. Alone, elemental. Surrounded by sea and sky, light, wind, earth. But he came into my circle. And we watched the waves crash below us, I pointed out Point Reyes, to the west, Drake’s Bay, and the scalloped cliffs to our right. I’m on an island in time, we were on another island, it seems like Scotland or Ireland. Nova Albion. I get it.

I wore a nylon jacket from the 20th century and there were boats in the harbor, but it was as if time itself didn’t exist. My determined pilgrimage, my mindlessly running to this place, only to have the uncanny sensation of having had a similar experience before, unnerved me. But my relationship with Oleg has been filled with déjà vu from the very beginning. He was supposed to stay this long, I guess.

I remembered another useless dream about schedules, etc., fragments of conversation, meaningless in the dream, but they still came true nearly two years after the fact. Because I write down what I remember of my dreams, I have a running fact sheet of images. The earthquake dream came true too. The rubber band dream with the red carnations defied logic. Oleg had rubber bands around his neck with me helping him to adjust them.

In another dream, we were on Highway 101 by Cotati, heading north to Santa Rosa. Instead, in real life, I took him to the San Francisco depot late at night, I had placed a red carnation in his food bag. And there were plenty of rubber bands around his luggage items, as it seems. In fact, he took all of my fat rubber bands, only Leaving two behind, just like in the dream. I have the elements of the dream right here. The order may be out of sync or it hasn’t happened yet.

And so we went to my grandmothers house, had dinner with Jane and my mom. So many cornflowers or bachelor buttons in bloom in the field below. Oleg said they grew among the rye in the Ukraine considered a weed, but to describe a beautiful girl was like cornflowers among the rye, all blonde hair and blue eyes. I realized my darkness, my hair and my eyes were the opposite of assumed beauty in the Ukraine, with its predominance of blue-eyed blondes.

Home, this land I love, and roses filled the path to the upper garden. We struggled in the tangle. I showed him plants. Huge bushes, rosemary and flowering peach that I had planted in the rocky, barren soil as a child. I season our food with sprigs of rosemary from the parent bush of my grandmother’s garden. I’ve made many progeny. Several here in Forestville as well as elsewhere. Rosemary the blue sea rose of my name and of remembrance. Roman cliffs, Italy, the sea.

We said goodbye to the sun setting in the northerly gap on Mt. Barnabe. Fitting that I should come home, appropriate accident. Later, my mother tells me that my uncle Bill has lung cancer. I am so angry knowing he was missing a half a lung from TB and yet he continued to smoke. I’m surprised it took this long to catch up. Jane, Oleg, and my mother continue to smoke as she tells me the details.

The open window and the air purifier is for my benefit, the asthma that comes from inhaling cigarette smoke, will not help their lungs. I flash angerly at Oleg. See why I want you to stop? I say it just brings more death. He continues to smoke. I pointed to my mother, saying how our family is riddled with cancer. She had breast cancer, an,uncle died of melanoma, and my aunt Toddy has skin cancer and breast cancer. My grandfather’s throat cancer from the cigars. In defiance, he draws another halo of smoke around his shoulders, the pleasure on his face is unmatched even by sex. Even with the knowledge of death, they enjoy their guilty addiction, subtle, thorough and lasting.

I want to mail those last five cigarettes to Oleg just to get them out of my house but I am aiding and and abetting by mailing them back to him, or am I? Grim reminders of death. I leave for Hawaii soon. When my uncle be alive when I return on 21 July? I talk of returning to my childhood home, living in a trailer in the garden. Oleg says it would be coming down in life to live this way, it would be regressing, that I’m better off staying in Forestville. Wow. I didn’t see that one coming. A middle class Soviet.

I never liked my uncle Bill, especially when he tried to sell our land right out from under us. My grandmother crying one summer evening as he laid down the news. Who was he, living in a tract home, to tell us what to do with our land? In a rage I attacked him verbally. I wasn’t even 12 years old and he never for gave me for my adult anger in a child’s body.

And I never forgave him for manipulating us, trying to break up our family. Put her in a nursing home, what happened to me and Guy? The enemy was a man all right, within the family. Eldest born son with the arrogance to match. Shades of the dream. The white cylindrical tubes, the glistening silver lines—what significance can I attach to the number four?

Sarcasm is the first form of humor. I think of the word sarcophagus. Phagos. The body devouring itself. Cancer. Give me another fag. I can hear my uncle asking, as he lies, so white and pale on the bed. I want to tell him, the Little League coach, that the bases are loaded this time, and who is left to steal home?

Journal entry, 6/29/91, dropping off Oleg Atbashian

6/29/93 12:38 AM, what better time than to start a new journal, having just dropped Oleg Atbashian off at the San Francisco Greyhound station, the end of relationship, end of a project—and a new beginning with my art. I am really ready to be done with him.

Sad to report it since Oleg’s been here, I’ve only filled one journal. Nine months of relationship absorbing all my free time. So much conflict with us, the useless arguing, we even managed to contradict each other on our final ride to San Francisco. He’s on his way to LA, then to Fort Worth, New York, and then home to the USSR. He was definitely saying goodbye forever, and I guess whatever we had, the experiment that failed, it’s gone forever, though we told each other I love you, what is there really?

He goes back to his kids and wife in the Ukraine. What of her? Someone said Nadia went to the authorities to report him missing, having abandoned his family. I can’t help but wonder what horrors he will face when he gets home.

All his American loot will bring much excitement. Two heavy suitcases, a backpack, and a Macintosh. Between the two of us, we could barely carry it all. How will he managed if no one meets him in Fort Worth, or New York? I can’t imagine him in the Moscow Airport trying to get to Kiev train station. But that is no longer my worry.

When I think of my lover leaving, it makes me cry. When I think of all the technical difficulties, I remain dry-eyed. I can’t imagine why he so easily riles me up. Yesterday, after making love, we finally talked a little bit about ourselves, and the relationship. The scary part is how alike we are. So, even though he was from a completely different culture and language, we managed to find a twin of ourselves. Dysfunctional match. He said I was like his grandfather and I said he is like my grandmother.

The constant contradictions in arguments over trifles—we both became our own worst enemies, and exorcised our personas on each other with predictable results. We’re both equally guilty of something we had little control over. I often felt possessed by a demonic urge to challenge, to be hard, and he really brought out a side of me from my childhood that I don’t like at all. He says we’re too alike to have a relationship. We are two pluses, we each need a negative to balance us out. He thinks similarity is a bad thing. I think it’s positive.

Stalemate. Checkmate. Guilt is a motivating factor, feelings of inadequacy. He says I’m more of a male-female while he is a feminine male. The problem is, it’s easy for him to not develop and grow, he lets me take the role of responsibility and he becomes a parasite, like the male parasite fish attached permanently to the side of the colossal female, so huge, that scientist at first assumed they were two different species.

He said he learned a lot from me, not necessarily positive. He said he learned that he needs to be kinder. I probably tenderized him enough to make his relationship with his wife better, such bitter  irony there. Where does love fit into all of this conflict? He says to remember the bad times when you wanted me out of the house, it’ll make it easier.

So easy for us to cry, and to hold each other. In bed we were friends, better lovers than workmates. A reversal of our role in Cherkassy. Emotionally, it was a roller coaster, though I seemed to retain a clarity as to why I reacted, and felt the way I did, but I was helpless to prevent the emotional upheaval.

What do tears mean, and those three words, I love you? Values. Sex wasn’t enough to make the relationship work—really work. We both wanted something more tranquil and supportive. Instead we got chaos, and fireworks. I felt angry because I was having to do so much work to keep us physically afloat. Maybe having him in my territory was the real problem. We talked about the conflict there too—we both want to occupy the same territory and I’m not used to sharing that space, and neither is  he. He thinks he began to recognize some of my criticisms were based upon truth after all.

It’s going to seem strange sleeping alone, our silly mammalian talk, horses and rummaging rights, penguin talk and blue sky acts. Once he rubbed my ass saying blue sky! And the sky turned blue. It stuck and every time he wanted blue skies to appear, he’d rub my ass. Silly things that lovers too. I’ll miss the affection and the sex it was satisfying—for the most part.

His odd quirk, his dislike of my breathing on him never changed, it continue to hurt my feelings when he turned his head away. He had enough phobias, it sometimes made life difficult. He was so intolerant of my animal love noises, my licking and biting and scratching. I was surprised when he asked me to scratch him very gently the other day. It took us a long time to trust each other sexually.

His changeability, apparently a cancer trait, was very unhealthy for me, creating a whole scenario of mistrust. We never quite molded each other into the likeness that we each desired. We never quite accepted each other the way we are, flaws and all.

Luis says there’s a danger in trying to remake someone, codependency. I was definitely trying to remake Oleg over. The entire fucked Soviet system of co-dependency equaling love. And to his credit, he did improve in many areas. I told him how difficult it was for me to have someone entirely dependent upon me. How it drained me. He really was foolishly wise. Childlike in so many ways. We really were from different eras, time travelers. But the hourglass shattered.

TRINITY

TRINITY 

from a drawing by Marsha Connell, White Sands Guardians

When Marsha drew 
rock formations at Stallion Gate,
naming them White Sands Guardians,
she knew nothing of their history
witnesses to Ground Zero, 
and the new green desert glass, trinitite—
On July 16th,1945,
the sand fused for miles
by Trinity; a destroyer of worlds,
said J. Robert Oppenheimer.
This is the place 
where Billy the Kid 
& Pancho Villa last rode
on The Trail of the Dead.

This is the place
where ghosts of the Cold War 
swarmed in hissing sands, 
where fathers and sons listened 
to the sounds of war 
growling across a cloudless sky
announce the birth 
of the nuclear age.

This is the place 
where blood stained white sands, 
and the threefold nightmare 
of a black flower bloomed,
riding across the world 
at the speed of light.   


6/91 & 7/16/92                                                                        

Walden Pond reading, Oakland, with Mimi Albert, Sharon Mayes, Deborah Fass

 

WHY I AM A POET

WHY I AM A POET


The silhouette of a bird on a telephone pole
a raven, a vulture, a hawk? Too big.
I swerved and braked the truck—
in the sunlight, a golden eagle,
too close to civilization, and I understood
why they're called golden; they are luminous.
Spotting eagles within city limits
isn't reason enough to write a poem about it.
What am I supposed to do now?
Tell the world I hang eagle feathers
from my ceiling to keep away bad dreams?
We feel compelled to talk of more human things
site-specific, but now I've seen rare eagles
where they're not supposed to be.
We've come to expect vultures and crows
with whom we co-exist so beautifully.
The raptor who faced near-extinction
isn't reason enough to celebrate;
our sights are limited to an occasional red-tail
on the fringes of society, and we are satisfied.
We always have trouble imagining
anything beyond our own limitations.


6/91

Duane Jones: Arts Activist/Sculptor

DUANE JONES, ARTS ACTIVIST/SCULPTOR

BY MAUREEN HURLEY

Duane Jones is a behind the scenes sort of guy when it comes to the viewing of art at myriad Bay Area benefit auctions and events, including the San Francisco Art Institute masterʼs Show, Sonoma Countyʼs annual Face to Face, Sebastopol Center for the Arts, etc.

Not only is he the one who made and installed all the panels and pedestals the art is displayed on, heʼs often an organizational sponsor, promoting and showcasing Sonoma County art on numerous platforms. In fact, the successful two-year-old Sebastopol Center for the Arts is his Athena—his brainchild.

Jones is also the director of the California Museum of Art at the Luther Burbank Center, and is responsible for securing eight major shows a year, and purchasing art for the museumʼs permanent collection (the 40-odd 1pieces are on display at the CMA until June 21).

But few know of Jones the sculptor. Jones who works primarily in paper pulp, cardboard, and found objects recently finished with an extensive shield project series. A long time ago, he sculpted in the lost wax bronze casting process. “The direction Iʼm going now is temples and habitats.”

Somewhat of a maverick, the 59-year-old Jones never attended arts school, nor received formal art training, but heʼs always considered himself a visual artist. He says his work is influenced by mentors and friends Raymond Barnhart and the late Paul Beattie; he gives some credit to the work of the masters Rodin and Giacometti.

Though Jones says he has not made a concerted effort to show his sculptures, his work may be viewed at the Bay Arts Gallery in San Francisco, and the Lawrence Gallery in Yountville. Some of his pieces were included at the Sonoma Arts Guild Shrine Show last month. He continues to donate major pieces to Face to Face, The Sebastopol Arts Center, and to local PBS station KRCB art auctions, and has been on the Art Trails open studio tour since its inception.

Born in East L.A., by the age of 17, Jones was a young father supporting a family, and working the swing shift at an aircraft carrier plant while attending school— studying photography. He dropped out of school, went into electronic sales, auto racing—(sports cars and formula cars at the Times Grand Prix, and the Riverside International Raceway against the likes of Phil Hill and Johnny Parsons), started a few successful businesses, but continued to sculpt on the side for pleasure.

In the ʻ60s, Jones worked with desktop size western bronzes in the style of Remington; “You know, that cowboy and Indian stuff. I tried not to make it trite; it was tongue-in-cheek, I didnʼt realize it was so popular. All I wanted was to work with the human gesture, and here I was using a magnifying glass with a loup to get the smile lines on the cowboyʼs faces just right. I needed to loosen up, and finally threw in the towel.”

He found that working with paper and cardboard was less constricting and offered the possibility to work in a larger format, which allowed him to “get caught up in the process, not the end product.” In 1976, the sculptor moved to Sebastopol, and became a builder, constructing houses for friends. Always the entrepreneur, he had a machine shop on the side—working on those foreign cars.

In 1980, tired of dirty fingernails, and wondering what to be when he grew up, he quit the business world for good, deciding it was all nonsense. He saw that the county “was pregnant ready to pop, and become a full-fledged arts scene. There was not much happening in the arts locally, yet I knew there were many good artists living here. Some knew how to market their work elsewhere but most didnʼt.”

Jones had a vision to promote local art, he founded the Bookstore Gallery which displayed museum quality one-man shows in Rohnert Park, and volunteered to help the Sebastopol Library to upgrade their annual arts shows. He also volunteered his time at the CMA, eventually creating a paid staff position as director of the fledgeling museum.

Besides displaying the work of nearly 250 artists last year, the community museum served an estimated 14,000 people. A lot of foot traffic for an out-of-the-way museum that barely saw 2,500 souls (artists included) when Jones came aboard in ʼ86.

In 1991, the CMA featured internationally renown local artists Morri Camhi, Frank Schueler, Judy North, Bill Morehouse, Raymond Barnhart, Charles Churchill, and others. The Sonoma Fine Crafts exhibit featured 22 artists, The Celebrate Sonoma permanent collection represented 20 artists, and at the California Small Works show Jones displayed 229 works from 189 artists (out of 679 entries from across the state).

Jones persevered even when the museumʼs future looked pretty bleak.“Sometimes it was just me fighting for the arts, why? Because I decided I was going to devote my life to the arts. Itʼs a magic county we live in, in that there are a lot of fine artists here who are not recognized in their own back yard. Iʼm a salesman. I know about merchandising, organizing, and marketing from working in the business world. Itʼs easy to show art, I said to the disbelievers letʼs just do it, and make it look professional.” His proof of success? The long list of thriving art galleries (40+) in Sonoma County,

and the steady stream of collectors who come to arts events and galleries to purchase local art. Jones says the county has become more sophistocated. He uses the museum exhibits to educate people—to expose them to the arts, and to give local artists high calibre opportunities to show their work.

Jones also attributes the museumʼs success to the broad-based community support. He is an advocate for accessible, not elitist, or academic art: “A museum is a community, not just for artists, but for the general public to enjoy. California contemporary art is exciting, itʼs accessable; thereʼs a history that needs to be recorded.”

Speaking of history, Jones would be happier of some of his earliest attempts at sculpture would just quietly rest in pieces. Jones whoʼd rather be remembered by his biodegradable paper pieces, disparagingly quips as if the cowboys and Indians were gaining on him: “There are still a lot of my bronzes of mine out there. A beginning artist probably shouldn't make bronzes because they last forever.”

He doesn't quite know what to make of aesthetics of the thief who stole two of his western  pieces from the Christopher Queen Gallery display window one night. . . “You know, itʼs ironic, I hate horses. Give me a motorcycle any day; it doesnʼt bite or need to be rubbed down. You can ride it hard, put it away wet, and itʼs OK. ”

ca 1991, 1992—when?  May?

Teaching Stones to Speak 5/10/91

"The Stone Series"

Paintings of William Morehouse

William Morehouse in his Bodega studio. On the left is "Broadgar Energy," one of the works in "The Stone Series" on view at the California Museum of Art.

BY MAUREEN HURLEY

RECENTLY A BULGARIAN POET handed me a conundrum: a hollow river stone with a smaller stone trapped inside—a talking stone. This reminded me of my Irish grandmother, who told me stones could speak even on this side of the world. Steeped in the Celtic mysteries, she relied on the megalithic limestone outcropping at the crest of a nearby hill to note the solstices. I was encouraged to spend time listening to the rock, and to measure the speed of shadows, but I gathered inconclusive evidence as to the shape of time, and the translation of the mute attestation of stones.

I was faced with a similar conundrum upon viewing William Morehouse's "The Stone Series" at the California Museum of Art at the Luther Burbank Center. I found myself seeking a decoding process to solve the riddle, but what was the mystery?

A resident of Bodega, Morehouse is a mature, established artist with an impressive track record; his works are represented in over 20 public and private collections, including the Whitney Museum of Art in New York, the Smithsonian Institution 'in Washington, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

His artistic career spans 42 years and hundreds of exhibitions. The 62-year-old San Francisco native studied at the California School of Fine Arts, the California College of Arts and Crafts, and the San Francisco Art Institute; he received his master's degree from San Francisco State University. He taught at the San Francisco Art Institute from 1958 to 1967, and since 1967, he's been at Sonoma State University, where he is a full professor.

The CMA exhibit—25 painted ceramic sculptures, oil paintings, and pastels—were thematically inspired by "the mystery of Celtic monuments" Morehouse visited during a 1985 trip to over 80 megalithic sites of Wales, northern Scotland, the Hebrides and the Orkney Isands, Morehouse says his journey to the megalithic stones began in Soho, New York, one hot August night in 1985 when the loft where he was staying was too hot to sleep and so, within 24 hours, he was headed for the London fog to cool his heels.

Morehouse made the obligatory pilgrimage to Stonehenge, but the thundering hordes and the fence surrounding the ancient monument were discouraging; the magic was gone. He stumbled upon more sites in Wales and Scotland, which he describes as a "delicious adventure" enhanced by "two bottles of single-malt whiskey in the boot of the car," and these burial cairns, cromlechs and dolmens seemed to speak more succinctly to Morehouse than did the incarcerated Stonehenge.

Morehouse says his "Stone Series" pieces, executed after returning to New York and California, are not based on precise visual presences of the stones as much as they are recollections of those experiences, both visual and sentient. He describes the central theme of the series as "the mysterious and unknown nature of these monuments . . . meditations on, and subjective responses to, the kind of energy, spirit, and evocative qualities I experienced while visiting the sites."

ONE OF THE MORE interesting elements of the CMA exhibit is to see Morehouse's stone theme executed in three difterent mediums: ceramic, oil, and pastel. At first glance, many of the raw, opaque paintings have an inaccessible quality similar to that of the megalithic stones they represent, while the three pastels retain a lyrical depth and quality that enhance the sense of mystery.

"Spirit and Sentinels—Caallanish" contains a wonderful spiraling energy. And the green ropes of "Spirit Dance and Stone" float in a darker mystery. The "Witches' Stone, Callanish: Study for Paintings" is phallic, but that shouldn't come as a surprise because that's what the stone represents to begin with." The diminutive megalithic sculptures in the center of the room are strangely comforting.

One of the largest paintings in the exhibit, the spermetic "Dark Cairn Metamorphosis," retains some of the fertile mystery of the pastel pieces. "Callanish: Isle of Lewis, Hebrides" has a nice juxtaposition of organic line and shape, as does. "Cairn—Wales: Spirals in the Burial Chamber." The contemporary painted red line becomes a rich punctuation mark against the magic ancient calligraphic spirals.

Another marking, or "thought gesture," most notably on "Energy Form Gesture II," looks almost Sanskrit in origin—recalling our Indo-European origins. However, the unsettling green palette of "Stenness" and the orange flame of "High Ambition" literally drove me from the room to seek escape from this two-dimensional reality of pyrotechnics. I cautiously reentered, shielding my eyes from these Plutonic wonders in order to spend some quality time with the more contemplative pieces.

My first reaction to the "Stone Series" was that Morehouse, while apparently trying to get closer to the mystery, had made it more opaque. This is a painter who is capable of throwing light into the meeting of mountains, but can he clear the stone place for a rough magic to form? Magic is a finicky muse. By naming it, one can destroy it. Since first impressions come too easy, after much deliberation, I came back to my primary conclusion: these paintings are filled with a mysterious raw kinetic energy—more Plutonic than Celtic.

But they feel new and unfinished; the composition is good, but for the most part, the palette is unsettling. Morehouse's thoughts rush toward full-blown combustion; there is little for the viewer to absorb and contemplate. I wish his works contained more of the sublime magic of the megalithic stones. Morehouse's paintings are filled with thought, perhaps too much so. And I think the art itself suffers for it, because the paintings, though bright, don't necessarily shed light.

A child's first marking—which may represent the beginnings of thought processes—are akin to Morehouse's symbolism, but a child's markings are transparent and tenative, there's the feel of paper (or the wall) beneath the mark, while Moorehouse's remain shrouded. Ironically, Morehouse says that in the "Stone Series" he was seeking a more lyrical, spiritual quality, moving towards less deliberate image-making, less control. He was seeking a sense of energy, calling his works essays of the spiritual language, subliminal thoughts, forms intuitively arrived at, symbols of power in a land steeped in legend.

During an artist's lecture at CMA, Morehouse presented slides of the paintings juxtaposed against the megalithic sites he documented, which was a real visual treat. Some of the pieces not in the show made more sense than the selected canvasses. Perhaps the show should have been expanded to include more paintings and pastels.

TECHNICALLY, THE DRYNESS of the painted surfaces in the "Stone Series"—akin to the creechy feeling of fingernails on chalkboard—had my skin crawling. Morehouse is an excellent draftsman and painter, and by comparison, his plein air paintings recently on view at the J. Noblett Gallery in Boyes Hot Springs, were juicy and luscious. (That exhibit, "Open Air Paintings," features, in addition to the recent work of Morehouse, and four other West County painters—Tony King, Wilder Bentley, William Wheeler, and John Stuppin—the "must see" exhibit recently moved to Dominican College in San Rafael.)

During my visit to the J. Noblett Gallery, two Morehouse paintings in particular stood out: "West from Poff Ranch" with its post-impressionistic cypress writhing in the wind, and his fluidly juicy "North from Armstrong Woods," an edible landscape redolent wiih succulent color. My faith in Morehouse's painterly ability restored, I was again faced with the dilemma of making sense of his "Stone Series."

Morehouse's palette makes sense out-of-doors. In this context. I thought fleetingly of Mark Rothhko's work, and wished the room, the paintings, or both, were much, much larger. As it turns out, Clyfford Still, Mark Rothko and abstract expressionism generally have had a major influence on Morehouse's work, but Rothko's paintings are sophisticated 20th century civilized interiors, sheets of colors that float above the surface of the canvas, while Morehouse has taken on the primitive pagan landscape. He's tried to contain it, and caged it like Stonehenge itself.

The Scottish "Stone Series" can be seen at the California Museum of Art at Luther Burbank Center through May 26. Regular museum hours are Wednesday through Sunday a.m. to 4 p.m. Admission is free. For more information, caII 527-0297.
Concurrent with the Morehouse exhibit, the CMA is featuring another show, "Guardians of Myths and Legends," comprised of 29 raku-fired ceramic helmets, shields and breastplates by Torrance artist Max Fuller. A great double barrel treat.

The Western Sonoma County Paper, ca. 5/10/1991

William Paul Morehouse
1929 - 1993

Note Bene: Bill Morehouse was one of my painting teachers at Sonoma State University, but at that time (late 1970s) there was no art department, not like today. The entire art department was crammed in the basement of Darwin Hall. We were literally below ground level. Our transom windows framed the ankles of passers-by. I had a ceramics class and a painting class in Darwin Hall—with no facilities, no potter's wheels, no kilns, no place to paint, no storage lockers—nothing. It was strictly whatever you could carry on your back. Needless to say, we got very little art done that year. It was a real bummer all the way around.

fire poet of space need copy

Yet another ASCII casualty

written 5/90 or 91

CPITS reading Barnes & Noble, Santa Rosa

THIS IS JUST TO SAY (for Kathy Evans)

THIS IS JUST TO SAY
             (an occasional poem for Kathy Evans)


Because the collected Love Poems slept all night long
on top of O'Hara's Lunch Poems, Dostoyevsky is implied
though the window sill is composed of pure morning light.
I moved the bottle of grapefruit juice from the floor
beneath the rocking chair (& one lone shoe) to the sink
only to have it explode in the sunlight onto the photos of your children
smiling crazily at us from beneath a juicy glaze—
& Oleg hurries to save them from the indifferent nature
of love in this world; the mathematical division of families—
his own children asleep on the other side of the world,
your mother wondering why a stranger with a Russian accent
answers your phone on a Sunday morning.
We continually face separations of the heart
that is why it hungers for sum totals.
Everything needs translation—
The sea plane outside your window taxies across alluvial mud;
the pilot has to go so far to reach water these days.
The French family on the dock screams goodbye
to their papá as he lifts off from the gravity of this world.
This division cleaves us from what we know to be true.
If only it were so simple: Peterson's Guide to Western Birds
holding us aloft and classified from human wishes,
last year's wives, and the daily remains—
enough to sustain our increasing appetites.
Migratory birds sup most delicately on soup du jour,
the mud — moist, hard and moaning. No free lunch here.
You will not die from the multiple invasions of winter
without a single answer from the abundance of nature.
This thirst we share in common.


4/21/91
Mill Valley  mudflats

1992 Artists' Palette, Mill Valley, 1st Honorable Mention, chosen by Rosalie Moore & Kathy Evans


4/21/91
Hmm, my prose piece is
Easter Sunday, April 19, 1992 typo?

Sunday Morning, Berth 1-11, Sausalito 
GEWOON MAAR OM JE TE LATEN WETEN
         ( een gelegenheidsgedicht voor Kathy Evans)

Omdat de verzamelde Love Poems de hele nacht sliepen
boven op de Lunch Poems van O'Hara zit Dostojevski er ook tussen
al is de vensterbank gemaakt van zuiver morgenlicht.
Ik heb de fles met grapefruitsap, op de vloer
onder de schommelstoel (& een eenzame schoen), op het aanrecht gezet
maar daar explodeerde hij juist in het zonlicht over de fotoos van je kinderen
die met een streep door ze heen naar ons lachen van onder een sappig glazuur—
& Oleg haast zich om ze te redden van de onverschillige aard
van liefde in deze wereld; de wiskundige deling van gezinnen —
zijn eigen kinderen in slaap aan de andere kant van de wereld,
jouw moeder die zich afvraagt waarom een vreemde met een Russisch accent                
bij jou de telefoon opneemt op een zondagmorgen.
We zien steeds scheidingen van het hart onder ogen
daarom hunkert het naar totalen.
Alles heeft vertaling nodig —
Het watervliegtuig voor je raam taxiet over aangespoelde modder;
de piloot moet zo ver gaan om bij water te komen tegenwoordig.
Het Franse gezin aan de kade schreeuwt tot ziens
naar hun papá terwijl die loskomt van de zwaartekracht van deze wereld.
Deze deling klieft ons van wat wij weten dat waar is.
Was het maar zo eenvoudig: Peterson's Guide to Western Birds
die ons omhoog houdt en in een andere klasse dan mensenwensen,
de echtgenoten van verleden jaar, en de dagelijkse overblijfselen —
genoeg om onze toenemende begeerten gaande te houden.
Trekvogels souperen zeer kies op soep du jour,
de modder — vochtig, hard en kreunend. Geen gratis maal hier.
Je zult niet doodgaan aan de meervoudige invasies van de winter
zonder een enkel antwoord van de overvloed van de natuur.
Deze dorst hebben we samen gemeen.


 21/April/91
Maureen Hurley
De  schorren en slikken van Mill Valley
Nederl. vert. Vins van Neerven, 10/92

THE POWER OF THE PRINTED WORD

The good doctor-poet William Carlos Williams wrote: "It is difficult/ to get the news from poems/ but men die miserably every day/ for lack/ of what is found there./ Hear me out/ for I am concerned..." At the risk of overusing this poem, hear me out. 

Imagine a crowded veteran's hall roaring with spectators viewing their children's school work at a curriculum faire, the usual exhibits of math tests, body parts and package products predominating; and a handful of children, sans microphone, bravely standing on chairs, shouting out their poems over this din, willing the unruly crowd into submission, taming them with their flowered words. People who probably never heard a poem performed in their lives, stopped and listened to the children recite these islands of refuge, small poems to keep back oppression behind the backdrop of the Gulf War.

Entering its 27th year, California Poets in the Schools has reached an estimated half a million kids. I can't even imagine how many poems have been generated in that amount of time but it all came home when a teacher handed me a hefty folder of nearly 200 poems typed by five classes of kids during their free time in computer lab. These were the same kids who practiced for six hours straight before the curriculum faire so they'd be ready to sing out their poems to an unsuspecting public. 

Understand that we only met four to six times (though they were double sessions, and we did some art too), but the kids were so motivated by the thought of breaking into print, they submitted two and three poems to the CPITS statewide anthology. How was I to choose? Some poems were new poems written or revised after I left the school.

And I realised that the potential of the printed word reaching out across borders has empowered these students to reach far beyond their classroom communities. It's more than the possibility of fame and fortune (though no one ever exactly got rich quick on poetry), it's the urge to communicate with the larger world, to put a cartesian spin to the quote: I feel, therefore I am. Poet laureate Robert Frost said to write poetry is a brave thing to do. 

My mother reminds me that when the first generation of kids that I taught comes of age, they will begin to make an impact upon society. They are the voters, the ones sent to fight in the Middle East. At a peace rally before war was declaimed, I saw scores of my former students marching, marching down Mendocino Avenue to Courthouse Square in Santa Rosa. They were rightly concerned...

Testimonials from teachers and parents for the necessity of programs such as CPITS continues to grow. Another school administrator facing the usual financial deficits proclaimed: we will not cut the arts from out budget. Since 1982, the CPITS program has enhanced student learning skills and dramatically increased our test scores across the curriculum. 

A teacher from another district said she recently judged fifth grade students on written language proficiency skills. She added, she was surprised to learn that one student who had written several pages (and unfortunately still didn't pass the test—English is his second language), was a former student of hers, a former non-writer. She directly attributes his increased writing skills and interest in language to a CPITS workshop. She listed several students who became "writers" after the CPITS workshop ended. 

I was unavoidably late to class the other day, it was a low skills class where I had to pull teeth to make breakthroughs; one girl wrote to me, "most kids in my class don't understand poetry" and proceeded to write me a poem.

Recent studies showed that on a scale of one to ten, people rate the arts somewhere between nine and ten (the lowest score); but when asked what's most important to them personally, they listed the arts as of primary importance. It is a fact that nationally, more people attend arts events that sports events. 

With over 30 million people, the highest population and per capita of artists, California should lead the nation in financial support for the arts; however in both arts and education (I believe they're both intrinsically linked), California ranks 36th in the nation. Why this discrepancy between personal and public values? In a so-called "primitive culture" such as Bali, there is no word for art because art is part of their every day lives. Why not here in California?

No mattter how primary we rate arts and education in our personal lives, with an enormous state deficit, they are about to take a severe beating. However, if we continue to keep silence as to what is personally important to our lives, these programs will continue to die. 

It's up to all of us to contact our legislators and tell them the financial and emotional impact the arts have on our lives, to support the arts politically, then we can heal the rift, the dichotomy. Why not start with the children? Staking a claim in our cultural future is a brave thing to do. After all, "the pursuit of happiness" is legislated in our constitution. Don't we have that right?

I don't know when or where this was published, it was from Arts Day politicking, so I am publishing it here

Arts funding; Staking a claim in our political future

Imagine a crowded veteran's hall of spectators viewing the usual exhibit of children's school work displayed at a curriculum faire, and a handful of children, sans microphone, standing on chairs, bravely shouting their own poems over this din, willing the unruly crowd into submission, taming them with their flowered words. 

Attracted to our display of poetry and art, one parent bored by the obligatory citiquains passing for literature said, "Thank God for arts programs like California Poets in the Schools, because our children are capable of so much more than this!" A junior high school English teacher exclaimed, "This poetry puts the work of my junior high school students to shame." 

People who probably never heard a poem performed in their lives, stopped and listened to the children recite these islands of refuge, small poems to keep back the oppression punctuated by the backdrop of the Gulf War. 

Now imagine next year's curriculum faire with no exhibits at all, no music, no art, no poetry. If Governor Pete Wilson has his way, he will attempt to defeat Proposition 98 which guarantees a percentage of government funds for school budgets, so that the enrichment programs from sports to dance won't be threatened each year by gubernatorial whims.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson said "It is time to stand up and fight for our basic community rights which means a decent education for every child in America. We must be willing to march, unify, coalesce and if necessary die for the right to an education," he said. "

Arts education is not a luxury" said Bill Honig, State Superintendent of Public Instruction. "We must make the investment... to elevate the study of the arts to its rightful place with other academic subjects in the education of every student." Arts education sharpens children's cognitive development, teaches cultural awareness and stimulates the creativity needed for the continuing economic vitality of our state. 

The State Board of Education adopted a policy that arts education is "an integral part of basic education for all students." Most indepth arts programming in the schools and communities, including California Poets in the Schools, are dependent upon seed or operating money from California Arts Council funded grants and special school discretionary funds. With the loss of Prop 98 and CAC funds, the future for any enrichment programs is bleak indeed.

With over 11 million people, California should lead the country in financial support for the arts and education; however in both arts and education (I believe they're both intrinsically linked), California, one of the most affluent states in the nation, ranks at trie bottom, number 40 (out of 50) in public support for the arts. (At 44th, it ranks in the bottom third in educational support as well).

Compare our $.58 per capita spent on the arts with that of Massachusetts at $2.15. States with much weaker economies provide far greater arts and education funding than California. Why this discrepancy between personal and public values? In the so-called "primitive cultures" such as Bali, there is no word for art because art is so much a part of their every day lives. Why not here in California? 

Arts and education are inexorably intertwined, we cannot separate the two. Please support both the CAC budget and Prop 98 by keeping them intact as the voters have so clearly requested of you. 

Maureen Hurley
California Poets in the Schools

Jesse Jackson, Prop 98 teachers' rally, State Capitol

"Today we are ten thousand strong"announced the Reverend Jesse Jackson to a wildly cheering crowd at the California State Capital April 5, as he led them on a "war to save our children...to save our state and nation." Jackson who advocates that "We must invest in our children while they're children.” He said we must "stop closing schools and building jails.... Teachers cost less than wardens."

During Easter break thousands of teachers and parents, opposing cuts in school funding, rallied on the state capital steps to join forces with liberal leaders including former governor Jerry Brown, United Farmworkers President César Chavez, and the Reverend Jesse Jackson in support of Proposition 98 which assures 40% of the state's operating budget in schools. 

Due to state fiscal shortfalls, the law was suspended by Governor Pete Wilson because the state budget faces nearly a 3 billion dollar deficit. And according to California systems analysts, schools already received a 5% budget increase; "however, schools still stand to lose about 2 billion dollars if Governor Wilson suspends Prop 98 in order to balance the state budget."

Sonoma County schools sent a caravan of nine chartered buses and private carpools of over 700 teachers and administrators to the capital to protest the state budget cuts. Sebastopol teacher Sue Maclean of John Reed School in Rohnert Park commented, "What blew me away was seeing the State Capital ringed with hundreds of yellow school buses. Buses came from as far away as Kern County. CTA officials were quick to point out that school districts did not pay for the buses, they were rented out.

An estimated 500 Sonoma County administrators who attended the Sonoma County pre-rally met with state senators Filante and Barry Keene, and assemblymen Dan Hauser and Mike Thompson. Jim Hansen, who was not present, sent an aide. 

 Many educators were concerned by the apparent lack of support from their elected leaders. One Sonoma County teacher grumbled, "with the exception of Thompson, they all gave wishy-washy statements of assurances to vote for Prop 98 with a package deal." Both Thompson and administrators were in agreement that Prop 98 needs to be a stand-alone line item—not buried in a "package deal", and taxes need to be raised in order to support public education.

The rally organized by the Coalition for the Future, a group comprised of the Rainbow Coalition and the California Teachers Association, scheduled on the anniversary eve of Martin Luther King's assassination was very much like marching on Selma, Alabama, and equal rights, though Jackson's speech was punctuated with political rhetoric and presidential themes such as "We must invest in our children's future because we are morally right, we will win because our children will win." And "Don't give up, don't surrender" which seemed to accurately sum up the mood of the crowd.

I don't know when or where this was published, probably in the paper, I don't have a tearsheet, this was from a dot matrix print out. Hellish to read.

VARIATIONS IN WHITE AND BLACK

       Language is the music of thought.
—  —Andrei Vosnesenski

The composer Satie, who ate only what was white
would've loved this cavernous room suspended from dark beams
with its white rug, walls and venetian blinds of white linen.
The hostess, the guests, even the keyboards of the baby grands
and our poems—all in variations of white and black.
Sighting down the vault created by the raised piano lids
snuggled in each other's curves like tired lovers,
Kirk and Marilyn play a four-handed improvisation
on Pachelbel's Canon in D. Dah dada dá dah-dum. . .  I think: gun barrel.
Just after the war we are overly sensitive to images of war.
Sasha, a Soviet vet who survived fire, reads about Afghanistan.
More piano wires taut around the slender necks of poems
of those who can never break free or go back:
Marilyn to Cuba, Oleg to the Ukraine, Sasha to his unscarred face.
We prepare to read translations, but because each line
requires a leap of faith from one image to the next,
we fine-tune them mid-air. Music is the mother of mathematics.
At one point, near the end of Haydn's Variations by Brahms,
the notes begin to merge, forming new ones like hawks mating mid-flight.
At the right moment a chorus of frogs joins in
but there's a hole in the sky; how do they measure time?
As the last note descends, it is silent; they say frogs
are the living barometers of the earth's health.
They say Gaia's final chorus will be silence in spring.
They say in some places it's already begun.
Where does a Möibius strip begin and end?
Sasha transliterates Kirk's name, and we are drunk on this music,
the sum of this defenseless layer of human culture.
Notes leaping over the small mossy stones in our ears
add up to a temporary respite from the shadows of raptors—
useless angels of the war, any war.
Even the frogs are listening to the Hallelujah Chorus.


3/29/91
Santa Rosa 1991 The Paper Sasha: Alexandr Karpenko

RRWG flyer, Mudd's Cafe, Mar-April 1991