Marc Hofstadter Featured Monday, Aug 4 at Poetry Express

8/4/14 Marc Hofstadter

 

Marc Hofstadter was born in New York City and obtained his B.A. degree from Swarthmore College, his Ph.D. from U.C. Santa Cruz, and his M.L.S. from U.C. Berkeley. He has taught at Santa Cruz, the Universite d'Orleans (on a Fulbright Lectureship) and Tel Aviv University, and served for 25 years as the librarian of the San Francisco Municipal Railway. He has published poems, translations and essays in over 60 magazines, and he has published 5 books of poetry and one of essays. His latest book of poems, Memories I've Forgotten, will appear in September. He lives in Rossmoor, Walnut Creek with his partner David Zurlin.

And Please Note the following Poetry Express members featured at other venues:

Aug 1: Chris Chandler reads at subterranean art house  2179 Bancroft Way, Berkeley, CA 8pm with  music partner Paul Benoit for his full show, a rare bay area event.

Aug 2: Jan Dederick and John Rowe featured at La Promenade San Francisco http://www.lapromenadecafe.com/

Aug 3: Sally Elseby reads at Jannie Dresser’s Poetry Salon, email janniedres@att.net  for  info.

Aug 3: Gary Turchin featured at the Art House Gallery Berkley, details at http://www.richardloranger.com/events

7/28 Theme Night: Trees

7/28/14 Theme Night: Trees -- Open Mic whole evening devoted to poetry or short prose loosely related to Tree theme.  Bring your Tree poems.

Each poet will have 3 to 5 minutes to read their Tree poems per round. Usually there is room for more than one round and then when Tree poems are exhausted there is often time for open mic on any topic.

Cassandra Dallett featured Monday 7/21

7/21/14 Cassanda Dallett

Cassandra Dallett lives in Oakland, CA. Cassandra writes of a counter culture childhood in Vermont and her punk rock adolescence in the San Francisco Bay Area. She hasbeen published widely online and in print magazines such as Slip Stream, Sparkle and Blink, Criminal Class Review, Chiron Review and Out Of Our. A full-length book of poetry Wet Reckless will be released from Manic D Press in the spring of 2014.

Baby I Was Born To Run

As soon as I learned to walk stripped my clothes off

into the woods I’d go

my nakedness on the mossy rocks

and the needle pine beds

My parents were high a kitchen full of fools

with six packs and joints to smoke

and I would be out there

in the leaves the dappled light

I knew the names of jack in the pulpits and columbine

the places where trees grew close around me

played in empty hunting camps and abandoned cars

my runaway episodes were legend

a crowd of long hairs fanning out calling my name

down the road and through the trees

they’d find me

curled in sleep under the ferns by the pond.

7/14/14 Nancy Gonzalez Featured at Poetry Express

7/14/14 Nancy Gonzalez

Nancy Aidé González is a Chicana poet and educator. She graduated from California State

University, Sacramento with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English Literature. She attended Las Dos Brujas Writer’s Workshop in 2012. Her work has appeared in Mujeres De Maiz Zine, Huizache The magazine of Latino literature, DoveTales, Tule Review, Seeds of Resistance Flor y Canto:Tortilla Warrior, La Bloga, and several other literary journals. Her work is featured in the Sacramento Voices: Foam at the Mouth Anthology (2013). She is a participating member of Escritores del Nuevo Sol, a writing group based in Sacramento, California which honors the literary traditions of Chicano, Latino, Indigenous and Spanish-language peoples. 

La Virgen de Las Calles
Pink Sentinels
Mujeres Del Maíz
Kites
La Pulga
Tapestry of Dawn

La Virgen de Las Calles

She stands on the
busy street corner
selling delicate red
and white roses
hugged by baby's -breath
and luminous cellophane
resting in a
once discarded
plastic bucket.

She understands the innate
beauty of roses,
their fragility
their fragrant hope
as they grow slowly
from bud to
emerge
embracing change,
as they flush into
full bloom.

She knows of
piercing thorns
and truth,
of crossing
barbed wire
borders.

She understands
the prickling sting,
the aculeus
of being an outsider.

She wears a large
sweatshirt with USA
emblazoned in block
print across her chest
but she misses
Mexico and the
small town she was
raised in .

A red and green
rebozo hangs down
upon her head shielding
her from the flugent sun,
a gift from her mother,
a reminder of home.
People stride past her
lost in their own thoughts
hustling to work,
on pressing errands,
wandering down the tangle
of the Los Angeles
landscape.

She is La Virgen de las Calles,
waiting with a
heavy heart,
full of yearning,
dreaming of
new horizons,
a fountain of
humble tenderness
and abounding love.

La Virgen de las Calles
comprehends the
nature of roses,
their vulnerability
their need for nettle.

Elana Levy featured Monday, 7/7/14

7/7/14 Elana Levy 

Elana Levy is a recent transplant to the land of her daughter, of avocadoes and redwoods, from the northeast, of snow, lakes and green.  She will read her latest poems, as well as poems from her recent collection, Legacies and Heresies with blessings.  Elana will also read from her translations of much heralded 20th century German Jewish poet, Rose Ausländer, book available this fall.  Elana taught math in community college for two decades.  First  photographed by FBI in 1959.  Student and teacher of Jewish meditation and Kabbala; factory worker, social justice activist, radio producer, video director; embraces silence one month yearly. Still studying hard, knowing there's no easy answers.  

note that 7 + 7 = 14