Northern California Daily Calendar
Southern California Daily Calendar

THE HISTORY: Poetry Flash curates one of the West Coast’s longest running reading series. From 1982-2006, the readings took place at Cody’s Books on Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, the legendary independent bookstore. (The series originally began in the late sixties/early seventies.) The reading series moved to Cody’s Fourth Street and then to Cody’s last store on Shattuck Avenue. During that time, Poetry Flash readings also took place at Moe’s Books and Black Oak Books in Berkeley, Berkeley City College, and at Diesel, A Bookstore, Oakland. [For more on the closing of Cody’s, see below.]

Poetry Flash readings now take place at Moe’s Books, Berkeley, and at Diesel, A Bookstore, Oakland. Over one-hundred poets are introduced each year by our host, Poetry Flash Associate Editor Richard Silberg, with Editor Joyce Jenkins. The series continues to be open to diverse poetics, while providing a forum for poetry’s best. Please help poetry thrive by shopping at these fine independent bookstores!

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 2010, 5:00—note special time
Poetry Flash at DIESEL, A Bookstore
JACQUELINE BERGER & ERIC GUDAS
Jacqueline Berger’s new book of poetry is The Gift That Arrives Broken, winner of the 2009 Autumn House Poetry Prize. Chana Bloch says, “In her third book Jacqueline Berger surveys the terrain of mid-life. . .Her perceptions about the hungers of body and mind, striking in their candor, are couched in language that honors and deepens the losses, even as she uncovers the gifts to be found in brokenness.” Her first book, The Mythologies of Danger, won both the Bluestem Award and the Bay Area Book Reviewers Award, and her second,Things that Burn, was a winner of the Aga Shahid Ali Prize from the University of Utah Press.
Best Western and Other Poems is Eric Gudas’s first book of poems, winner of the 2008 Gerald Cable Book Award. Tony Hoagland says, “. . .Eric Gudas has been one of my secret favorite poets for a long time. This careful, rich collection makes his playful, anguished, perceptive, and humane poems available at last.” His poems, reviews, and interviews with poets have been published in The American Poetry Review, Poetry Flash, and elsewhere, and he’s also author of the chapbook Beautiful Monsters.
DIESEL, A BOOKSTORE, 5433 College Avenue, Oakland, (510) 653-9965,
dieselbookstore.com. Near Rockridge BART. Poetry Flash: (510) 525-5476.

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 16, 2010, 7:30
Poetry Flash at Moe’s Books
SUSAN BROWNE & ALISON LUTERMAN
Susan Browne’s new book of poems, her second, is Zephyr, winner of the Editor’s Prize at Steel Toe Books. Her poetry has appeared in Ploughshares, Subtropics, River City, The Mississippi Review,Gargoyle, Margie, and anthologies, such as 180 More, Extraordinary Poems for Everyday, edited by Billy Collins. Her awards include prizes from the Chester H. Jones Foundation, the National Writer’s Union, the Los Angeles Poetry Festival, and the River Styx International Poetry Contest. Her work was nominated for a Pushcart Award. Selected as the winner of The Four Way Books Prize by Edward Hirsch, her first book, Buddha's Dogs, was published in 2004. She also has a word/music CD with poet Kim Addonizio, Swearing, Smoking, Drinking, & Kissing, available from cdbaby.com. Her poems have recently appeared on Garrison Keillor’s Writer's Almanac and Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry.
Alison Luterman’s new book of poems, her second, is See How We Almost Fly, winner of the 2008 pearl Poetry Prize, selected by Gerald Locklin. Ellen Bass calls it, “a delight. Alison Luterman, like the beings who inhabit her poems, has found a way to love this complicated, painful, and wondrous world. . .These are poems of resilience and redemption, poems that open the heart.” Her first collection, The Largest Possible Life, won the Cleveland State University Poetry Prize. She’s also a playwright and an essayist.
MOE’S BOOKS, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, (510) 849-2087, moesbooks.com.
Parking at the Durant/Channing Garage, close to Telegraph. Channing is one block north.
Poetry Flash: (510) 525-5476.

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 2010, 7:30
Poetry Flash at Moe’s Books
BOB HICOK & current and former Stegner Fellows
MATTHEW SIEGEL, KEETJE KUIPERS, SARA MICHAS-MARTIN
Bob Hicok’s new book of poems, his sixth, is Words for Empty and Words for Full. Recent books include This Clumsy Living and Insomnia Diary. He is one of the nation’s more celebrated poets; among his honors a Guggenheim Fellowship and two from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Felix Pollak Prize, the Jerome J. Shestack Prize, four Pushcarts, and more. He will be reading with three poets who are all past or present Wallace Stegner Fellows in poetry at Stanford University.
Keetje Kuipers’s first book of poems, Beautiful in the Mouth, won the 2009 A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize and was published last March.
Sara Michas-Martin was a Stegner fellow and a Jones lecturer at Stanford; her work has appeared in The American Poetry Review, The Believer, Poetry Daily, and elsewhere.
Matthew Siegel is a current Stegner fellow, his poetry has appeared in Poetry Daily, Diagram and elsewhere.
MOE’S BOOKS, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, (510) 849-2087, moesbooks.com.
Parking at the Durant/Channing Garage, close to Telegraph. Channing is one block north.
Poetry Flash: (510) 525-5476.

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 30, 2010, 7:30
Poetry Flash at Moe’s Books
WATERSHED Environmental Poetry Festival Panel
ALISON HAWTHORNE DEMING, JULIA WHITTY & Others
These two acclaimed nature writers will both be reading from their work at the Watershed Environmental Poetry Festival in Berkeley’s Civic Center Park on the following Saturday, October 2, noon to 4:30.
Alison Hawthorne Deming’s recent book of poems, her fourth, is Rope. Her first book of poems, Science and Other Poems, won the 1993 Walt Whitman Award, selected by Gerald Stern, who says of it, “I greatly admire Alison Deming’s lucid and precise language, her stunning metaphors, her passion, her wild and generous spirit, her humor, her formal cunning; I am taken, as all readers will be, by the knowledge she displays and how she puts this knowledge to poetic use.” Temporary Homelands is one of her three books of essays.
Julia Whitty’s first book on oceans, The Fragile Edge, was awarded the John Burroughs Medal Award, the PEN USA Award, and the Kiriyama Prize. Her articles have appeared Harper’s Magazine and Mother Jones, where she is the environmental correspondent and blogger at Blue Marble. Her brand new book is Deep Blue Home: An Intimate Ecology of Our Wild Ocean. She recently written important articles for Mother Jones on the Gulf oil spill.
MOE’S BOOKS, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, (510) 849-2087, moesbooks.com.
Parking at the Durant/Channing Garage, close to Telegraph. Channing is one block north.
Poetry Flash: (510) 525-5476.

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 2, 2010, Noon-4:30
WATERSHED ENVIRONMENTAL POETRY FESTIVAL
Brenda Hillman, Alison Hawthorne Deming, Robert Hass, Al Young,
David Meltzer, Camille T. Dungy, Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry, John Felstiner, Can Poetry Save the Earth? A Field Guide to Nature Poems, author Annie Leonard, The Story of Stuff, nature writer Julia Whitty, Deep Blue Home: An Intimate Ecology of Our Wild Ocean,details TBA, with California Poets in the Schools, River of Words, Poetry Inside Out K-12 student poets, River Village exhibits, music by Barry Finnerty’s Jazz Roots Trio, We Are Nature open mic, sign up at noon; Strawberry Creek Walk led by Chris Olander at 10:00 a.m., see Daily Calendar
To exhibit, e-mail: mbb @ poetryflash.org, or leave a message at (510) 526-9105.
Watershed is presented alongside the Berkeley Farmers’ Market, near Berkeley BART,
Civic Center Park, downtown Berkeley.

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 7, 2010, 7:30
Poetry Flash at Moe’s Books
Readers TBA
MOE’S BOOKS, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, (510) 849-2087, moesbooks.com.
Parking at the Durant/Channing Garage, close to Telegraph. Channing is one block north.
Poetry Flash: (510) 525-5476.

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 14, 2010, 7:30
Poetry Flash at Moe’s Books
TIMOTHY DONNELLY & BARBARA CLAIRE FREEMAN
Timothy Donnelly’s new book of poems is The Cloud Corporation. Allen Grossman says, “The poems of Timothy Donnelly astonish by their inventive intelligence. . .we learn that self-knowledge can be adequate to knowledge of the world, in all its violence and complexity.” His first book of poems was Twenty-seven Props for a Production of Eine Lebenzeit. His work has been translated into German and Italian and anthologized in 100 Poems by Younger American Poets, Legitimate Dangers: American Poets of the New Century, and elsewhere. He is a poetry editor for Boston Review.
Barbara Claire Freeman’s first book of poems is Incivilities. Judith Butler calls it “an extraordinary collection of poems. . . .They range in form and style, but they participate in an austerity, a political edge, and what one poem calls ‘an abbreviated violence.’ Beautifully crafted, tight, with no word to spare, these poems interrogate the region of what is left in the aftermath of devastated land and life.” A literary critic and Professor of Literature, she has recently turned her full attention to writing poetry. Author of The Feminine Sublime: Gender and Excess in Women’s Fiction, among other works of criticism and theory, Freeman’s honors include a 2008 Discovery/Boston Review Poetry Award and the 2007 Campbell Corner Poetry Prize from Sarah Lawrence College.
MOE’S BOOKS, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, (510) 849-2087, moesbooks.com.
Parking at the Durant/Channing Garage, close to Telegraph. Channing is one block north.
Poetry Flash: (510) 525-5476.

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 24, 2010, 3:00
Poetry Flash at DIESEL, A Bookstore
MATTHEW ZAPRUDER, STEVE HEALEY & MICHAEL EARL CRAIG
Michael Earl Craig’s new book of poems, his third, is Thin Kimono. James Tate says, “I like being in the world of Craig’s poems. Anything can happen, and probably will, and it will affect me in small or large ways that I couldn’t have imagined. The precision of their imagery keeps me reeling with delight.” His previous books are Yes, Master and Can You Relax in My House.
Steve Healey’s second book of poems 10 Mississippi receives this praise from Billy Collins, “Somehow Steve Healey has figured out a way to get a new sound out of the saxophone of English. Loopy, smart, eyebrow-raising, wiggy, and wildly entertaining belong in the string of modifiers that would try to describe this poet's amazing voice.” Healey’s first book is Earthling; he’s been anthologized in Legitimate Dangers: American Poets of the New Century, and his criticism and essays have been published in Rain Taxi and elsewhere.
Come on All You Ghosts is Matthew Zapruder’s third book of poems. Library Journal says, “Zapruder’s innovative style is provocative in its unusual juxtapositions of line, image and enjambments. . .Highly recommended.” His previous books are American Linden and The Pajamaist, which won the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America and was honored by Library Journal as one of the top ten poetry volumes of 2006. Zapruder is also co-editor of Wave Books.
DIESEL, A BOOKSTORE, 5433 College Avenue, Oakland, (510) 653-9965,
dieselbookstore.com. Near Rockridge BART. Poetry Flash: (510) 525-5476.

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 28, 2010, 7:30
Poetry Flash at Moe’s Books
BARBARA JANE REYES & LYRAE VAN CLIEF-STEFANON
] Open Interval [ is Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon’s second book of poems. Cornelius Eady enthuses, “Jimi Hendrix, Robert Hass, Rainier Maria Rilke, Romare Bearden, John Goodricke, blues, desire, longing, supernovas, and more are all held together with lyrical daring and fierce imagination. Van Clief-Stefanon invents a new world to reveal to us the secret workings of the old.” Her first collection, Black Swan, was 2001 winner of the Cave Canem Prize in Poetry, and she is co-author with Elizabeth Alexander of the chapbook Poems in Conversation and a Conversation.
MOE’S BOOKS, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, (510) 849-2087, moesbooks.com.
Parking at the Durant/Channing Garage, close to Telegraph. Channing is one block north.
Poetry Flash: (510) 525-5476.

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 4, 2010, 7:30
Poetry Flash at Moe’s Books
CHAD SWEENEY & MELISSA STEIN
Melissa Stein has won this year’s APR / Honickman First Book Prize, selected and with an introduction by Mark Doty, who says, “…its oxymoronic title suggests the sweet and fierce character of desire, that compelling and dangerous sustenance…Stein’s poems are lit by a restless and flashing verbal intelligence…Her sentences are beautifully choreographed; they start and stop the motion of her poems with a nearly invisible, effortless authority…” A freelance editor and writer in San Francisco, her poems have been widely published in literary journals and anthologized in Best New Poets 2009 and other anthologies.
Chad Sweeney’s new book of poems, his third, is Parable of Hide and Seek; Mary Ruefle says that these poems “view the world through strangely faceted eyes (perhaps those of a dragonfly?)—actually they behold it, and…they display a dazzling Rumiesque ecstacy, one that holds the reader as rapt as the creator of these poems is held by Creation.” Sweeney is co-editor of Parthenon West Review and editor of the anthology Days I Moved Through Ordinary Sounds, a collection of WritersCorps writers, which Sweeney was, himself, during his stay in San Francisco. His poems have appeared in Best American Poetry 2008, The American Poetry Review, and elsewhere.
MOE’S BOOKS, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, (510) 849-2087, moesbooks.com.
Parking at the Durant/Channing Garage, close to Telegraph. Channing is one block north.
Poetry Flash: (510) 525-5476.

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 11, 2010, 7:30
Poetry Flash at Moe’s Books
Readers TBA
MOE’S BOOKS, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, (510) 849-2087, moesbooks.com.
Parking at the Durant/Channing Garage, close to Telegraph. Channing is one block north.
Poetry Flash: (510) 525-5476.

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 2010, 3:00
Poetry Flash at DIESEL, A Bookstore
STEVEN NIGHTINGALE & poet TBA
Steven Nightingale is both a poet and a novelist. His new book of sonnets, his third, is The Light in Them is Permanent; Robert Hass says, “There is a natural ecstatic in Steven Nightingale, whom one might situate on a scale somewhere between Emerson and Rumi. And there is also a craftsman—with a jeweler’s or watchmaker’s meticulousness—who wants to make the sonnet mimic his wonder at the architecture of things.” Nightingale has published two novels, The Lost Coast and The Thirteenth Daughter of the Moon.
DIESEL, A BOOKSTORE, 5433 College Avenue, Oakland, (510) 653-9965,
dieselbookstore.com. Near Rockridge BART. Poetry Flash: (510) 525-5476.

~Check back for more readings~

Past Events:

THURSDAY, AUGUST 12, 2010, 7:30
Poetry Flash at Moe’s Books
JULIE SHEEHAN & ROBERT THOMAS
Julie Sheehan’s newest, Bar Book, Poems and Otherwise, employs the metaphor-rich names and recipes of cocktails. It’s an exuberant third collection from, in the words of Molly Peacock, “a dancer of language.” Sheehan’s first book won the Poets Out Loud Prize from Fordham University, and her second, Orient Point, won the 2005 Barnard Women Poets Prize.
Robert Thomas’s latest book of poems is Dragging the Lake, about which Brendan Galvin says, “He can be lyrically contemporary, or speak in extended narratives through the personae of Leos Janácek, Jakob Boehme, and Jaqueline du Pré. Dragging the Lake is richly textured, various, deeply satisfying, and snazzy.” His first book, Door to Door, was selected by Yusef Komunyakaa as winner of the Poets Out Loud Prize, Fordham University.
MOE’S BOOKS, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, (510) 849-2087, moesbooks.com.
Parking at the Durant/Channing Garage, close to Telegraph. Channing is one block north.
Poetry Flash: (510) 525-5476.

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 11, 2010, 8:00
Poetry Flash Benefit at Ashkenaz Music & Dance Community Center
POETRY & MUSIC with MICHAEL McCLURE, COUNTRY JOE McDONALD, RISA KAPARO with bassist SASCHA JACOBSEN,
Detroit Poet M.L. LIEBLER with Moby Grape’s PETER LEWIS, JAMES PRESTON of Sons of Champlin
Join us for summer fun to keep Poetry Flash in print, with Country Joe McDonald, legendary Beat poet Michael McClure, Risa Kaparo, and Detroit poet M.L. Liebler performing from his poetry with Peter Lewis of the rock and roll band Moby Grape, and drummer James Preston of the rock band Sons of Champlin. M.L. Liebler received the Barnes & Noble/Poets & Writers 2010 Writers for Writers Award with Maxine Hong Kingston and Junot Diaz. His books include Working Words: The Literature of Work, Class & Art and Breaking the Voodoo & Other Poems. He is an internationally known populist performance poet and arts activist. His poetry and music CDs include The Magic Poetry Band and The Detroit Legacy Sessions:Gasoline. Michael McClure’s new poetry book is Mysteriosos. He was one of the five readers at the Six Gallery reading where Ginsberg first read “Howl.” Prolific poet, Obie-winning playwright, essayist, and novelist, he continues to publish and to perform with Ray Manzarek from the Doors and other musicians. McClure’s poetry books include Rain Mirror and his book of Zen poems Touching the Edge.Country Joe McDonald was the lead singer of the sixties psychedelic rock group Country Joe & the Fish. He has recorded over thirty albums and written hundreds of songs.
The grand prizewinner of the prestigious John Lennon Songwriting Contest, Risa Kaparo will perform her poetry with Sascha Jacobsen, who has played principal bass with the Santa Cruz Symphony and now performs with the Argentine Tango group Trio Garufa. “There is power in Risa Kaparo’s sensual voice, an allure, a beckoning. The voice plays like reflection, like flame on the varied musical deeps laid down by a brilliant ensemble of musicians. “Everyone I touch is god / play us as one instrument / I have yet little experience being all I am / Reveal me to myself.”Awaken, her debut CD, calls us to this larger whole, this shimmer and oscillation where bodies and souls become one.” —Poetry Flash. Her book of poems is Embrace. As Dr. Risa Kaparo, she is the creator of Somatic Learning, a methodology of wellness integrating psychology, neurology, biology, and meditative disciplines.
$10-$20 at the door, donations cheerfully accepted
ASHKENAZ, 1317 San Pablo Avenue, Berkeley, (510) 525-5054, www.ashkenaz.com.
Poetry Flash: (510) 525-5476.

THURSDAY, AUGUST 5, 2010, 7:30
Poetry Flash at Moe’s Books
Contributors Reading for Love Over 60: an anthology of women’s poems, featuring ELLERY AKERS, ELLEN BASS, GAIL ENTREKIN,
KATHIE ISAAC-LUKE, ELLARAINE LOCKIE,
CAROL WADE LUNDBERG, ROSALIE NELSON
Edited by Robin Chapman and Jeri McCormick, this new anthology from Mayapple Press celebrates poems by women over sixty. Marilyn L. Taylor said of it, “. . .in this era of steamy effusions about romance and passion, comes this show-stopping array of love poems---insightful, sophisticated, deeply erotic at times, often undeniably brilliant.” Eleanor Wilner wrote of it, “In plain language and unashamed directness, these elder women poets, in lines alive with both remembrance and presence, like Barbara Crooker’s couple in their hammock, “lie. . .caught between the mesh / of rope and the net of stars, suspended, tangled up / in love, running out of time.” And, knowing what they know, they still, like Lucille Clifton welcoming a granddaughter into a violent world, can say: “and I am consumed with love / for all of it.”
MOE’S BOOKS, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, (510) 849-2087, moesbooks.com.
Parking at the Durant/Channing Garage, close to Telegraph. Channing is one block north.
Poetry Flash: (510) 525-5476.

SUNDAY, AUGUST 1, 2010, 3:00
Poetry Flash at DIESEL, A Bookstore
DIANE KIRSTEN MARTIN & LISA GLUSKIN STONESTREET
Diane Kirsten Martin’s new book of poems is Conjugated Visits. Yusef Komunyakaa says, “The observed is clearly the crystal engine here, at the heart of Conjugated Visits; an urgent music moves each poem down the page with a calibrated knowingness that releases us to truth and wonderment.” Her work has been widely published in literary journals and was included in Best New Poets 2005.
Lisa Gluskin Stonestreet’s first book of poems, Tulips, Water, Ash was the winner of the 2009 Morse Poetry Prize, selected by Jean Valentine, who says in her introduction, “If there is one defining gift here, I think it is the poet’s way of feeling and making art out of shifts of consciousness---often joined to the subtle and tender and bold poems about intimate life.” Among her other honors are a Javits fellowship and a Phelan Award.
DIESEL, A BOOKSTORE, 5433 College Avenue, Oakland, (510) 653-9965,
dieselbookstore.com. Near Rockridge BART. Poetry Flash: (510) 525-5476.

THURSDAY, JULY 29, 2010, 7:30
Poetry Flash at Moe’s Books
STEFANIE MARLIS & CAROL MOLDAW
Stefanie Marlis’s latest book of poems is cloudlife. C.D. Wright calls it “Aphoristic, enigmatic, and startling&Part elegy for her father and the brisance of his twentieth century, part cautionary tale for this one&Once more Marlis converts an intimate history into a distinctive, austere expression.” Among her other books of poems are Slow Joy, which won the 1989 Brittingham Prize in Poetry, rife, and fine, which was a finalist for the Bay Area Book Reviewers Award. Her work was included in American Hybrid: A Norton Anthology of New Poetry.
Carol Moldaw’s new book of poems is So Late, So Soon: New and Selected Poems. “Out of acutely observed, deeply felt particulars the poems&balance intimacy and objectivity in exact, lyric language.” Author of four previous books of poetry, which are represented in the new book with a generous selection of new poetry, as well as a novel, Moldaw has received a Lannan Foundation Marfa Writer's Residency, an NEA Creative Writing Fellowship, and a Pushcart Prize.
MOE’S BOOKS, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, (510) 849-2087, moesbooks.com.
Parking at the Durant/Channing Garage, close to Telegraph. Channing is one block north.
Poetry Flash: (510) 525-5476.

THURSDAY, JULY 22, 2010, 7:30
Poetry Flash at Moe’s Books
MARC HOFSTADTER & TIM KAHL
Marc Elihu Hofstadter’s Rising at 5:00 A.M. is his fifth book of poems. Neal Oxenhandler says of it, “Poems that read like narrative traverse years of suffering, learning and delight. They open doors to. . .prep school, the mental ward, Russian novels. With unerring rhythm and in countless ways Marc Hofstadter sings his passion to the reader’s heart.” His recent books include Shark’s Tooth and Luck. His essays, translations, and poems have appeared in more than sixty magazines. Tim Kahl’s first full-length book of poems is Possessing Yourself. Joshua McKinney says, “Part photo album, part diagram, part dream, Tim Kahl’s Possessing Yourself hacks a life out of the harsh terrain of experience. . .In vivid narrative and acute lyric, these poems bring us close to the complexities of a whole human being. This is an exceptional book.” Widely published in literary magazines, Tim Kahl is also a translator, from the German of Austrian avant-gardist Friederike Mayrocker, and from the Portuguese of several poets, including the only Portuguese-speaking Nobel Laureate, José Saramago. Tim Kahl is a board member and hosting coordinator of the Sacramento Poetry Center.
MOE’S BOOKS, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, (510) 849-2087, moesbooks.com.
Parking at the Durant/Channing Garage, close to Telegraph. Channing is one block north.
Poetry Flash: (510) 525-5476.

SUNDAY, JULY 11, 2010, 3:00
Poetry Flash at DIESEL, A Bookstore
Contributors Reading for The Place That Inhabits Us Anthology
featuring DAN CLURMAN, SUSAN KOLODNY, PRISCILLA LEE, JACK MARSHALL AL YOUNG, & others TBA
The Place That Inhabits Us: Poems of the San Francisco Bay Watershed is an anthology put together by Sixteen Rivers Press relating to our wide watershed, the poets gathered together in a wide-cast net, poets living and dead, famous and much less so, some living here, some from other countries. The poems came half and half from a national call for submissions and from a pool of poems nominated by members of the Sixteen Rivers collective. In his generous Foreword Robert Hass says, “. . .at a certain moment, a group of early-twenty-first-century poets made a selection of poems about the place that mattered to them, so that this book is about the experience of place---and about being given the remembered expression of the experience of place by others who have lived here. And that begins to be a culture.” This beautifully designed anthology celebrates and faithfully represents the life of poetry in northern California.
DIESEL, A BOOKSTORE, 5433 College Avenue, Oakland, (510) 653-9965,
dieselbookstore.com. Near Rockridge BART. Poetry Flash: (510) 525-5476.

THURSDAY, JULY 8, 2010, 7:30
Poetry Flash at Moe’s Books
NEELI CHERKOVSKI & DAVID MELTZER
Neeli Cherkovski’s new book of poems is From the Canyon Outward. Sarah Menefee says of it, “Neeli Cherkovski has mastered the lyricism of the clear-seeing heart. In these poems, he sets down in the middle of the mystery of existence and experience.” Among his many books of poems are Fronteras Rotas, Leaning Against Time, and Animal. He is also famed as a biographer for Bukowski: A Life. He and Bukowski co-edited the L.A. poetry anthology Laugh Literary and Man the Humping Guns in the late 1960S. Neeli Cherkovski also authored Ferlinghetti: A Biography, and his book of critical essays Whitman’s Wild Children has become an underground classic. David Meltzer is one of the greats of the Beat Generation; he migrated across country from New York City to L.A. with his father as a teenager in 1954, became involved in the jazz and art scenes, moved to San Francisco in 1957 and continued on as an ‘angel-headed hipster’ ever after. A poet, Kabbalist, musician, he’s published many books of poems including The Name: Selected Poetry 1973-1983, No Eyes: Lester Young, Beat Thing, and his newest, David’s Copy, The Selected Poems of David Meltzer. Diane di Prima says, “David Meltzer is a hidden adept, one of the secret treasures on our planet. Great poet, musician, comic: mystic unsurpassed, performer with few peers. . . .A kind of bop perfection pervades his work.”
MOE’S BOOKS, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, (510) 849-2087, moesbooks.com.
Parking at the Durant/Channing Garage, close to Telegraph. Channing is one block north.
Poetry Flash: (510) 525-5476.

THURSDAY, JUNE 17, 2010, 7:30
Poetry Flash at Moe’s Books
JUDITH McCOMBS & INDIGO MOOR
Judith McCombs’s latest book of poems is The Habit of Fire: Poems Selected & New. Alicia Ostriker says of her poetry that it “grips the world in which rivers flow to the ocean and life flows to death. . . with a ferocious quietness, a gratitude beyond bitterness, a beauty and vulnerability of language to match those of the world.” Her other books include Against Nature: Wilderness Poems and Territories, Here & Elsewhere. She is the founding editor of Moving Out, which lasted three decades as the nation’s second oldest feminist journal. Among her honors are an NEH fellowship and a Canadian Embassy Senior Fellowship. She is currently working on a historical family sequence of Scots-German farmers and carpenters.
Indigo Moor’s new book of poems, his second, is Through the Stonecutter’s Window, winner of the 2009 Cave Canem Northwestern University Prize for a Second Book. His previous book was Tap-Root, which Jane Hirshfield praised: “Sense-embedded, peeled to perceptive freshness, with a gift for the muscular and concentrating phrase, Indigo Moor’s first book engages not only family and personal history, but the broader culture’s as well.” A former editor of the Tule Review, he has garnered numerous honors, including the Crab Orchard First Book Prize, The Saturnalia First Book Award, the Naomi Long Madgett Book Award, and a Wordworks Prize.
MOE’S BOOKS, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, (510) 849-2087, moesbooks.com.
Parking at the Durant/Channing Garage, close to Telegraph. Channing is one block north.
Poetry Flash: (510) 525-5476.

THURSDAY, JUNE 10, 2010, 7:30
Poetry Flash at Moe’s Books
MAXINE CHERNOFF, RACHEL LODEN & DONNA de la PERRIERE
Maxine Chernoff is both a poet and novelist. The Turning is her newest book of poems, praised by Aaron Shurin who says, “Maxine Chernoff’s poems are born in the ache of the world in need of itself. Amid the false papers of emptied language, this writing envisions ‘a home inside the neutral gleam,’ where the heart of the authentic resides.” She’s published six books of fiction, including Signs of Devotion, which was a New York Times Book Review Notable Book. With Paul Hoover she edits New American Writing, and with him she co-translated Selected Poems of Friedrich Hölderlin, which won the 2009 PEN USA Translation Award.
Rachel Loden’s new book of poems is Dick of the Dead, which was a finalist for the California Book Award. A poem from the collection was recently featured in the Washington Post’s “Poet’s Choice” column, and it has been called “oddly sublime” and “intoxicating” by the Poetry Project Newsletter and “expansive and whimsical” by the Brooklyn Rail. Loden’s first book, Hotel Imperium, was one of the San Francisco Chronicle’s ten best poetry books of the year. She is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize, a California Arts Council fellowship, and a grant from the Fund for Poetry.
Donna de la Perrière is the author of True Crime (Talisman House, 2009) and the forthcoming St. Erasure (Talisman House, 2011). The recipient of a 2009 Fund for Poetry award, she teaches in the MFA and undergraduate creative writing programs at California College of the Arts and San Francisco State University, and curates the Bay Area Poetry Marathon reading series at San Francisco's The Lab gallery and performance space.
MOE’S BOOKS, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, (510) 849-2087, moesbooks.com.
Parking at the Durant/Channing Garage, close to Telegraph. Channing is one block north.
Poetry Flash: (510) 525-5476.

SUNDAY, JUNE 6, 2010, 3:00
Poetry Flash at DIESEL, A Bookstore
TOM HEALY, MARTHA RHODES & ALISSA VALLES
Tom Healy’s first book of poems is What the Right Hand Knows. Carol Muske-Dukes calls him a “poet who has a clear and urgent style, a straightforward ownership of his emphatically lyrical choices. . . .These are poems about being off-beam, asymmetrical. . .the left and right hand at odds in their knowledge, the world tipped one way, then another.”
Martha Rhodes has published three books of poems, Perfect Disappearance, At the Gates, and, most recently, Mother Quiet. James Longenbach says of the last, “Weird, dark, hilarious, direct, otherwordly—these poems display a poet in command of every note the English language is capable of sounding.” She is a founding editor and the director of Four Way Books, publisher of both Healy and Valles’s collections.
Alissa Valles’s Orphan Fire is also her first book of poems. Publishers Weekly says, “Valles’s terse, learned, harsh collection is one of the standout first books of the year. . .her stark regard for the brutalities of European history [is] represented here by spare handfuls of images.” Born in Amsterdam to an American father and a Dutch mother, she grew up in both the United States and the Netherlands and has extensively studied Slavic languages, literature, and history. She is the editor and co-translator of Zbigniew Herbert’s The Collected Poems 1956-1998, a New York Times Book Review Notable Book of the Year in 2007, and of Herbert’s Collected Prose, forthcoming this year.
DIESEL, A BOOKSTORE, 5433 College Avenue, Oakland, (510) 653-9965,
dieselbookstore.com. Near Rockridge BART. Poetry Flash: (510) 525-5476.

THURSDAY, JUNE 3, 7:30
Poetry Flash at Moe’s Books
GRAHAM FOUST & CATIE ROSEMURGY
Catie Rosemurgy’s new book of poems is The Stranger Manual. Dean Young enthuses, “Catie Rosemurgy’s penetrating meditative force is fueled by a feral play, and we can’t help but be swept up in its ricocheting humor, riptide imagination, and mordant, sensual thrill. Reader, prepare for a scorching.” Her first poetry collection was called My Favorite Apocalypse.
Graham Foust’s new book of poems is A Mouth in California. Susan Howe has said of his work, “Graham Foust has an unerring sense of the exact contours of a particular thought and is able to express them with mathematical precision and emotional delicacy; yet pushing against lyric constraint is wildness, uneasiness, sometimes terror.” He’s published three previous collections, most recently Necessary Stranger. He directs the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Saint Mary’s College in Moraga, California.
MOE’S BOOKS, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, (510) 849-2087, moesbooks.com.
Parking at the Durant/Channing Garage, close to Telegraph. Channing is one block north.
Poetry Flash: (510) 525-5476.

SUNDAY, MAY 23, 2010, 3:00
Poetry Flash at DIESEL, A Bookstore
STEVE KOWIT & ALICIA SUSKIN OSTRIKER
Steve Kowit’s new book of poems, a collaboration with the artist Lenny Silverberg, is Crossing Borders. Robbie Conal, who wrote the introduction, calls the book “tough, poignant. . .drawings and poems addressing the international epidemic of refugees.” He characterizes Kowit as “the most raging, socially concerned, funniest dead serious poet I’ve ever met.” Among his books of poems are The First Noble Truth, The Gods of Rapture, and The Dumbbell Nebula. He’s won two Pushcart Prizes, an NEA fellowship, and a Tampa Review Prize for Poetry. His poems have been read by Garrison Keillor on NPR, and he’s the author, as well, of the teaching manual In the Palm of Your Hand: The Poet’s Portable Workshop.
Alicia Ostriker’s new book of poems is The Book of Seventy. Joyce Carol Oates says of it, “Here is a hard, obdurate, elusive sort of beauty. Alicia Ostriker is not only one of our very best poets but one of our most crucial.” This is her twelfth book of poems; others include The Mother/Child Papers, No Heaven, The Volcano Sequence, and The Little Space: Poems Selected and New, 1968-1998. She has received the Paterson Poetry Prize, the William Carlos Williams Award, the San Francisco State Poetry Center Award, and she has twice been a finalist for the National Book Award.
DIESEL, A BOOKSTORE, 5433 College Avenue, Oakland, (510) 653-9965,
dieselbookstore.com. Near Rockridge BART. Poetry Flash: (510) 525-5476.

THURSDAY, MAY 20, 2010, 7:30
Poetry Flash at Moe’s Books
CATHY COLMAN & BARBARA TOMASH
Cathy Colman’s new book, her second, is Beauty’s Tattoo. Jeffrey McDaniel says, “I’ve been an admirer of Cathy Colman’s work for over fifteen years now, her intoxicating blend of stop-in-your-tracks imagery, her lettuce-crisp diction, the mixture of Eros, imagination, and longing.” Her first book of poems, Borrowed Dress, won the 2001 Felix Pollak Award for Poetry and made The Los Angeles Times Bestseller List the first week of its publication. She’s won the Browning Award for Poetry and the Ascher Montandon Award for Poetry.
Barbara Tomash’s new book of poems is The Secret of White. Truong Tran says, “The Secret of White is a marvel of language, written with acute patience and precision. Each line and image is crafted with the care of embroidery, the pen and paper giving way to the needle and thread. . .” A multimedia artist before she became a poet, she won the Winnow First Poetry Award for her first book, Flying in Water, which has just been re-issued.
MOE’S BOOKS, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, (510) 849-2087, moesbooks.com.
Parking at the Durant/Channing Garage, close to Telegraph. Channing is one block north.
Poetry Flash: (510) 525-5476.

THURSDAY, MAY 13, 2010, 7:30
Poetry Flash at Moe’s Books
JOANNE KYGER & ANNE VALLEY-FOX
Joanne Kyger has been a key figure straddling a number of poetry movements from the San Francisco Renaissance to the Black Mountain Poets to the Beats. Robert Creeley has said of her, “There is no poet with more whimsically tough a mind.” She is the author of some thirty books of poetry and prose, including Japan and India Journals, As Ever: Selected Poems, and About Now: Collected Poems.
New Mexico poet Anne Valley-Fox’s new book of poems is How Shadows Are Bundled. Nathaniel Tarn says, “These poems, while deeply anchored in New Mexico reality, reach out in long, loping elegant lines across the continent from California to Maine. . .There is a novel inside each poem. . . .” Author of three previous books of poems, she is also co-author of Your Mythic Journey and co-editor of Outlaws and Desperados, both nonfiction.
MOE’S BOOKS, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, (510) 849-2087, moesbooks.com.
Parking at the Durant/Channing Garage, close to Telegraph. Channing is one block north.
Poetry Flash: (510) 525-5476.

THURSDAY, MAY 6, 2010, 7:30
Poetry Flash at Moe’s Books
JORN AKE & PETER DALE SCOTT
Jorn Ake’s new book of poems is Boys Whistling Like Canaries, winner of the 2008 Blue Lynx Prize; David Wojahn, who selected the book, says it’s a “collection haunted by the grim history of the twentieth century and by how its legacy continues so troublesomely to endure. . .Ake recalls the work of two of our finest poets of social conscience, George Oppen and Thomas McGrath. . . .” Beginning as a painter, Ake won the X.J. Kennedy Poetry Prize for his first book of poems, Asleep in the Lightning Fields; his second is The Circle Line.
Peter Dale Scott’s new book of poems is Mosaic Orpheus. A former Canadian diplomat, both a writer and a poet, Scott has received enormous acclaim for his poetic trilogy Coming to Jakarta, which Robert Hass has called “the most important political poem to appear in the English language in a very long time.” James Laughlin said of it, “Not since Robert Duncan’s Groundwork and before that William Carlos Williams’ Paterson, has New Directions published a long poem as important as Peter Dale Scott’s.” A professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley and a former Canadian diplomat, he has also published a number of important nonfiction books, including Drugs, Oil, and War: The United States in Afghanistan, Colombia, and Indochina and The Road to 9/11: Wealth, Empire, and the Future of America.
MOE’S BOOKS, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, (510) 849-2087, moesbooks.com.
Parking at the Durant/Channing Garage, close to Telegraph. Channing is one block north.
Poetry Flash: (510) 525-5476.

THURSDAY, APRIL 29, 2010, 7:30
Poetry Flash at Moe’s Books
LEE ANN BROWN & LAYNIE BROWNE
Laynie Brown has two new books of poetry, The Desires of Letters and the forthcoming Roseate, Points of Gold. Lisa Robertson has said of her work that is “places her amongst the loveliest natural historians of perception. . .showing that to describe is to honor an unknowable reader. These poems gently host our plentitude.” In all, she has published nine books of poetry and a novel. She is one of the directors of the POG poetry series in Tucson, Arizona.
Lee Ann Brown is the author of Polyverse (winner of New American Poetry Series Award), The Sleep That Changed Everything (Wesleyan University Press) and collaborations such as Nascent Toolbox with Laynie Browne.  She has performed her poetry internationally and is the editor and publisher of Tender Buttons press; she is currently Associate Professor of English at St. John’s University, New York City.  Her song cycle, The Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time and other readings can be found at the websites, PENNSOUND and The Electronic Poetry Center.
MOE’S BOOKS, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, (510) 849-2087, moesbooks.com.
Parking at the Durant/Channing Garage, close to Telegraph. Channing is one block north.
Poetry Flash: (510) 525-5476.

THURSDAY, APRIL 15, 2010, 7:30
Poetry Flash at Moe’s Books
BARBARA RAS & DAN BELLM
Dan Bellm’s new book of poems is Practice. Alicia Ostriker says, “I am in awe of how Bellm’s poems perform a dance with and against Holy Scripture. . .Practice is like a long prayer of wonder, gratitude, pain and loss and tenderness.” His two previous collections are One Hand on the Wheel and Buried Treasure, which won both the Cleveland State University Poetry Center Prize and the Alice Fay DiCastagnola Award from the Poetry Society of America.
Barbara Ras’s new book of poems is The Last Skin. Rich and full as ripe fruit, her work can be both deeply moving and subtly humorous. Her first book, Bite Every Sorrow, was selected by C.K. Williams for the 1997 Walt Whitman Award; her second book is One Hidden Stuff. She has received fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and she directs Trinity University Press.
MOE’S BOOKS, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, (510) 849-2087, moesbooks.com.
Parking at the Durant/Channing Garage, close to Telegraph. Channing is one block north.
Poetry Flash: (510) 525-5476.

THURSDAY, APRIL 1, 2010, 7:30
Poetry Flash at Moe’s Books
MOLLY FISK & REBECCA FOUST
Molly Fisk’s second book of poems, The More Difficult Beauty, has just been published; Al Young praises it, “Fisk’s poems twinkle with the dark, nuanced subtlety of painted miniatures; they speak from the heart and gut. Devils and angels dwell in her details.” Her first book is Listening to Winter. She has received an National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry, a Dogwood Prize, Robinson Jeffers Tor House Prize, Billee Murray Denny Prize, and a National Writers Union Prize.
Rebecca Foust’s first full-length book of poems, All That Gorgeous, Pitiless Song, won the Many Mountains Moving Book Award and will be published this April. Also to be published in September 2010 is God, Seed, a book of environmental poetry with art by local artist Lorna Stevens. Her two previous chapbooks, Mom’s Canoe and Dark Card, won Robert Phillips Poetry Chapbook Prizes in 2007 and 2008.
MOE’S BOOKS, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, (510) 849-2087, moesbooks.com.
Parking at the Durant/Channing Garage, close to Telegraph. Channing is one block north.
Poetry Flash: (510) 525-5476.

THURSDAY, MARCH 25, 2010, 7:30
Poetry Flash at Moe’s Books
LAUREL ANN BOGEN & SUSAN KELLY-DeWITT
Laurel Ann Bogen’s recent book of poems is Washing a Language. Edward Field says, “In this fascinating book, again and again, she transforms her moments of joy, the wounds she has suffered, into a mouth, speaking her terse and immaculate poems. . .” A founding member of the acclaimed poetry performance group Nearly Fatal Women, Bogen was named Best Female Poet/Performer by the L.A. Weekly. She is the author of ten previous books of poetry and short fiction. A former literary curator of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art where she ran the Writers in Focus poetry series, her honors include two awards from the Academy of American Poets and the Curtis Zahn Poetry Prize from the Pacificus Foundation.
Susan Kelly-DeWitt is author of The Fortunate Islands. Dennis Schmitz says of it, “These poems take pleasure in the multiplicity of things. . .whatever personal loss or change. Their power is in their spiritual longing. They are graceful, so accurate and deep in their discernment. . .” A former Stegner fellow at Stanford University, she has been widely published and anthologized, featured on Writer’s Almanac and Verse Daily, and she’s published a number of chapbooks, including Feather’s Hand and Cassiopeia Above the Banyan Tree, Poems about Hawai’i. She’s a member of the National Book Critics Circle, the Northern California Book Reviewers, and she’s a contributing editor of Poetry Flash.
MOE’S BOOKS, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, (510) 849-2087, moesbooks.com.
Parking at the Durant/Channing Garage, close to Telegraph. Channing is one block north.
Poetry Flash: (510) 525-5476.

SUNDAY, MARCH 21, 2010, 3:00
Poetry Flash at DIESEL, A Bookstore
JANET HOLMES & RUSTY MORRISON
Janet Holmes’s new book of poems, The ms of m y kin, as she, herself, explains, is derived by erasure from “The Poems of Emily Dickinson,” and so ‘the manuscript of my kin’ or, perhaps, ‘kind’. She is the award-winning author of four previous books of poems, most recently F2F. She is also editor of Ahsahta Press, an avant-garde poetry press.
Rusty Morrison’s first book of poems, Whethering, won the Colorado Prize for Poetry; her second, the true keeps calm biding its story, won the 2007 Sawtooth Poetry Prize from Ahsahta Press, selected by Peter Gizzi, then the James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets for the best second book of poetry published in America that year. It also received the Northern California Book Award in Poetry. Peter Gizzi says, “Her careful handling of form allows knowing to remain both openly discrete and discretely open. This is a joyous read and a remarkable book.” Rusty Morrison is co-founder and co-editor of Omnidawn Press.
DIESEL, A BOOKSTORE, 5433 College Avenue, Oakland, (510) 653-9965,
dieselbookstore.com. Near Rockridge BART. Poetry Flash: (510) 525-5476.

THURSDAY, MARCH 18, 2010, 7:30
Poetry Flash at Moe’s Books
CANARIUM BOOKS READING:
JOHN BEER, PAUL KILLEBREW& ISH KLEIN
John Beer’s first book, The Waste Land and Other Poems, has just been published. Appearing in some fine literary magazines, he writes on theater for Time Out Chicago.
Paul Killebrew’s first book, Flowers, is also hot off the press from Canarium Books; John Ashbery says that it, “plunges us into a world we inhabit but seldom notice, forcing its horror on us but also reminding us why we go on coping with it.” He is the author of two chapbooks, Forget Rita and Inspector vs. Evader. He works as a lawyer at Innocence Project in New Orleans. UNION! is Ish Klein’s first book of poems; Nicole Pollentier says of it in MOSTLY BOOKS on this website, “Like Walt Whitman’s exclamatory ‘Camerado, I give you my hand!” the[se] poems. . .are an invitation to the reader. Klein finds a vocabulary for a poetics of inclusion. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, she lives in Philadelphia and is a filmmaker.
The reading will also celebrate the Canarium Books publication of Suzanne Buffam’s new book, her second, The Irrationalist; though she won’t be reading. Her first book is Past Imperfect. Among her honors are the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award and the CBC Literary Award for Poetry.
MOE’S BOOKS, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, (510) 849-2087, moesbooks.com.
Parking at the Durant/Channing Garage, close to Telegraph. Channing is one block north.
Poetry Flash: (510) 525-5476.

THURSDAY, MARCH 11, 2010, 7:30
Poetry Flash at Moe’s Books
NIN ANDREWS & SALLY ASHTON
Nin Andrews’ new book of poems is Southern Comfort; Mark Cox says, “Southern Comfort reads like a poetic memoir. . .tinged with awareness of the unspoken—the underlying ambivalence, shame and desperation common to too many of our childhoods. Long time fans of Andrews’ daring and inventive poetry will discover a different side to her aesthetic in this thoroughly compelling and moving book.” Her collection Why They Grow Wings won the Gerald Cable Award; other books of her poetry include Midlife Crisis with Dick and Jane and Sleeping with Houdini. Her poetry and stories have been widely published in literary journals, and her work has been anthologized in The KGB Bar Book of Poems and Best American Poetry 1997, 2001, and 2003.
Sally Ashton is editor of the DMQ Review, an online journal. She is author of the two chapbooks Her Name Is Juanita and These Metallic Days. Her poetry and reviews have been widely published in literary journals as well as in the anthology An Introduction to the Prose Poem. Her first full-length book of poems, Some Odd Afternoon, will be celebrated at this event.
MOE’S BOOKS, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, (510) 849-2087, moesbooks.com.
Parking at the Durant/Channing Garage, close to Telegraph. Channing is one block north.
Poetry Flash: (510) 525-5476.

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 2010, 7:30
Poetry Flash at Moe’s Books
A Celebration for VAN GOGH’S EAR, THE LOVE EDITION
with editor DAWN-MICHELLE BAUDE &
contributors CHARLES BORKHUIS, JEAN DAY,
JOSEPH LEASE & LAURA MULLEN
Published jointly by French Connection Press (Paris) and Committee on Poetry (New York), Volume Six of Van Gogh’s Ear, an international literary and art journal was edited by Dawn-Michelle Baude, This event celebrates Van Gogh’s Ear: “The Love Edition,” with contributors, poets and writers Charles Borkhuis (Afterimage, from Chax), Jean Day (Enthusiasm: Odes & Otium, from Zephyr), Joseph Lease (Broken World, from Coffee House Press), and Laura Mullen (Murmur, Futurepoem). Editor Dawn-Michelle Baude (Finally: A Calendar, Mindmade) will introduce the readers.
MOE’S BOOKS, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, (510) 849-2087, moesbooks.com.
Parking at the Durant/Channing Garage, close to Telegraph. Channing is one block north. Poetry Flash: (510) 525-5476.

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 2010, 3:00
Poetry Flash at DIESEL, A Bookstore
MOLLY BENDALL, KAREN KEVORKIAN & GAIL WRONSKY
This will be a reading for the exciting new collective, What Books Press.
Molly Bendall has published four books of poems, including Ariadne’s Island and, her newest, Under the Quick. She’s published her translations of the French Surrealist poet Joyce Mansour in many literary journals. Her honors include two Pushcart Prizes and awards from both Poetry Magazine and Denver Quarterly. She’ll be reading from Bling and Fringe (The L.A. Poems), that she co-authored with Gail Wronsky; Gillian Conoley says of it, “In these intensely female, lively luscious songs it’s Collette meets Beyonce meets Lil Mama meets Cixous and in comes Kristeva
. . .and therefore streams continual surprise.”
Karen Kevorkian’s new book is Lizard Dreams; Joshua Kryah says, “Kevorkian finds the extraordinary in patterns of everyday life. . .Intimate, loving, and spare, Lizard Dreams casts the familiar in brilliant luster.” Her first full-length book of poems is White Stucco Black Wing. Her fiction and poetry have been widely published in literary journals and anthologized in the land of wandering and Line Drives. She’s received fellowships from the Djerassi, Ucross, and Wurlitzer foundations and the Millay and McDowell colonies.
Gail Wronsky has published many books of poetry, including Dying for Beauty, a finalist for the Western Arts Federation Poetry Award and her newest, Poems for Infidels. She’s authored, too, the novel The Love-Talkers and Volando Bajito, her translation of the poet Alicia Portnoy. She and Molly Bendall have also co-authored two books of ‘cowgirl’ poetry, as well as Bling and Fringe.
DIESEL, A BOOKSTORE, 5433 College Avenue, Oakland, (510) 653-9965,
dieselbookstore.com. Near Rockridge BART. Poetry Flash: (510) 525-5476.

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 18, 2010, 7:30
Poetry Flash at Moe’s Books
CAMILLE DUNGY & ROBIN EKISS
Camille Dungy’s first book of poems was What to Eat, What to Drink, What to Leave for Poison; Chris Abani says, “The sorrow here is ironic and unsentimental and yet Camille Dungy’s vision is all joy. Even as anti-psalms, these poems are pure transcendence.” She’ll be reading from her brand new book, Suck the Marrow. She has also edited the recently published anthology Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry, collecting 180 poems from 93 African American poets writing on nature, a comprehensive new look both at nature poetry and African American poetics.
Robin Ekiss’s first book of poetry, The Mansion of Happiness, was published toward the end of last year. Eavan Boland says, “These darkly beautiful poems are unswerving in their search for a place where the inner and outer world edit one another. Robin Ekiss writes with force and elegance. The combination makes this book a superb debut.” She is a former Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, and she received a Rona Jaffe Award for Emerging Women Writers.
MOE’S BOOKS, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, (510) 849-2087, moesbooks.com.
Parking at the Durant/Channing Garage, close to Telegraph. Channing is one block north. Poetry Flash: (510) 525-5476.

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 2010, 7:30
Poetry Flash at Moe’s Books
MARY JO BANG & LYN HEJINIAN
Mary Jo Bang’s new book of poems is The Bride of E; Lyn Hejinian says of it, “These are poems of deft invention, explorations into a trove of ready happenstance. . .This a book of darks and delights. It is totally amazing.” This is her sixth book of poems; others include Louise in Love, The Eye Like a Strange Balloon, and her most recent, Elegy, which won the 2007 National Book Critics Circle Award and was named a 2008 New York Times Notable Book.
Lyn Hejinian is one of the founding figures in the Bay Area of what’s come to be known as Language Poetry, a diverse, widely influential, and much celebrated avant-garde movement associated with such phrases as “foregrounding the materiality of language,” and her own associated term “open form.” Her newest book of poetry is Saga/Circus; others of her many books of poetry (or prose poetry) include The Fatalist, A Border Comedy, The Cold of Poetry, The Cell, and My Life. She has co-translated the work of the Russian poet Arkadii Dragomoshchenko and edited The Best American Poetry 2004. Her essays have been collected in The Language of Inquiry; she was the founder and editor of Tuumba Press, co-editor (with Barrett Watten) of Poetics Journal, and is now co-editor of Atelos, which publishes collaborations between poets and artists. Lyn Hejinian is Chair of the Solidarity Allliance at UC-Berkeley, a coalition of workers, staff, students, union reps, and faculty fighting against the privatization of the University of California and fighting for free public higher education.
MOE’S BOOKS, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, (510) 849-2087, moesbooks.com.
Parking at the Durant/Channing Garage, close to Telegraph. Channing is one block north. Poetry Flash: (510) 525-5476.

SUNDAY, JANUARY 31, 2010, 3:00
Poetry Flash at DIESEL, A Bookstore
CHERYL KLEIN & TERRY WOLVERTON
This will be a reading from two new novels.
Cheryl Klein is the author of Lilac Mines, the story of an L.A. lesbian whose lover leaves her, is gay-bashed on the street, and moves to the small town of Lilac Mines in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada looking for a new life. There she confronts a hundred year-old mystery. Her first novel is The Commuters, which won the City Works Press Ben Reitman Award and was published in 2006. Klein directs the California office of Poets & Writers, Inc., and she was co-editor of the online queer fiction magazine Blithe House Quarterly.
Terry Wolverton is a poet, novelist, and a feminist political activist based in Los Angeles. Her new book is the novel The Labrys Reunion, in which the alumnae of a radical women’s institute of the 1970s are forced to face the legacy of their movement when one of the women’s daughters is raped and murdered. Terry Wolverton’s most recent book of poems is Shadow and Praise.
DIESEL, A BOOKSTORE, 5433 College Avenue, Oakland, (510) 653-9965,
dieselbookstore.com. Near Rockridge BART. Poetry Flash: (510) 525-5476.

THURSDAY, JANUARY 21, 2010, 7:30
Poetry Flash at Moe’s Books
BRETT EUGENE RALPH & JASON MORRIS
Brett Eugene Ralph’s first book of poems is Black Sabbatical. Andrew Hudgins says of it,
“. . .the giddy energy of the writing doesn’t exist for its own sake. It’s generated by the poems struggling with endangered and extinct species, ill and abused children, nuclear war, and war unadorned with nuclear weaponry. . .Ralph’s poems are. . .all the more powerful for their complex awareness of how to delight and to instruct are, at the highest level, all the same thing.” Ralph is also a musician who began in punk rock and currently leads a country rock ensemble called Brett Eugene Ralph’s Kentucky Chrome Revue.
Jason Morris grew up in Vermont and now lives in San Francisco, where he edits Big Bell. He’s been widely published in literary journals including Mirage #4 Period(ical), Jacket, TRY!, puppyflowers, and Salt Hill. His new collection of poems, Spirits & Anchors, is forthcoming from Auguste Press.
MOE’S BOOKS, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, (510) 849-2087, moesbooks.com.
Parking at the Durant/Channing Garage, close to Telegraph. Channing is one block north.
Poetry Flash: (510) 525-5476.

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 20, 2010, 7:30
Poetry Flash at Moe’s Books
SHARON DOUBIAGO & MARIA MAZZIOTTI GILLAN
Sharon Doubiago’s Love on the Streets: Selected and New Poems is receiving heartfelt acclaim from journals like Bloomsbury Review, ALA Booklist, and others; here is the LA Weekly: “Her poetry is narrative by nature and epic by intent, and it achieves its state of white-hot imagination because Sharon Doubiago meets life so imaginatively.” And her long-awaited memoir, My Father’s Love: Portrait of the Poet as a Young Girl, has just been published. Among her fourteen books of poetry and prose are the feminist epic Hard Country, South America Mi Hija, and Body & Soul, poetry books, and two collections of short stories, The Book of Seeing With One’s Own Eyes and El Niño.
Maria Mazziotti Gillan’s most recent book of poems is All That Lies Between Us; Diane di Prima says of it, “These poems are powerful in their honesty, their passion and their grief. They take us deep into the labyrinth of our humanity and---in the face of loss and death---show us the paradox of love in the center of our being.” The founder and the Executive Director of the Poetry Center at Passaic County Community College in Paterson, New Jersey, she has published many books of poems, including Things My Mother Told Me and Italian Women in Black Dresses. She is also co-editor, with her daughter Jennifer, of three anthologies of multicultural writing, Unsettling America, Identity Lessons, and Growing Up Ethnic in America. Also, with her daughter and Edvige Giunta, she has edited Italian American Writers in New Jersey; she’s editor, as well, of the Paterson Literary Review.
MOE’S BOOKS, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, (510) 849-2087, moesbooks.com.
Parking at the Durant/Channing Garage, close to Telegraph. Channing is one block north.
Poetry Flash: (510) 525-5476.

THURSDAY, JANUARY 14, 2010, 7:30
Poetry Flash at Moe’s Books
WILLIS BARNSTONE & ANDREI CODRESCU
Willis Barnstone is one of America’s foremost poets as well as an astonishingly prolific translator, editor, essayist, and memoirist. His newest book is his translation of the second volume of the New Testament (his translation of the first volume was published as The New Covenant); others of the authors he’s translated include Sappho, Rilke, Antonio Machado, and Mao Tse-tung. His latest book of poems is Life Watch; earlier collections include The Algebra of Night: New and Selected Poems (1948-1998) and The Secret Reader 501 Sonnets.
Andrei Codrescu is famous nationally as an ironic, razor-sharp commentator for NPR; he’s a poet, novelist, essayist, and editor of Exquisite Corpse: a Journal of Letters & Life. His new book of poems is Jealous Witness, an homage to New Orleans, Katrina, and the process of recuperation, whose centerpiece is a series of poems called “Maelstrom: Songs of Storm & Exile” that’s performed on a CD that accompanies the collection by the New Orleans Klezmer Allstars. Born Jewish in Sibiu, Romania in 1946, Codrescu, like Barnstone, has a miles-long literary bio; to mention just a few of his poetry books: he co-authored Forgiven Submarine with Romanian poet Ruxandra Cesereanu; It Was Today was named a best poetry book of 2003 by Library Journal; the titles also include Alien Candor, Belligerence, Comrade Past & Mister Present: New Poems and a Journal. Among his honors are the Romanian Literature Prize, the ACLU Freedom of Speech Award, and the Ovidius Prize.
MOE’S BOOKS, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, (510) 849-2087, moesbooks.com.
Parking at the Durant/Channing Garage, close to Telegraph. Channing is one block north.
Poetry Flash: (510) 525-5476.

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 11, 2009, 7:15
Poetry Flash at Berkeley Art Center Special Holiday Event
JOHN BALABAN & CHANA BLOCH
A very special holiday reading in a beautiful art gallery set in Live Oak Park, two blocks from Peet’s Coffee and Tea in North Berkeley, featuring John Balaban and Chana Bloch.
These two celebrated poets and translators will be reading some of both.
John Balaban’s latest book of poems is Path, Crooked Path. Among his other books of poems, Words for My Daughter was a Lamont Poetry Selection and Locusts at the Edge of Summer, New and Selected Poems won the Poetry Society of America’s William Carlos Williams Award. He’s the author of the memoir Remembering Heaven’s Face: A Story of Rescue in Wartime Vietnam, and his translations from the Vietnamese include Spring Essence, The Poetry of Ho Xuan Huong and Ca Dao Vietnam: Vietnamese Folk Poetry. Balaban has twice been nominated for the National Book Award.
Chana Bloch’s latest book of poems, her fourth, is Blood Honey; Jane Hirshfield says, “Chana Bloch’s poems carry their reader into a hard-won, music-ripened wisdom.” Among her three previous collections is Mrs. Dumpty, which received the Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry. Among her translations from the Hebrew are Hovering at a Low Altitude: The Collected Poetry of Dahlia Ravikovitch, The Song of Songs, The Selected Poetry of Yehuda Amichai, and his Open Closed Open, which won the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation.
$5 donation/BAC members free, no one turned away!
BERKELEY ART CENTER, 1275 Walnut Street, in Live Oak Park, Berkeley, (510) 644-6893, www.berkeleyartcenter.org. Poetry Flash: (510) 525-5476.

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2009, 7:30
Poetry Flash at Moe’s Books
TONY BARNSTONE & TIFFANY HIGGINS
with guitarist MOISES NASCIMENTO
Tony Barnstone’s newest book of poems, Tongue of War, a series of dramatic monologues set in the Pacific in World War II, won the John Ciardi Prize in Poetry. His previous collection, The Golem of Los Angeles, won the Benjamin Saltman Award in Poetry. A translator and a critic, as well, with many books and publications to his credit, his honors include an NEA Fellowship and a Pushcart Prize, among many others.
Tiffany Higgins’s first book of poems, and Aeneas stares into her helmet, won the 2008 Carolina Wren Press Poetry Contest; Patrick Herron says of it, “Tiffany Higgins’ anachronistic and recast hero is one brilliantly charged nexus of exploitation and war; she is captured, tortured, and released as a sequence of heartbreaking lyrics. A stunning book.” Her poetry, critical essays, and her translation of the poetry of the Lebanese writer Nadia Taéni from the French, have been widely published in literary journals, including Poetry Flash.
MOE’S BOOKS, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, (510) 849-2087, moesbooks.com.
Parking at the Durant/Channing Garage, close to Telegraph. Channing is one block north.
Poetry Flash: (510) 525-5476.

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2009, 7:30
Poetry Flash & Moe’s Books co-present a reading & book launch
STEPHEN KESSLER & KATHLEEN WEAVER
Stephen Kessler is a poet, translator, and critic; his newest volume of translation is Desolation of the Chimera, by Luis Cernuda, what amounts to a last poetic testament from one of the great poets of Spain’s “Generation of 1927.” Among the other authors that Kessler has translated are Vicente Aleixandre, Julio Cortázar, Fernando Alegría, Pablo Neruda, and Raymond Queneau. He has published three books of his own poetry, Burning Daylight, Tell It to the Rabbis, and After Modigliani, and the book of essays Moving Targets: On Poetry, Poets & Translation. He also edits The Redwood Coast Review.
Kathleen Weaver’s new book is Peruvian Rebel, The World of Magda Portal, with a Selection of Her Poems. Portal (1900-1989) was a tireless fighter for women’s rights and for social justice in Peru, often in exile in various Latin American nations, underground in Peru, or in prison; this pioneer Latin American feminist was also an acclaimed poet by the age of twenty-three and struggled throughout her life to balance her art and her politics. Weaver has translated four books from Spanish, including Omar Cabezas’s Fire from the Mountain, with an introduction by Carlos Fuentes; and Julio Cortázar’s Nicaraguan Sketches. She has also co-edited The Other Voice: Twentieth-Century Women’s Poetry in Translation and The Penguin Book of Women Poets.
MOE’S BOOKS, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, (510) 849-2087, moesbooks.com.
Parking at the Durant/Channing Garage, close to Telegraph. Channing is one block north.
Poetry Flash: (510) 525-5476.

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 2009, 7:30
Poetry Flash at Moe’s Books
FRESH INK WRITERS WORKSHOP READING
featuring Adam David Miller, Barbara Minton, Mary Milton,
Julian Waller, Ellen Levin, Chantal Guillemin, Rita Flores Bogaert,
Madeline Lacques-Aranda, June Stoddart & David White
This long-running community-based writers group will publish a new anthology of their work this fall. Started by East Bay poet and examiner.com columnist Jannie Dresser, this group has been meeting regularly to workshop their poems since 1989. All of the poets reading are featured in the new anthology.
Adam David Miller is know for both his collections of poetry, including Forever Afternoon, Apocalypse is My Garden, and his coming-of-age memoir, Ticket to Exile, on growing up in the “Jim Crow” South. Ticket to Exile was nominated for the Northern California Book Award in Creative Nonfiction.
MOE’S BOOKS, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, (510) 849-2087, moesbooks.com.
Parking at the Durant/Channing Garage, close to Telegraph. Channing is one block north.
Poetry Flash: (510) 525-5476.

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 2009, 3:00
Poetry Flash at DIESEL, A Bookstore
MARILYN KALLET & SUSAN COHEN
Marilyn Kallet’s latest book of poems is Packing Light, a new and selected; X.J. Kennedy says, “Marilyn Kallet writes with candor, infectious humor, and verve. Her poems keep delivering enjoyable jolts that you don’t see coming. . .an immensely skilled crafter of fat-free free verse.” Marilyn Kallet is the author of fourteen books, including the book of poems Circe After Hours, Last Love Poems of Paul Eluard, translation; The Movable Nest: A Mother/ Daughter Companion, which she co-edited; and Sleeping With One Eye Open: Women Writers and the Art of Survival.
Susan Cohen’s new poetry book is Finding the Sweet Spot; Molly Fisk enthuses, “Susan Cohen’s poems praise the world in all directions, from the autistic boy who sings to a canyon at four in the morning to the huge flock of crows whose ruckus ‘saws into our sleep.’Cohen’s words are well-earned, they sear us with a fierce joy.” An earlier collection, Backstroking, was a winner of the Acorn-Rukeyser Chapbook Award. She has had a long, varied career as a journalist, for the San Jose Mercury News, as a freelancer, a faculty member of the Graduate School of Journalism, and other positions, with a special interest in science, health, and ethics questions. She is co-author of the new book Normal at Any Cost: Tall Girls, Short Boys, and the Medical Industry’s Quest to Manipulate Height.
DIESEL, A BOOKSTORE, 5433 College Avenue, Oakland, (510) 653-9965, dieselbookstore.com. Near Rockridge BART. Poetry Flash: (510) 525-5476.

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 2009, 7:30
Poetry Flash at Moe’s Books
BARBARA CLAIRE FREEMAN & ENDI BOGUE HARTIGAN
Barbara Claire Freeman’s first book of poems is Incivilities, which Judith Butler calls, “Insistent scraps of language pushed beyond the possibility of narrative sequence by forms of destruction.” Her book links poetic subjectivity with the exploration of key moments in U.S. history, linking, then, the personal and the political. Barbara Claire Freeman is a literary critic and teacher of literature who has recently turned her full attention to the writing of poetry. She is the author of The Feminine Sublime: Gender and Excess in Women’s Fiction. Widely published in literary journals, her honors include a Boston Review/Discovery Prize and the Language Exchange Poetry Prize from Sarah Lawrence College.
Endi Bogue Hartigan’s first books of poems, One Sun Storm, was the winner of the 2008 Colorado Prize for Poetry, selected by Martha Ronk, who says of it, “. . .not a mere collection, but a total project in which each poem is part of the whole. The passing by of the pieces of this created world engenders gratitude and awe.” A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Hartigan cofounded and, for several years, edited Spectaculum, a magazine devoted to long poems and poetry sequences.
MOE’S BOOKS, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, (510) 849-2087, moesbooks.com.
Parking at the Durant/Channing Garage, close to Telegraph. Channing is one block north.
Poetry Flash: (510) 525-5476.

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 25, 2009, 7:30
Poetry Flash at Moe’s Books
JENNIFER K. SWEENEY & PATTI TRIMBLE
Jennifer K. Sweeney’s second book of poems, How to Live on Bread and Music, has won this year’s James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets, selected by Robin Becker, Bob Hicok, and Afaa M. Weaver; the award is for the best second book of poems published by an American poet in the previous year. Afaa M. Weaver says that the book “is a remarkable achievement from the hand of a poet with a subtle and compassionate mindfulness. These are poems that tell us we move forward in moments when motion seems all too risky and stillness all too intolerable.” Jennifer Sweeney’s first book of poems, Salt Memory, won the Main Street Rag Poetry Award in 2006. After living for twelve years in San Francisco, she’s moved to Kalamazoo where she serves as Assistant Editor for DMQ Review.
Patti Trimble is a published poet and performance poet who has presented her work in the U.S. and Europe. The co-founder and featured reader for the last ten years for the Tuolumne Poetry Festival at Yosemite National Park, she works as a freelance writer and editor, and has written award-winning readers for children. She is currently preparing Voices of the River, a community-wide creative project to debut in spring 2010. The project inspires and collects poems, prose, and paintings from the community to inform architects of the restored pathways along the Petaluma River north of the Bay Area. Also known as a painter, she is writing “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice: notes from a studio assistant,” a collection of lyric essays and prose poems based on her work as a studio assistant in New York to four first-generation abstract expressionist painters.
MOE’S BOOKS, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, (510) 849-2087, moesbooks.com.
Parking at the Durant/Channing Garage, close to Telegraph. Channing is one block north.
Poetry Flash: (510) 525-5476.

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 11, 2009, 3:00
Poetry Flash at DIESEL, A Bookstore
ALISON HAWTHORNE DEMING & ANN FISHER-WIRTH
Alison Hawthorne Deming’s new book of poems, her fourth, is Rope. Her first book of poems, Science and Other Poems, won the 1993 Walt Whitman Award, selected by Gerald Stern, who says of it, “I greatly admire Alison Deming’s lucid and precise language, her stunning metaphors, her passion, her wild and generous spirit, her humor, her formal cunning; I am taken, as all readers will be, by the knowledge she displays and how she puts this knowledge to poetic use.” Temporary Homelands is one of her three books of essays.
Ann Fisher-Wirth’s new book of poems is Carta Marina; Carolyn Forché says of it, “. . . at once a lyric triptych of searing beauty and an absorbing novella that turns upon a disclosed secret from a woman’s life. The poet becomes a cartographer of the heart as she moves through a year’s sojourn in Sweden, lighting candles in her own darkness.” Ann Fisher-Wirth’s two previous books of poems are Blue Window and Terraces. Among her honors are a Rita Dove Poetry Award and two Poetry Fellowships from the Mississippi Arts Commission.
DIESEL, A BOOKSTORE, 5433 College Avenue, Oakland, (510) 653-9965, dieselbookstore.com. Near Rockridge BART. Poetry Flash: (510) 525-5476.

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 8, 2009, 7:30
Poetry Flash at Moe’s Books
ROSE BLACK, RAFAELLA DEL BOURGO & JOSEPH ZACCARDI
Rose Black’s new book of poems is Winter Light. David St. John says of it, “Rose Black is a remarkable and heartbreaking poet. Her meditations on the passages of experience and the psychological resonances of childhood are compelling and powerful. . .” Her first book of poems is Clearing; both books are prose poetry, her chosen form.
Rafaella Del Bourgo is the author of I Am Not Kissing You. Among her honors are the Lullwater Prize for Poetry in 2003 and a New River Poets Award in 2006. She has been widely published in literary magazines.
Joseph Zaccardi’s latest book of poems is Render. James Downs has said of it, “. . .dig into the earth. . .reach sky. . .hands into the soil of the world. . .buddhist sensibility. . .the love comes through.” Joseph Zaccardi is the Associate Editor of the Marin Poetry Center Anthology. He teaches Transformations: A Poetry Tutorial and volunteers at a San Rafael Convalescent Hospital to read poetry and listen to the residents on a one-on-one basis. His poems have appeared in Poet Lore, Runes, Seattle Review, Southern Poetry Review, and elsewhere. He received a grant from the Marin Arts Council in 2003 for his first book, Vents (2005).
MOE’S BOOKS, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, (510) 849-2087, moesbooks.com.
Parking at the Durant/Channing Garage, close to Telegraph. Channing is one block north.
Poetry Flash: (510) 525-5476.

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 1, 2009, 7:30
Poetry Flash at Moe’s Books
DENISE NEWMAN & SANDRA STONE
Denise Newman’s new book of poems is Wild Goods; Liz Waldner praises it: “Speculative, tender, droll, fierce, attentive, intelligent, precise, aware, deft, tough, and contemplative, it’s poetry that makes Flannery O’Connor’s tenet, the imagination is a moral faculty, sing awake.” Denise Newman’s first book of poems is The Human Forest. She is also the translator of Danish poet Inger Christensen’s The Painted Room.
Sandra Stone’s first book of poems, Cocktails with Breughel at the Museum Café, won the Cleveland State University Poetry Center Award. A subtle, edgy writer whose language is syntactical and representational, in its dreamy, slippery fashion, and yet folds musically back on itself. She won the 2007 Dana Award in Poetry for her cycle of poems, “A Comparison of Silt,” and she was honored with a fellowship from Oregon Literary Arts for her short fictions.
MOE’S BOOKS, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, (510) 849-2087, moesbooks.com.
Parking at the Durant/Channing Garage, close to Telegraph. Channing is one block north.
Poetry Flash: (510) 525-5476.

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 2009, Noon-4:00
WATERSHED ENVIRONMENTAL POETRY FESTIVAL
Robert Hass, Arthur Sze, David Mas Masumoto, Marilyn Chin, Kim Addonizio, Joseph Stroud, Carol Moldaw, Chris Olander & more, “We Are Nature” open mic, California Poets in the Schools, River of Words, Poetry Inside Out K-12 student poets, River Village, music by Barry Finnerty’s Jazz Roots Trio & more
To enter the Open Mic drawing for five three-minute slots, see the info table at the festival by noon. To exhibit, e-mail: mbb -at- poetryflash.org.
Watershed is presented alongside the Berkeley Farmers’ Market, near Berkeley BART,
Civic Center Park, downtown Berkeley

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 2009, 3:00
Poetry Flash at DIESEL, A Bookstore
JENNY BROWNE & CHERYL DUMESNIL
Jenny Browne’s most recent book of poems, her third, is The Second Reason; Nick Flynn says of it, “. . .wild and beautiful and surprising. In this poet’s hands the seeming mundane is transformed into the nearly sacred, the elemental reveals its inner mysteries, and scraps of overheard language dissolve into song.” Her two previous books are At Once and Glass. She is also the editor of Provide and Protect, Writers on Planned and Unplanned Parenthood. She’s a former Michener Fellow at the University of Texas at Austin.
Cheryl Dumesnil’s first book of poems, In Praise of Falling, is the winner of the 2008 Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize from the University of Pittsburgh Press. Michael Waters says of it, “Cheryl Dumesnil passionately and at times irreverently approaches the consequences of desire. . .a debut of extraordinary transparency and generosity.” She is the editor of Hitched! Wedding Stories from San Francisco City Hall and co-editor of Dorothy Parker’s Elbow: Tattoos on Writers, Writers on Tattoos.
DIESEL, A BOOKSTORE, 5433 College Avenue, Oakland, (510) 653-9965, dieselbookstore.com. Near Rockridge BART. Poetry Flash: (510) 525-5476.

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 2009, 7:30
Poetry Flash at Moe’s Books
Anthology Reading for
Beyond Forgetting: Poetry and Prose about Alzheimer’s Disease
featuring contributors
DAN BELLM, PERSIS KNOBBE, SYBIL LOCKHART, TIM MYERS,
PETER SEIDMAN, ANDRENA ZAWINSKI & MARY ZEPPA
& editor HOLLY J. HUGHES
Beyond Forgetting is an unusual collection of poetry and short prose about Alzheimer’s disease with contributions from one hundred contemporary writers whose lives have been touched by the disease. Edited by Holly J. Hughes, who will read and discuss the anthology at this event, with a moving foreword by poet Tess Gallagher. From the book, “This anthology forms a richly textured literary portrait encompassing the full range of the experience of caring do someone with Alzheimer’s disease. Because the writers share their personal stories as well as their poems and prose, this collection will be a valuable companion to anyone embarking on this difficult journey. In their honest, deeply moving, and compassionate portrayals, the voices collected here help illumine the darkness of this passage and help us see, as one of the contributors put it, the unlikely light shining deep within it.”
San Francisco poet Dan Bellm’s new collection is Practice; his previous books are One Hand on the Wheel and Buried Treasure. The July/August 2009 issue of the American Poetry Review features his translations of the French poet, Pierre Reverdy. His translations from Spanish have appeared in Poetry, Ploughshares, The Threepenny Review, and The Village Voice.
Holly J. Hughes’s chapbook is Boxing the Compass (2007), and her poems and essays have appeared in a number of literary journals and athologies, including Dancing with Joy: 99 Poems. A graduate of the MFA program at Pacific Lutheran University, she teaches writing at Edmonds Community College in Washington, where she codirects the Convergence Writers Series.
Persis Knobbe is the author of the story collection, Here I Am, winner of an Oakland PEN Award. She writes periodically for the San Francisco Chronicle about her husband’s journey through Alzheimer’s.
Sybil Lockhart is a neurobiologist who writes and edits science and and creative nonfiction in Berkeley. Her columns appear in Literary Mama Magazine online, and her memoir, Mother in the Middle: A Biologist’s Story of Caring for Parent and Child was published this year.
Tim Myers is a writer, songwriter, and storyteller, as well as a lecturer at Santa Clara University. He is the author of a poetry chapbook, That Mass at Which the Tongue is Celebrant, and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
Berkeley writer Peter Seidman retired several years ago as a teacher, program manager, and editor to write poetry and feed hungry street folk.
Andrena Zawinski is the author of the forthcoming full-length collection Something About. Her previous works include Traveling in Reflected Light and the Pudding House chapbook Greatest Hits 1991-2001. Her recent work has appeared in The Progressive Magazine, Psychological Perspectives Journal of Jungian Thought, and Pacific Review. She founded and runs a Women’s Poetry Potluck and Salon and is features editor at PoetryMagazine.com.
Mary Zeppa is the author of two chapbooks, Little Ship of Blessing and The Battered Bride Overture. She was a founding editor of The Tule Review and a coeditor of Poet News. She received a 2008 Resident Fellowship from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and lives in Sacramento.
MOE’S BOOKS, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, (510) 849-2087, moesbooks.com.
Parking at the Durant/Channing Garage, close to Telegraph. Channing is one block north.
Poetry Flash: (510) 525-5476.

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 2009, 7:30
Poetry Flash at Moe’s Books
C.S. GISCOMBE & KIT ROBINSON
C.S. Giscombe’s new book of poems is Prairie Style. Marjorie Perloff says of it, “In a series of dense, aphoristic, interrelated meditations, Giscombe unearths a unique ‘Afro-Prairie’ world of love and loss. Inland’s what I can memorize and recite, the poet tells us. This is a haunting and beautiful book.” His other books of poetry include Postcards, Here, and Giscombe Road; he’s also published a book of essays, Into and Out of Dislocation. His work has appeared in Best American Poetry and the Pushcart Prize anthologies.
Kit Robinson’s new book is The Messianic Trees, his selected poems. Tom Raworth praises it, “The Messianic Trees (organ cue) is a xylophone for the soul, the music as he passes poems that refresh eye and mind and shift for a second glance.” One of the core members of Bay Area literary renaissance and Language movements, Robinson performed with San Francisco Poets Theater and produced “In the American Tree: New Writing by Poets,” a weekly radio program of live readings and interviews with co-host Lyn Hejinian on KPFA in Berkeley. He’s published seventeen books of poetry, and his honors include a Fund for Poetry Prize and an NEA fellowship.
MOE’S BOOKS, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, (510) 849-2087, moesbooks.com.
Parking at the Durant/Channing Garage, close to Telegraph. Channing is one block north.
Poetry Flash: (510) 525-5476.

SUNDAY, AUGUST 2, 2009, 3:00
Poetry Flash at DIESEL, A Bookstore
LUCILLE LANG DAY & ROZ SPAFFORD
Lucille Lang Day’s new book of poems is The Curvature of Blue; Alicia Ostriker enthuses about it, “Intelligence enjoying itself, awareness at play, attentiveness dancing through life’s minefields smiling at itself in its new black car. . . a wonderful book and I feel lucky to have read it.” Lucille Day has published four previous books of poetry, including Infinities, Wild One, and Self-Portrait with a Hand Microscope, her first, for which she won the Joseph Henry Jackson Award. She is the founder and director of Scarlet Tanager Books, a literary press in the Bay Area.
Roz Spafford’s new book of poems is Requiem, winner of the 2008 Gell Poetry Prize, with a foreword by Carl Dennis: “All the poems in Requiem may be read as attempts to confront the presence of death in our lives . . .What is remarkable about this steady focus, which offers no easy consolations, is that it leads to a book that is more challenging than it is querulous or elegiac. . .a book that confronts our limitations in a way that makes us feel larger rather than diminished.” Roz Spafford has been a writer, teacher, and activist for the last three decades. She wrote book reviews and a newspaper column of media and cultural criticism called “Mediations” for much of that time. Her poetry and fiction have been widely published in literary magazines.
DIESEL, A BOOKSTORE, 5433 College Avenue, Oakland, (510) 653-9965, dieselbookstore.com. Near Rockridge BART. Poetry Flash: (510) 525-5476.

THURSDAY, JULY 23, 2009, 7:30
Poetry Flash at Moe’s Books
BRENDAN CONSTANTINE, STEVEN ROOD
& CATHIE SANDSTROM
Brendan Constantine’s new book of poetry is Letters to Guns. Terrance Hayes muses about it, “In the hands of Brendan Constantine poetry is a weapon. That much is obvious. But one never knows, his poems will explode with bullets or flowers because Constantine is both guerrilla fighter and beguiling jester.” Also the author of Zombie Dovecote and Crimewave, he’s an electric performer of his imaginative work.
Steven Rood is a Berkeley poet and attorney active in Bay Area literary organizations. Fluent and moving as a poet and writer, for many years he has attended a workshop begun by the legendary poet Jack Gilbert.
Cathie Sandstrom was recently honored as an emerging poet at the annual LA Poetry Festival and Beyond Baroque Literary/Arts Center event at the Los Angeles Central Library. Her work has appeared in literary magazines including Solo, Cider Press Review, Runes, and Ploughshares, and the anthologies Matchbook, So Luminous the Wildflowers, and Open Windows. She was twice winner of the Arroyo Arts Collective’s “Poetry in the Windows,” sponsored by the Lannan Foundation.
MOE’S BOOKS, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, (510) 849-2087, moesbooks.com.
Parking at the Durant/Channing Garage, close to Telegraph. Channing is one block north.
Poetry Flash: (510) 525-5476.

SUNDAY, JULY 5, 2009, 3:00
Poetry Flash at DIESEL, A Bookstore
CHARLES ENTREKIN & MARY MACKEY
Charles Entrekin’s new book is a novel, his first, Red Mountain. Alicia Ostriker says of the book, set in Birmingham, Alabama in 1965, “Reading this novel, you will feel it as if it were your own life, your own wounds, being lifted up from the well of memory.” Entrekin was born and raised in Birmingham, Alabama. A resident of northern California for more than thirty years, he is also a poet and the author of several collections, including Casting for the Cutthroat. For two decades he was managing editor of Berkeley Poets Workshop & Press; currently he is managing editor of Hip Pocket Press. Charles Entrekin will also be reading from new poems.
Mary Mackey is a much-published and acclaimed novelist and poet. Her most recent novel, her eighth, is The Notorious Mrs. Winston, a love story set in the American Civil War; her forthcoming novel is The Widow’s War. Her latest book of poetry is Breaking the Fever. She is also the author of several film scripts, including the award-winning feature Silence, and she is a former president of the West Coast branch of PEN.
DIESEL, A BOOKSTORE, 5433 College Avenue, Oakland, (510) 653-9965, dieselbookstore.com. Near Rockridge BART. Poetry Flash: (510) 525-5476.

THURSDAY, JUNE 18, 2009, 7:30
Poetry Flash at Moe’s Books
CYNTHIA KRAMAN & EMILY WARN
Cynthia Kraman’s long awaited book of poems from Bob Holman’s Bowery Books is The Touch. Marie Ponsot calls it: “Rich, lyrical, sharp, a big world well perceived, Cynthia Kraman’s poems are alive with real ideas. Reading them sent me to e-mailing friends to say what I now say, to you, ‘You have to read this,’” She’s published three previous collections, Taking on the Local Color, Club 82, and The Mexican Murals. She’s been widely published in literary journals and anthologized in Ordinary Women, New York Women, and Bowery Women: Poems. Also a prose writer and a playwright, her career spans the dizzying gap from lead singer/lyricist with the Seattle punk rock band Chinas Comidas to a Ph.D. in Medieval Literature and her study of the French Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas.
Emily Warn’s new book of poems is Shadow Architect. Publishers Weekly says, “Warn’s clear, inviting lines draw on the shapes of the [Hebrew] letters, [she] has created a serious meditation on Jewish prayer and cosmogony in lyrical prose and in accessible verse, a book that belongs not only on poetry shelves, but amid other Judaica and books of prose and verse on religious themes.” Author of two previous books of poems, Emily Warn is a former Stegner Fellow at Stanford University. She has divided her time between Seattle and Chicago, where she was the Webby Award-winning editor for PoetryFoundation.org.
MOE’S BOOKS, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, (510) 849-2087, moesbooks.com. Parking at the Durant/Channing Garage, close to Telegraph. Channing is one block north.
Poetry Flash: (510) 525-5476.

SUNDAY, JUNE 7, 2009, 3:00
Poetry Flash at DIESEL, A Bookstore
A READING FOR
LYRIC POSTMODERNISMS: AN ANTHOLOGY
OF CONTEMPORARY INNOVATIVE POETRIES
featuring contributors
GILLIAN CONOLEY, C.S. GISCOMBE,
AARON SHURIN, & CAROL SNOW
The late poet Reginald Shepherd edited this rich collection from Counterpath,
Lyric Postmodernisms: An Anthology of Contemporary Innovative Poetries, with an aim towards depth and variety. There are twenty-three poets represented, spanning two generations, with some publishing since the 1960s, in a wide range of poetics. Each poet is given space for a poetics statement, sections of longer poems and uncollected work, as well as signature pieces. Publishers Weekly says: “These poems by Peter Gizzi, Brenda Hillman, Nathaniel Mackey, Martha Ronk, and Marjorie Welish, among others, ask questions like what is poetry, a looking out or a looking in? This will be a helpful anthology for readers and students looking to orient themselves toward this vital American tradition.”
DIESEL, A BOOKSTORE, 5433 College Avenue, Oakland, (510) 653-9965,
dieselbookstore.com. Near Rockridge BART. Poetry Flash: (510) 525-5476.

THURSDAY, MAY 28, 2009, 7:30
Poetry Flash at Moe’s Books
STEVEN NIGHTINGALE
Steven Nightingale’s new book of poetry is Cinnamon Theologies, a collection of reënvisioned sonnets from The Black Rock Press, University of Nevada; he also has two previously published collections of sonnets. “Steven Nightingale is faithful to his name, being the invisible singer of sonnets disguised in form but overheard as a master should be. He addresses the world. Steven is a throwback to art with the morning air of reality.”—Willis Barnstone. Steven Nightingale is also the author of two novels, The Lost Coast and The Thirteenth Daughter of the Moon. “Nightingale’s novel [The Lost Coast] takes us through erotic peregrinations in a parallel universe to our own. . .a delicious book.”—Diane Middlebrook.
MOE’S BOOKS, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, (510) 849-2087, moesbooks.com.
Parking at the Durant/Channing Garage, close to Telegraph. Channing is one block north.
Poetry Flash: (510) 525-5476.

THURSDAY, MAY 21, 2009, 7:30
Poetry Flash at Moe’s Books
Red Hen Press Reading:
TIMOTHY GREEN & JOEL BARRAQUIEL TAN
Timothy Green’s first full-length book of poems is American Fractal; Denise Duhamel says, “The poems in Timothy Green’s American Fractal find love within love; landscape within landscape; the ‘I’ and ‘you’ nestled within the bigger ‘I’ and ‘you’. Unpredictable, uproarious, and true to the wonder of the moment. . .“ He’s the editor of RATTLE magazine, and he’s been nominated for Pushcart Prizes and the Rhysling Award; an earlier version of his book was a finalist for the New
Issues Poetry Prize.
Joël Barraquiel Tan’s new book of poems is Type O Negative; Marianne Villanueva calls it, “A narrative of pain and loss, a memory piece of such raw emotion and sadness it will make you weep. Nothing I have read in the past several years comes close to matching Joël Tan in the nightmarish intensity of his vision.” His previous collections include El Canto de Animal and Monster. Among his honors are grants from the NEA, California Council for the Humanities, and San Francisco Arts Commission, and a fall 2004 Best Poem Prize from Spoon River Review. He’s worked extensively in HIV prevention, and he’s the Director of Community Engagement at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco.
MOE’S BOOKS, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, (510) 849-2087, moesbooks.com.
Parking at the Durant/Channing Garage, close to Telegraph. Channing is one block north.
Poetry Flash: (510) 525-5476.

THURSDAY, MAY 7, 2009, 7:30
Poetry Flash at Moe’s Books
CHAD SWEENEY & FARRAH FIELD
Chad Sweeney’s new book of poems is Arranging the Blaze. He’s also the author of Parable of Hide and Seek, runner up for the Beatrice Hawley Award, forthcoming in 2010. Sharon Doubiago says of Arranging the Blaze, “I am entralled by Chad Sweeney’s exquisite poems. Philosphical, exploratory in the way the mind naturally wanders—gentle, humorous, of history and time and geography, human tragedy and joy too. And, there are stunning love poems.” His books of poems include An Architecture and A Mirror to Shatter the Hammer, a chapbook. He edited the anthology Days I Moved Through Ordinary Sounds, poetry, fiction, and memoir by members of the national WritersCorps. His work has appeared in Best American Poetry, Crazyhorse, New American Writing, Colorado Review, Black Warrior, Runes, Verse, Volt, Barrow Street, American Letters & Commentary, and elsewhere. He is co-editor of Parthenon West Review and is working toward a Ph.D. in literature at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, where he teaches poetry and serves as assistant editor of New Issues Press.
Farrah Field’s first book of poems, Rising, is the winner of the Levis Prize, judged by Tony Hoagland, who says of it, “These poems possess a wonderful combination of irony and soul, satire and vulnerability, which shines a warmly human light.” She has been widely published in such literary journals Margie, Chelsea, Massachusetts Review, Mississippi Review, Pool, and Typo. “Farrah Field is a slinger of the colloquial phrase, the slangy, side-of-the-mouth aphorismcryptic and in your face, her voice is flavored by a Southern regionalism, but the country manners are deployed at a metropolitan speed. So the best of her poems represent, perhaps, the hybrid dilemma of an inside-outsider, who isn’t sure how much of her belongs to any tribe.” —Tony Hoagland.
MOE’S BOOKS, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, (510) 849-2087, moesbooks.com.
Parking at the Durant/Channing Garage, close to Telegraph. Channing is one block north.
Poetry Flash: (510) 525-5476.

SUNDAY, MAY 3, 2009, 3:00
Poetry Flash at DIESEL, A Bookstore
CAROL MOLDAW, JULIA B. LEVINE & RUTH L. SCHWARTZ
Carol Moldaw’s new book, The Widening, calls itself a “lyric novel” and is written throughout in numbered, prose poem-size sections. Rikki Ducornet says of it, “In this irresistible evocation of an erotic life, Carol Moldaw’s juvenile lead—impetuous, unbridled, unexpectedly funny and self-deceiving—is always wildly interesting. I dearly love this book.” Carol Moldaw has published four books of poetry, including The Lightning Field, which won the 2002 FIELD Poetry Prize. Among her honors are a Lannan Foundation Marfa Writer’s Residency, a Pushcart Prize, and an NEA Fellowship.
Julia B. Levine’s new book is Ditch-tender. Dennis Schmitz calls it “a book of longings and healings. Julia Levine doesn’t conjure as much as coax the magic to happen by itself. The poems lift and move us in currents—shifts, insinuations and splendid runs, delicate textures, depths.” Among her other honors are a Discovery/The Nation Award for Emerging New Writers and the Pablo Neruda Prize. Her previous books include Practicing for Heaven, winner of the 1998 Anhinga Prize for Poetry, and Ask, winner of the 2002 Tampa Review Prize for Poetry.
Ruth L. Schwartz has published three books of poetry: Edgewater, selected by Jane Hirshfield for the National Poetry Series 2001; Singular Bodies, winner of the 2000 Anhinga Prize for Poetry; Accordion Breathing and Dancing, winner of the 1994 Associated Writing Programs Award. She’s also published a book of memoir, Death in Reverse: A Love Story. She has won over a dozen national literary prizes, including two Nimrod/Pablo Neruda Awards, New Letters Prize in Poetry, and two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts. Jane Hirshfield says of Edgewater, “Ruth L. Schwartz writes with consummate passion, precision, and honesty of the raw hungers that give rise to the world&she grapples with her twofold, central question: How can we love fully, open-eyed and open-hearted amid all the flaws and beauty, each other and the world? How could we not?”
DIESEL, A BOOKSTORE, 5433 College Avenue, Oakland, (510) 653-9965, dieselbookstore.com. Near Rockridge BART. Poetry Flash: (510) 525-5476.

THURSDAY, APRIL 30, 2009, 7:30
Poetry Flash at Moe’s Books
Sixteen Rivers Press Reading:
LYNNE KNIGHT & CAROLYN MILLER
This reading celebrates two new books from Sixteen Rivers Press.
Lynne Knight’s new book of poems is Again. Grace Schulman says of it, “Her poems are luminous and musical. . .She plumbs the depths of grief and joy, and this reader is with her all the way.” Her two most recent previous collections are The Book of Common Betrayal and Night in the Shape of a Mirror. Her work has appeared in Best American Poetry, and she’s won a Theodore Roethke Award from Poetry Northwest and a Lucille Medwich Memorial Award from Poetry Society of America.
Carolyn Miller’s new book of poems is Light, Moving. Forrest Hamer calls it “an elegant celebration of close attentiveness from a poet ever engaged in and humbled by living. Carolyn Miller’s poems are sensual, care-filled, and shining. . . .” Her previous full-length collection, also from Sixteen Rivers, is After Cocteau. She has received a James Boatwright Award from Shenandoah and the Rainmaker Award from Zone 3.
MOE’S BOOKS, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, (510) 849-2087, moesbooks.com.
Parking at the Durant/Channing Garage, close to Telegraph. Channing is one block north.
Poetry Flash: (510) 525-5476.

THURSDAY, APRIL 16, 2009, 7:30
Poetry Flash at Moe’s Books
JULIE CARR, CAROL SNOW, & BRIAN TEARE
Julie Carr has published two books of poems, Mead: An Epithalamion, and Equivocal; she’s widely published in literary journals and appeared in the anthology Best American Poetry 2007. She is co-publisher of Counterpath Press and teaches English and Creative Writing at the University of Colorado, Boulder.
Carol Snow’s new book of poems is Placed: Karesansui Poems. Cole Swensen says of it, “This delicate, masterful book joins Zukofsky, Waldrop and others in a growing body of work honoring the preposition and the primacy of relationship over objects. . . .” Her three previous books are Artist and Model, chosen by Robert Hass for the National Poetry Series, Fore, and The Seventy Prepositions. She’s collaborated on two text-dance works with choreographer Alex Ketley, Syntax: A Reading Danced and Vessel.
Brian Teare’s new book of poems is Sight Map. D.A. Powell says of his work, “Brian Teare’s poetry is turning the lyric on its ear. No one is safe in any of these poems, in any sense of the word. What a brave new voice, vivid and gutsy and fresh.” A former Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, he won the Brittingham Prize for his first book of poems The Room Where I Was Born.
MOE’S BOOKS, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, (510) 849-2087, moesbooks.com.
Parking at the Durant/Channing Garage, close to Telegraph. Channing is one block north.
Poetry Flash: (510) 525-5476.

SUNDAY, APRIL 5, 2009, 3:00
Poetry Flash at DIESEL, A Bookstore
Poetry Solos, Duos & Three-sided Exchanges:
DIANE di PRIMA, MICHAEL McCLURE & DAVID MELTZER
These are three great poets from the heart of the Beat generation.
Diane di Prima’s Revolutionary Letters, her youthful classic, has been published in a new, expanded edition; other recent publications are the memoir Recollections of My Life as a Woman and a revised, expanded edition of Loba, di Prima's ongoing epic of the wild feminine spirit. Michael McClure, of course, was one of the five readers at the Six Gallery reading where Ginsberg first read “Howl.” Prolific poet, Obie-winning playwright, essayist, and novelist, he continues to publish and to perform, most recently with Big Mix, with Ray Manzarek from the Doors and other musicians. McClure’s most recent poetry books are Rain Mirror and his book of Zen poems Touching the Edge.
David Meltzer is a prolific poet, Kabbalist, and jazz guitarist; among his recent publications are No Eyes: Lester Young, poems from the life of the jazz saxphonist, Beat Thing, poetizing in and around that movement and its times, and David’s Copy: The Selected Poems of David Meltzer.
DIESEL, A BOOKSTORE, 5433 College Avenue, Oakland, (510) 653-9965, dieselbookstore.com. Near Rockridge BART. Poetry Flash: (510) 525-5476.

THURSDAY, MARCH 19, 2009, 7:30
Poetry Flash at Moe’s Books
D.A. POWELL & HUGH BEHM-STEINBERG
D.A. Powell’s new book of poems is Chronic from Graywolf Press; J.D. McClatchy says of it, “Whenever I change the channel to D.A. Powell’s work, there beneath the screen’s headlines runs the simultaneous quicksilver crawl of news from elsewhere: from underneath, behind the scenes, the half-secret places where love is brokered and power is spent. . .Chronic gives us the time of our lives in ways both ardent and exhilarating.” Powell’s previous collections are Tea, Lunch, and Cocktails, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.
Hugh Behm-Steinberg’s book of poems is Shy Green Fields; Jane Miller says his debut volume “. . .is in company with books by poets who wrote about glorious ordinary days in extraordinary times. In a pillowbook of a hundred seven-line poems, this life, as it is written, has the shadow of Robert Creeley’s A Day Book behind it, and the shadow of Federico Lorca in his famous, reiterated line, Green, I love you, green, . . .” A former Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, Hugh Behm-Steinberg has received a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship. He is the editor of the California College of Arts literary journal Eleven Eleven.
MOE’S BOOKS, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, (510) 849-2087, moesbooks.com.
Parking at the Durant/Channing Garage, close to Telegraph. Channing is one block north.
Poetry Flash: (510) 525-5476.

SUNDAY, MARCH 15, 2009, 3:00
Poetry Flash at DIESEL, A Bookstore
ETEL ADNAN, HAYAN CHARARA & FADY JOUDAH
Etel Adnan’s new book, a book-length series of prose poems, is Seasons. Megan Pruiett says of it, “A series of mediations following the sun...Intimate with ephemera, alert to what’s hidden, Seasons seeks the universe within and beyond the spirit’s changeable weather, finding everywhere its center.” Adnan, born to a Greek Christian and a Muslim Syrian father, has published seven books of poetry and the novel Sitt Marie-Rose.
Hayan Charara is the editor of Inclined to Speak, An Anthology of Arab American Poetry which includes Adnan, herself, and such well-known poets as Naomi Shihab Nye, Jack Marshall, Lawrence Joseph, and many others. Charara is a poet himself, author of two poetry books.
Fady Joudah’s first book of poems, The Earth in the Attic, has been chosen by Louise Glück for this year’s Yale Younger Poets selection. In her Foreword to the book she says, “These are small poems, many of them, but the grandeur of conception is inescapable. The Earth in the Attic is varied, coherent, fierce, tender, impossible to put down, impossible to forget.” Joudah, also in Charara’s anthology, is a Palestinian-American medical doctor and a field member of Doctors Without Borders since 2001. He has translated the late Mahmoud Darwish’s poetry in a recently published collection, The Butterfly’s Burden.
DIESEL, A BOOKSTORE, 5433 College Avenue, Oakland, (510) 653-9965, dieselbookstore.com. Near Rockridge BART. Poetry Flash: (510) 525-5476.

THURSDAY, MARCH 12, 2009, 7:30
Poetry Flash at Moe’s Books
DOBBY GIBSON & MATT HART
Dobby Gibson’s new book of poems is Skirmish from Graywolf Press; Tony Hoagland says of it, “This is a poetry of—in Gibson’s own terms—echolocation, that makes us grapple with the ghosts of speech and world at once. The poems of Skirmish are both entertaining and troubling and full of complex contemporary sensibility.” Gibson’s first collection, Polar, was a Beatrice Hawley Award-winner from Alice James Books.
Matt Hart’s full-length collection of poetry is Who’s Who Vivid; he’s also the author of three chapbooks: Revelated, Sonnet, and Simply Rocket. A collaborative chapbook, Deafening Leafening, with poet Ethan Paquin, is forthcoming from Pilot Books. Additionally, his work has appeared in many print and online journals, including Gulf Coast, Harvard Review, Jubilat, and Octopus. He lives and teaches in Cincinnati where he edits Forklift, Ohio: A Journal of Poetry, Cooking, & Light Industrial Safety.
MOE’S BOOKS, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, (510) 849-2087, moesbooks.com.
Parking at the Durant/Channing Garage, close to Telegraph. Channing is one block north.
Poetry Flash: (510) 525-5476.

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 2009, 7:30
Poetry Flash at Moe’s Books
The Wind Shifts: New Latino Poetry ON TOUR
with editor Francisco Aragón
& contributors: John Olivares Espinoza, Venessa Fuentes
Adela Najarro, Paul Martínez Pompa
This reading celebrates The Wind Shifts, the anthology edited by Francisco Aragón with a Foreword by Juan Felipe Herrera, and published by the University of Arizona Press.
Francisco Aragón will be at the reading with four of his exciting contributors flown in as part of a national tour. John Olivares Espinoza’s first full-length book of poetry is The Date Fruit Elegies; he’s appeared in many journals and anthologies, most recently in The Bear Flag Republic: Prose Poems from California. A working member of the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis, Venessa Fuentes has appeared in Between the Heart and the Land/Entre el Corazón y la Tierra: Latina Poets in the Midwest, and other literary journals; she has received the SASE/Jerome Award.
Adela Najarro has appeared in many literary journals, including Crab Orchard Review, Cimarron Review, and Another Chicago Magazine. Paul Martínez Pompa’s first full-length book of poems, While Late Capitalism, was selected by Martín Espada as winner of the 2008 Andres Montoya Poetry Prize and will be published by University of Notre Dame Press in 2009; he is a former editor of Indiana Review. Francisco Aragón is the author of Puerta del Sol; he is currently Director of Letras Latinas, the literary unit of the Institute for Latino Studies at the University of Notre Dame (www.franciscoaragon.net).
MOE’S BOOKS, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, (510) 849-2087, moesbooks.com.
Parking at the Durant/Channing Garage, close to Telegraph. Channing is one block north.
Poetry Flash: (510) 525-5476.

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 2009, 3:00
Poetry Flash at DIESEL, A Bookstore
Scarlet Tanager Press Reading:
MARC HOFSTADTER & ZACK ROGOW
This reading celebrates two new poetry releases from Scarlet Tanager Press.
Zack Rogow’s new book of poems is The Number Before Infinity; Cornelius Eady says of the book, “I was reminded of young Neruda’s love poems: here is that passion, tempered and informed by the briars and grace of marriage and family. Bravo Love, Bravo Poetry.” Zack Rogow is the author, editor, or translator of seventeen books and plays, including six books of poetry, three anthologies, four volumes of translation, and a children’s book.
Marc Hofstadter’s new book of poems is Luck. He’s published three previous books of poems, House of Peace, Visions, and Shark's Tooth. His poems, translations, and essays have been
published in over sixty literary journals, and also in Steeped, an anthology of writings about tea.
DIESEL, A BOOKSTORE, 5433 College Avenue, Oakland, (510) 653-9965, dieselbookstore.com. Near Rockridge BART. Poetry Flash: (510) 525-5476.

SUNDAY, JANUARY 25, 2009, 3:00
Poetry Flash at DIESEL, A Bookstore
JOHN ISLES & RUSTY MORRISON
John Isles’s new book of poems is Inverse Sky; Donald Revell praises it: “The poems of Inverse Sky transpire in a magic climate conducive to old Edens and new evangels. Here are wantonness and water-lights written starkly. And here, too, are tender shades I have not met before, in a further America.” John Isles’s first poetry collection was Ark. He received an NEA fellowship and an award from The Los Angeles Review.
Rusty Morrison’s new book of poems is the true keeps calm biding its story; winner of the 2007 Sawtooth Prize from Ahasahta Press, it was also chosen by Rae Armantrout, Claudia Rankine, and Bruce Smith for the 2008 James Laughlin Award for most outstanding second book of poetry published in America that year. Claudia Rankine says of it, “. . .the poem transforms into a machine for transmitting lines across impossible distances. . . .In the end we, as readers, are left with a stunning collection, written into the silence of everlasting loss.” Her first book, Whethering, won the 2004 Colorado Prize for Poetry, and also received the Poetry Society of America’s Alice Fay di Castagnola Award, among other honors. Rusty Morrison is the co-publisher of Omnidawn.
DIESEL, A BOOKSTORE, 5433 College Avenue, Oakland, (510) 653-9965, dieselbookstore.com. Near Rockridge BART. Poetry Flash: (510) 525-5476.

THURSDAY, JANUARY 22, 2009, 7:30
Poetry Flash at Moe’s Books
SHARON DOUBIAGO & JUDITH ROCHE
Sharon Doubiago’s Love on the Streets: Selected and New Poems has just been published and is receiving heartfelt acclaim from journals like Bloomsbury Review, ALA Booklist, and others; here is the LA Weekly: “Her poetry is narrative by nature and epic by intent, and it achieves its state of white-hot imagination because Sharon Doubiago meets life so imaginatively.” Among her many books of poems are the feminist epic Hard Country, South America Mi Hija, and her most recent, Body & Soul. She’s published two collections of short stories, The Book of Seeing With One’s Own Eyes and El Niño. Her long-awaited memoir, My Father’s Love, is forthcoming.
Judith Roche’s new book of poems is Wisdom of the Body, winner of an American Book Award; Sharon Doubiago says of it, “Steeped in biology, Judith Roche’s poems come close to saying the Unspeakable---Wisdom of the Body is an outstanding achievement, the work of one of our most important poets in full maturity.” She’s published two previous books of poems, and she’s co-editor of First Fish, First People: Salmon Tales of the North Pacific Rim, poems, folk tales, histories, essays, and stories on this fish, so important to so many different peoples, with writing that tells of its near extinction through over fishing in our own time. This anthology also received an American Book Award.
This event is supported by Poets & Writers, Inc. through a grant it has received from The James Irvine Foundation.
MOE’S BOOKS, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, (510) 849-2087, moesbooks.com. Parking at the Durant/Channing Garage, close to Telegraph. Channing is one block north.
Poetry Flash: (510) 525-5476.

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 7, 2008, 3:00
Poetry Flash at DIESEL, A Bookstore
RICK BAROT & VICTORIA CHANG
Born in the Philippines and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, Rick Barot is a former Stegner Fellow at Stanford University. His first book of poems, The Darker Fall, was the winner of the Kathryn A. Morton Prize in Poetry. His new collection is Want. Terrance Hayes says of it, “...I’ve grown too intoxicated, too gripped by this wonderful collection to reduce it to a single idea. In Rick Barot’s hands every poem casts at least two luminous shadows. Want is masterfully merciless and merciful at the same time.”
Victoria Chang’s first book of poems, Circle, was chosen for the Crab Orchard Review Award Series in Poetry and also won the Association of Asian American Studies Book Award. Her new book is Salvinia Molesta: Poems, whose title refers to a particularly virulent invasive species which, as Linda Gregerson says, “...can smother a lake in days. And under its proliferant injunction, Victoria Chang surveys the paths that brought us here. She charts her course through biosphere and boardroom, the intimate spaces of private infidelity, the vast terrains of state-supported slaughter...in art this finely pitched we have the one true antidote.”
DIESEL, A BOOKSTORE, 5433 College Avenue, Oakland, (510) 653-9965, dieselbookstore.com. Near Rockridge BART. Poetry Flash: (510) 525-5476.

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 4, 2008, 7:30
Poetry Flash at Moe's Books
PETER NEIL CARROLL & JARED SMITH
Peter Neil Carroll’s new book-length narrative poem, Riverborne: A Mississippi Requiem, tells of two friends repeating their young men’s trip along the Mississippi in late middle age, a journey that flows through geography and history, intercut with quotes and allusions to Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. This is a skillful, captivating book, a resonant, American journey that rises to an epiphany, a transcendent historical surprise as they approach the Mississippi delta. Former editor of the San Francisco Review of Books, Carroll is also the author of the prose work Keeping Time: Memory, Nostalgia, and the Art of History.
Jared Smith’s new book of poems is The Graves Grow Bigger Between Generations, selected as top pick in the September/October edition of Small Press Review, and recently favorably reviewed in The Midwest Quarterly and Home Planet News. He has published seven volumes of poetry. A two-time Pulitzer Prize nominee, he was also nominated for the National Book Award for his 2007 collection, Where Mages Become Imbued With Time. He has also released two CDs, Seven Minutes Before The Bombs Drop and Controlled by Ghosts. For more on Jared Smith, see http://www.jaredsmith.info.
MOE’S BOOKS, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, (510) 849-2087, moesbooks.com. Parking at the Durant/Channing Garage, close to Telegraph. Channing is one block north.
Poetry Flash: (510) 525-5476.

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 2008, 7:30
Poetry Flash at Moe’s Books
MICHAEL McGRIFF & ANDREW GRACE
Michael McGriff’s first book of poems, Dismantling the Hills, is the winner of the 2007 Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize. Ed Ochester praises it, “The poems...are love songs to the forests of the Pacific Northwest....Distinguished by their masterful craft and human sympathy, these poems constitute not just an unusually fine and readable first collection, but an evocation of place and spirit....” He is also the translator of Tomas Tranströmer’s The Sorrow Gondola. Among his honors are a Stegner fellowship from Stanford University, a Michener Fellowship from the University of Texas at Austin, and a Ruth Lilly Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation.
Andrew Grace, also a Stegner Fellow at Stanford for the last two years, has won an Academy of American Poets prize and the Southern Poetry Review’s Guy Owen Prize. His first book of poems, A Belonging Field, was published in 2002; his second, forthcoming collection, Shadeland, won the 2008 Ohio State University/The Journal Award.
MOE’S BOOKS, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, (510) 849-2087, moesbooks.com.
Parking at the Durant/Channing Garage, close to Telegraph. Channing is one block north.
Poetry Flash: (510) 525-5476.

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 2008, 3:00
Poetry Flash at DIESEL, A Bookstore
JAN BEATTY & MOLLY FISK
Jan Beatty’s new book of poems, her third, is Red Sugar; Alicia Ostriker enthuses about it, “Jan Beatty’s Red Sugar is a hard-rocking book, a gorgeous sexual book, a fearless way high up and way down deep roller-coaster book of poetry....It is full of strong language and full of love....” Beatty’s previous two collections are Boneshaker and Mad River, which won the 1994 Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize. She’s also won the Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry, and she’s received two fellowships from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. Beatty is the co-host and producer of “Prosody,” a weekly radio show featuring the work of national writers.
Molly Fisk’s full-length book of poems is Listening to Winter, about which Jane Hirshfield said, “Molly Fisk brings to her readers a poetry of great emotional power, linguistic invention, and courage. She looks long and hard at the world, and speaks to what she sees with both clarity and depth.” Molly Fisk has received a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship and directs the Poetry Boot Camp online peer poetry workshop. She has also released two CDs of her popular radio commentaries, Using Your Turn Signal Promotes World Peace and Blow-Drying a Chicken.
DIESEL, A BOOKSTORE, 5433 College Avenue, Oakland, (510) 653-9965, dieselbookstore.com. Near Rockridge BART. Poetry Flash: (510) 525-5476.

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 1, 2008, NOON-4:00
WATERSHED ENVIRONMENTAL POETRY FESTIVAL
Robert Hass, Brenda Hillman, Jane Hirshfield,
California Poet Laureate Al Young with bassist Dan Robbins,
Joseph Lease, Camille Dungy, Avotcja with bassist Eugene Warren, Sonoma County Poet Laureate Mike Tuggle, Chris Olander, open mic, CPITS/River of Words/Poetry Inside Out K-12 student poets & much more
presented alongside the Berkeley Farmers' Market, near Berkeley BART,
Civic Center Park, downtown Berkeley (rain venue: Berkeley City College)

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 16, 2008, 7:30
Poetry Flash at Moe’s Books
ED PAVLIC & SEAN HILL
Ed Pavlic’s new collection of prose poems, Winners Have Yet to Be Announced, is about 1970s soul singer Donny Hathaway, who died, presumably of suicide, at the age of thirty-three, and who is known for his many recordings, including “A Song for You” and “To Be Young, Gifted, and Black.” Terrence Hayes says of the collection, “Ed Pavlic shapes the ineffable (some call it Duende, some call it Soul) into a language haunting the borders of the sayableand unsayable, the sung and the unsung.” Other of Pavlic’s books include Labors Lost Left Unfinished and Paraph of Bone & Other Kinds of Blue. He’s also the author of a scholarly work, Crossroads Modernism, on African American literary culture.
Sean Hill’s debut collection of poetry is Blood Ties & Brown Liquor. Each poem builds on the poetic landscape created from his hometown, Milledgeville, Georgia, offering a portrait of the town’s black community. A multitude of voices rises from the pages to celebrate to create a call and response across six generations of the family of the fictional character Silas Wright, a black man born in 1907. These poems spread before us a sensuous world of quotidian lives punctuated by love and violence. Sean Hill is a Cave Canem fellow; he is currently a Stegner fellow at Stanford University. “Langston Hughes, Gwendolyn Brooks, Elizabeth Bishop: these are among the select few whose first books signaled a new vision of form and vernacular, an everyday elegance. We can now add Sean Hill’s transcendent debut to that remarkable list.”---Kevin Young.
MOE’S BOOKS, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, (510) 849-2087, moesbooks.com.
Parking at the Durant/Channing Garage, close to Telegraph. Channing is one block north.
Poetry Flash: (510) 525-5476.

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 5, 2008, 3:00
Poetry Flash at DIESEL, A BOOKSTORE
ELLEN BASS & JANE HIRSHFIELD
Ellen Bass’s new book of poems is The Human Line; Billy Collins praises it, “Ellen Bass’s frighteningly personal poems about sex, love, birth, motherhood and aging are kept from mere confession by the graces of wit, an observant eye, an empathetic heart, and just the right image deployed at just the right time.” She’s published many books of poems, including the most recent, Mules of Love, which won the 2002 Lambda Literary Award. She was co-editor of the ground-breaking feminist anthology No More Masks! and her prose book The Courage to Heal sold over a million copies. Among her honors are a Pushcart Prize, the Pablo Neruda Prize from Nimrod/Hardman, and a New Letters Poetry Prize.
Jane Hirshfield’s newest book of poems is After, which carries a quote from the late Nobel Laureate Czeslaw Milosz: “A profound sympathy for the suffering of all living beings....It is precisely this I praise in the poetry of Jane Hirshfield....In its highly sensuous detail, her poetry illuminates the Buddhist virtue of mindfulness....She is among the most outstanding of my fraternity of California poets.” Among her five previous books of poems are Given Sugar, Given Salt and The Lives of the Heart; she has also published the book of essays Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry, edited the anthology Women in Praise of the Sacred, and published the volume of translation The Ink Dark Moon: Love Poems by Ono no Komachi and Izumi Shikibu, Women of the Ancient Court of Japan. Among her honors are Guggenheim and Rockefeller fellowships, and multiple appearances in the Best American Poetry and the Pushcart Prize anthologies.
DIESEL, A BOOKSTORE, 5433 College Avenue, Oakland, (510) 653-9965, dieselbookstore.com. Near Rockridge BART. Poetry Flash: (510) 525-5476.

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 2008, 7:30
Poetry Flash at MOE’S BOOKS
ROBERT HASS, MAXINE HONG KINGSTON
& editor FRED MARCHANT
read from WILLIAM STAFFORD’S ANOTHER WORLD INSTEAD
ANOTHER WORLD INSTEAD: The Early Poems of William Stafford 1937-1947 has just been published by Graywolf Press, edited and with an introduction from Fred Marchant. This is the first publication of William Stafford's early work as a conscientious objector. Robert Hass says of it, “Three widely read American poets---Robert Lowell, William Everson, and William Stafford---were conscientious objectors during World War II. They represent, among them, a powerful and difficult moment in the tangled history of conscience and military violence in America.” Stafford (1914-1993), one of America's most celebrated poets, was the author of more than fifty books, including Thinking Through the Dark, winner of the 1966 National Book Award, and The Way It Is: New and Selected Poems; among his many honors were his appointment as U.S. Poet Laureate (Poetry Consultant to the Library of Congress), 1971-72, and his appointment as Poet Laureate of Oregon in 1973.
Robert Hass and Maxine Hong Kingston are two of our country’s most celebrated writers and two of its most noted writers against war. Time and Materials, Robert Hass's new book, this year's winner of both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, contains searing anti-war poetry, along with so much else. Maxine Hong Kingston, also a National Book Award winner is a tireless activist for peace, leader of veterans’ workshops in writing and meditation, and author, most recently of The Fifth Book of Peace and editor of Veterans of War, Veterans of Peace.
Fred Marchant, as well as editing this book, has published four acclaimed volumes of poetry and co-translated the work of Vietnamese poet Nguyen Ba Chung. In 1970, Marchant became one of the first Marine officers ever to be honorably discharged as a conscientious objector from the Vietnam War.
MOE’S BOOKS, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, (510) 849-2087, moesbooks.com.
Parking at the Durant/Channing Garage, close to Telegraph. Channing is one block north.
Poetry Flash: (510) 525-5476.

SUNDAY, AUGUST 3, 2008, 7:30
Poetry Flash at Moe’s Books
A Sendoff Reading for the Sweeneys:
RICHARD SILBERG, CHAD SWEENEY & JENNIFER K. SWEENEY
Chad and Jennifer K. Sweeney, who have done so much for Bay Area poetry, are moving to the Midwest! Join us at this sendoff reading to wish them the best.
Richard Silberg, Associate Editor of Poetry Flash, is a poet, critic and translator. His most recent book of poems is Deconstruction of the Blues. He’s author of Reading the Sphere: A Geography of Contemporary American Poetry, essays from Poetry Flash, and co-translator of The Three Way Tavern, poems of the South Korean poet Ko Un, winner of the Northern California Book Award in Translation. Chad Sweeney is the author of two new books of poems, An Architecture, BlazeVOX, and Arranging the Blaze, forthcoming from Anhinga Press. Andrew Joron says of the first, “In Sweeney's swift architecture, memory assumes the power of imagination, and language becomes a platform for the mind’s multiplicity.” A longtime WritersCorps teacher, Sweeney is co-editor of the literary journal Parthenon West Review, and he's also author of the chapbook A Mirror to Shatter the Hammer. Chad Sweeney is the editor of “Listening In,” the Poetry Flash feature on MFA poets and poems. Jennifer K. Sweeney’s debut book of poems, Salt Memory, is the winner of the 2006 MSR Poetry Book Award. Her poems enact unusual combinations, high velocity yet sharply sculpted, surreal yet grounded in nature and feeling. She’s a powerful poet, widely published in journals like Hayden’s Ferry Review, RUNES, and New York Quarterly, finalist for both the 2004 Center for Book Arts Chapbook Competition and the 2005 Brittingham/ Felix Pollak Prize. She is the recipient of a Cultural Equities Grant from the San Francisco Arts Commission.
MOE’S BOOKS, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, (510) 849-2087, moesbooks.com. Parking at the Durant/Channing Garage, close to Telegraph. Channing is one block north.
Poetry Flash: (510) 525-5476.

The last Poetry Flash at Cody's Telegraph reading was held on June 4, 2006. The last Poetry Flash at Cody's Downtown Berkeley reading was held on June 7, 2008. Poetry Flash readings continue to thrive at other locations!

BERKELEY'S CODY'S BOOKS CLOSES AFTER 52 YEARS

Berkeley, California, June 20, 2008

After 52 years, Cody's Books will shut its doors effective June 20, 2008. The Berkeley bookstore has been a beacon to readers and writers throughout the nation and across the world. Founded by Fred and Pat Cody in 1956, Cody's has been a Berkeley institution and a pioneer in the book business, helping to establish such innovations as quality paperbacks and in-store author readings. Throughout the 1960s and 70s, Cody's was a landmark of the Free Speech movement and was a home away from home for innumerable authors, poets and readers.

The Board of Directors of Cody's Books made this difficult decision after years of financial distress and declining sales.

According to Cody's president, Hiroshi Kagawa, "[It] is a heartbreaking moment…in the spring of 2005 when I learned about the financial crisis facing Cody's, I was excited to save the store from bankruptcy. Unfortunately, my current business is not strong enough or rich enough to support Cody's. Of course, the store has been suffering from low sales and the deficit exceeds our ability to service it."

"When I met Cody's 25 years ago, I was a freelance journalist, enraptured by its books and atmosphere. It means so much to me and I apologize to the people who have supported Cody's for not being able to keep this landmark independent bookstore open. Cody's is my treasure and more than that, Cody's is a real friend of Berkeley community and will be missed."

Cody's would like to thank all of our loyal customers for their years of patronage.

For further information contact: Mindy Galoob, General Manager at mindy@codysbooks.com.

____________________________________________________________________________

BERKELEY'S TELEGRAPH AVENUE TO LOSE CODY'S BOOKS;
CODY'S REMAINS STRONG ON FOURTH STREET IN BERKELEY
AND ON STOCKTON STREET IN SAN FRANCISCO

May 10, 2006

Andy Ross, owner and president of Cody's Books, Inc., has announced that Cody's oldest store, on Telegraph Avenue near the University of California in Berkeley, will close its doors on July 10, 2006.

Cody's Books on Fourth Street in Berkeley and Cody's Stockton Street in San Francisco, as well as Cody's School and Book Fair division, remain open, healthy, and intent upon continuing to provide the best of independent bookselling.

Ross noted the fifteen-year sales decline in the south-of-campus area, resulting in Cody's Telegraph Avenue doing only one-third of the business it did in 1990. The company's attempt to keep this store open has caused a loss of over $1,000,000.

"It is with a heavy heart that I must announce that Cody's will be closing our doors at the Telegraph Avenue store for the last time on July 10. We will continue to operate our stores on Fourth Street in Berkeley and on Stockton Street in San Francisco.

The Telegraph store has been declining in sales for more than 15 years. We are now doing only 1/3 of the business that we did here in 1990. We have lost over $1,000,000 attempting to keep the store open. As a family business, we cannot continue to afford these ruinous losses.

The book business has changed over this period. Many of our customers have found other sources for their books. In particular, the Internet has taken quite a bite out of sales, particularly the scholarly and academic titles that have always been our specialty.

This is Cody's 50th year in business and our 43rd year at this location. During this period, Cody's has been engaged in the great issues of our time. As America increasingly turned to huge mass merchants and disembodied Internet retailers in their buying habits, Cody's always urged people to support stores in their communities.

During the 60's, Cody's was part of the great anti-war movement that began in Berkeley. In 1989, we were the first victim of international terrorism in the United States. We were bombed during the Rushdie Affair. After the bombing, Cody's staff voted unanimously to continue carrying The Satanic Verses, even in the face of threats to our lives. This was a great and heroic act of commitment to humanistic values by simple booksellers. It was truly our finest hour.

Throughout this period, we spoke of the dangers of economic concentration in bookselling on the part of chain stores. Sadly our warnings have come to pass. Stores like Cody's have become truly rare. The few that remain are cherished by their communities.

Cody's is an idea, not a building. That idea will endure in our other stores on Fourth Street and in San Francisco. 

We leave Telegraph with great sadness, but with a sense of honor that we have served our customers and our community with such distinction; and that in our own way, we have changed the world for the better and will continue to do so.

Thank you, dear customers, for giving us that opportunity."

---Andy Ross