2019 Poetry Flash Reading Series

Poetry Flash readings readings take place at Moe's Books, Berkeley, and at East Bay Booksellers, Oakland. To find out more about the Poetry Flash Reading Series, please email editor@poetryflash.org or call (510) 525-5476. ASL interpreters for the deaf and hearing impaired may be provided for these events with at least one week's notice. To request, editor@poetryflash.org. Our bookstore venues are wheelchair accessible. Read more about the series on the Poetry Flash Reading Series page.

24 JANUARY 2019 — thursday

Fire and Rain: Tiffany Higgins, Jeanne Wagner, more

Poetry Flash presents a reading from the new anthology, Fire and Rain: Ecopoetry of California, with co-editor Lucille Lang Day and contributors Marcia Falk, Ben Gucciardi, Tiffany Higgins, and Jeanne Wagner, wheelchair accessible, Moe's Books, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, 7:30 (510/849-2087, www.moesbooks.com)

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Fire and Rain: Ecopoetry of California, co-edited by Lucille Lang Day and Ruth Nolan, is a powerful new anthology featuring more than 250 poems by 149 contributors, including Ellen Bass, Christopher Buckley, Alison Hawthorne Deming, Camille T. Dungy, Ann Fisher-Wirth, Rebecca Foust, Dana Gioia, Rafael Jesús González, Emily Grosholz, Robert Hass, Brenda Hillman, Jane Hirshfield, Ursula K. Le Guin, Gary Snyder, and David St. John, with a foreword by Dana Gioia and introduction by Jack Foley. Pattiann Rogers, recipient of the John Burroughs Medal for Lifetime Achievement in Nature Poetry, says, “Fire and Rain: Ecopoetry of California”…is not only a beautiful and thorough anthology but an homage to California, its varieties of landscapes, and the amazing poetry it has evoked. Like no other collection in its focus, it presents for the reader experiences of life and personal perspectives on the region while also providing an invaluable resource for teachers of creative writing and literature and the ecology, habitats, and species of the state.” Reading at this event are contributors:
Marcia Falk is a poet, painter, translator, and Judaic scholar. Her brand new book is Inner East: Illuminated Poems and Blessings. Her previous books include The Book of Blessings: New Jewish Prayers for Daily Life, the Sabbath, and the New Moon Festival; The Days Between: Blessings, Poems, and Directions of the Heart for the Jewish High Holiday Season; and The Song of Songs: Love Lyrics from the Bible.
Ben Gucciardi’s poems have appeared in Indiana Review, Orion, Terrain.org, upstreet, Forklift, Ohio, and other journals. He is a winner of the Milton Kessler Memorial Prize from Harpur Palate, a Dorothy Rosenberg Prize, and contests from The Maine Review and The Santa Ana River Review.
Tiffany Higgins is the author of The Apparition at Fort Bragg, selected by Camille T. Dungy; And Aeneas Stares into Her Helmet, selected by Evie Shockley; and Tail of the Whale, translations from Portuguese of poems by Alice Sant’Anna. Her article, “Brazil’s Munduruku Mark Out Their Territory When the Government Won’t,” appeared in Granta.
Jeanne Wagner is the winner of several national awards, most recently an Arts & Letters Award, a Sow’s Ear Chapbook Prize, and a Sow’s Ear Prize for an individual poem. Her first book, The Zen Piano Mover, won the Stevens Poetry Manuscript Prize. In the Body of Our Lives, her most recent book, was published by Sixteen Rivers Press.

27 JANUARY 2019 — sunday

Devreaux Baker and James M. LeCuyer

Poetry Flash presents a reading by James M. LeCuyer, from his new collection of short stories, Duck Lessons, and poet Devreaux Baker, Hungry Ghosts, East Bay Booksellers, 5433 College Avenue, Oakland, wheelchair accessible, 3:00 (510/653-9965, ebbooksellers.com)

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Devreaux Baker's new book of poems is Hungry Ghosts. William Pitt Root says of it, "These poems, each fully individuated from politics or profit, stand in effect as non-violent protests of enormous moment, stalwart beauty." Baker has published four previous books of poetry, out of the bones of earth, Red Willow People, Beyond the Circumstance of Sight, and Light at the Edge; she was also an editor of Wood, Water, Air and Fire: The Anthology of Mendocino County Women Poets. Her honors include the PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Poetry Award. She lives on the Mendocino Coast in Northern California.
James M. LeCuyer’s new book of short stories is Duck Lessons. Richard Michael Levine says, “Lecuyer’s stories, all beautifully written, are at once funny and poignant. He writes like an angel with a devilish grin.” His previous book of short stories is Threnody for Sturgeon; he is also author of the book of poems A Brick for Offissa Pupp.

10 FEBRUARY 2019 — sunday

Kelsay Books: Kathleen McClung, Lenore Weiss, Andrena Zawinski, more

Poetry Flash presents a Kelsay Books reading by Rachel Dacus, Carol Lynn Stevenson Grellas, Eileen Malone, Kathleen McClung, Lenore Weiss, and Andrena Zawinski, East Bay Booksellers, 5433 College Avenue, Oakland, wheelchair accessible, 3:00 (510/653-9965, ebbooksellers.com)

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This reading celebrates poets published by Kelsay Books, whose imprints also include Aldrich Press.
Poet and novelist Rachel Dacus’s collection, Gods of Water and Air, features poems and tales of horseback riding, ballet class, a bipolar rocket scientist parent, and a commercial fishing immigrant community. She is also author of The Renaissance Club, a time-travel novel, and the poetry collections Femme au Chapeau and Earth Lessons. Her writing has appeared in Atlanta Review, Boulevard, Prairie Schooner, The Pedestal, and Valparaiso Poetry Review, as well as in anthologies.
Carol Lynn Stevenson Grellas’s new book of poetry is On the Edge of the Ethereal. Sam Rasnake, editor of Blue Fifth Review, calls it, “a dark and beautiful book filled marvelously with the nature of loss, pain and its evasion, leaving, things left unsaid, ‘inhaling a world gone wrong’…Grellas is a remarkable poet with an unflinching eye and ear for details. The writing is a powerful, rewarding journey, not to be missed.” She is an eight-time Pushcart nominee and a four-time Best of the Net nominee. A Red Ochre Press Chapbook contest-winner, her work has appeared in many magazines including The Yale Journal for Humanities in Medicine. She has published other collections, including her chapbook, Things I Can’t Remember to Forget.
Eileen Malone has published her poetry in over 500 literary journals and anthologies, some of which have earned significant awards, including four Pushcart nominations. Her newest book is It Could Be Me, Although Unsure. Her previous books include Letters with Taloned Claws and I Should Have Given Them Water. She founded and now directs the Soul-Making Keats Literary Competition and its Awards Event at San Francisco Main Library. She has taught for California Poets in the Schools and at Bay Area community colleges, and hosted an online interview show for Cable Access TV San Francisco.
Kathleen McClung’s new book is The Typists Play Monopoly. Almost the Rowboat is her previous collection. Her poems appear widely in journals and anthologies including Southwest Review, Naugatuck River Review, Ekphrasis, Atlanta Review, California Quarterly, and Fire and Rain: Ecopoetry of California. Winner of the Rita Dove, Morton Marr, Shirley McClure, and Maria W. Faust national poetry prizes, she is a Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee, and associate director and sonnet judge for the Soul-Making Keats Literary Competition. She teaches at Skyline College, where she directs Women on Writing: WOW! Voices Now, on campus. She is a 2018-2019 writer-in-residence for Friends of the San Francisco Public Library.
Lenore Weiss received an MFA in fiction from San Francisco State University where she won the Clark-Gross Award (judged by Paul La Farge) and the Robert Browning Dramatic Monologue Contest. She recently won first prize in the Alexandria Quarterly Press small stories series for her flash fiction chapbook, Holding on to the Fringes of Love. Her three poetry collections form a trilogy about being mortal: Cutting Down the Last Tree on Easter Island, Two Places, and The Golem. In reviewing Two Places, Nina Serrano wrote, “Weiss’ mind travels like the speed of light from the real, to the symbolic and the surreal.”
Andrena Zawinski’s poetry has received accolades for free verse, form, lyricism, spirituality, and social concern. Landings is her recent Kelsay Books collection. In Landings, she presents poems that embrace the worldwide condition of women, immigrants, and the working class alongside reverence for the natural world. Rebecca Foust lauds the collection “as a book that offers wisdom and solace and one you will take comfort in reading again and again.” Her other books include Something About, a PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award winner, and Traveling in Reflected Light, a Kenneth Patchen Prize in Poetry winner.

21 FEBRUARY 2019 — thursday

Christopher Buckley and Gary Young

Poetry Flash presents a poetry reading by Christopher Buckley, Chaos Theory, and Gary Young, That’s What I Thought, wheelchair accessible, Moe's Books, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, 7:30 (510/849-2087, www.moesbooks.com)

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Christopher Buckley’s new book of poems is Chaos Theory. Gerald Stern says, “There is a deep nostalgia here, but also wisdom and common sense, and beautiful writing. I welcome him at his maturest, poet of stardust.” Author of some twenty books of poems, including Star Journal: Selected Poems, Back Room at the Philosopher’s Club, Varieties of Religious Experience, and Rolling the Bones; his honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship, four Pushcart Prizes, two awards from the Poetry Society of America, and two grants from the National Endowment for the Arts. He has also edited numerous anthologies, several of them with Gary Young, including The Geography of Home: California’s Poetry of Place and Bear Flag Republic: Prose Poems and Poetics from California.

Gary Young is the author of eight books of poems. His new collection of prose poems is That’s What I Thought, winner of the 2017 Lexi Rudnitsky Editor’s Choice Award. Mark Jarman says, “The warmth and honesty of Young’s poems are as durable as their precision and insight.” Also a printer and a book artist, his print work has been widely shown, including at the Museum of Modern Art and The Getty Center for the Arts. In 2010, he was named the first ever Poet Laureate of Santa Cruz County. Some of his honors include a 2009 Shelley Memorial Award, a Pushcart Prize, a William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America, and two grants from the National Endowment for the Arts.

28 FEBRUARY 2019 — thursday

Barbara Henning and Maureen Owen

Poetry Flash presents a poetry reading by Barbara Henning, A Day Like Today, and Maureen Owen, Edges of Water, Moe's Books, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, wheelchair accessible, 7:30 (510/849-2087, www.moesbooks.com)

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Barbara Henning's new book of poems is A Day Like Today. Cole Swenson says, "Henning adds a global attention to the grand New York tradition of the frank reportage of daily life, making those mundane details refract in myriad sparkling colors." She has published seven poetry collections and four novels. She has edited a book of interviews, Looking Up Harryette Mullen, and The Selected Prose of Bobbie Louise Hawkins; she was also editor of the poetry/art journal Long News: In the Short Century, from 1990-1995.

Maureen Owen has published eleven books of poems, most recently Edges of Water. A special selection of poems from her book Erosion's Pull is now available in collaboration with work of the New York artist Yvonne Jacquette. Bernadette Mayer says, "In Erosion's Pull, Maureen Owen epitomizes quantum poetics or being in 67 places at one time or The Atomizer." A former editor and chief of Telephone Magazine and Telephone Books and a former program coordinator for The St. Mark's Poetry Project, her work has been widely anthologized, including in Moving Borders: Three Decades of Innovative Writing by Women. Among other honors, she has received a grant from the Fund for Poetry and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.

3 MARCH 2019 — sunday

Keith Emmons and Lisa Rosenberg

Poetry Flash presents a reading by Keith Emmons, Moondrifter Reverie, and Lisa Rosenberg, A Different Physics, East Bay Booksellers, 5433 College Avenue, Oakland, wheelchair accessible, 3:00 (510/653-9965, ebbooksellers.com)

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Keith Emmons’s debut book of poems is Moondrifter Reverie. David Landau says, “Moondrifter Reverie invests the anxious 1970s with nobility and even, dare I say, with dignity. [It] recreates the sheer loveliness under the hustle bustle and delivers it fresh, via the poet’s handsome language.” A cum laude graduate of Harvard College, he lived for ten years in a waterfront houseboat community during the 1970s, where he wrote and also designed and built a floating home that won a first place award from the National Endowment for the Arts. Widely published in journals in the Bay Area, he now lives off the grid in the Santa Cruz Mountains.
Lisa Rosenberg’s debut book, A Different Physics, won the 2017 Red Mountain Poetry Prize (both of these books are from Red Mountain Press). Kenneth Fields says, “Trained as a scientist and poet, Lisa Rosenberg brings both disciplines together in ways that are quietly terrifying…In landscape, as beautifully rendered as in any modern writer, she sees the potential for destruction familiar to us in the daily news.…” She holds degrees both in Physics and Creative Writing and served as Poet Laureate for San Mateo County 2017-2018. A former Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford, she’s widely published in literary journals. She also worked as an engineer in the space program, founded a consulting practice, and flew as a private pilot. She has a craft essay forthcoming in The WAVES Anthology about her years in the military-industrial complex.

14 MARCH 2019 — thursday

Scott Edward Anderson and Lucille Lang Day

Poetry Flash presents a poetry reading by Scott Edward Anderson, Dwelling: an ecopoem, and Lucille Lang Day, Becoming an Ancestor, Moe's Books, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, wheelchair accessible, 7:30 (510/849-2087, www.moesbooks.com)

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Scott Edward Anderson's new book of poems is Dwelling: an ecopoem. David Gessner says, "In the spirit of Gary Snyder's Turtle Island and The Practice of the Wild, Scott Edward Anderson leads us on a journey into place and the idea of place…driven by the burning questions of how we find a home on this planet, in this transient, often brutal world, and how we heal through home." He's published two previous collections, FallowField and Walks in Nature's Empire. He's been a Concordia Fellow at the Millay Colony for the Arts and he has received the Nebraska Review Award.

Lucille Lang Day has published ten poetry collections and chapbooks, including Becoming an Ancestor and Dreaming of Sunflowers: Museum Poems. She is coeditor of and contributor to the recently published Fire and Rain: Ecopoetry of California, and Red Indian Road West: Native American Poetry from California. She is also the author of two children's books, Chain Letter and The Rainbow Zoo, as well as a memoir, Married at Fourteen: A True Story, nominated for the Northern California Book Award in Creative Nonfiction. Her poems, essays, and short stories have appeared widely in magazines and anthologies, and her many honors include the Joseph Henry Jackson Award in Literature, two PEN Oakland awards, and nine Pushcart nominations.

17 MARCH 2019 — sunday

Linda Elkin and Steven Rood

Poetry Flash presents a book launch reading by Linda Elkin, Navigation, with Steven Rood, I Say Your Name, East Bay Booksellers, 5433 College Avenue, Oakland, wheelchair accessible, 3:00 (510/653-9965, ebbooksellers.com)

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Linda Elkin's debut book of poems is Navigation. Eleanor Wilner says, "The resonant poems of Navigation have their compass set on the heart's true north and, as they move through the darkest times, appear lit from within…these poems make emotion intelligible; they distill and illuminate experience—its splendor, suffering, 'sudden grace.'" Widely published in literary journals and some anthologies, including, Kindled Terraces: American Writers in Greece, she's been awarded writers' residencies at Soapstone and the Vermont Studio Center. Born in New York City, she now lives in Oakland.
Steven Rood's debut book of poems is I Say Your Name, devoted to the memory of both the late, great poet Jack Gilbert and Rood's own psychotherapist. For these many years he's been a member of the writing workshop that Jack Gilbert founded at San Francisco State University in 1967, and he was a primary caregiver of Gilbert's during his last Alzheimer days.

4 APRIL 2019 — thursday

Susan Millar DuMars and Austin Smith

Poetry Flash presents a rare U.S. poetry reading by Irish-American poet Susan Millar DuMars, Naked: New and Selected, and Austin Smith, Flyover Country, Moe's Books, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, wheelchair accessible, 7:30 (510/849-2087, www.moesbooks.com)

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Irish-American poet Susan Millar DuMars is visiting from Ireland for this reading. Her new book of poems is Naked: New and Selected. Poetry Ireland Review says, "Her poetry, influenced by the directness of the American tradition, comes as a breath of fresh air…." She's published four previous collections, which have been nominated for her country's most prestigious awards and featured on Irish radio. She's also the author of the book of short stories Lights in the Distance. Born in Philadelphia, she lives in Galway, Ireland where she lives with her husband, blogs, and directs "Over the Edge," an acclaimed reading series. She also teaches creative writing classes at the Galway Arts Centre and for the Brothers of Charity's Away With Words project. In 2009, the couple was the subject of a documentary by Des Kilbane called Rhyming Couplet, which was screened at the Galway Film Fleadh.

Austin Smith's new book of poems is Flyover Country. Jane Hirshfield says, "Austin Smith's Flyover Country is a book of vital and generative reckoning, one that finds both the intimate knowledge held in large landscapes and the larger knowledges found within intimate places and acts." Author of the previous collection Almanac, he grew up on a family dairy farm in northwestern Illinois, lives now in Pescadero, California, and teaches at Stanford University.

7 APRIL 2019 — sunday

Camille Norton, Barbara Swift Brauer, Maya Khosla

Poetry Flash presents a Sixteen Rivers Press book launch and reading by Barbara Swift Brauer, Rain, Like a Thief, Maya Khosla, All the Fires of Wind and Light, and Camille Norton, A Folio for the Dark, East Bay Booksellers, 5433 College Avenue, Oakland, wheelchair accessible, 3:00 (510/653-9965, ebbooksellers.com)

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Three poets launch and read from their new Sixteen Rivers Press books! Barbara Swift Brauer's new book of poems is Rain, Like a Thief, Ellery Akers says, "Barbara Swift Brauer is a poet of wonderful transparency and economy, and evokes the delights of ordinary life as well as the passage of time." Her first collection, At Ease in the Borrowed World, was published by Sixteen Rivers in 2013. A freelance writer, she co-authored the nonfiction book Witness: The Artist's Vision in "The Face of AIDS," with portrait artist Lisa Kirk.
Maya Khosla's new collection is All the Fires of Wind and Light. Pattiann Rogers says, "The tone and stance of the lyrical language bestow on each particular—whether commonplace or unique, pitiful or rapturous, insect-tiny or sky-wide—an aura of the miraculous, each being, each element equally mighty in itself and essential to the whole." Her first book, Keel Bone, won the Dorothy Brunsman Poetry Prize. The current Poet Laureate of Sonoma County, she is also a wildlife biologist and a filmmaker. Her recent film is Searching for the Gold Spot: The Wild After the Wildfire. Her film and fieldwork show that the natural environment, if left undisturbed, can recover from even the most devastating fires, especially in northern California, and her poetry is often inspired by her research.
Camille Norton's new book of poems is A Folio for the Dark, in which she "asks us to contemplate the power of reading and writing in an open-source universe in which books as physical objects are disappearing." Julia B. Levine says, "In her brilliant second collection, Camille Norton creates a deep and lush interior world where she is both reader and writer, young girl and sensual adult, herself and other. In these poems, which are as mysterious, brutal, and beautiful as truth, Norton writes her way into the lives of those she has read: Poe, Thomas Jefferson, Gertrude Stein, a Confederate prisoner, Herman Melville's whale, and the Old Testament's Jonah…there emerges an alchemical voice of the multiple worlds that inhabit Norton's dynamic mind." Her first collection, Corruption, was a National Poetry Series winner. She has worked collaboratively with artists and composers since the early 1990's when she co-edited Resurgent: New Writing by Women, an anthology of experimental writing by women in literature, film, and the visual arts. Her poem "The Prison Diary of Bartlett Yancey Malone" was published in The Best American Poetry 2010.

11 APRIL 2019 — thursday

Sally Ashton and Arlene Biala

Poetry Flash presents a poetry reading by Sally Ashton, The Behaviour of Clocks, and Arlene Biala, one inch punch, Moe's Books, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, wheelchair accessible, 7:30 (510/849-2087, www.moesbooks.com)

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Sally Ashton's brand new book of poems is The Behaviour of Clocks. Amy Gerstler says, "Ashton's investigative meditations maintain constant awareness of territories shared by physics and poetry. These wonderfully reflective poems arise from something like a physicist's precision of mind and a shaman's sensitivity of vision." She is author of three previous collections and assistant editor of They Said: A Multi-Genre Anthology of Contemporary Collaborative Writing. Editor-in-Chief of DMQ Review, an online journal featuring poetry and art, she also served as Poet Laureate of Santa Clara County from 2011-2013. Her honors include fellowships from Arts Council Silicon Valley and a Lucas Artist Residency at Montalvo Arts Center.

Arlene Biala's new collection is one inch punch. Juan Felipe Herrera says, "Arlene Biala chants and dances at the center of inner-outer sacred lakes; her texts move at the incredible heights of Pele, the ancient Goddess." Her previous collections include two chapbooks and the full-length her beckoning hands, winner of a 2015 American Book Award. Daughter of immigrants from the Philippines, she was raised in San Francisco. A Pinay poet and performance artist, she has performed widely, collaborating with Herrera, Dolores Huerta, Barbara Jane Reyes, and others. She also received a Montalvo residency and served as Poet Laureate of Santa Clara County, 2016-2017.

25 APRIL 2019 — thursday

Nicholas Friedman and Laura Glenn

Poetry Flash presents a poetry reading by Nicholas Friedman, Petty Theft, winner of the New Criterion Poetry Prize, and Laura Glenn, When the Ice Melts, Moe's Books, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, wheelchair accessible, 7:30 (510/849-2087, www.moesbooks.com)

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Nicholas Friedman’s debut poetry book, Petty Theft, is the winner of this year’s New Criterion Poetry Prize. B.H. Fairchild says, “As the political life of the nation descends further into lies and doublespeak, there is a poet in California who remembers the art of poetry, practices it superbly, and so, like Keats, is able to offer us the music of Truth ‘proved upon our pulses.’” Currently a Jones Lecturer in Poetry at Stanford University, he is a former Wallace Stegner Fellow and the recipient of a Ruth Lilly Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation.
Laura Glenn's new book of poems is When the Ice Melts. Alice Fulton says, "No poet better expresses the way in which our physical, literal position in the world changes our perception of the world…a vision so profound and riddling, I was reminded , at times, of Dickinson." Her first collection is I Can't Say I'm Lost. Widely published in literary journals and several anthologies, she's also a visual artist and lives in Ithaca, New York, where she works as a freelance editor.

28 APRIL 2019 — sunday

Grace Schulman and Rosa Lane

Poetry Flash presents a reading by acclaimed poet and memorist Grace Schulman, Without a Claim, and Rosa Lane, Chouteau's Chalk, winner of the Georgia Poetry Prize, East Bay Booksellers, 5433 College Avenue, Oakland, wheelchair accessible, 3:00 (510/653-9965, ebbooksellers.com)

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Rosa Lane's new book of poems, Chouteau's Chalk, is the winner of the Georgia Poetry Prize. Dawn McGuire says, "In Chouteau's Chalk, Rosa Lane becomes a lionhearted singer of the erotic: as life force, as madness, as mentor, as inventor…Lane's technical mastery serves the fierce music of the body, which, like desire itself, did bring me to my knees." Her previous collections are Tiller North and Roots and Reckonings. She an architect as well as a poet, and she splits her time between coastal Maine and the San Francisco Bay Area.
Grace Schulman's new book of poems is Without a Claim. Philip Schultz says, "Without a Claim is a modern book of Psalms. Indeed, the glory in these radiant sacred songs meld an art of high music with a nuanced love of the world unlike any we've heard before." She'll also be reading from her newly published memoir Strange Paradise: Portrait of a Marriage, which tells the moving story of her love for her scientist husband, her care for him during a long, terminal illness, and her subsequent harrowing grief. Author of seven books of poems, including this new one and Days of Wonder: New and Selected Poems, which was a Library Journal Best Book of the Year, she is a Distinguished Professor of English at Baruch College, a former director of the Poetry Center at the 92nd Street Y, and a former poetry editor at The Nation. Her honors include a Frost Medal for Distinguished Lifetime Achievement in American Poetry, the highest award of the Poetry Society of America, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and four Pushcart Prizes.

9 MAY 2019 — thursday

Carolyn Tipton and Stephen Kessler

Poetry Flash presents a poetry reading by Carolyn Tipton, The Poet of Poet Laval, and Stephen Kessler, Garage Elegies, Moe's Books, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, wheelchair accessible, 7:30 (510/849-2087, www.moesbooks.com)

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Stephen Kessler's new book of poems is Garage Elegies. Author of several previous collections, he is an all-around man of letters, perhaps best known as a translator from Spanish: his translations of Luis Cernuda have won the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Men's Poetry, the Harold Morton Landon Translation Award from the Academy of American Poets, and the PEN Center USA Translation Award. His version of Julio Cortázar's Save Twilight: Selected Poems won a Northern California Book Award. He is also the editor and principle translator of The Sonnets by Jorge Luis Borges. Author of one novel, The Mental Traveler, he has edited numerous magazines and newspapers, including The Redwood Coast Review, four-time winner of the California Library Association's PR Excellence Award.
Carolyn Tipton's debut book of poems is The Poet of Poet Laval. She is also a noted translator from Spanish. She has translated two books of poems by Rafael Alberti: the first, To Painting: Poems by Rafael Alberti won the National Translation Award; the second, Returnings: Poems of Love and Distance, won the Cliff Becker Translation Prize. Among her honors are fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts.

19 MAY 2019 — sunday

Willis Barnstone and Tony Barnstone

Poetry Flash presents a reading by acclaimed poet and translator Willis Barnstone, Poets of the Bible, with his son and noted poet and translator Tony Barnstone, Pulp Fiction, East Bay Booksellers, 5433 College Avenue, Oakland, wheelchair accessible, 3:00 (510/653-9965, ebbooksellers.com)

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Willis Barnstone is a poet, teacher, memoirist, editor, and translator; he's published more than eighty books. He'll be reading from his Poets of the Bible and his new, not yet published translations of Guillaume Apollinaire. His books include The Restored New Testament, The Poetics of Translation, and the poetry collections Stickball on 88th Street, and Mexico in My Heart, New and Selected Poems. A Guggenheim fellow, he has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry four times, and has had four Book of the Month Club selections. His poetry has appeared in The Paris Review, The New Yorker, Poetry Magazine, The New York Review of Books, and The Times Literary Supplement. His books have been translated into diverse languages including French, Italian, Romanian, Arabic, Korean, and Chinese. He was awarded the Northern California Book Awards' Fred Cody Lifetime Achievement Award in 2015.
Tony Barnstone, Willis's son, is also an acclaimed poet, editor, translator, and fiction writer as well. He is the author of seventeen books, including Pulp Sonnets, Beast in the Apartment, The Golem Of Los Angeles, Tongue of War: from Pearl Harbor to Nagasaki, selected for the John Ciardi Prize by B.H. Fairchild, and a poetry and music CD by the same name. B.H. Fairchild said, "…The diction and syntax are often blunt with the exhaustion and terror of human voices—American and Japanese, soldiers and civilians—struggling to articulate the unspeakable, to make visible that to which we have learned to blind ourselves.…I cannot help but think that having read it, an American President who has himself been privileged to avoid the horrors of the battlefield might be less inclined to send young men and women off to face them." His honors include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities, the Poet's Prize, and the Benjamin Saltman Prize from Red Hen Press.

30 MAY 2019 — thursday

Jennifer Elise Foerster and Chad Sweeney

Poetry Flash presents a poetry reading by Jennifer Elise Foerster, Bright Raft in the Afterweather, and Chad Sweeney, Little Million Doors, Moe's Books, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, wheelchair accessible, 7:30 (510/849-2087, www.moesbooks.com)

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Jennifer Elise Foerster's new book of poems is Bright Raft in the Afterweather. Joy Harjo says of it, "We are adrift in mythic waters that hold the possibility of rebirth even as they float the remains of human destruction." A member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation of Oklahoma, Jennifer Foerster has published one previous collection, Leaving Tulsa. She received a 2017 National Endowment of the Arts Fellowship, a Lannan Foundation Writing Residency Fellowship and is a former Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University.
Chad Sweeney's new book of poems, winner of the Nightboat Poetry Prize, is Little Million Doors. Kazim Ali, the prize's judge, says, "Still and spare, Little Million Doors is a book-length series of lyrics that mourns a dead father…Perhaps ghostly but never disembodied, these lyrics feel immediate, necessary and absolutely brand new." He has published five previous collections, and two books of translation, the selected poems of the dissident Iranian poet H.E. Sayeh (from the Farsi with Mojdeh Marashi) and Pablo Neruda's final book, Calling on the Destruction of Nixon and the Advancement of the Chilean Revolution. His poetry is widely published in literary journals and has been included in Best American Poetry, The Pushcart Prize Anthology, and Verse Daily. He is the editor of Days I Moved Through Ordinary Sounds: Teaching Artists of WritersCorps in Poetry and Prose and Iroquois elder Maurice Kenny's posthumous collection of poetry and prose, Monahsetah, Resistance, and Other Markings on Turtle's Back.

2 JUNE 2019 — sunday

Francesca Bell and Lee Rossi

Poetry Flash presents a poetry reading by Francesca Bell, Bright Stain, and Lee Rossi, Darwin's Garden, East Bay Booksellers, 5433 College Avenue, Oakland, wheelchair accessible, 3:00 (510/653-9965, ebbooksellers.com)

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Francesca Bell's debut book of poems is Bright Stain. Ellen Bass says, "Francesca Bell's poems are fierce and tender, passionate, compassionate, disturbing and delightful." The former poetry editor of River Styx, she is a translator as well as a poet; among her translations is a collection of poems by the Palestinian poet Shatha Abu Hnaish. Her work is widely published in literary journals and magazines, including B O D Y, ELLE, Massachusetts Review, New Ohio Review, North American Review, Poetry Northwest, Prairie Schooner, Rattle, and The Rumpus.
Lee Rossi's new book of poems is Darwin's Garden: Studies from Life. Marsha de la O says, "Much as Darwin walked his 'thinking path' in his garden at Down House in Kent, Lee Rossi teases out the hidden structures of experience in his remarkable work on childhood, bearing the freight of ancestors, masculine codes, sex, religion, and the not-so-tender mercies of nuns, and parents." He has published three previous collections. A critic and a poet, his essays and poetry have been widely published in literary journals; he is a member of the Northern California Book Reviewers and a Contributing Editor for Poetry Flash. A former editor of Tsunami (1986-1992), he studied for five years to be a Roman Catholic priest before leaving the seminary and devoting himself, as he says, "to the study of failure."

6 JUNE 2019 — thursday

Susan Kelly-DeWitt and Mary B. Moore

Poetry Flash presents a poetry reading by Susan Kelly-DeWitt, Spider Season, and Mary B. Moore, Amanda and the Man Soul, Moe's Books, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, wheelchair accessible, 7:30 (510/849-2087, www.moesbooks.com)

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Susan Kelly-DeWitt's latest book of poems is Spider Season. Jane Mead says, "The poems in Susan Kelly-DeWitt's Spider Season reflect our human desire to weave inner and outer worlds into an ordered pattern: like the spider's web, these poems are delicate, made of strong filament, and vulnerable." She's published many previous collections, most recently The Fortunate Islands, as well as an illustrated short story The Audience. A former Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, she is a member of the National Book Critics Circle, the Northern California Book Reviewers association, and is a contributing editor for Poetry Flash, and a reviewer for Library Journal. She is also an exhibiting visual artist.
Mary B. Moore's new book of poems is Amanda and the Man Soul. Dorianne Laux says, "This is one of those books that can't be put down, that overwhelms us with the mystery of what it means to be human and alive in a body, to be in possession of a soul, or maybe twin souls." Her recent collections include Flicker, winner of the 2016 Dogfish Head Award, and Eating the Light, a 2016 Sable Books' chapbook winner.

14 JULY 2019 — sunday

Robin Behn and Julie Bruck

Poetry Flash presents a poetry reading by Robin Behn, Quarry Cross, and Julie Bruck, How to Avoid Huge Ships, East Bay Booksellers, 5433 College Avenue, Oakland, wheelchair accessible, 3:00 (510/653-9965, ebbooksellers.com)

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Robin Behn's new book of poems is Quarry Cross. Lee Upton says, "Tender, turbulent, witty, elegiac, Quarry Cross is a refreshment to the spirit. Robin Behn shakes out the language to fathom what she calls 'the old harms' and 'needy needs'—those very forces that may shatter any of us…These are bold, mutinous, world-and-word-enchanted-poems." She's published four previous collections, including The Yellow House and Horizon Note. Co-editor of The Practice of Poetry: Writing Exercises for Poets Who Teach, she is also editor of a collection for young writers, Once Upon a Time is the Twenty-First Century: Unexpected Exercises. She's received grants from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Julie Bruck's new book is How to Avoid Huge Ships. Sharon Thesen says. "Alert and precise, perceptive and measured, Julie Bruck's poems calibrate situations both grave and brave, serious and hilarious, whilst avoiding the 'large ships' of heavy-handed conclusion." Born in Montreal, she has been a San Francisco resident for more than twenty years. She has published her poems in such journals as The New Yorker, Ploughshares, Maisonneuve, The Malahat Review, and Valparaiso Poetry Review; her work has also appeared in the anthology, The Best of the Best Canadian Poetry, and Poetry Daily. Her third collection, Monkey Ranch, won the 2012 Governor General's Literary Award for Poetry.

4 AUGUST 2019 — sunday

Marsha de la O and Noah Blaustein

Poetry Flash presents a poetry reading by Marsha de la O, Every Ravening Thing, and Noah Blaustein, After Party, East Bay Booksellers, 5433 College Avenue, Oakland, wheelchair accessible, 3:00 (510/653-9965, ebbooksellers.com)

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Marsha de la O's new book of poems is Every Ravening Thing. Christopher Buckley says, "Every Ravening Thing presents a matchless intensity and intellectual gift, a fearless investigation into the world amplified by a vision that is both cosmic and detailed in our common suffering." Her previous collections include Antidote for Night, winner of the 2015 Isabella Gardner Award, and Black Hope, winner of the New Issues Press Poetry prize and an Editor's Choice, Small Press Book Award. Other honors are the Morton Marcus Poetry Award and the da Poetry Award. She has published extensively, including recent poems in The New Yorker, the Kenyon Review, and Prairie Schooner. She lives in Ventura, California, with her husband, poet and editor Phil Taggart. Together, they produce poetry readings and events in Ventura County and edit the literary journal Spillway.
Noah Blaustein's new book of poems is After Party. Garrett Hongo says, "Blaustein is as canny as Odysseus returned home and stringing his bow. Vagabond and shining like the sea, his poems drag you to deep undercurrents as you are caught singing in their chains." And Campbell McGrath says, "These are poems full of vivid particularities, poems that know 'it's easier to love/ this world than it is to disappear.' Noah Blaustein is a believer in hard-earned wisdom—'suffering is measured/ by the strength of one's fears'—and a poet of ferocious nostalgia." His previous collection is Flirt, and he is editor of the anthology Motion: American Sports Poems. He lives in Santa Monica, California.

8 AUGUST 2019 — thursday

Grace Marie Grafton and Judy Maher

Poetry Flash presents a poetry reading by Grace Marie Grafton, Lens, and Judy Maher, Dear Circus God, Moe's Books, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, wheelchair accessible, 7:30 (510/849-2087, www.moesbooks.com)

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Grace Marie Grafton's new book of poems is Lens. Tobey Hiller says, "The book is a paean to the nature and majesty of California, to the peoples and animals that have lived within her changing, rich landscape, and to the importance of knowledge, contemplation, and art." She is the author of six previous books of poems, including Jester; Whimsy, Reticence and Laud; and Other Clues. Widely published in literary journals and anthologies, she has also taught for thirty years through the California Poets in the Schools program, winning twelve Artist in Residence grants from the California Arts Council for her teaching. She was awarded "Teacher of the Year" by the River of Words Poetry & Art Competition for K-12 students, sponsored by Robert Hass.
Judy Maher's debut collection is Dear Circus God. Her book is divided into four sections, beginning with circus metaphors and ending at new starting points, with poems of humor and compassion throughout. Born in Asheville, North Carolina to a minister father, she lived with her family in many temporary homes across the country; then she travelled more with her husband, including a three-year adventure in Saudi Arabia. Having raised two children, they've since settled in Oakland, where she's blossoming as a poet.

12 SEPTEMBER 2019 — thursday

Don Bogen and Katie Peterson

Poetry Flash presents a poetry reading by Don Bogen, Immediate Song, and Katie Peterson, A Piece of Good News, Moe's Books, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, wheelchair accessible, 7:30 (510/849-2087, www.moesbooks.com)

Don Bogen's new book of poems is Immediate Song. Wayne Miller says, "At once an extended elegy, a meditation on time, and a hard-won articulation of the largeness of small moments. Simultaneously ambitious and understated, these poems are unmistakably of today's America, even as they mine the timeless concerns of loss and memory." He has published five books of poems, including Luster and An Algebra, as well as a critical book on Theodore Roethke and a translation of selected poems of contemporary Spanish poet Julio Martínez Mesanza. His honors include a Discovery Award, The Writer/Emily Dickinson Award from the Poetry Society of America, and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Camargo Foundation. He is editor-at-large for the Cincinnati Review.
Katie Peterson's new book of poems is A Piece of Good News. Publishers Weekly says, "These poems burst into consciousness: a child meets John Lennon through her mother's tears at his death, knives and scissors are the implements of love." She's published four books of poems, including This One Tree, Permission, and The Accounts, winner of the Rilke Prize. Other honors include a Literature award from the Academy of Arts and Letters, a grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, and a fellowship from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. She is the editor of the New Selected Poems of Robert Lowell, and she collaborates on film and artists' books with her husband, the photographer Young Suh.

22 SEPTEMBER 2019 — sunday

Jeffrey Thomas Leong and Brian Komei Dempster

Poetry Flash presents a reading by poet and translator Jeffrey Thomas Leong, Wild Geese Sorrow: The Chinese Wall Inscriptions at Angel Island, and poet Brian Komei Dempster, Topaz, East Bay Booksellers, 5433 College Avenue, Oakland, wheelchair accessible, 3:00 (510/653-9965, ebbooksellers.com)

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Jeffrey Thomas Leong's new book is Wild Geese Sorrow: The Chinese Wall Inscriptions at Angel Island, which won the Poetry in Translation Award at this year's Northern California Book Awards. David Wojahn says, "Jeffrey Thomas Leong is a fine poet, and his translations of 70 of the poems are nuanced, affecting, and informed by a haunting but astringent music." Leong began his translations of these wall inscriptions at the Angel Island Immigration Station, by Chinese immigrants detained from 1910-1940, while earning his MFA at Vermont College of Fine Arts. His writing has been widely published in literary journals including Bamboo Ridge, Crab Orchard, Hyphen, and Spillway.
Brian Komei Dempster's debut book of poems, Topaz, received the 15 Bytes Book Award in Poetry in 2014. He edited both From Our Side of the Fence: Growing Up in America's Concentration Camps, which received a 2007 Nisei Voices Award from the National Japanese American Historical Society, and Making Home from War: Stories of Japanese American Exile and Resettlement. His poems have been widely published in literary journals and anthologies, including the North American Review and Ploughshares.

17 OCTOBER 2019 — thursday

Colby Gillette and Lola Haskins

Poetry Flash presents a poetry reading by Lola Haskins, Asylum: Improvisations on John Clare, and Colby Gillette, Hymn Underground, Moe's Books, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, wheelchair accessible, 7:30 (510/849-2087, www.moesbooks.com)

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Lola Haskins's new book of poems is Asylum: Improvisations on John Clare. W.S. Merwin says, "Lola Haskins writes with the startling freedom and grace of a kite flying and with the variety and assurance of invention that reveal, in image after image, the dream of the waking world." She has published twelve collections of poetry and three books of prose. Her honors include the Iowa Poetry Prize, two Florida Book Awards, two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Emily Dickinson Prize from the Poetry Society of America. She is also the current Honorary Chancellor of the Florida State Poets Association.
Colby Gillette's debut collection is Hymn Underground. Donald Revell says, "Amidst the empty tumult and febrile, futile clamor of so many poets now, Colby Gillette stands fast and, standing, gives quickening evidence to things imperishable…The phrases of the sun and nomenclature of starlight in the human eye resound with true, with effortless certainty here. These are poems the planet can believe." He is the author of two chapbooks, Without Repair and Red of the Dawnbreakers: Translations of René Char. Widely published in literary journals, he lives in Pittsburgh.

27 OCTOBER 2019 — sunday

Barbara Berman and Zack Rogow - CANCELED

CANCELED (BOOKSTORE CLOSED DUE TO POWER OUTAGE) - Poetry Flash presents a poetry reading by Barbara Berman, Currents, and poet and translator Zack Rogow, Irreverent Litanies, East Bay Booksellers, 5433 College Avenue, Oakland, wheelchair accessible, 3:00 (510/653-9965, ebbooksellers.com)

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Barbara Berman’s debut book of poems is Currents. Eavan Boland says, “The reach of these graceful, ambitious poems ranges across stars, cities, storms. Their music is both political and deeply private, braiding the two undersongs together in challenging and sometimes wrenching poetry.” She is also the author of the chapbook The Generosity of Stars. Organizer of one of the first independent press festivals in the country in Washington, D. C. in 1979, she reviews poetry for The Rumpus.
Zack Rogow’s new book of poems is Irreverent Litanies. Frank Paino says, “’Everything we hold dear is borrowed,’ writes Zack Rogow, and those sage words are really the summation of these Irreverent Litanies. Whether in technically adept sonnets, ironic free verse, elegies, or straight-out litanies, the poet isn’t afraid to ask big questions.” The author, editor, or translator of twenty books or plays, his poetry collections include The Number Before Infinity and Talking with the Radio: poems inspired by jazz and popular music. He writes a blog, Advice for Writers, read internationally, at www.zackrogow.com.

7 NOVEMBER 2019 — thursday

Maxine Chernoff and Gillian Conoley

Poetry Flash presents a poetry reading by Maxine Chernoff, Under the Music: Collected Prose Poems, and Gillian Conoley, A Little More Red Sun on the Human: New & Selected Poems, Moe's Books, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, wheelchair accessible, 7:30 (510/849-2087, www.moesbooks.com)

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Maxine Chernoff’s new book of poems is Under the Music: Collected Prose Poems. Peter Orner says, “It is time to acknowledge that Maxine Chernoff is a national treasure…Who has a voice like hers, able to penetrate so deep into the roots of life’s pain and awkwardness and sometime beauty? I could quote any one of these aching, uproarious and, above all, humane pieces and you’d see what I mean.…” Author of more than a dozen books of poetry, including Here, Without, and To Be Read in the Dark, she is also a fiction author and a translator: with Paul Hoover she translated The Selected Poems of Friedrich Hölderlin, which won the 2009 PEN Translation Award. She and Hoover founded and edited New American Writing. Among her honors, a PIP Gertrude Stein Award for Innovative Poetry, a Carl Sandburg Award in Poetry, and fellowships including the National Endowment for the Arts.
Gillian Conoley’s new book of poems is A Little More Red Sun on the Human: New & Selected Poems. The Antioch Review says, “Here we find the peculiarly American matter-of-factness of the small-town exotic coming face-to-face with intellectual high-brow energy. Carson McCullers meets Gertrude Stein.” Among her previous collections are Profane Halo, The Plot Genie, and Peace, which was named a Standout Book for 2014 by the Academy of American Poets and was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. She published her translations of Henri Michaux, Thousand Times Broken, in 2014, and she edits Volt magazine. Other honors include the Jerome J. Shestack Poetry Prize, a National Endowment for the Arts grant, a Fund for Poetry Award, and a 2017 Shelley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America

14 NOVEMBER 2019 — thursday

Wendy Taylor Carlisle and Kimi Sugioka

Poetry Flash presents a poetry reading by Wendy Taylor Carlisle, The Mercy of Traffic, and Kimi Sugioka, Wile & Wing, Moe's Books, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, wheelchair accessible, 7:30 (510/849-2087, www.moesbooks.com)

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Wendy Taylor Carlisle's new book is The Mercy of Traffic. Tony Hoagland said, "Wendy Carlisle's poems come out wearing their red shoes and ready to dance. The lives she sketches flame underfoot so the soles of your feet are 'burned like little suns' and when we read this book of grace and empathy 'we are assured there will be sparks, then blasts and blowups, offerings of flame and dust.…'"Her publications include the full-length books Reading Berryman to the Dog and Discount Fireworks, plus five chapbooks, most recently They Went Down to the Beach to Play. Her work is in anthologies such as In Plein Air, Untold Arkansas, and 50/50: Poems and Translations by Womxn Over Fifty. She has an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts and lives in the Arkansas Ozarks.
Kimi Sugioka's brand new Manic D Press poetry book is Wile & Wing. Anne Waldman said, "Kimi Sugioka is a poet with a lot of guises: maternal, witchy, passionate, detached observer…She moves through the female cycle confidently, poised, strong in her observance and power." Born in Chapel Hill, North Carolina and raised in Berkeley, California, Kimi Sugioka is a poet, songwriter, and educator. She performs her work frequently throughout the Bay Area. She has worked in public education for decades, and earned her BA from San Francisco State University and MFA from the Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado.

20 NOVEMBER 2019 — wednesday

Marilyn Chin and Genny Lim

Poetry Flash and PEN West co-present a poetry reading by Marilyn Chin, A Portrait of the Self as Nation: New and Selected Poems, and Genny Lim, KRA!, note different day of the week for this special event, refreshments, Moe's Books, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, wheelchair accessible, 7:30 (510/849-2087, www.moesbooks.com)

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Marilyn Chin's new book of poems is A Portrait of the Self as Nation: New and Selected Poems. Adrienne Rich said, "Marilyn Chin's poems excite and incite the imagination through their brilliant cultural interfacings, their theatre of anger, 'fierce and tender,' their compassion, and their high mockery of wit." Born in Hong Kong, currently living in San Diego, she is the author of four previous poetry collections and a novel. Widely anthologized, in Best American Poetry, The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women, and elsewhere, her honors include five Pushcart Prizes, the PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award, and fellowships from the United States Artists Foundation and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. She serves as a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.
Genny Lim—San Francisco Jazz Poet Laureate, born in San Francisco—is the author of the poetry collections Winter Place, Child of War, and Paper Gods and Rebels. She also wrote the plays Paper Angels and Bitter Cane and the children's book Wings for Lai-Ho, among other works. Winner of the American Book Award in 1981, she founded the theater company Paper Angels Productions, later known as XX Theater, and produced many experimental performance pieces. Recipient of the Bay Guardian Goldie for Local Discovery in 1991, she went on to record and collaborate with musician-composers Jon Jang, Francis Wong, Anthony Brown, the late Max Roach, and Herbie Lewis. Her new poetry book KRA! is a power house political and historical, biographical work invoking figures such as James Baldwin, Amiri Baraka, Francisco X. Alarcon, Fred Ho, and Alfonso Texidor, and is a salute to Flint, Michigan, Standing Rock, and Black Lives Matter.

24 NOVEMBER 2019 — sunday

Marcia Falk and Steven Rood

Poetry Flash presents a poetry reading and powerpoint presentation of artwork by Marcia Falk, Inner East: Illuminated Poems and Blessings, Steven Rood, I Say Your Name, also reads, East Bay Booksellers, 5433 College Avenue, Oakland, wheelchair accessible, 3:00 (510/653-9965, ebbooksellers.com)

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Marcia Falk's new book is Inner East: Illuminated Poems and Blessings, which contains her own artwork side-by-side with her poetry and new blessings in English and Hebrew. She will be showing images of the artwork with her poetry at this event. Mark Podwal, artist and scholar of Jewish culture, says, "Inner East is a symbiosis of word and image…Falk's beautiful visual images are poems in paint that do not merely illustrate her written words but illuminate them." A Fulbright Scholar at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, she returned there four years later as a Postdoctoral Fellow. Among her many other books are The Days Between: Blessings, Poems, and Directions of the Heart for the Jewish High Holiday Season and The Book of Blessings: New English Prayers for Daily Life, the Sabbath, and the New Moon Festival. She is also the author of a classic verse translation of the biblical Song of Songs, The Song of Songs: Love Lyrics from the Bible, about which Adrienne Rich said, "it's always a thrill when (as rarely happens) the scholar's mind and the poet's soul come together." A translator from Yiddish as well, she's published The Spectacular Difference: Selected Poems of Zelda, poetry of the twentieth century mystic, Zelda Schneurson Mishkovsky, and With Teeth in the Earth, poems of the Yiddish modernist Malka Heifetz Tussman.
Steven Rood's debut book of poems is I Say Your Name, devoted to the memory of both the late, great poet Jack Gilbert and Rood's own psychotherapist. For these many years he's been a member of the writing workshop that Gilbert founded at San Francisco State in 1967, and he was a primary caregiver of Gilbert's during his last Alzheimer days.

1 DECEMBER 2019 — sunday

Joan Baranow and Joan Aleshire

Poetry Flash presents a gala book launch reading by Joan Baranow, In the Next Life, with Joan Aleshire, Days of Our Lives, refreshments, East Bay Booksellers, 5433 College Avenue, Oakland, wheelchair accessible, 3:00 (510/653-9965, ebbooksellers.com)

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This reading, our last of 2019, will feature a festive book launch for Joan Baranow's new book of poems, In the Next Life. Alicia Suskin Ostriker says, "The lilt and love, the trust and thrust, the pain and gain of these poems, is simply marvelous. In the Next Life reminds me of what I often forget—that poetry can be radiant." Her previous collection is Living Apart. With her husband David Watts she produced the PBS documentary Healing Words: Poetry & Medicine. Her feature-length documentary The Time We Have draws an intimate portrait of a young woman facing terminal illness.
Joan Aleshire's new memoir in poems is Days of Our Lives. Reginald Dwayne Betts says, "Most poets choose: navigate the personal or navigate the public. In Days of Our Lives, Aleshire abandons the choice. Instead, opts for the gospel that is all the ways our private turns at living are never as private as we imagine. As if, all of it, our love and the nation's loss, hang by the thinnest of wires." She's published five previous collections and is working on a novel. She lives in Vermont and is the founder of SAGE, an organization that supports sustainable agricultural education and the arts.