Monday, November 6, 1995

Carolyn Kizer, Diana O'Hehir reading at Mudd's


I'm emceeing at Mudd's Cafe tonight with Carolyn Kizer and Diana O'Hehir. Carolyn arrives dressed to the nines in heels and a mink coat. The audience is almost non-existent so we have a small, intimate reading. I hate the industrial cavernous space of Mudd's, in Santa Rosa, but beggars can't be choosers.

Diana reads about living on the earthquake fault. She said that poems fall into categories: children, parents, relationships. I don't believe in God but I'll try anyway, and then she writes a poem about salvation. Poetry of loss and of separation from the mother.

I said my mother's ashes gather dust on the bureau in my brother's room where the forgotten pieces of the discarded past seek eternal rest. A dog chewed on the crucifix, it's a secret hiding place of Sacrament, amid the tarnished golf clubs. Diana tells me to write of an apple and then relate it to my mother. I think the last known wild aurochs died in Poland in 1627, when did the last wood bison die? Fallen among the apples?

Carolyn Kizer, Napa Poetry Conference

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