Sacramento Poetry Center Presents
F. D. Reeve and Al Garcia
Monday, June 9 2008 at 7:30 PM
HQ for the Arts at 1719 25th Street
Host: Tim Kahl
F. D. Reeve is a poet, critic, and novelist. Franklin Reeve has had a varied career, for a while driving a combine in the Midwest wheat fields, later acting in summer theater, and working as a longshoreman on the Hudson River docks. He learned Russian and spent a year in Moscow and Leningrad as an exchange professor between the ACLS and the Soviet Academy of Sciences. He also served as translator for Robert Frost during his historic visit to Russia to meet with Nikita Kruschev in 1962.
His books of poetry include: The Toy Soldier. Bayeux Arts Press, 2006, The Return of the Blue Cat. New York: Other Press, 2005, "The Secret Orchard" published online by Verse Daily, 2003, The Urban Stampede and Other Poems. Michigan State University Press, 2002, A World You Haven’t Seen: Selected Early Poems. (downloadable pdf) New York: Rattapallax Press, 2001, The Moon and Other Failures. Michigan State University Press, 1999, Concrete Music. Pyncheon House, 1992, Nightway. The Press at Colorado College, 1987, The Blue Cat. Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1972, In the Silent Stones. William Morrow, 1968.
He has translated a dozen books from Russian, including Five Short Novels by Turgenev, the two-volume Anthology of Russian Plays, The Garden (poems by Bella Akhmadulina), The Trouble with Reason by Alexander Griboyedov, The King and the Fool by Alexander Borshchagovsky, Lions and Acrobats: Selected Poems by Anatoly Naiman.
He has been a contributor to the following magazines: Agni, The American Poetry Review, The American Scholar, The Antioch Review, The Atlantic, The Beloit Poetry Journal, Book World, Confrontation, The Connecticut Review, The Cream City Review, Folio, The Hudson Review, Kansas Quarterly, The Kenyon Review, The Little Magazine, The London Magazine, The New Criterion, The New England Review, New Letters, The New York Times Book Review, The North American Review, The North Dakota Quarterly, Poet & Critic, Poetry, Poetry Now, Potpourri, The Sewanee Review, Shenandoah, The Times Literary Supplement, The Virginia Quarterly Review, Voices, The Western Review, The Yale Review, and others.
The Secret Orchard
The ghosts of a house live in the upstairs hall.
You hear them on their midnight rounds
laughing like the bells of history; by day
they hang like coats along the wall.
In the dark do they stand tall with upright names
as haughty as acolytes lighting an altar?
Surely a few are bent over by worry
like owls, or the Hunchback of Notre Dame.
In April, when the foreign wind relents
and their preposterous imagination starts
a crusade for free love and an end to suffering,
do they beg their loss be recompensed?
That's when I go to the secret orchard. The dew
is fresh on the grass, and a white-throat sings.
There the haunted world is a Faerie ring,
and the earth at sunrise, a magic view.
Al Garcia is the author of two poetry books Rainshadow [Copper Beech Press, 1996] and Skunk Talk [Bear Star Press, 2005] He has had work published in the following: North American Review, Prairie Schooner, Mid-American Review, Laurel Review, Poetry East, Yankee Magazine. He is currently serving as the the Dean of the Languages and Literature Department at Sacramento City College. He lives with his wife, Terry, and three children in Wilton, where he chooses to consistently honor everyday moments.
August Morning
It's ripe, the melon
by our sink. Yellow,
bee-bitten, soft, it perfumes
the house too sweetly.
At five I wake, the air
mournful in its quiet.
My wife's eyes swim calmly
under their lids, her mouth and jaw
relaxed, different.
What is happening in the silence
of this house? Curtains
hang heavily from their rods.
Ficus leaves tremble
at my footsteps. Yet
the colors outside are perfect--
orange geranium, blue lobelia.
I wander from room to room
like a man in a museum:
wife, children, books, flowers,
melon. Such still air. Soon
the mid-morning breeze will float in
like tepid water, then hot.
How do I start this day,
I who am unsure
of how my life has happened
or how to proceed
amid this warm and steady sweetness?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Coming Up at SPC:
June 16 [Rebecca]: Summer Solstice Reading
June 23 [Tim] James Lee Jobe and Gailmarie Pahmeier
June 30 [Frank]: Stephen Kessler and Jeff Knorr
July 7 [Frank]: Asian Poetry Reading with Frances Kakugawa
July 14 [Emmanuel]: Ali Salim
July 21 [Rebecca]:
July 28 [Tim]: Susan Palwick and Ellen Klages
August 4 [Frank]: Mary Mackey
August 11 [Emmanuel]: Brad Buchanan
August 18 [Rebecca]:
August 25 [Tim]: Ann Keniston and June Saraceno
September 1 [Art]:
September 8 [Emmanuel]:
September 15 [Rebecca]:
September 22 [Tim]: Robbie Grossklaus and Company
September 29 [Frank]: Alan Williamson
ban28guec8
F. D. Reeve and Al Garcia
Monday, June 9 2008 at 7:30 PM
HQ for the Arts at 1719 25th Street
Host: Tim Kahl
F. D. Reeve is a poet, critic, and novelist. Franklin Reeve has had a varied career, for a while driving a combine in the Midwest wheat fields, later acting in summer theater, and working as a longshoreman on the Hudson River docks. He learned Russian and spent a year in Moscow and Leningrad as an exchange professor between the ACLS and the Soviet Academy of Sciences. He also served as translator for Robert Frost during his historic visit to Russia to meet with Nikita Kruschev in 1962.
His books of poetry include: The Toy Soldier. Bayeux Arts Press, 2006, The Return of the Blue Cat. New York: Other Press, 2005, "The Secret Orchard" published online by Verse Daily, 2003, The Urban Stampede and Other Poems. Michigan State University Press, 2002, A World You Haven’t Seen: Selected Early Poems. (downloadable pdf) New York: Rattapallax Press, 2001, The Moon and Other Failures. Michigan State University Press, 1999, Concrete Music. Pyncheon House, 1992, Nightway. The Press at Colorado College, 1987, The Blue Cat. Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1972, In the Silent Stones. William Morrow, 1968.
He has translated a dozen books from Russian, including Five Short Novels by Turgenev, the two-volume Anthology of Russian Plays, The Garden (poems by Bella Akhmadulina), The Trouble with Reason by Alexander Griboyedov, The King and the Fool by Alexander Borshchagovsky, Lions and Acrobats: Selected Poems by Anatoly Naiman.
He has been a contributor to the following magazines: Agni, The American Poetry Review, The American Scholar, The Antioch Review, The Atlantic, The Beloit Poetry Journal, Book World, Confrontation, The Connecticut Review, The Cream City Review, Folio, The Hudson Review, Kansas Quarterly, The Kenyon Review, The Little Magazine, The London Magazine, The New Criterion, The New England Review, New Letters, The New York Times Book Review, The North American Review, The North Dakota Quarterly, Poet & Critic, Poetry, Poetry Now, Potpourri, The Sewanee Review, Shenandoah, The Times Literary Supplement, The Virginia Quarterly Review, Voices, The Western Review, The Yale Review, and others.
The Secret Orchard
The ghosts of a house live in the upstairs hall.
You hear them on their midnight rounds
laughing like the bells of history; by day
they hang like coats along the wall.
In the dark do they stand tall with upright names
as haughty as acolytes lighting an altar?
Surely a few are bent over by worry
like owls, or the Hunchback of Notre Dame.
In April, when the foreign wind relents
and their preposterous imagination starts
a crusade for free love and an end to suffering,
do they beg their loss be recompensed?
That's when I go to the secret orchard. The dew
is fresh on the grass, and a white-throat sings.
There the haunted world is a Faerie ring,
and the earth at sunrise, a magic view.
Al Garcia is the author of two poetry books Rainshadow [Copper Beech Press, 1996] and Skunk Talk [Bear Star Press, 2005] He has had work published in the following: North American Review, Prairie Schooner, Mid-American Review, Laurel Review, Poetry East, Yankee Magazine. He is currently serving as the the Dean of the Languages and Literature Department at Sacramento City College. He lives with his wife, Terry, and three children in Wilton, where he chooses to consistently honor everyday moments.
August Morning
It's ripe, the melon
by our sink. Yellow,
bee-bitten, soft, it perfumes
the house too sweetly.
At five I wake, the air
mournful in its quiet.
My wife's eyes swim calmly
under their lids, her mouth and jaw
relaxed, different.
What is happening in the silence
of this house? Curtains
hang heavily from their rods.
Ficus leaves tremble
at my footsteps. Yet
the colors outside are perfect--
orange geranium, blue lobelia.
I wander from room to room
like a man in a museum:
wife, children, books, flowers,
melon. Such still air. Soon
the mid-morning breeze will float in
like tepid water, then hot.
How do I start this day,
I who am unsure
of how my life has happened
or how to proceed
amid this warm and steady sweetness?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Coming Up at SPC:
June 16 [Rebecca]: Summer Solstice Reading
June 23 [Tim] James Lee Jobe and Gailmarie Pahmeier
June 30 [Frank]: Stephen Kessler and Jeff Knorr
July 7 [Frank]: Asian Poetry Reading with Frances Kakugawa
July 14 [Emmanuel]: Ali Salim
July 21 [Rebecca]:
July 28 [Tim]: Susan Palwick and Ellen Klages
August 4 [Frank]: Mary Mackey
August 11 [Emmanuel]: Brad Buchanan
August 18 [Rebecca]:
August 25 [Tim]: Ann Keniston and June Saraceno
September 1 [Art]:
September 8 [Emmanuel]:
September 15 [Rebecca]:
September 22 [Tim]: Robbie Grossklaus and Company
September 29 [Frank]: Alan Williamson
ban28guec8
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