Sacramento's Zen Marxist Launderettes Cleansing History of its Spiritual Nothingness



Tonight I hosted a group reading at the Sacramento Poetry Center. The group, formed seven years ago in Sacramento, calls itself the Zen Marxist Launderettes. Seven of the group's nine members came to the reading and they treated us to come great craft, gentle but jolting. The launderette sisters who read tonight are Margaret Burns, Cecile Martin, Ellen Johnson, Mira Kores, Sandra Senne, Emily Wright, and Laura Ann Walton. They read mostly from their new book Wring, which is scheduled to be reviewed soon right here on WOI.

In her introduction to Wring, Julia Connor, former Sacramento Poet Laureate, said, " The only real essential of a gift economy is that its goods be passed along from hand to hand. For only when the works of the imagination are carried over into the real--the poem on the page--can imagination create the future." And indeed, ZML, which started as a workshop, has "co-conspired" to launder words with which to convey truth. As one of the poets, Emily Wright, has written, "The Zen Marxist Launderette puts words onto paper to cleanse history of its spiritual nothingness."

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