Cholla Needles
Open Poetry Reading
June 5, 2022 5-7 PM
Reviewed by John Krieg
Wild Spectacle: Seeking Wonders in a World beyond Humans
by Janisse Ray
Trinity University Press.
From the swamps of America’s southeast, to the forests of
Montana, to the still untrammeled wilderness areas of Alaska, south of the
border to mainland Mexico and the governmentally protected rain forests of
Costa Rica, Ray relentlessly searches
for the wild places and brings back the tragic story: they are fast
disappearing. She laments that she was
not born of another time, the time before European contact in America. A time when the vastness and diversity of nature
ruled and humanity, us, Homo sapiens was just another species in the grand scheme
of things, living amongst the other species; no better, no worse, just another
creature struggling to survive.
These are stories of innocent vulnerability intertwined
with strands of uncommon strength; intricately woven tales encompassing equal
measures of magic and passion. They
speak of what is still out there if you’re astute and bold enough to notice it. What does it mean to still be wild? It means to realize that nature is bigger
than you. That nature doesn’t need you. Wildness puts humanity in its place. Wildness
is awe. And, as she so eloquently states,
where nature is still undisturbed, unadulterated, and unmolested it is still
wild, it is in fact a wild spectacle:
I have, in my luckiest moments, lived heart-pounding
moments of wild spectacle (p. x).
Her essay about swimming amongst the manatees in the
Crystal River of Florida is not for the hard-hearted. It springs forth with kindness and the
essence of love – acceptance and tolerance of something different than
ourselves. These docile creatures, their
backs sliced and scarred by the props of
the motorboats of the callous and uncaring so-called apex species deeply moved
her. She communes with a mother manatee
and her calf:
Then I hear the manatee mother speak. She is beseeching me. “You must help us,” she says. “You must help us.”
I hear her distinctly: “You must help us.”
She turns, blows at the surface, nudges her baby, and
sinks away, back into the descension of the primitive river bottom. Something rises in me that has been rising
for a long time, and I break into the sentient air, dizzy, trembling, and blind
with love (p. 142).
This woman has courage.
Not the brazen reckless courage of the braggart or the fool, but the
calculated courage of knowing the risks and the odds against succeeding and
fighting through those misgivings and taking them on. She will write grants, volunteer her labor,
accept the kindness of likeminded nature lovers to get to the wild places. In the same vein as Annie Dillard before her,
Ray risks all to be in a position to write, to be able to go to where the story
is. She blocks out the white noise of the
manmade world to better interpret the wild one, the one which she prefers. A world that she wants to share with those
astute enough to understand that it has always been there and could be
again. In her acknowledgements, which
she terms “gratitude” she says as much:
My greatest desire is to enliven our culture,
cultivating and spreading ideas about a world beyond violence and destruction,
a wild and inclusive world, a world that is at our fingertips; and to offer the
possibility of transformation. I thank
those who keep their hearts open to all life (p. 194).
Janisse Ray is a marvelous contradiction of inherent grit versus raw emotion. This woman, tough as nails, is easily given to weeping over natural beauty, beauty rapidly disappearing, beauty lost. If that isn’t worth crying about, what is?
Click here for more information about Wild Spectacle
Also available:
Red Lanterns: Poems by Janisse Ray
Click here for more information about Red Lanterns
Reviewed by John Krieg
Deep Hanging Out:
Wanderings and Wonderment in Native California
by Malcolm Margolin
Heyday
Books.
If you want a jolt to any
complacency and smugness that you may have fallen prey to as a member of the
boomer generation, or if you’re a millennial seeking to know the unbridled
truth about the volatile European settlement of California, by all means, buy
this book. Know that sometimes the truth
really doesn’t set you free, but rather binds you to a sense of responsibility
and accountability. The truth can be heart
wrenching.
Margolin is white, Jewish, and
hails from Boston, Massachusetts. How would
anyone with those credentials become involved with Native Americans in
California? Well…he is also
compassionate, empathetic, generous, and imbued with a rock solid basic sense
of fairness that prods him to speak out
against injustice, and Eurocentric man’s treatment of indigenous peoples across
the globe ever since over oceanic exploration came to the fore is just about
the greatest injustice in human history.
It should also be noted that he moved to Berkley after graduating from
Harvard University while in his late twenties during the late 60’s at the
height of its revolutionary ethic while concurrently serving as the epicenter
of hippiedom. Back then peace and love
wasn’t just a popular saying, it was a way of life. Margolin still lives it and still lives in
Berkley.
Malcolm Margolin is a
journalist’s journalist. A journalist
strives to always have their boots on the ground where the story is unfolding. They don’t rely on television or secondhand
information, they have to be there, they have to hang out where the action is. So, just how deep is Margolin’s deep hanging
out? It started over 50 years ago and is
ongoing. He explains this endeavor in
his recently written introduction:
I’ve often explained my time
spent with California Indians as “deep hanging out.” The phrase has a connotation of hippie
casualness, but it was coined by anthropologist Clifford Geertz in 1998 to
describe anthropological research done via informal immersion in a culture, as
opposed to research done by conducting formal interviews and distanced
observations…
As a practice deep hanging
out very much corresponds to Indian ways of gaining knowledge. It is an older way in which you don’t pursue
knowledge as much as you put yourself out there with the hope that knowledge
will come to you. I learned much from
sitting on people’s porches, playing checkers with them, listening to their
stories, telling stories of my own. My
academic reflections come from hours spent in libraries reviewing
anthropological treatises, linguistic reports, and field notes. I’m proud of the research that I’ve been able
to do and very grateful for the trust and the access to their lives that Native
people have given me (p. viii).
Consider the wealth of
environmental diversity in California pre-European contact estimated to have
occurred in 1542. From the seacoast to
the deep forests to the interior plateaus to the salmon rich river valleys natural
food sources were readily available to those who lived a sustainable lifestyle
that never overexploited their source of sustenance. Deer, elk, and antelope abounded while flocks
of ducks and geese were so thick that they blotted out the sky. The botanical marvels of oak and mesquite
trees provided acorns and pods that could be stored in granaries throughout the
winter and feed an entire village. Statewide,
there were well over 100,000 Indians living lightly off the land which was a
lifestyle long ago abandoned by the European nations. The damage that was wrought upon the unsuspecting
indigenous inhabitants through oppression, diseases, and intolerance has been well documented ad infinitum
elsewhere, and while Margolin makes solid reference to it, his primary focus is
mainly on the living, on the restoration of cultures through a return to their
traditional customs and the redemption of their languages, many of which were considered
lost to history.
The depth and breadth of the
man’s intellect is on high display in his article entitled: Life in a
California Mission (1989) because it
answers the haunting question of why would the Indians have ever accepted
Spain’s mission system? Margolin
explains:
Part of what drew them was,
of course, the dazzle of Spanish goods. Guns, metal, cloth, exotic foods,
horses that obeyed people and bore them effortlessly and majestically for great
distances, cows that patiently gave them milk, carts pulled by stately and well-muscled
draft oxen, boats in full sail that came from beyond the ocean – these were,
for a people who had never conceived of such things, bewildering in their power
and beauty (p. 169-170).
This is a work filled with kind-hearted
admiration and understanding with an occasional undertone of remorse that is
quickly dispelled with ample examples of hope.
In short, it is an extraordinary and vitally important account of the
human spirit and the will to survive. In
the essay entitled Still Here (2019) the author humbly sums up his
life’s work through the publication of News from Native California:
As is obvious from the
listings in the very first issue, we didn’t create the cultural revival, we
reported on it and, in reporting, spread information about it from one
community to another. I’m proud of what
we did. In that age before the Internet,
many areas of California – especially rural areas - were isolated from one
another, spreading the news of how, in various communities, members of a
younger generation were, by and large on their own, reviving language, dance,
song, traditional arts, and skills, as well as spiritual practice, was a
laudable service (p. 246).
Malcolm Margolin has done a huge
service for not only the state’s original population, but for all Californians. Deep Hanging Out is a book that is well
worth hanging out with and referring to time and time again.
I was born and raised in Pasadena, California.
My happiest childhood moments included watching vintage movies igniting my simmering creative passions. I’d often set out on my motorcycle into the wilderness. Upon reaching a crest, I’d turn off the motor and enjoy the breeze whipping up the forest fragrance, and meet many of its inhabitants.
My earliest memory of school was the telling of original stories to my classmates in the kindergarten sandbox.
My writing career began in a sandbox, lay dormant for decades, and resurfaced when my life’s journey provided abundant story material. - Jonathan
Click here for more information
Open Poetry Reading
May 1, 2022 4-6 PM
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Sunday, April 24, 3-5 PM.
Open Youth Poetry Reading
April 10, 2022 2-4 PM
Fallout From Our Asphalt Hell by Gabriel Hart
This collection of 20 fast-paced short stories cut to the quick. There’s death, there’s suicide, there’s alcoholism, there’s hopeless drug addiction. And, there are precious few characters to actually look up to. Hart provides a gutter lever glimpse of humanity that is not unlike a hideous car wreck; they’re simply too awful to look away from. Infidelity gone awry, botched contract killings, glorification of the anti-hero, out-patient sex change operations, an entire town’s economy propped up by dog fighting, invention of a drug that takes the user so high that death is the only thing left to experience. A delicious and dizzying display of debauchery, dysfunction, and despicableness that leaves you shocked, occasionally revolted, and constantly turning the pages.
Fallout From Our Asphalt Hell defies genre description. Are these stories punk, pulp, speculative, or heroin chic? At times they’re equal measures of all, and at other times they’re none of the above, but at all times they’re thoroughly entertaining. As Thompson would say: “Buy the ticket, take the ride.” You won’t be disappointed.
Open Poetry Reading
April 3, 2022 2-4 PM
Not On Fire, Only Dying by Susan Rukeyser
(Twisted Road Publications, 2015, 277 pages)
Reviewed for Cholla Needles by Greg Gilbert
Lola says her baby is kidnapped, and the reader soon wonders
if the child is real. Only Marko believes that the baby isn’t a figment of her
mental instability and pharmaceutical haze. An ex-convict and drug-dealer, he
is devoted to Lola and acts as her knight in an effort to right her world. Armored
with his love, his honor, and his black oilskin duster, his allegiance to her
fragile belief in the child is the great test of his knighthood. Though his
eyes, we experience Lola as a fully formed person, at times jittery and ragged,
and at times “better.” As for Marko, one may ask if he is an antihero. This is
a central question in the story. Is he tilting at windmills, or is there a gallant
obligation in his quest? Is true heroism founded in the heart of the warrior,
regardless of the rightness of the quest? In a world of artifice, Marko may lack
the qualities of a “leading man,” but just as Rukeyser’s depiction of love is cleaved
to the bone, so too is Marko’s heroism. His strides are long, his love is true,
his duster spreads behind him like a cape. He is all sinew and scars and heart.
He is never ridiculous. Even his violence and his moments of confusion and
doubt are virtuous – except for when his violence has the final word. And even
then, we are inclined to forgive.
Not On Fire, Only Dying is a compelling novel. Susan
Rukeyser is a gifted writer and storyteller. Without relying on sentimentality,
she draws us into the lives of her characters, some worthy of our affection and
admiration, others deserving of our scorn. Her scene setting is brief and atmospheric,
often poetic but never heavy-handed. Her pacing is patient, and her narration
occurs from within the story’s interior. This is a streetwise book. Hardcore
realities are commonplace, a one room apartment without a closet, bitter icy
waters that promise infinite rest, hopes hung on a precarious balance, the
world of pharmaceuticals and back-alley sleight-of-hand, and, hauntingly, in
the background – the punctuating cries of a lone infant. The story of Lola and Marko
is one where love is acid etched onto the hearts of two weathered souls who
might become one another’s redeemer. This is a story that will sit in the
reader like a personal memory.
reviewed by Jennifer E Bradpiece
It’s raining. Kelsey Bryan-Zwick’s voice crackles like fire. Not comfortable flames in the fireplace but a controlled burn heading straight for the nape of your neck, then searing through your spine.
Outside, the rain falls gently. In “Self-portrait -after an Epidural,” the narrator admits they “only ever weep / when it is raining.” The sky’s tears above are no cover for the visceral ravage of bone and flesh this author lays bare.
Throughout Bone Water, Kelsey goes into her body with the surgeon’s “rapid hands” and “knives.” She stretches the reader as her spine has been painfully stretched and stressed over and over. It is unbearable, yet there is a vicious beauty in how she relates the ravages of her body. Her perspective is at once dissociated and visceral.
In “Kintsugi,” the narrator “offer[s]” their “broken body, time and time again.” Like the art form the poem is named after, all of these pieces speak to the necessity of constantly creating beauty in fractured spaces. “Everyday a new story …” (“Left Thigh”). This genre is the Art of Survival.
Kelsey won’t allow you off the operating table or out of bed. But she will gift you the wry absurd humor it takes to live artfully in a pain wracked or ill body. This is a vantage point that is too often invisible in this bustling world. Invisible — like many of us Painlings and chronically ill folx are or feel. These are deep seldom explored waters. And in this time of pandemic, when many who survive are left with lingering or permanent ailments, it’s time to dive in.
presence
Open Poetry Reading
Mar 6, 2022 2-4 PM
