Joseph Zaccardi’s Songbirds of the Nine Rivers

 Songbirds of the Nine Rivers by Joseph Zaccardi

My rating: 4 of 5 stars   #2 from "Poetry Feast," a Knox Book Beat review from 27 July 2023, The Berkeley Times. 

Zaccardi found a collection of Chinese and Vietnamese poetry in his U.S. Navy ship’s library in 1966 which “seemed to flow in and out with my breath as I read them.” He doesn’t imitate or translate poems, but chapters his verses under the names of poets he admired as an 18-year-old medic who “looked around (Vietnam) and (wisely) said. ‘We can’t win this thing.’” 

The characters I paint take time.
What unrolls from the left hand is revealed to the right hand.
gives us an imagery that sounds like Confucian scholar and master military strategist Nguyễn Trᾶi, but he then follows it with a somewhat detached Western ego and philosophical questioning:

At times like these I know our dead are not dead to us.
They stand at the edge of our dreams urging us on.

 
At his best, he lets the images speak:
The trail has been long. Sleeping, I clutch my sword,
Dream of distant gardens, of unattended chrysanthemums.
 

This beautiful book from Sixteen Rivers holds wonderful fables, sad but good wistfulness, curious and strange repetitions. Bravo!


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Poetry Feast - #1 Julia Vinograd

 

When God Gets Drunk and Other Poems by Julia Vinograd
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Poetry Feast -- from a Knox Book Beat review July 27, 2023, The Berkeley Times.
When God Gets Drunk by Julia Vinograd with art by Chris Trian: a brisk aperitif. Joseph Zaccardi’s Songbirds of the Nine Rivers, Avotcja’s With Every Step I Take 2 with artwork by Eliza Land Shefler a main course, and Judy Wells’ Night at the Musée d’Orsay: Poems of Paris and Other Great European Cities winding up international and local poetry styles and subjects. Christopher Bernard’s The Socialist’s Garden of Verses the slightly bitter but balancing digestif.
We love you, Julia. A true Poetry Goddess of the Streets of Berkeley, California for many, many years. Short reviews of the others follow.


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Odyssey of Ashes - Cheryl Krauter

Odyssey of Ashes: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Letting Go by Cheryl Krauter
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

From the review published 16 November, 2023 in The Berkeley Times, Knox Book Beat as "Grief & Gratitude" covering the “Mystery, Magic and Meaning of Transformation” She Writes Press’ reading at Book Passage in June of 2023.

“Yet these are the cards that have been laid before me, and I know I will play the hand I’ve been dealt.” (Krauter p. 43).

      I’m glad moderator Cheryl Krauter sent me her 2021 Odyssey of Ashes: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Letting Go, sensitively and honestly chronicling her husband’s sudden death, her thoughts, feelings and responses then, leading up to and through her pilgrimage to a Montana fly-fishing stream where she takes his ashes, and then through her thoughts and changes as she celebrates Día de Los Muertos and contemplates how she has changed, her “myth,” self-concept and mortality.

“We leave behind all that we were once and become --- what? Air? Sky? Stars? Do our souls, the essence of our being, travel in swirling patterns of light and color in corners of the universe we cannot comprehend, only to circle back and touch others lightly in the heart?” (Krauter, p. 125). (YES! wc)     

She talks to a woman friend’s picture on the Muertos altar, asking forgiveness for “not understanding the devastating grief of losing (her husband) Joe…I wish she were here with me. We’d agree that the loss of a partner does not get easier… Like a river meandering along its path, sparkling in the sunlight, beneath the surface, the water is always made of tears.” (Krauter, p. 134). When she finds $560 in cash in “the mess of John’s office,” she hears “him saying to me, “Don’t pay bills with this. Take it for yourself; do something frivolous.” It’s one of those bittersweet moments then I feel how he lives in me.”

The dead inhabit our consciousness, giving us “messages from the grave.” "All we need to do is suspend the rational mind and they’re right there, where they’ve been all along.” 

I felt like I was automatically on a first-name basis with all these women after hearing them and reading their books.

I hear Larry say “I’m excited,” in that odd, deadpan way he had. I feel better. Not “so sad.” Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you… <3 br="">

https://www.cherylkrauter.com/

https://shewritespress.com/product/odyssey-of-ashes/


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The Girl in the White Cape - Barbara Sapienza - Ways of Knowing

 The Girl in the White Cape: A Novel by Barbara Sapienza

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

From the review published 16 November, 2023 in The Berkeley Times, Knox Book Beat as "Grief & Gratitude" covering the “Mystery, Magic and Meaning of Transformation” She Writes Press’ group reading at Book Passage in June of 2023.

Barbara Sapienza’s The Girl in the White Cape: A Novel, is a present-day step into a Bay Area “mythic fairy tale” full of mystery and transformation; full of loss, death, birth, nature, spirit and love. 

Steeped in Clarissa Pinkola Estés’ stories and archetypes of Women Who Run With the Wolves like Vasilisa the Wise and “wild” and Dangerous Old Women like Baba Yaga, Sapienza does very well weaving unique male, female, Q, intergenerational and other characters into real/not real familiar places and situations. So close and yet not really our world, Girl absolutely reeks of what she called at Book Passage “different ways of knowing” like “Surrender, Feminine Mystery, Sacred, Deep Feminine” and “Intuition.”

I would be skeptical of moving in the direction of “willing suspension of disbelief” with Sapienza if I hadn’t been watching Dr. Dan Siegel’s YouTube video on the ancient, basically multisensory primality of "How Our (human) Relationships Shape Us" biologically, ancestrally and neurologically from womb to tomb (and possibly beyond) through mentors, self-discipline, practices and teachers. There ARE possibilities of building new responses out of primal reactions; of moving from loss, doubt, fear and silence to joy, trust, beauty and compassion as well as “awe, respect” and visioning thOur “life source.”

Sapienza’s story is enchanting, but not dopey – captivating in an encouraging, strengthening way. I hope to read more from her and the muses who whispered it to her.

() https://www.barbarasapienza.com/ () 

()  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwmtgrWKQrY   ()

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By Accident: A Memoir of Letting Go - Greene

 From a review published 16 November, 2023 in The Berkeley Times, Knox Book Beat as "Grief & Gratitude," regarding the She Writes Press’ reading at Book Passage, Corte Madera, CA in June 2023.

By Accident: A Memoir of Letting Go by Joanne Greene
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

In By Accident: A Memoir of Letting Go, Joanne Greene; newscaster, TV, radio and podcasting personality wrestles with cancer, a horrible auto injury and long recovery process; profoundly learning and growing along the way with the support of her spouse, Jewish roots, community service and learning to be more flexible in herself, work and relationships. 

     She’s like Donna Stoneham (Catch Me When I Fall) in recognizing the unique, transformational, cumulative, triggering qualities of the spiral of her suffering and healing, even though her circumstances, voice and life experiences frame them differently.     

 

Both experience Greene’s “emptiness I feel…tempered by my gratitude” and “There’s nothing quite like family – the way we show up for the pivotal moments in life.” And how their son’s “life-affirming plan gave me added motivation to heal.” (Greene p. 116-117.) Both examine primary relationships and recreate dialogues and descriptions skillfully, as well as recognizing chance and good fortune in their survival and recoveries.
 

Greene especially focuses on changes in how “I’m overdoing it…recognizing that I can no longer do it all tells me that I really have learned a few lessons since the accident. I can handle uncertainty. Filling every moment with activity gives me no chance to reflect and create moments of peace for myself.” (Greene p. 138.) “Whatever the outcome, I’ll be surrounded by my people.” (Greene p. 154.) 

She knows she is so blessed!

()  https://www.joanne-greene.com/   ()

()  https://shewritespress.com/portfolio/joanne-greene/   ()


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Stoneham - Mother Loss and Healing

Review published 16 November, 2023 in The Berkeley Times, Knox Book Beat as "Grief & Gratitude."

Catch Me When I Fall: Poems of Mother Loss and Healing by Donna Stoneham
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

In the obsessive world of California one-upspersonship, the cynical and jaded might call Donna Stoneham’s Catch Me When I Fall: Poems of Mother Loss and Healing childish and banal; but in post-pandemic nightmares, portents of WWIII every night on the news and the REAL, IMMEDIATE world of family, community and relationship churning up in every post-pandemic psyche and household, it is a shining star of simple eloquence, sincerity, grace and gratitude. We NEED childish. (Or as George Carlin said, “childLIKE.”) We CRAVE the “banal” if it means “commonplace,” “ordinary” and “normal” when the “new normal” is chronic agoraphobia; bombing and shooting up elementary schools, celebrations, refugees, hospitals and places of worship.
Hey, if "Love" is your Baptist-Republican Mama’s favorite word from St. Paul channeling from heaven to your White Tara retreat in Khatmandu, Go for it, Donna, and Tell it like it is! The truth of your and her and St. Paul’s “greatest of these is Love” in thOur contexts ring out like an Armistice bell over a vast graveyard. “The war is over, if you want it,” said John and Yoko, you look up and see a bumper sticker that says “Just Be Kind” and believe it, take it as a sign, the same way I did coming out of the neonatal care unit where our child was waffling between life and death to see one that said “Expect A Miracle.” So we did.

In the midst of her “jagged,” “recursive,” “repetitive spiral” of grief as well as reconnecting to work and world events; Stoneham finds “What I’m realizing, through being forced to move slowly as I’ve worked to heal my…injury, is that I no longer want my life to be focused on driving to make things happen through sheer force of will. What I choose now is to trust that whatever I need will emerge in divine timing. All I need to do is to hold that faith and remain open to the possibilities around me, so that I’m able to receive what’s coming next.” 

“Trust,” “divine” and “faith” remind us of the GOOD parts of family relationships and religious community she found in those years. Thank you. Much better than “hatred,” “authoritarian” and “fear.” (P. 190, Stoneham.)
Death of a loved one isn’t fun, life isn’t perfect, but “Mama” channels “grace will sustain you through every challenge you face in your life if you allow it space to enter,” and Stoneham records, “Your wise granddaughter took my hand, looked me in the eyes, and said, “Aunt Donna, instead of thinking about what happened then, why don’t you think about how much fun we’re having now, and then you won’t be so sad?”” (p. 189-90. Ibid.) Out of the mouths of babes… Childish? Right on!
Between November 2015 and 2021, she comes to “Mama, thank you….As bereft as I feel from (Roxie’s) loss, I rest in the faith that the circle of life is unfolding, and that neither one of you is far away.” (P. 251 ibid.) May we all be so blessed and balanced!

(13 December, 2023)  https://donnastoneham.com/    (2023)


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Nina Simons: A Woman Listens For Leadership

 Nature, Culture and the Sacred: A Woman Listens For Leadership by Nina Simons

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Nature, Culture and the Sacred: A Woman Listens For Leadership. Bioneers have some answers. Nina Simons has been absorbing, promoting and formulating them.
Published 22 June, 2023 in The Berkeley Times as “Bioneers: We ARE Nature,” Knox Book Beat.

Part memoir; part feminist, de-colonialist, anti-racist self-help workbook for activists, and a LOT of stories of her interactions with leaders in the ecology, spirituality and social justice worlds; this book is by a woman who not only listens, but pays attention, CHANGES and then expresses her life of growth and learning through sharing, ritual and action.

Unafraid of experiencing and admitting a lot of mistakes, “uncomfortable” discussions and “paradoxes” along the way; she threw herself into challenging situations, beginning with leadership in a still-very-gender-biased world of the 1970s. “A healthy system requires diversity to survive trauma and thrive,” however, and she knew they had to be “curious, brave and experimental.”

More thematic than chronological, Nature repeats her pivotal learnings that congeal and accumulate powerfully by the end, from personal to interpersonal to whole. Grounded in the body, she moves from inner balance to social biases; “breakthrough and breakdown” experiences, lists, prompts and questions; pulls through to “Gender Equity, Full Spectrum Leadership & Racial Justice;” Exploring Privilege, Allyship, Death, Grief and how Ritual Creates Relationship.

“We have to allow ourselves to feel the loss and the pain of witnessing as what we love is diminished and threatened,” she says. Friend Terry Tempest Williams replies “we really do have to stand in the center of authenticity and realize…community is very important…We cannot do it alone.” Simons replies “One of our deepest human needs is to belong.”

At Bioneers in Berkeley, we sang the “Warrior Woman” song for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women. We heard from McKenzie Long about This Contested Land: The Storied Past and Uncertain Future of America’s National Monuments; a brilliant younger rock climber, biker and hiker who writes like the wind, envisions like John Muir and tells truths “like a mountain.” We welcomed the words of gentle elder john a. powell of thOur Cal Othering and Belonging Institute, author of Racing to Justice: Transforming Our Conceptions of Self and Other to Build an Inclusive Society.

Storytelling, vulnerability, love, imagination. All part of the journey. “We cannot do it alone…” But I believe, together, we CAN…

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