On the last night it’s a tradition for the SV poets to gather at the home of Oakley and Barbara Hall, the founders of the Squaw Valley Community of Writers. There are about 80 of US all together and I’m amazed at how they manage to come up with all the tables and chairs that fill their living room, dining room and two large decks. There is a huge vat of curry on the stove (in a very tiny kitchen) and quesadillas being made on the spot, fruit and veggie salad, asparagus, sodas and wine and bread. The food is wonderful and the conversation lively.

The kitchen is buzzing. The quesadillas were hot off the grill and delicisioso! (yeah, I know that’s not an official word-but poetic license is in order when it comes to describing food).

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Christine (wacky, wonderful roommate), David (fellow blogger) & Dean Young (love those pearly button shirts)

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Sarah (dear poet mentor), Billie (need a hex or a blessing she’s your gal) & Alex (high school teacher in NY that any kid would love to have as their teacher)

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Larry (love the shirt) and Jo (awesome first basewoman)

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Chauncy (wrote his first love poem at SV) and Bryan (zen poet of Chico)

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The best part of the evening is after dinner one of the tables is folded away, we all gather ’round the fireplace and it’s time for anyone who wants to go for it to stand and recite a poem by heart. Frost, Yeats, Eliot, and of course, Dickins0n, were all honored, alongwith many others. Even I got up and spoke three short lines from a poem by Muriel Rukeyser that someone had sent me a couple of weeks before in an email: “Say it! Say it! / The universe is made of stories / not atoms.” I needed something really simple because memorizing does not come easy to me. I so envied some of the poets there who had several poems they could pull out of their pockets. I find the recitation of poems moving. I think of families or clans, people throughout time gathering around a fire or in the parlor or a small theater to tell stories, to chant and speak from the heart, to remember the elders, and to touch the essence of who we are as spirits, not bodies or minds, but visitors, bringing what we can to humankind.

Front row seats on the stone fireplace.

I don’t remember what Dean recited but this must have been a moment of high anxiety.

Liza read something long and, obviously, thought provoking.

C.D.: I think she did a cowboy song. She is a southerner.

Stephen with his Eliot recitation, complete with gestures and credible imitation!

Arlene expressing poetry through her beautiful dance.

Had to end with Sharon, who sang us a song–sweet, sad and full of all that’s Sharon.

On that note I’ll end this post with a favorite poem of Sharon’s and a huge THANK YOU again to all the folks at Squaw Valley Community of Writers. Until we meet again…

by Sharon Olds
from The Unswept Room

Kindergarten Abecedarian

I thought what I had to do was to read
the very long word, over the chalkboard,
ab-kedev-gi-hij-klem-nop-qurs-
tuv-wix-yiz, but what I had to do
was to look at a crescent moon-shape and to go
k k k k with my mind. It was strange,
like other things–that a very large Boy owned everything,
even a fire, where he could put me for the thoughts
in my head. Each day, I tried to read
the world, to find his name in it,
the trees bending in cursive, the bees
looping their sky script. Crescent moon
was k-k-k. Cereal bowl
uh-uh-uh. Cap-gun puh-
puh-puh. K-k, uh-uh, puh-puh,
kk-uhh-puhh, kk-uhh-puhh–
cup. Would God be mad? I had made
a false cup, in my mind, and although
he had made my mind, and owned it, maybe this was
not his cup, maybe he could not
put this cup in hell, and make it
scream the cup-scream. Maybe the paper
world was ours, as the actual one was his–
I was becoming a reader. For a moment I almost remember it,
when I stood back, on the other side
of the alphabet, a-b-c-d-
e-f-g, and took that first
step in, h-i-j-k
l-m-n-o-p, and stood astride
the line of the border of literacy,
q-r-s, t-u-v,
I would work for a life of this, I would ask
sanctuary: w-x-y-z.