Poetry in Sebastopol

Thanks to Suzanne for the hot lead on an evening of poetry. The Western Sonoma County Historical Society hosted "a night of vintage and contemporary poetry" at the Veterans Building. In spite of the fact that Suzanne and I felt a little bit like outsiders crashing the gig (as non-society members), it was great to hear Terry Ehret (the county's poet laureate) read, and to learn more about a little volume of poetry that was published in 1933 - a compilation of about a hundred literary voices in the area. Some of the vintage poetry was full of the emotionally manipulative pathos and forced rhymes you might expect from the era, but some of it was not so syrupy and did really evoke a little something about the local geography and history.

One of the things I found interesting was Terry's mention of William Keith, a painter whose work she had studied while writing poetry for the Oakland Museum. He created very large paintings, but in the end, Terry was inspired to write by a much smaller sketch he'd done. Here's one of the poems she read tonight:


Landscape
Untitled
WILLIAM KEITH
oil painting on a cigar box lid


A landscape might show up anywhere,
say as black and green,
red brushstrokes
on the lid of a cigar box,

inside three small glass bottles,
the dark amber which could be the sky,

an old, hinged palette,

brushes of various widths
and their stiff white hair,

whatever is near, your face perhaps.

Come closer.
You will begin to see how deep the woods are,
how much of night is suggested.
Are you thinking about sleep?
It is easy to imagine.

The tools you might use to invent the world
are everywhere, close at hand.