Poems for an Empty Church Book Release Reading and Party

Oh yeah. October is just around the corner, and you know what that means, don’t you? Yup. My girlfriend celebrates her birthday. And it’s time to celebrate Ezra Pound’s birthday.

And the Yankees make the playoffs. And it’s Halloween. And Tom Holmes has a book-release reading and party.

That’s right. I’ll be reading at A Different Path Gallery on Saturday, October 22 at 7:30 p.m. at the wonderful art gallery in downtown Brockport, A Different Path Gallery, located at 27 Market Street.

[To download a printable version of the poster, click Poems for an Empty Church PDF.]

Oh yeah. Good times. Poetry, wine, food, and you. Come for the wine. Stay for the poetry.

Here’s what they are saying about the book:

I’ve had a good time with Poems for an Empty Church, which is a big book, capacious, and surprised me with its often free-flowing and associational aesthetics.  As you want (usually) a cubist perspective(s), and as you say you want your poem/accept your poem as smarter than you are, you hit all sorts of interesting effects.  So, friend, way to go. I peered through the rocks into that eye & land of yours ….

– William Heyen, author of Shoah Train (finalist for the National Book Award)

Of course, no church is ever really empty unless people let ritual and myth lapse into repetition and dogma. Even then it isn’t empty, just empty of awe. That’s when origin stories are most necessary, and that’s what Tom Holmes provides in abundance: Moons create amazement, then stones create reflection, then people come along creating words, aggression, fire, flutes, art, physics, and probably our destruction, everything progressing ’til it returns full circle. Along the way, “statues pry themselves from sides of buildings / and exit the city / clutching their plaques.” Along the way, a lot of fine poems unfold, one containing a curse: “you have succeeded / in being only what you thought / you should be.” It’s a curse because we ought to be more. In a century in need of a giant do-over, Poems for an Empty Church reminds us of that. Even better, it makes a good lever or spark.

– Rob Carney, author of Story Problems, Weather Report, and Boasts, Toasts, and Ghosts

In Poems for an Empty Church, Tom Holmes writes of birth and death and the life we live in between those two events in beautifully sculpted lines carved into the white space that surrounds them. “I dare say I can hear / muddy angels singing /the lines of God,” he writes in “The Calculus of a Tod Marshall Book of Poems.” There are plenty of angels in Tom Holmes’ poems too, but one must be still enough to hear and appreciate the whisk of wings hovering over these powerful meditations.

– Sarah Freligh, author of Sort of Gone

I think of Charles Olsen when I read Tom Holmes’ poems: open, investigative, prophetic, often with mystical implications. These are the elements of our best modernist poems, and Holmes is a modernist – or a pre-modernist, or a post-pre-modernist. And there lies the real interesting part of his poems, they are hard to fit into anyone anywhere. He sits us in an empty church and says listen. He knows “it was the moons talked first.” He knows the dreams we dream even when “we wheeze / asleep in our boxes of shadows.” In these poems and parables is our collective of fire and nightfall, origins and endings, monochromatics, rivers, and stretch marks. Sappho makes a rare presence, but this is a book more stone-carved than page-written and she too is an ancient muse. As this author’s I is an absent eye, scanning the world of caves and shadows to find clouds who feed themselves, ghosts like alphabets, and men who whittle bones into flutes.

– Sean Thomas Dougherty, author of Sasha Sings the Laundry on the Line and Broken Hallelujahs

Poems for an Empty Church was officially released September 2, 2011, from Palettes & Quills. Founded in 2002, Palettes & Quills is devoted to the celebration and expansion of the literary and visual arts and offers both commissioned and consulting services. Palettes & Quills works to support beginning and emerging writers and artists to expand their knowledge, improve their skills, and connect to other resources in the community. Further, Palettes & Quills seeks to increase the public’s awareness and appreciation of these arts through education, advocacy, hands-on assistance, and by functioning as a literary press.//

Poems for an Empty Church Has Been Released

If you believe in God or don’t believe in god, if you have a religion or need a religion, if you’re empty or spiritually full, Poems for an Empty Church will speak to you and help you experience the Other.

Poems for an Empty Church (from Palettes & Quills) is now on sale at Amazon here. Soon it will be available at other book stores including Lift Bridge Book Shop in the heart of downtown Brockport, NY.

Here’s what people are saying about it:

Of course, no church is ever really empty unless people let ritual and myth lapse into repetition and dogma. Even then it isn’t empty, just empty of awe. That’s when origin stories are most necessary, and that’s what Tom Holmes provides in abundance: Moons create amazement, then stones create reflection, then people come along creating words, aggression, fire, flutes, art, physics, and probably our destruction, everything progressing ’til it returns full circle. Along the way, “statues pry themselves from sides of buildings / and exit the city / clutching their plaques.” Along the way, a lot of fine poems unfold, one containing a curse: “you have succeeded / in being only what you thought / you should be.” It’s a curse because we ought to be more. In a century in need of a giant do-over, Poems for an Empty Church reminds us of that. Even better, it makes a good lever or spark.

– Rob Carney, author of Story Problems, Weather Report, and Boasts, Toasts, and Ghosts

In Poems for an Empty Church, Tom Holmes writes of birth and death and the life we live in between those two events in beautifully sculpted lines carved into the white space that surrounds them. “I dare say I can hear / muddy angels singing /the lines of God,” he writes in “The Calculus of a Tod Marshall Book of Poems.” There are plenty of angels in Tom Holmes’ poems too, but one must be still enough to hear and appreciate the whisk of wings hovering over these powerful meditations.

– Sarah Freligh, author of Sort of Gone

I think of Charles Olsen when I read Tom Holmes’ poems: open, investigative, prophetic, often with mystical implications. These are the elements of our best modernist poems, and Holmes is a modernist – or a pre-modernist, or a post-pre-modernist. And there lies the real interesting part of his poems, they are hard to fit into anyone anywhere. He sits us in an empty church and says listen. He knows “it was the moons talked first.” He knows the dreams we dream even when “we wheeze / asleep in our boxes of shadows.” In these poems and parables is our collective of fire and nightfall, origins and endings, monochromatics, rivers, and stretch marks. Sappho makes a rare presence, but this is a book more stone-carved than page-written and she too is an ancient muse. As this author’s I is an absent eye, scanning the world of caves and shadows to find clouds who feed themselves, ghosts like alphabets, and men who whittle bones into flutes.

– Sean Thomas Dougherty, author of Sasha Sings the Laundry on the Line and Broken Hallelujahs

This book is dedicated to Rob Carney, William Heyen, and W. S. Merwin. Without them, this book could never have come into being. They have affected my poetry profoundly, which is evident in this book.

I began writing Poems for an Empty Church back in 1989 or 1990. I didn’t know that at the time, but the oldest poem in the book, “Three Voices of Creation,” was begun back then.  I then worked on it for 17 more years. Twenty-one or twenty-two years if you count some tiny edits I made before the book went to the printer.

The majority of the book, however, was written around 2005 and 2007 when Merwin’s sans-punctuation imagination and tonalities were in me along with Rob Carney’s mythic imagination and tonalities. This book is built from the mythic imagination, tonalities, long vowel sounds, and, to my surprise when I read it again for the first time in two years just before it went to publication, harmonic tonalities. But mostly, it’s in a simple language. A language of what I call The Language of Last Call. That is the language that people are using shortly before a bar closes. When you use a language that is most close and most honest to you. A language that is void of the pedantic and impressive. It’s a language of communication and images. And it’s clear.

Here’s the opening poem:

     Twelve Years with Heyen’s “The Poem is Smarter Than You”
        For William Heyen

     I know what this poem means
     I know everything about it
     I know why the oak is in the poem
     to evoke sturdiness longevity & tone
     The poem is smarter than you

     I know this poem in part
     is meaning to talk
     about the expensive oak desk
     & how it was made
     a symbol of civilization
     The poem is smarter than you

     I think the oak poem
     I will write will speak
     of a forest being clear cut
     The poem is smarter than you

     Dear Poem what do you need
     I can’t see from staring at you
     my imagination is not
     connecting to you or the oak
     The poem is separate from you

     Dear writer remove time
     from your poem then space
     then see where you stand
     see where the oak walks
     or has walked or if it will move
     The poem is separate from you

     There is nothing here
     but an old movie projector
     with an absent light bulb
     & now a star whose light
     has not yet arrived
     What are you hinting
     The poem is smarter than you

     Poem you’ve turned your back
     to me you’re walking without me
     you’ve stolen my pencil
     The poem is smarter than you

     Dear Poem I’m tired of this
     thinking I’ve lowered my hands
     I’ve stopped my attempt to write
     What do you want

     That surrender & your ego 
     clear cut from the page 
     & a mountain for me to stand on 
     & a sunrise for my shadow 
     which you will trace 
     listening to night’s echoes 
     I am smarter than you 
     Nature is smarter than me

This is like the opening door poem. The book really begins with the first section “Beginnings,” when the other poems become more grounded, more body- and soul-centric, and able to fill, live, and resonate within an empty church. //

The I-90 Poetry Revolution Begins 9-3-11

The second most important date in the history of American poetry is September 3, 2011, at 7:30 p.m. This is when poets from all over the country will gather at A Different Path Gallery to read poems announcing and supporting the I-90 Poetry Manifesto. (You can read the manifesto here  or as PDF here.)

Besides reading the poems that will be heard ’round the world, it will be the release party of Redactions: Poetry & Poetics issue 14.

(Special thanks to Kenny Lindsay for his help on the Tominator style for the letters.)

The final list of readers isn’t complete, but all the poets in issue 14 have been invited, including:

Corey Zeller, William Wright, Joe Wilkins, Antonio Vallone, Bill Tremblay, Daniel Tobin, Claudia M. Stanek, Matt Smythe, Martha Silano, Gregory Sherl, Ravi Shankar, Edwina Seaver, Wanda Schubmehl, Karen Schubert, John Roche, Michael Robins, Joseph Rathgeber, Nate Pritts, Derek Pollard, Dan Pinkerton, Eric Neuenfeldt, Laura E. J. Moran, Lindsay Miller, Philip Metres, Laura McCullough, Djelloul Marbrook, Gerry LaFemina, Keetje Kuipers, Les Kay, Kitty Jospe, Jonathan Johnson, Gwendolyn Cash James, Adam Houle, William Heyen, Andrei Guruianu, Richard Foerster, Jonathan Farmer, Deirdre Dore, Laura E. Davis, Jim Daniels, Charles Cote, Peter Conners, Holly Virginia Clark, Alex Cigale, Jan Wenk Cedras, Rob Carney, James Capozzi, John Bradley, Tricia Asklar, Sherman Alexie, Lisa Akus, and guest editor Sean Thomas Dougherty.

Don’t miss it. As Sean Thomas Dougherty says, “There will be poetry so beautiful it will change your life.”

A Different Path Gallery is located at 27 Market Street in Brockport, NY.

The event is free, but bring a bottle of wine if you can.

If you’re on Facebook, you can add it to your calendar here: I-90 Poetry Revolution Facebook page.

If you want a PDF of the poster, click The I-90 Revolution Reading Poster PDF.

in pursuit of the juiciest wine: day thirty-one

Right now I’m trying to design a cover for William Heyen’s next volume of journals, volume 2. He is so prolific. He writes more than Joyce Carol Oates or Stephen King. He’s got like 50 or more collections of poems, a whole bunch of other stuff that I’m not going to list, and his journal. 600+ pages per volume, and the first one was about a 9-point type size. He’s got about 20 of these. Anyway. I’m designing a possibly cool cover for volume 2, but I need a break. Actually, I need a drink.

So tonight it is Plungerhead Lodi Zinfandel Old Vine 2008. I’ve heard this is  jammy. I heard the vines are 100 years old. I’ve heard the grapes have been purposely stressed out, which is a good thing. It makes the grapes taste better. The vineyard also, as I understand it, uses a wild yeast. If this wild yeast behaves as it should and the wine maker knows what he or she is doing, then you will get very good results.

Let’s talk about yeast for a second. There are two yeast than can be used: wild and cultured. When a using a cultured yeast in the wine making process, the  cultured yeast ferments the grapes without much trouble – it begins fermenting right away and finishes fermenting. It works from beginning to end. Fermentation is what turns grape juice into wine. With a cultured yeast, the wine will be 12% to 13% alcohol. With the cultured yeast, the fermentation process is more controlled, and it won’t get sticky.  There will be little hassle with the cultured yeast.

With wild yeast, the fermentation process does not begin right away, as it does with cultured yeast. With wild yeast, the fermentation process begins whenever it finds sugar, and then the wild yeast might act as it should. If it does, it will turn grape juice into wine. However, sometimes wild yeast can end up being sticky. If it does, then there is a lot of work to save the wine. When the wild yeast does act correctly, then you will get a wine with more depth and dimensions that could be had with cultured yeast. Oh, and most important, more alcohol. Up to 16%. The Plungerhead Lodi Zinfandel Old Vine 2008 has 14.9% alcohol. So, yay!

What does Lodi mean? It’s a region.

Zinfandel is California’s favorite son. Unlike the classic French and Italian varietals, whose history in the New World is well charted, the origins and history of Zinfandel remain mysterious to this day. Research at the University of California, Davis, has uncovered clear genetic links to two European grapes: Italy’s ‘Primitivo’ and Croatia’s ‘Plavac Mali’; but wines produced from these grapes bear only a passing resemblance to California Zinfandel. It seems that Zinfandel, regardless of its origins, is truly a California phenomenon.

Unlike Cabernet Sauvignon, Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, and dozens of other European varietals which first entered California at the port of San Francisco in the mid-nineteenth century, Zinfandel appears to have come to us by way of a New York nursery in the early part of the nineteenth century. It’s virtues were immediately apparent: prolific producer of large clusters, up to three flowering cycles per season, and juice capable of reliably producing very good wine. It is no wonder that this varietal was esteemed above all others in California for red table wine in the nineteenth century. Zinfandel vineyards sprang up in Sonoma and Napa Counties, in the Sierra Foothills, in the Central Coast, throughout the Central Valley . . . and in Lodi.

There are more old, head pruned Zinfandel vineyards in Lodi today than in any other region of California. Since Lodi had been upstaged by other regions until late in the 1990s, few consumers had even heard of Lodi Old Vine Zinfandel. Worse, the distinguished fruit of most of these fine, old vineyards was sold to large wineries, to be blended with fruit of lesser quality.

Today, Lodi is undergoing a Renaissance. . . .

(http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/california_wine/37775)

Lodi

That seems a good description to me.

Is Plungerhead a superwine hero?

So we got stressed out old-vine grapes from Lodi, a fermentation process using wild yeast, and a dude with wine barrels for thighs and a plunger on his head. This has to be delicious and fun.

Alright, so lets get to it. Allons-y.

It’s bright and deep purple with lots of legs, because of the wild yeast yielding 14.9% alcohol! It has a thin meniscus, particularly thin for such a young wine.

It has a jammy and spicy nose. A big nose. Vanilla. Cherries, like cherries from a farmers market. Like those cherries that are closer to ruby in color than red, and with a seed in the middle.

Oh my, I love this texture. It is really jammy. Like raspberry jam, but without the seeds. Oh, it’s so fun to swirl in the mouth. There might be some plum in there, too.

I think there is bacon on the finish.

I can’t stop tasting this wine. And oddly, I think I can taste the terroir of Lodi. I have some Lodi Zinfandels before, and when I drink this, I recall them. It’s in the back of the mouth right before I swallow, a second or two after I swallow, and in the nose as I hold the wine in my mouth.

This wine is so fun to drink. There’s a juiciness to it like the juiciness from biting into a mushroom.

It’s delicious.

Oh wild yeast, how I love you.

I’m glad “Zork Dork is back!”

Get a bottle, and you will understand that reference.//