Scissortail Creative Writing Festival, Friday Morning, April 5

Back for another day of readings at this “Listening Festival,” as Sally Rhoades has christened it, in the Estep Auditorium.

Michael Dooley (who is also known as “Woodstock Farley”) got us off to an uproarious start with a tale set in West Texas “Picasso Hanging at the Water Stop Saloon” filled with a cast of characters, drunks, con-men, & general ne’er-do-wells, & a dart contest to see will own a Picasso painting salvaged from a train wreck. Folks here from Texas said that he got it just right.

Dorothy Alexander is one of my favorite writers (& characters) here at Scissortail. She is also the publisher of Village Books Press in Cheyenne, OK, as well as an activist attorney. Her reading today mixed the personal with the cosmic. She began with a memoir/meditation set in the 1940s “Night Sky Epiphany,” then an amusing piece about a junk yard couple “Creation Day.” The poem “When We Invented Time” quoted scientists, philosophers & ancient texts, while “Closing Time” was a tender autobiographical tale of taking care of a young girl & a horse. Somewhere along the line she mentioned the red bud tree, an unofficial running theme these last 2 days.

Chris Murphy read a series of short fiction pieces about Tahlequah, OK, beginning with a grim tale of an angry confrontation on a golf course “Incident at Hole 2.” “At the Trail of Tears Memorial” was about a visit from his parents, as was another story that included a rescue dog with a series of names. I never heard of Tahlequah before, but now I have.

The rest of the morning was another exercise in choices, between Estep & North Lounge readings. The first choice was made easier by my admiration for the work of Jason Poudrier. His 2012 book from Mongrel Empire Press Red Fields: Poems from Iraq ranks among the best literature about military experience, dare I say with such poets as Yusef Komunyakaa. His new poems seem to be infused with that same depth of feeling & insight. He began with a couple poems inspired by the artist Douglas Shaw Elder, who is also an Army veteran, the poems titled “Winter Wheat” & “Subterranean Black.” His poem “But A Shadow in Front of the Sun” was inspired by his young daughter’s question “who created God?” spiraling out from there considering the nature of “creating” & places & things. He continued with poems inspired by is daughter, & when he read “Daughter, Daughter,” with images of her in the stories on immigrants, as child soldiers, the tears flowed from my eyes. Jason is a good & important poet among us.

Continuing on the parent/daughter theme Heather Levy read a moving personal essay titled “The Twenty Year Lie” in which she describes her first time having sex & her conversation about her daughter about it.

Fortunately for my emotions, Alan Gann took a different direction with a series of nature poems illustrated with photos of birds, frogs, his meditations springing from his descriptions. His Haibun “First” was about birding with his father & seeing his first eagle, another poem took on the healing power of nature for those with mental health issues. He ended with a tribute poem to the late Mary Oliver, “One Possible Answer” in which he tries “to inhabit her voice.”

For the 2nd half of the morning I went to North Lounge. Don Stinson read some poems from his book Flatline Horizon (Mongrel Empire Press, 2018), including one about hearing of a truck bombing in Berlin around the same time as the shooting in San Bernardino, then a couple poems from Paris, including one dedicated to Jim Morrison of the Doors “Lizard King.” He also read from a new manuscript tentatively titled “Black Dog” which is a metaphor for depression; also, poems of spiritual exploration “Trinity” & “Download” (in which the Holy Spirit is a megabyte).

I fondly remember the reading Terri L. Cummings did here 2 years ago. Today she read entirely from her new book from Village Books Press, When Distant Hours Call; the copy I got is a “temporary” saddle-stapled one before the ultimate version is ready — same poems, different binding. A couple poems touched on her early time on an archeological dig in Israel, there were love poems to her husband & to chocolate pie, poems about her mother & her family, & tender poems dealing with the death of a son (“Moving On,” “The Long Road,” & “Rescue Dog.”

I had also seen Richard Dixon read the last time I was here. Today’s poems were a chronological series of autobiographical pieces, beginning with his absent father, his mother’s addictions (& other problems), then on to pieces about his sister, going into foster homes, & a stay in a juvenile detention center. The poems “Trial by Fire” & “Unreadable” were about the profound cruelty of his foster father. He ended with a tale of a Country & Western music ballroom in the 1960s “Honky Tonk on a Saturday Night.”

Like I’ve said a couple times, at Scissortail there are always poets I miss because I’m listening to poets someplace else. But fortunately there are events, like lunch, where I did get a chance to talk to some of the poets whose readings I missed. & there was more to come in the afternoon & evening.