Sage Said So

Get Your Words in the World with Liz Prato

Are you ready to submit your stories, poems and essays to literary journals & magazines, but aren't sure how it all works?

In this class, Liz Prato will help you untangle the sometimes dizzying process of publishing your work, including doing research, writing cover letters, tracking submissions, and dealing with rejection. After this class, you’ll be armed with information to go charging into the world of publishing. There will be lots of discussion, so come with questions.

Liz Prato’s prize-winning fiction and creative nonfiction has appeared in numerous literary journals and magazines. She thinks all writing classes should be lively conversations where everyone contributes to the word party. You can reach her at: lizprato@comcast.net.

Wednesday, July 9th
6:30 p.m—. - 9:00 p.mm
Multnomah Arts Center
Cost: $25
Register here

Two great poetry workshops at writers' conferences this summer!

If you're going to be at the PNWA or Willamette Writers conference this summer, come on by and say hello! You'll find me teaching these workshops:

Pacific Northwest Writers Association Conference
Friday, July 18
1:30 – 3:00 p.m.
Location: San Juan

Taking Your Poetry Out of the Closet and into the World

Make 2008 your year for establishing a submissions system that gets your poetry in the public eye. In this interactive workshop, participants will learn about the seven habits of widely published poets. They will be supported in developing their own personal action plans that align their poetry with the publications and contests where they are most likely to get noticed. Participants will learn how to identify the right publications, contests, prizes and residencies for their work and much more.

Willamette Writers Conference
Sunday, August 3
3:00-4:15

From Flabby To Firm: Toning Your  Poetry For Power And Precision

Revision is not a four-letter word! In this interactive workshop Sage Cohen will offer a high-level review of revision strategies that can be employed to make a good poem great. We will consider a few sample poems in detail to practice identifying strengths and opportunities for improvement. Students should each bring a poem of their own, which they will practice revising together through a series of exercises.
Level: Beginning/Intermediate
Format: Presentation, Exercises, Q & A
Bring: A Poem of your own

 

 

July 16: B&N features Katharine Salzmann, Willa Schneberg and Matt Schumacher

Barnes & Noble Reading Series is delighted to present poets Katharine Salzmann, Willa Schneberg and Matt Schumacher.

When: Wednesday, July 16, 7:00 p.m.

Where:
Barnes & Noble
1317 Lloyd Center // Gift section
Portland, OR 97232
503-249-0800

Hosted by: Sage Cohen

Katharine Salzmann's first chapbook of poetry Hemopoiesis was published by persian pony press in 1995. The Oregonian says of her work, "Human limitation and the apparent schism between mind and matter are absent here . . . Sensual, sensuous, refusing the either-or categories of Western rationality, this is a poet who apprehends the world in its wholeness, its gift, and gives it back in kind."  Her most recent chapbook of poetry Prayer Ceremony was published by persian pony press in 2007. She lives with her daughter and works as a massage therapist in Portland.

Willa Schneberg received the Oregon Book Award In Poetry for her second collection In The Margins of The World. A poem was published in The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror 2006: Nineteenth Annual Collection, St. Martin's Press. Her third collection of poetry, Storytelling In Cambodia, was published by Calyx Books, (2006). Poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Salmagundi, Southern Poetry Review, Rosebud and Exquisite Corpse.  She has presented her work at the Library of Congress, Wordstock, and will be a guest poet at the Montana Festival of the Book later this year.

Matt Schumacher lives in Eastern Oregon, where the natives revere the flavorful huckleberry. His first collection of poetry, Spilling the Moon, made its debut in March 2008, and his poems have recently appeared/will soon appear in ZYZZYVA, Green Mountains Review, and Portland Review. A second project, Fire Diary, has chapbook-sized and full-length versions in the works, both of which feature dastardly but very charismatic pyromaniac impulses.

Depth of Field

In preparation for the rapid approach of our son, Jon and I purchased a new camera with all the bells and whistles. Because technology is my friend only after a proper introduction has been made by someone else who knows what they're doing, Jon has become master of the camera; as he learns, he teaches me.

Today I've been admiring Jon's experiments with depth of field (these photos are his) and considering how it mirrors the changes in my life.

The more closely we look at a certain thing, the more blurry everything beyond the subject becomes. This seems to be what pregnancy is demanding of me: a singular focus, a deliberate tunnel vision, a simplicity. After keeping so many balls in the air for so long, I am suddenly utterly incapable of the juggle.

My depth of field has narrowed to the life inside of me, this enormous and weary body that carries it and the needs of my family. Everything beyond that nucleus has gone soft and blurry. As my priorities shift like sand in the great wind of this transition to motherhood, I am told that even my beloved animals will lose focus a bit as our son takes center stage. That is difficult to imagine. I will hold these photos as stones along the path--reminders that we choose in every moment how to adjust the lens.

A Cup of Comfort anthology series reading and book signing

When: Wednesday, June 25, 7:00 p.m.

Where:
Barnes & Noble
1317 Lloyd Center // Gift section
Portland, OR 97232
503-249-0800

What:
A Cup of Comfort is a bestselling anthology (book) series featuring uplifting true stories about the experiences and relationships that inspire and enrich our lives. These slice-of-life stories are written by people from all walks of life and provide unique personal insights into powerful universal truths.

This reading and book signing event, hosted by the Barnes & Noble Reading Series, will feature authors from the four most recent releases:

Cup of Comfort for Writers
Cup of Comfort for Single Mothers
Cup of Comfort for Dog Lovers
Cup of Comfort for Horse Lovers

Readers will include Sharyn Bolton, Sage Cohen, LouAnn Edwards, Lori Maliszewski,  Minnette Meador, Kimila Kay Setzer, Valetta Smith, Deanna Stollar, Samantha Waltz, and series editor Colleen Sell.

We'd love to see you there!

"I just knew"

This is what my friends would say when pressed for explanations about how they chose their husbands and partners. I always found this to be an entirely unsatisfying answer.

"But HOW did you know? What made you so certain?" My desire to comfortably navigate the unknown often expresses itself in trying to understand phenomena beyond articulation.

"I just KNEW." Clearly, this was some kind of insider club code that I was not likely to penetrate. There were no strategies I could mimic, no best practices I could adopt. Just some ambiguous intuiting that seemed available to every other person on the planet but me.

And thus I spent many, many years in many not-so-happy relationships, not-knowing--and wondering when that lightning bolt would strike.

Then last year a mutual friend introduced Jon and me by email. With Jon's first paragraph, I knew. A few weeks later on our first date, I knew. And when he proposed two months later, I knew. Absolute as a mountain was this knowing.

Today is the anniversary of that lightning bolt of mutual intention striking. I have a year's worth of experience confirming what my being somehow measured on some indescribable cosmic scale almost at first glance: that this is my person to love. And I am his.

There is so much about knowing that will gratefully never be burdened by the limited reach of the mind.

Your New, Huge Size

That's what the subject line of the email said.

Having spent the past few days fielding well-meaning, unsolicited comments from strangers about my now-indisputable baby bump, I have this unnerving feeling of eternal exposure. As a writer, I am accustomed to a kind of security that comes from being the disembodied person behind the words. I like my privacy. And after several excruciatingly slow first-trimester months, suddenly my life is transforming in a hugely visible, public way at the momentum of an oncoming train. Never have I felt a greater sense of belonging to--or being claimed by--the human culture. The new life taking root in me seems to inspire a kind of magnetic optimism that is beaming in from the faces around me, everywhere I go. 

So when I saw "Your New, Huge Size" in my in-box, my first thought was that yet another stranger had somehow penetrated my personal space membrane to say something about my belly or how I should eat or feel or think or look or give birth. And my second thought amusingly brought me back to the reality of spamland; this was just another email about penis enhancement. And yet--

My new, huge size...I have been reinvented, larger than life. Or at least larger than my old life that is in the process of being shed from the inside out. This husk of past fattening around the seed of future. This little boy I know more intimately than anything or anyone and yet do not know. This answer to the question I never knew how to ask swallowed whole and blossoming.

Across the finish line

Well, folks, I did it. The first draft of Writing the Life Poetic is now in the capable hands of my fabulous editor, Jane Friedman. With nine months of writing nights and weekends under the belt, I have been floating around my office weightless and aimless, like a balloon cut free. Good thing I have five months of baby above the belt to give me a bit 'o ballast.

It's time to turn my activity level down a few notches, and I've been studying the masters of stillness: my animals. This one's my favorite so far. (Photo by Jon.) I call this the "seducing sleep" asana.

If you have any tips for saying "no" to inspiring and utterly important literary projects in favor of sleep and sanity, I'm all ears!

May 21: Emily Kendal Frey, Christopher Luna and Toni Partington read at B&N

On May 21, Barnes & Noble Reading Series is delighted to present three oh-so-fabulous poets: Emily Kendal Frey, Christopher Luna and Toni Partington.

When: Wednesday, May 21, 7:00 p.m.

Where:
Barnes & Noble
1317 Lloyd Center // Gift section
Portland, OR 97232
503-249-0800

Hosted by: Sage Cohen

Emily Kendal Frey recently relocated to Portland after many years in Boston. She has work forthcoming in Word For/Word, Spinning Jenny, Knock and Octopus. She is also at work on collaborative projects with the poets Sarah Bartlett and Zachary Schomburg. Poems born of these collaborations are forthcoming from Bat City Review, horse less press, Portland Review (with Sarah Bartlett), Diode and Pilot (with Zachary Schomburg).

Christopher Luna is a poet and collage artist with an MFA from the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics. He hosts a monthly open-mic poetry reading in Vancouver, WA. Luna’s poetry has appeared in The Lion Speaks: An Anthology for Hurricane Katrina, eye-rhyme, Exquisite Corpse, and the @tached document. Chapbooks include tributes and ruminations and On the Beam (with David Madgalene). Luna is the author of Literal Motion, featuring three interviews with filmmaker Stan Brakhage, and is editing the correspondence of Brakhage and Michael McClure.

Toni Partington is a writer who lives and works in Vancouver, WA. She has been a featured reader at the Vancouver Barnes and Noble Poetry Series, received an Honorable Mention in the Oregon State Poet’s Association 2007 Spring Awards, and won first place in the 2007 Washougal Library Poetry Contest in the adult category. Her work has been published in the NW Women's Journal and the 2007 anthology: Selected Poems of the River Poets' Society.

Introducing Mr. Peanut

Today I am celebrating the half-way mark of the greatest creative act I have ever passively accomplished: pregnancy. At exactly five months, I am no longer pushing that lifelong boulder of me, myself and I uphill. Instead, I find myself hobbling from the first trimester precipice downhill toward a completely awe-agape new concept of we that is literally reinventing my body, my family, my future.

We learned last week in our ultrasound that Aliya, like Dahlia, has a penis. Instead of the daughters we dreamed up in high school, Jayne and I will have sons born within months of each other. Her third, my first, but gosh darn it, we pulled it off: a semi-synchronicity of motherhood! More than twenty years beyond our first shared crushes and infatuations, an entirely new boy narrative is emerging.

In five months, I will be mother to a son, our little in-utero Mr. Peanut. My son. Never have two words conjured so much possibility, so great an anticipation, so vast an unknown.