Jeff Tagami and Cecilia Woloch

Jeff and Cecilia at The Bookshop Santa Cruz, 3/9/2010, 7:30 PM

Jeff Tagami, Historical Poet

Jeff's reading was like pure distilled alcohol.  It was so focused, I felt like an accomplice, grand inquisitor, with my spot light peering while watching it sweat. Even after, during its answers to our questions, it told a silent story of torturous absence from popular publication. Is it happy being spokesperson to Family history?

Cecilia Woloch, Zeus with a Siren's Voice

Cecilia was flirting with its audience through out play time. It is an intelligent, more hyperactive mind that teases its body and shifts from literary labels to seductive descants. It is a world traveler searching for roots, it discovers and plants family at the same time.

© Donald Grube, 2010

Here's to Gertrude Stein

I might point out that Gertrude Stein is one of John Ashbery's major influences



© Donald Grube, 2010

Telephone Game

I've just cracked open
John Ashbery's Chinese Whispers
An incredible collection of poetry
So steady, lyrical, talks like
people I know and love
and uses tons of new, exacting vocabulary
He's created his own idiom
through language beats
strung together to make his
own rhythm of
specific non sequitur language
Some of the pieces instigate your
feeling, and side step knowing, and thinking



© Donald Grube, 2010

3 Bonsais Fall Victim to Her Wit, Actors' Theatre, Tuesday, 1/19/2010

The Willing Suspen-
sion Armchair Theatre hosts
Claire Braz-Valentine.

Director: Karen
Schamberg; Actors: Phil, Billy,
Wilma, and Karen.

A night of essays,
Letters, poems, monologues,
And personal ad.

A grand reception
For the poet and playwright
Famous from SC,

Where Claire autographs
Copies of SONGS OF MY HEART,
COLLECTED POEMS.

After the party,
When returning chips, bottles,
Plates, and champagne flutes

To Patricia's house
For cleaning, Pat and her son
Drove through the torn streets

To West Side Santa
Cruz, dodging fallen tree limbs and
Severed power lines.

They step past the gate,
Tread six inch deep puddles and
Notice upturned pots?

3 bonsais hurdled,
Cracked, as if burst from laughter.
Victims of the wind!

Victim to Claire's words,
ALL 80 MINUTES! Humor,
Sweat,  memoirs ritten.

Phrases flash on my
eyelids, tattooing pictures
Gently in my heart,

Forever graphed with
Favorite ink. I envy her
In green Paradise!



© Donald Grube, 2010

Rich and Scully at the Capitola Book Cafe. Tuesday, 1/12/2010

For sale that night:

Vagabond Flags, Serbia & Kosovo, Journal, Scrapbook & Notes
by James Scully

Oceania, a sheaf of poems
by James Scully

A Human Eye, Essays on Art in Society, 1997-2008
by Adrienne Rich

Both poets read poems from various periods in their careers.

After the reading when talking to James Scully and receiving his autograph, I shared with him the deep respect the poem about his Mother awoke in me. My Dad spent about 8 years dying one little piece at a time. Throughout his performance, James read with a comfortable whimsy and sense of humor.

Adrienne Rich could have been reading in the Colleseum with her grounded, robust, and metered voice. It wasn't until I was within inches of her breath, kneeling while she signed, that I witnessed her grip on life. She shook my hand! Somehow our experience gives me confidence to write exactly what I'm feeling.

It was also a fabulous evening for my Mother, Patricia Grube and a new friend Fabiola, both poets.



© Donald Grube, 2010

a the Gertrude come Gertrude back come a back Gertrude back Stein come a back Gertrude back Gertrude back Gertrude back a Stein please

Please come back Gertrude Stein!



© Donald Grube, 2010