Thursday, April 30, 2009

"Meditation on the Limitation of Desire" by Rick Campbell


In this morning of cardinals
the neighbor's cattle low
and a dog—who knows its master?—
wails like a penitent awakened
not from nightmare, but just another
night's dream.

The cardinals are constant.
Warblers intermittent. Woodpecker
a surprise, each drumming new
and unexpected. Behind this,
every few minutes, a dove coos.

All of this seems now destination.
As if, like the armadillo
diligently shuffling through the brush
toward our garden, I too
have long been seeking this soil,
its grubs and worms.

Sometimes we stretch the metaphor
too thin, our artifice transparent
as the locust husks clinging
in afterlife to the loblolly's rough bark,
its darker sap. In this desire
to make ourselves one
with the world outside our skin
and blood, our frail but impassable
barriers, we miss the obvious—
that it is desire for the armadillo,
the hawk high in the soft sky,
the sun not yet fully above the trees
that makes us what we are,
not less than the song,
but someone listening, someone
wanting to sing.

...


Please join us in welcoming Rick Campbell to Poetry Night at Bistro 33 on Wednesday, May 6 beginnig at 9 p.m. in 226 F. Street, Davis, California.


SICKSPITS POETRY SPEAK OFF

T O N I G H T

UC Davis' poetry and spoken word group, Sickspits will battle it out with UC Berkeley, UC Santa Cruz, and Stanford in a poetry speak-off!

April 30th
7:30 p.m.
Science Lecture Hall 123 on the UC Davis Campus

Poetry Reading by UC Davis Creative Writing Alumni, Francisco Reinking and Mischa Erickson

T O N I G H T!

April 30th
126 Voorhies on the UC Davis Campus
8 - 10 P.M.

Poets Franciso Reinking and Mischa Erickson are graduates of the UC Davis Creative Writing program. Their work has been published in the American Poetry Review.

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

RICK CAMPBELL on MAY 6


Campbell is the winner of a Pushcart Prize, an NEA Fellowship in Poetry, and two fellowships from the Florida Arts Council. He has published books such as The Traveler's Companion, A Day's Work, and Setting the World in Order - a winner of the Walt McDonald Prize; he has also published his poetry and essays in The Georgia Review, The Florida Review, and The Prairie Schooner among others. His latest book of poetry, Dixmont was published in November 2007.

He now serves as the director of Anhinga Press and the Anhinga Press Prize Poetry, and teaches English at Florida A&M University in Tallahassee. He lives with his wife and daughter in Gadsden County, Florida.