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POEMS-FOR-ALL | STEPHEN KESSLER | NOVEMBER 11 11/01/2006"A love poet of sensitive memory,he constructs his poems as bastions of feeling amid crumbling values and collapsing affirmations." -- Jack Hirschman Poet Laureate, San Francisco The Poems-For-All Second Saturday Series presents poet Stephen Kessler on Saturday, November 11th at The Book Collector, 1008 24th Street, Sacramento. 8pm. Free. STEPHEN KESSLER - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Poems-For-All Second Saturday Series - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Saturday, November 11th - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 8PM - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - The Book Collector - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 1008 24th Street - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Between J & K Streets - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Info: richard@poems-for-all.com Stephen Kessler is a poet, prose writer, translator and editor whose most recent books include WRITTEN IN WATER: THE PROSE POEMS OF LUIS CERNUDA (translation, City Lights), winner of 2004 Lambda Literary Award; TELL IT TO THE RABBIS and AFTER MODIGLIANI (poems, Creative Arts); SAVE TWILIGHT: SELECTED POEMS OF JULIO CORTÁZAR (translation, City Lights); APHORISMS by César Vallejo (translation, Green Integer); and major contributions to THE ESSENTIAL NERUDA (City Lights) and the SELECTED POEMS of Jorge Luis Borges (Penguin). His essays, criticism and journalism have appeared widely in the independent and alternative press of Northern California, especially Poetry Flash, where he is a contributing editor. He is the editor of The Redwood Coast Review. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Copies of After Modigliani and Tell it to the Rabbis are presently available for sale at The Book Collector and will also be available the night of the reading. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Sleeping in Shelley?s Ashesby Stephen Kessler(from After Modigliani) I slept on the beach where Shelley drowned and was burned right there by his friends it was 1966 and we were driving up from Rome and there were no vacancies in Viareggio so Dave Mann drove his red VW bug onto the beach and got stuck in the sand and we spread our pink plastic laundry sacks from the laundromat in Venice and lay there under the Mediterranean sky gawking up at the summer stars and freezing and being eaten by insects and I could feel the zits on my unbathed back erupting with pus on one of the most romantic nights of my life which may explain why I became a poet because I passed that first initiative ordeal and went on to endure far greater discomforts in the pursuit of rooms for rent and elusive muses sleeping in Shelley?s ashes was essential I relish the smell of his charred but fireproof heart even tonight under a cool California sky whose stars are veiled by coastal mist and whose thin moon has set hours since just past dusk in this other summer Vallejo Remembers by Stephen Kessler(from After Modigliani) Do you still make that little buzzing sound between your teeth as your lover is coming? you were the only woman I ever knew who did that and it was immensely sexy 20 years ago? or whenever it was we were given our time together and here comes the sound of the cable-car cable heard from your bed as it hummed and clanked under Mason Street and the tall glass of water you always placed on the nightstand and your fluffy white terrycloth robe and the down comforter and your mandolin or was it a balalaika? and when I lay behind you cradling your little breasts you?d grind your butt so deliciously into my belly those nights on Russian Hill just up from Keystone Korner and the police station on a street named after a Peruvian poet still reach me sometimes when I?m in the neighborhood on the border between the smells of Chinese fish markets and the erotic garlicky aromas of the Italian restaurants red wine running through our brains and tongues there was something radiant about those hours so what if you made a habit of being late it?s so much later now what matters is what endures of our connection brief as it was a certain indelible residue of tenderness
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