Sometimes in the Open : Poems from California's Poets Laureate

by Bob Stanley

Flood and desert are here, coast and valley and mountain. City and open land, the cadences of Spanish and English. On one page, fog drips from oak trees as white-tailed deer appear. On the next page there are skateboarders and jazz and text messaging and TiVo and laughter. To read this book is to move across the state and really see the land and its people, an imperfect union, but a union nevertheless. Here are worker-poets and teacher-poets and activist-poets and workshop-poets and host-open-mic-every-week-for-eleven-years-poets. Her are farmer-poets and driver-poets and mother-and-father-and-daughter-and-son-poets, the ones who witness and tell, the ones who remember. The tender poets and the angry poets are here; the ones who pay attention. Here are the ones who sing in the old way that the singing might go on, that the stories still be heard. This book features poems from Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Kay Ryan, Al Young, Carol Muske-Dukes, Terry Emret, Christina Hutchins, Harry Spacks, Mary Rudge, José Montoya and many more.

118 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2009

About the author

Bob Stanley has worked as a music journalist, a DJ, and a record label owner and is the cofounder and keyboard player for the band Saint Etienne. He lives in London.