POETALK poetry journal
Editor Emerita: Maggie Morley (1998-2010)
Editorial Board
Al Averbach
Claire J. Baker
Jan Dederick
Cover Price: $4
Single copy of current issue, mailed 1st class: $5
Sample copy (back-issue): $2
POETALK is 36 pages, digest-sized, photocopied, saddle-stapled with heavy card cover.
Basic Submission Info: Editorial review and production is on hiatus in 2020-2021. We recommend waiting for a "call for submissions" to be posted here and on the POETALK facebook page.
BAPC / POETALK
1791 SOLANO AVE. #A11
BERKELEY, CA 94707-2209
email: bapc.poetalk@gmail.com
_________________________________________________
Production of POETALK
on hiatus 2020-21
Covers of previous issues from recent years.
(No issues published in 2010).
Cover Art: UC Jazz All-Star Ensemble (2013)
by Geores Buttner (1936-2018)
CONTRIBUTORS:
Dee Allen • David Alpaugh • Al Averbach • Claire J. Baker
Jane Blanchard • Mike Bove • Geores Buttner (In Memoriam)
Patrick Cahill • Robert Cooperman • Deborah H. Doolittle
David Erdreich • E.P. Fisher • Craig Greenman • Jose L. Gutierrez
Don As Tauno Hagelberg • Blaine Hammond • Stephen Kopel
Judith Ann Levison • Lyn Lifshin • Nadine Lockhart • Wulf Losee
Adele Mendelson • Diane Lee Moomey • Tim Nuveen (In Memoriam)
Zack Rogow • Deborah Schmidt • Sherry Sheehan
Robert Collet Tricaro • Julia Vinograd (In Memoriam)
Nancy Wakeman • Karma Tenzing Wangchuk • Jim Watson-Gove
Neal Whitman • Kath Abela Wilson • Cherise Wyneken
Poem from the current issue
Poetry Is a Call to Being
Poetry is a solitude without distances—
A falling world arriving upside-down
At the back of the eye.
Poetry is a night at the crossroads—
A mother’s voice in anguish
From a dead-end in the heart.
Poetry is a call to Being from the roots of words—
An abstract phantasmagoria
Of secret signs & sighs.
Poetry is a choice that chooses you—
An electric arrangement of shapes in a wink
Courtesy of spring in a pulse.
Poetry is a home for higher truths—
A desert crossing, an ancient body of water;
A book of ghosts, a crown of thorns.
Poetry is a puzzle for the soul—
Excalibur embedded in the mists of lost time
At the intersection of yin & yang.
Poetry is a game, a virtual reality
Full of talking heads & panic;
And death-by-the-numbers round-the-clock.
Poetry is a constitutional right—
Love’s answer to the bottom-line,
A daydream as way of life.
Poetry is René Char toting a gun,
Kierkegaard for dummies
With the eras of earth listening in.
E.P. Fisher, Pine Bush NY
Cover artwork by Clyde Always
Cover artwork by Robert Eastwood
Cover artwork by Paula Salemme
Cover artwork by Janet Lee Butler
Cover artwork by Jonathan Machen
The following appears on Page 1 of SUMMER/AUTUMN 2011
Unfolding
All things unfold, and in their time progress
toward less or greater unity of form;
will never coexist in static state
though they may cast a sense of permanence
on anxious souls requiring clean, clear ends.
Illusion carves, for those who trust, a norm
so clean, correctly curved, that it seems true,
like hawk’s wing unfolding—like love between
new lovers, seeing things as they alone will see.
But we, from our detached remove, stand by
a differing pattern guaranteed to shun
all but its own predestined symmetry.
In the life of lovers, unfolding’s not a thing,
finally, but itself—like a hawk’s wing.
Maggie Morley, Mill Valley CA
Appreciation goes out to
all the past editors of POETALK
through the years
(POETALK first appeared in the late 1970s
in a newsletter format):
Maggi H. Meyer
Carter McKenzie
Lisa Wibble
Blaine Hammond
Dale Hermann
Mark States
and others who served on a temporary basis.
This issue of POETALK is dedicated to
its now editor emerita, Maggie Morley.
THANK YOU Maggie for your thoughtful and
skillful editing of this journal over the past decade.
POETALK’s new editorial board, and all those
associated with this publication who appreciate
the variety and quality of the poetry that’s been
presented in these pages, honor you.
So before we move forward, this Page 1
is all yours, Maggie. Cheers to you!
