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     MFA in Creative Writing Newsletter

MFA and MA Humanities students, alumni, faculty, and friends participated in an Open Mic Night at the Magic Flute on Oct. 20.  Photo credit Christian Dean

Director's Message

Poetry gives us an intimate space of connection, a heart-to-heart joining that holds us together. We seek poetry at times of joy or when terrible events ravage the world. For many, poetry is a form of prayer.  As William Carlos Williams famously said, "It is difficult to get the news from poems yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there." In honor of poetry's sustenance, below are two beautiful poems written to Rita Dove's "10-Minute Spill":

In a moment 
 
the lick then bite of a blackberry renders my mother’s voice. 
In a hot valley a day spent 
picking fruit from a bush big as a boat. 
Her lively words, songs,
came in clear
like a needle glint in sunlight. 
Heat came over 
every cliff and hill, 
made us all wilt, or grow.
Not one cloud to shade us
only the whir and buzz
of crickets as evening 
inhaled the day. 
 
-Katherine Crawford

 

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Thick blackberry clouds hang over seaside cliffs
The ocean waves crash and pull back
like a tongue frothy sea foam licking the shore
the boats in the harbor rock like cradles
they creak and moan
harmonizing with the voices of seagulls
echoing like my mother’s did
up the stairs to my teenage bedroom

-Brennen Belogorsky

 

We look forward to printing more responses to the prompt in upcoming newsletters!

Remembering Tony Hoagland  1953-2018

When Tony passed away last week I went to my shelf and picked up his book Donkey Gospel. In memory of Tony and other dear writers and poets who passed away this year, this poem, the last in the book, feels timely in so many ways--seasonally, politically, spiritually:

Totally
 
I’m raking leaves and singing in my off-key voice
a mangled version of Madonna’s “Like a Virgin,”
a song I thought I hated;
 
that’s how it goes when our head and heart
are in different time zones—
you often don’t find out till tomorrow
what you felt today.
 
I know I do not understand the principles
of leaf removal; I pile them up
in glowing heaps of cadmium and orange,
 
but I identify so much more
with the entropic gusts of wind
that knock them all apart again.
Is it natural to be scattered?
 
When I look into the sky I am often dreaming
of a television program that I saw some months ago;
when I walk into a dinner party
 
I am thinking of the book I mean to read
when I get home – you might say
my here is disconnected from my now,
so never am I entirely anywhere,
 
or anyone. But I won’t speak cruelly
of myself: this dividedness is just what
makes our species great: possible for Darwin
 
to figure out his theory of selection
while playing five-card stud,
for surgeon Keats to find a perfect rhyme
 
wrist-deep in the disorder
of an open abdomen.
 
For example, it is autumn here.
The defoliated trees look frightened
at the edge of town,
 
as if the train they missed
had taken all their clothes.
The whole world in unison is turning
toward a zone of nakedness and cold.
 
But me, I have this strange conviction
that I am going to be born.

- Tony Hoagland

This November, let's take pause to appreciate our shared humanity, the passing of the seasons, and all the celebrations and ceremonies that bring us together.

Joan

Joan Baranow, Director
Low-Residency MFA Creative Writing
Dominican University of California

Student and Faculty News

MFA Students
Reminder

Join us in celebrating the release of Brats, a poetry chapbook written by MFA student Catharine Clark-Sayles, published by Finishing Line Press.  Dominican will host a book launch party on November 6 from 7-9pm in the Garden Room of Edgehill Mansion.  All are welcome to help us congratulate Catharine! 
MFA Faculty
Judy Halebsky read at LitQuake with the Mojo Poets inside the SF Public Library Mobile Bus. Georgina came and it was her first trip on BART. 

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Creative Writing MFA at Dominican University of California · 50 Acacia Ave · San Rafael, CA 94901-2230 · USA

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