URGENT UPDATE! Mary Rudge is Alameda's Poet Laureate! But surely, you knew!

Here's a Rudge sample:

Our Tears Have Watered the Earth

& other poems by Mary Rudge

AT THE WALL

Women press their bodies against the wall and

cry into the crevices husband

where are you

Conscripted ten years into hard labor

Soldier Prisoner slave whose life

belongs to the making of wall,

inch by painful inch

will I never see you again in this life

husband lover

mixed with mortar where you fall

sealed forever

in the China wall

Old men go to the wall and weep

and wail the western wall

crying in dust for centuries

because the wall itself exists

women touching and sobbing --

tears on the old wall where the roots

grow through

Wall of antiquities of ritual of history

Jerusalem, Jerusalem.

People come here to cry all these years

since Viet Nam black granite feel

the shapes of the alphabet

of lines the hand

the sculptor's hand

has written on the wall.

Put your fingers into the L's the S's

the J's ---

The D.C. that sent them there to die

tears turn to gold in the script

of names this wall is

too soon too strong for crevices

for earth to crack and take it back

into herself

inch by painful inch.

There are people who stand at walls

and cry. Women and old men.

The messages in walls.

TO OUR GLORIOUS DEAD

On the ancient marble monument

inscribed "To Our Glorious Dead"

posters and paper drawings

of students shot at Beijing.

We forgot who the monument marked,

this moment is what we know. We wear

their face at our hearts, dot matrix

of newspaper print on T shirts that say

forever (as long as cloth weave lasts)

"remember the children"

In front of City Hall in Hong Kong

hundreds weep, fasten with masking tape

festoons of human violence, photographs

of the fallen, dying.

We know what this monument meant.

Moving from hero to hero

of one time then another, every atrocity new,

the realization of death for a good cause

always with us. The monument still tells

someone will always kill.

WE ARE ALL PRISONERS OF WAR

As long as someone believes violence

can change things

though leaders change,

the place, the purpose,

we are prisoners of war

from the day we are born.

It comes for our fathers, our lovers,

waiting the day,

it wants us beside them with weapons,

eye for eye, tooth for tooth,

blood for oil, land for grabs,

son for son,

as long as soldiering is a solution,

as long as "hero" can mean "to kill"

as long as there are words "the enemy".

We are born with guilt for all dead

for whatever cause. We arrive

with memory of ancestors murdered

with anger from "yours" and "mine".

With revenge celled into our skin

by color, by country, by name.

We are born with old history books

for our hands,

and passions in our genes that flame

in instants,

as long as someone

believes violence can change things,

as long as "hero" can mean "to kill"

we are all born prisoners of war.

OUR TEARS

HAVE WATERED THE EARTH

Our tears have watered the earth.

Our tears have watered the earth.

Our tears have prepared the ground.

Our tears have readied the ground,

have made moist and fertile and ready

for what will grow and flower.

Our tears have refracted the sun,

reflected multiple colors,

our tears have reflected light,

held pure and clear and sparkling,

a portent of beautiful flowers.

Our tears have watered the earth.

Our tears have watered the earth.

Let the growing begin,

something beautiful grow and flower.

© Copyright 2002 by Mary Rudge. All rights reserved.

More on Rudge here:

"I am the woman poet/and sweep before me/ all women up/ to the podium/ flutter and brush the air, this fringe."Meet Alameda's first poet laureate, Mary Rudge. The lines are from her poem titled, "For Women in Fringed Shawls" in her book, "She Can't Be Beat." Rudge has written and edited several books of poetry, including, "Watch Planet," "Glory Days," "Her Poems," "When the Rapture Comes," "Going to China," and "Haiku for the Dead," which was written after Sept. 11.

All of these books are available to peruse at the Alameda City Arts Council (ACAC) office at the Veteran's Memorial Building at Central Avenue and Walnut Street.

Rudge, who will hold the position for the next two years when a new laureate will be invited. Rudge was named laureate after living and writing in Alameda for the past 30 years. She hopes to bring the city's diverse community together through poetry.

In August, 2000 Rudge represented Alameda in an international poetry event in the Philippines. Rudge has also won various awards, spoken extensively about peace, and was named "International Laureate" in San Francisco and "Princess of Poetry" in Italy. She is also founder of Poets of the Island City.

"The city is very responsive to military, social and civic organizations." Rudge said. "What we're lacking is concentrated focus on the arts. Sometimes my poetry group has to meet on the beach for lack of space."

Memo to Justin (who never reads a goddamned thing I write!)

You might read this article, and think about whether you're within the 2500 feet zone. If so, you could save a lot of time and trouble accordingly.

Feel free to reply here!

AND HERE'S THE EMAIL I JUST RECEIVED:

From: "Scott Hillis" Add to Address BookAdd to Address Book
To: escheie@yahoo.com
Subject: John C.Wright
Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2004 02:14:43 -0700
Hello, I check the Classical Values blog more or less daily, and have appreciated the attention you've given to John C. Wright's "Golden Age" trilogy. In fact, I first found the blog when I googled Wright's name to find more of his fans.

Anyway, you probably already know, but Wright's new book, "The Last Guardian of Everness", is finally out. The couple of reader reviews on Amazon are pretty positive. From what I can make out (and I admit I haven't delved too deeply into plot details so as not to spoil the treat for myself) it seems to be sort of a study of totalitarianism in a fantasy setting.

Also, there is a lengthy new interview with Wright up on SF Signal -- the full link is www.sfsignal.com/archives/001978.html. It goes without saying that it is fascinating reading. One of my favorite parts is where Wright hands the interviewer his, ahem, ass for suggesting (albeit in a seemingly tongue-in-cheek manner) that Wright's publisher was "evil" for making the series into a trilogy instead of the two volumes originally planned:

SF SIGNAL: The follow-up novels, THE PHOENIX EXULTANT and THE GOLDEN TRANSCENDENCE were originally planned as a single volume, but were released as two books. Was this an evil attempt by the publisher to extort money out of fans?

JCW: Yes, if by the word "evil" you mean specifically that act of prudence which causes one who sells a good or a service to satisfy the greatest number of customers possible, so as to benefit them in the fashion most pleasing to them; and if by the word "extort" you refer to a mutually voluntary and mutually beneficial exchange delightful and profitable to all involved. I realize these definitions of the word "evil" and "extort" are fashionable, but it is not a fashion I follow.

It is also revealed that Wright is a pretty hard-core fan of role-playing games, and that he prefers to invent his own, partly as a method for stimulating his creative juices and generating story ideas. There's lots of interesting stuff in there, and I hope you find it as engaging as I did.

Thanks for the hard work you put into the site, and keep up the good work!

Regards,

Scott Hillis
Beijing

If you want to reply to the guy, you can just leave it here and I'll pass it along to him. That way, your anonymity will remain unblemished.