Poetry & Art 4/26/13
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Charlene Baldridge at Poetry & Art
all photos by Liliane Choney |
A report on my appearance to introduce my
late daughter, poet Laura Jeanne Morefield. I began with introduction of blowup
photos of Laura and of Laura and me.
“How
can she possibly do that?” was the question most frequently asked of my
friends, stalwarts who accompanied me and helped me though my first live, aloud
in public presentation of Laura’s chap book, The Warrior’s Stance.
It was my 79th birthday, and, as a
gift, my best GF Liliane Choney gave me an hour-plus with a make-up artist named
Meleah, who transformed my clean but sere and weathered face and hair into
something beautiful. Feeling that way certainly buoyed me up for the Friday
presentation at Poetry & Art at the Museum of the Living Artist in Balboa
Park.
The evening of poetry started late and host Michael Chung
Klam decided to plow right ahead, with my presentation coming last, prior to
what would have been the interval.
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| With Michael Chung-Klam, our host |
I sat there listening to others read, and it
took me back to vocal competitions when I was a young woman, sitting through maybe
25 other lyric sopranos singing the same
aria I was about to sing. By the time it rolled around to me I was insecure and
heavy of voice, and, sure enough, I never did well.
Last night, though, I was determined to lift
the audience up with Laura’s words. Something magical happened. I introduced
Laura and her story and as I read her works I found new music, drama and
meaning in each of them, For the first time, ever, I realized that her poem
“Selah,” ostensibly about blowing bubbles instead of praying that day, really
concerns her tendency to be a control freak. In the poem she has no control:
the bubbles go where they may and last not as long as the poet intends; but she
finds beauty in their fragility. “….Some pop before they/ leave the wand and
some wander to heights that amaze me so that I watch them ascend/until they are
no longer visible or simply/no longer are.”
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| Rob and Charlene |
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| Kay and Sharyn Lyon |
Friends and I discussed the reading at a
post mortem at The Crest Café. Those present were my stalwarts: girlfriends
Liliane Choney and Kay O’Neil and my best friend Rob Wesley. I told them about
the discoveries I made as I was reading. They felt them, too; as I read they
discovered the revealed meanings, a sign that Laura was
definitely there, making herself clear to me, and, through me, to others.
Other poems I read were “Rain,” “Another
Day,” “I Invented Body Surfing,” “If They’re Right,” “Living with Cancer,” “I
Am Not My Cancer,” “I’ve Been Waiting” and “The Work at Hand.”
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| Poetry & Art attracts a large audience |
How could I do that indeed? How could I
possibly float my immense grief on a series of breaths and not melt into a blubbering puddle? I know only that I have
told the story so many times that each time it becomes easier. Laura’s poems
are universes of their own, explored differently each time they travel through
my mind, escape my lips and fly on my breath. As I once wrote, “We breathed
each other’s breaths.” Apparently that continues.
Next up, my friends, is the presentation of
“our” theatre piece, The Warriors’ Duet, to be produced by the San Diego
Fringe Festival sdfringe.com. It will play the weekend of July 5,6,7 at 10th Avenue Theatre.
Casting and times TBA.
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| Susan Hertzog and Charlene |
Meanwhile, I will see if my feet bring me
back to earth.
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Charlene, baby Chung-Klam, Jennifer Chung-Klam and Christian Hertzog
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Charlene Baldridge
"Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?" -- Mary Oliver
Amy
Locklin edited the anthology of speculative short fiction Altered
States and has begun to edit a second anthology, Law and Disorder.
Her poetry, fiction, and nonfiction have appeared in journals including Clementine
Magazine, Quarter After Eight, Maize, and Main Street Rag,
as well as the anthologies And Know This Place: Poetry of Indiana and
Dots on a Map: Stories from Small Town America. Her work has won honors in
the Robert J. DeMott short prose contest, the Academy of American Poets Prize,
the Associated Writing Program’s Intro Journal Project, and the Lois Davidson
Ellis Literary Award. A recipient of Indiana Arts Commission grants, she earned
her MFA at Indiana University, where she directed the IU Writers’ Conference
for four years. She teaches writing and literature, writes and performs music,
and is executive director of San Diego Writers, Ink. Her poetry chapbook The
Secondary Burial is available from Finishing Line Press.
