LA JOLLA, California — The Astor Judaica Library was filled to capacity Tuesday evening, January 8, for Jewish Poets—Jewish Voices. The large audience was no doubt attracted by the two San Diego celebrities on the program, Richard Lederer, syndicated columnist for The San Diego Union-Tribune and author of over 50 books, and Nina Garin, former reporter for the Union-Tribune and current Arts Producer for KPBS. Abigail Floto, a retired geriatric nurse, was the third poet of the three featured poets. Joy Heizmann moderates. Following the planned part of the program, there were many participants in the open microphone segment, including Jewish Poets—Jewish Voices committee members, Sara Appel-Lennon and Michael Horvitz.
Following are poems by the three featured poets of the evening:
DANCES WITH WORDS by Richard Lederer
From alpha to omega,
You can bet the alphabet,
Like a painting done by Degas,
Will leap and pirouette.
It’s Stupendous Tremendous,
End-over-endous
Dances with Words
I’m dancing with Words
Prancing with words,
Enhancing, Entrancing,
Advancing with words,
IT’S DANCES WITH WORDS by Richard Lederer
I’m a verbivore and wordaholic
Logorrheic and eclectic
Lexically I’m apoplectic
Logophile and logoleptic
I’m dancing with words,
Prancing with words.
Enhancing, Entrancing,
Advancing with words,
It’s Dances with Words.
It’s Glorious, Uproarious,
Notorious, Victorious,
Outrageous, Courageous,
Contagious, and Verbivorous,
Dances with Words. [
It’s Stupendous,
Tremendous,
End-over-endous
Dances with Words.
It’s Dances with Words
*
I DON’T WRITE POEMS ANYMORE (or, Building a Wall) by Nina Garin
I don’t write poems anymore
Because after 20 years in a newsroom
The part of your heart that feels
The feelings poetry demands
It happens slowly
(unless you sit by the police scanner then it happens overnight)
It starts when you’re sent to interview parents who lost their child in a school shooting and you have to ask them things they want to forget, you have to ask them even though they’re crying and you want to hug them and cry.
But you can’t.
So you ask questions.
And your heart starts closing.
Even then,
You think you can still
Write poems about
Love and loss and passion
But then you’re sent to observe a South Sudanese independence ceremony, a day filled with pure elation. Dancing and colors and aromas that you only read about in books. Faces of refugees filled with hope and promise. And you imagine that this could be 1948, when Israel became Israel. And the wave of joy washes over you in a what that’s so overwhelming, you excuse yourself to cry in the bathroom.
Then you pull everything in
Go back outside
Secure the wall around your heart
And observe. Quietly.
And that wall,
It stays up
Grows stronger,
Is reinforced by headlines
About
Fire and fraud
Scandals and tsunamis
Abductions and addiction
My Mexican family described as rapists
My colleagues called liars
American Nazis chanting
“Jews will not replace us.”
It’s too much for a poet
And a journalist.
So I pick the one that’s easiest
The one where I don’t have to feel
The feelings poetry demands
And I go to work.
ETERNAL LOVE by Abigail Floto
Shackles I once wore, put on me
holding back my embrace of love.
I could have taken them off but
time was more important…
you might have missed or not
the house, the garden I had worked
and I am no betrayer, was not
then, nor ever. Enduring the
heavy tie-down of years past
living the shackles weight silent
heavy on me with still years to
come as they grew up on me,
up to my neck, aloof on my days,
my brain in danger—in spite of that
I am faster, you shackle master
Steps ahead of you with all
Your trials and tribulations
I found that was the danger till
I grew away, myself in rescue
what still was left of me.
Changer of love and honesty,
my life milled into mud for
distribution, his lesser ego called.
I should not have had shackles
Burning evil’s hell on me.
Hell though was His, indeed.
How I had longed to talk of love
As once I gave my life, my soul.
Now, his trust is the gold in his
pockets, believing it is love.
Glee was counting the golden
bars, as the bull he was.
I once missed love, it still knows
my heart’s depth.
You feel your heart beat, count
your gold. What a loss for a once
winner, a sad exchange for love
a sold-out Heart, a lost Truth.
Where are you now, among the
stars I wish for you to be star after star.
Once counted as a child, now
I count again in search for you.
It’s my love game that works
at times and times again at night
as dreams follow me.
Are you there?
