UPCOMING BENICIA POETRY EVENTS
* December 7, 7-9 p.m.: Poetry Gathering at the Benicia Public Library (first Tuesday of every month).
* December 12, Benicia Public Library Community Party.
POETRY CONTESTS
* December 1st Love Poems Contest in honor of Concepcíon Argüello and Nikolai Rezanov. Awards and celebration set for February 13, 2011, 2-4 p.m. at Benicia Historical Museum, 2060 Camel Road, Benicia.
* January 7, 2011 Student Poems Contest. For information or to be added to the mailing list, contact RonnaRonna@mac.com.
View portraits of current and past state poet laureates taken by Ronna Leon at Poetslaureate.com.
At first, I was skeptical of the trend whereby many northern California cities are naming civic poet laureates. It had an air of the proverbial ’big-fish-in-a-small-pond‘-- self-promotion Babbitt-style--or at least that is what I thought. My inner cynic rebelled. But, something else is at work here, and my snobbery has transformed into great appreciation.
I have reported on several laureates already: Connie Post, laureate emerita of Livermore; Mary Rudge, who has maintained a multi-year run in Alameda; Geri Digiorno of Sonoma County; CB (’Lyn) Follett of Marin County; and now, Janelle Moon of Emeryville and Ronna Leon in Benicia. Ronna is a pure expression of the magnanimity and grace of these local laureates.
Here's the thing: our art form is experiencing demise in the grand agora of American culture. You can barely find a poetry section in a local bookstore anymore, and if you do find it back there in the dark corner by the employee door, it is sure to disappoint.
Poetry is not something you “get” in a flash of action across a wide screen; it does not map well on an entertainment paradigm fascinated by special effects and thunderous chase scenes. But, you say, ‘there are tons of online sites for poetry’ and many local cafes hosting readings. Yes, hundreds-of-thousands of websites with more 10-second viewers than serious readers and lots of open-mic venues with chairs filled by other poets. The ubiquitous MFA program at least provides a context where writing poetry is seen as a worthwhile enterprise and poets can earn a real-world reward, but even it is dismissed both within the academia and by the culture of getting-and-spending, including a cadre of writers who think the only way to earn your verse is through the trenches of “real” life.
Let's face it, poetry barely hangs on to a teensy-weensy niche in the American marketplace. With rare exception, the news we can't get everywhere else is largely absent from mainstream media; only the “PBS News Hour” and its host Jeffrey Brown routinely cover poets as a result of series support from Poetry Foundation. We won’t even mention the role of an educational system hell-bent on testing the joy out of learning. Where is Robin Williams and his poetry preaching when you need him?* In such a climate, the local laureate movement is the one valiant effort to reclaim public space, and Benicia’s Ronna Leon understands this.
“We have made ourselves an art form restricted to producing thin little books," says Ronna (who prefers to be referred to by her first name). When she took over as Benicia’s poet laureate this past July, she felt that her role was, above all, that of a community activist. "There is a need to cross over into the general community beyond the occasional poem at commemorations or dedication ceremonies.” Simply put, Ronna’s aim is to bring poetry into “every single community event and organization,” including the Rotary and Lion's clubs.
Local laureates are a necessary link between the somewhat isolated poetry community and the larger populace, helping to break down walls and stereotypes on both sides. These "citizen poets" lead workshops in prisons, run small presses, host events structured around regional and historical themes, establish ongoing readings series, and bring together old and young to enjoy and write poetry. Since 2005, Ronna has photographed and provided background on all of California’s state poet laureates and built a website in their honor: Poetslaureate.com.
With a two-year term that began July 1st, 2010, Ronna's main goal is getting young people involved with poetry and has brought the Poetry Out Loud program to Benicia. Sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts, Poetry Out Loud encourages high-school students to memorize and recite poems before well-known poets and state legislators in order to win recognition for themselves and their communities. The event is taped and made available to the public. “At the state level,” Ronna says enthusiastically, “every elected representative has turned up.” Many offer to write letters of recommendation to a student’s targeted college.
An example of taking poetry to the streets--quite literally--is Ronna’s “POEM HOME” program. The POEM HOME is a stand-alone “mail-box” that looks like those used for advertising real estate; instead, passers-by find copies of many different poems so which Ronna has solicited, logged, and photocopied. Fellow Benicia poet, Peter Bray, installed the boxes at seven public locations including the library, high school, community action council, parks and the town‘s independent Bookshop Benicia. At recent count, there were 350 poems representing 40 poets, with a total of over 700 poems distributed thus far.
On December 12, Ronna will host a Holiday Party with activities designed around the kind of poetry parlor games that inspired Elizabethan and Romantic poets; who knows what new poems will be inspired here? Ronna suggests that such events do not mean that we “lose the high end of the esoteric art” of poetry. “It’s a continuous process,” she says. “You have to cultivate readers and writers over time and through enjoyment. If you make it so that only artists are looking after--and at--their art, you’re going to get into trouble right here in Kansas City.”
As to the Rotarians and other service clubs that accomplish many projects in town but don’t necessarily include poetry in their plans, Ronna hopes “to get them to think ‘oh, let’s have a poet too.‘” As a kind of poetry proselytizer, she wants poetry to permeate every town function and community program. For the first half of her term, which will run until June 30, 2012, she is launching programs that will be turned over to the next laureate. Laureate programs have a dove-tailing quality where one laureate builds on a predecessor’s success while allowing creative freedom to move into new areas or to approach populations that have been overlooked.
Ronna’s “poetry clinics” invite teens and older poets to come for free critiques of their work and she has created two contests. Her “Love Poem” contest--deadine is on December 1st--is to honor the love affair of one of Benicia’s legendary citizens, Concepcíon Argüello; the famous “dancing nun” now rests in Saint Dominic’s Catholic Cemetery but her story haunts the town. In January, there will be a Student Poetry Contest which seeks poems that portray Benicia “through kids’ eyes.“ For more information about sending poems for these contests, contact Ronna@mac.com or go to http://www.benicialibrary.org/poet/events.
Born in Philadelphia but raised in Palo Alto, Ronna was accepted in a limited-enrollment program in writing and literature at the College of Creative Studies, at the University of California Santa Barbara, where she met her husband, Joe. She was interested in playwriting and theater production and Joe was studying visual art. In 1976 they launched Caterpillar Puppets, www.caterpillarpuppets.com, a business of creating and hosting puppetry programs for schools and community venues. Joe creates most of the sets and is the main puppeteer while Ronna makes the puppets and writes the scripts: “Nobody writes Quacks like I do,” she says.
In addition to her work as poet laureate and puppeteer, she is a photographer, printmaker and visual artist. Along with Joe, she shares her home with many portraits and paintings, as well as a frog who has taken up residence inside the front room. “I’ve been an artist all my whole life,” says Ronna. “I want to make stuff and do stuff.”
There has been a poet laureate in Benicia since 2003. Ronna’s immediate predecessors are Joel Fallon and Robert Shelby. A few years ago, her encounter with Fallon drew her back to an art form she had always loved. At family gatherings, relatives would write doggerel or occasional poems, while her father sometimes read poems at the dinner table. She liked memorizing poems or having poems in her pocket as she moved through the day. Among her childhood favorites were Alfred Lord Tennyson’s “Ring Out Wild Bells” and Alfred Noyes’ “The Admiral’s Ghosts” as particular favorites.
When Ronna’s youngest son got involved in a chess group that Fallon started, she learned that he was starting a poetry group. Saying that was something she wanted to support, she joined the group and started to attend some of the many poetry readings that take place around the Bay. However, she wasn’t particularly impressed by what she heard. “Many of those poems were depressing to me, deadly boring and not well read.” She could hardly invite friends or neighbors who were not already devotees of poetry. “It just didn’t seem like a way many people would want to spend an evening of their lives.“ She also noticed that “a lot of the poets attending these events barely seemed to listen to one another.” Often a reader presented work using a “compulsive or incomprehensible reading style.” Yet, she says, she sometimes would “discover a few gems [of poetry] and enjoyed some of the people she met.
In contrast to many contemporary poets doing the publication-chase, Ronna says she is not interested being featured on a “website of 900 poets,” nor does she hanker after a Pushcart Prize. Poetry is something she “wants to find in my world. . . at the table while waiting for food to arrive, mailing a letter, or standing in line at the grocery store.”
Benicia has been Ronna’s home for 28 years. In addition to boosting poetry, she is a civic booster as well and can list several famous writers who touched down here. With nearly 27,000 people, Benicia was for a brief period California‘s state capital and is linked to the greater San Francisco Bay via the Carquinez Straits and Alfred Zampa Memorial Bridge (Carquinez Bridge) . There’s almost enough of a shipping history and the whiff of salt water to call Benicia a maritime town. The father of “John Brown’s Body’s” author Stephen Vincent Benet once commanded the military base here, while Jack London worked in Benicia, drank in Benicia, and took quick cold dips in the straits to sober up. John Muir erowed across the strait from his Martinez home to worship at Saint Paul’s Episcopal Church.
The purpose of the arts for promoting communication and encouraging civic pride and identity is not lost on Ronna. “I’m always trying to talk to you, my unknown friend,” is what she says about her own artistic pursuits. At age 65, and living with diabetes, she is aware of the vulnerability of living as an artist. Although she and her husband own their home, purchased when property was not as expensive with help from their parents, they do not have job security, health insurance or much of a safety net. Yet, she claims, “We’re the richest poor people you’ll ever know." Working tirelessly, Ronna gets out among her neighbors to encourage young and old to participate as poets and artists, in short “learning the language that they speak” and mentoring others. Simply put, this laureate is about one thing: “I want more people to enjoy poetry.”
* Robin Williams starred as a passionate English instructor in a New England boarding school for boys in the 1989 film by Peter Weir, "The Dead Poets Society."
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