The Most Exciting Post this Blog Will Ever Have (maybe)

Today, I went to the Berkeley Poetry Walk on Addison Street between Shattuck and Milvia, about a block away from the Downtown Berkeley BART station. I checked out a handy book from the library, edited by former US Poet Laureate and Bolinas-native, general bad-ass, my favorite poet ever, Robert Hass. My favorite poem by him, "Spring Rain" goes a little something like this:

Spring Rain

Now the rain is falling, freshly, in the intervals between sunlight,

a Pacific squall started no one knows where drawn east as the drifts of
warm air make a channel;

it moves its own way, like water or the mind,

and spills this rain passing over. The Sierras will catch it as last snow
flurries before winter, observed only by the wakened marmots at ten
thousand feet,

and we will come across it again as larkspur and penstemon sprouting
along a creek above Sonora Pass next August,

where the snowmelt will have trickled into Dead Man's Creek and the
creek spilled into the Stanislaus and the Stanislaus into the San Joaquin and the San Joaquin into the slow salt marshes of the bay.

That's not the end of it: the gray jays of the mountains eat larkspur seeds, which cannot propagate otherwise.

To simulate the process, you have to soak the gathered seeds all night in the acids of coffee

and then score them gently with a very sharp knife before you plant them in the garden.

You might use what was left of the coffee we drank in Lisa's kitchen visiting.

There were orange poppies on the table in a clear glass vase, stained
near the bottom to the color of sunrise;

the unstated theme was the blessedness of gathering and the blessing of dispersal---

it made you glad for beauty like that, casual and intense, lasting as long
as the poppies last.

But that poem isn't on the poetry walk. With manual in hand, fellow Oberlin student Max and I braved the streets, where we were quickly accosted by... two friendly college students with clipboards. I, Laura, am now officially registered to vote in California, after registering in Ohio months ago. Oops. So we started reading some poems. Some were better than others.
In my trusty manual, I found out that the author, Gelett Burgess, wrote a sequel to "Purple Cow," that went:
Ah yes, I wrote the 'Purple Cow'
I'm sorry now I wrote it;
But I can tell you anyhow,
I'll kill you if you quote it.

Apparently this guy went to MIT. I hope he was good at math. Some of the poems were really interesting though, and soon I will be writing some inspired by those. One of my favorites was short and sweet, written by an unknown Ohlone poet.

Some of the poems were colorful. Even Max, who is illiterate, gave it a shot:



After that, we went to Berkeley used bookstore Moe's books, which has four floors of books! We were disappointed to find that the signs leading to subsequent floors said "more books" as opposed to "moe books." I mean, come on, that was a wasted pun opportunity.

(P.S. Actually, I'm pretty sure Max can read.)