found in a chapbook, Lantana Leaves, c1990

Below is a two page entry in a chapbook, Lantana Leaves, published in 1990, Austin, Full Court Press.  I probably wrote it during the 18 years I lived on the Mexican border.  Isla de Mujeres should really just be Isla Mujeres, Women Island, not Island of Women.  I scanned this instead of retyping it, so this is as big as it gets.  It had to be scanned as a JPEG to be uploaded here.  Actually, it brings back a very early memory of Quebec City, from the early 1970s.

Photo vieille, poème nouveau

Une photo vieille, Venice-au-Quebec, Lake Memphremagog

et aussi un poème publié recemmant en Waterways

Tant Pis

written with (rather) fine black marker
your only margin note on page roman 6, vi

vi to sound like swiftness or life
in French, vit or vie

to rhyme with pis or English pee

or vi as in English vinegar
for that matter if it matters in this
piss and vinegar state we share

and it must because we share, too,
thanks to you, The First Man by Camus,
and this in English

for your one black note on white,
marginal, before you realized
you were in the copy you meant for me,
tant pis, and moved on to your own

for rather fine notes in black
on marginal white, free to write now
on your own.

[written for Mary Teague]

TROIS POÈTES SONT VENUS POUR NOUS!

Michèle Blanchet (front, left), Monique Laforce (front, center) and Richard Fournier (in back on right) came from Quebec City to give three poetry readings on both sides of the Quebec/Vermont border. They came across to Vermont on Saturday, Nov. 13 after a drive down from Quebec City. This picture was taken after their second reading, at the Barton Public Library. With them is Toni Eubanks, librarian for Barton and Glover (front, right) and also yours truly, Sylvia Manning (in back, in black). They had already given a wonderful first reading at the Bread and Puppet theatre in Glover, from which we have no pictures here but some very good ones in a review in the Orleans County Chronicle of Nov. 17, 2010.




Here the three poets stand in front of Resto Millie's in Stanstead, Quebec. Their last reading, billed Brunch & Poetry, was here, just barely back across the line. This reading was filmed, so we hope to have a link to that video.

It was beautiful. Everything. The poems, the weather, the way people listened, the way they responded, the graciousness of Elka and Peter Schumann, Toni Eubanks, Bashar at Resto Millie's, Nancy Nourse with RythmeBeat. Tous. Merci beaucoup.