Santa Clara County’s poet laureate Nils Peterson may not have written a word of it, but he was proud to announce that the county’s official poem has finally been completed. The poem, entitled “A Family Album; Santa Clara County 2009,” was composed by hundreds of local residents, each of whom contributed a line. Peterson then selected 100 lines and fashioned them into a poem, divided into such sections as Work, People, Our Lives, What Was Lost, What’s Here, and The Look of Our Place. The entire poem can be found here.
A selection:
What’s Here
I thought it would be almost like Kansas, but it’s not.
Home of garlic fog, traffic bog and many who jog.
Sometimes the earth shakes beneath our feet.
A hint of garlic seasons the morning fog.
Showers - what I once called drizzle.
Hills wrap long arms around the valley.
Winter rain stops; chartreuse gingko leaves finger the sky.
Hawks glide and dive, melted sunshine poppies spill downhill.
Morning doves coo softly from rooftop antennas.
A hummingbird whirrs through roses; jet lumbers above.
A woodpecker pounds the dead madrone, as I walk past.
Eleven ducklings in mom’s wake down Coyote Creek.
Paired for life, two geese fly over Camden before rain.
Two lizards doing pushups - Qui es mui macho?
A dog barks…bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark.
The street cat has a wild and holy light in his eyes.
With my wet laundry, I startle a doe.
6 AM: the mockingbird sang all night.
Squirrels playing soccer with walnuts on the roof.
Ocean cool morning, filigree snail trail on doormat.
Mountain lion hit on 85. Whose valley, this?
Above Silicon Valley two bluebirds are mating.
And crow, county jester, finds a way to thrive.
The Giant Orange. Not razed, just moved a mile. Hot dog!
“Two eighty south becomes six eighty north?! What?”
Moffett tarmac – white blimp, the floating skywhales return!
Annie Deckert, Gwen Hacker, Dawn Haskins, Bonnie Home,
Martha Sterne, Millicent Kellogg, Mimi Ahern, Amy Meier,
Cookie Curci, Margit Look Henry, Lucy Salcido Carter, Maureen
Alexander, Erika Goss, Karen Booth, Bret Mannon, Floi Baker,
Katie Welbourn, Katy Huber Grischy, Conne Shaw, Catherine
Shinners, Sharon Nelson, Maureen Draper, Sally Ashton,
Larry White, Jennifer Swanton Brown, Stephen C. Wetlesen
The poet laureate’s selections in the poem above were 89% female contributed.
This can only mean one thing.
The County’s poet laureate is a bigoted sexist.
Raj! We need you Raj!
… and Pete Constant is the city council mouth piece for the far-right Christian group Values Advocacy Council.
Where is John Galt and the objectivists to point this out and do something?
You are making a fool out of yourself.
I didn’t know that
poems didn’t have to
rhyme.
the lines
just had to be
pressed-entered
and it is a poem.
john gait
you asked for a bigot.
might you not be calling…
yourself?
Adam W.,
This article was not about Pete Constant.
I guess you failed to grasp the intended meaning of my sarcastic remark.
I’ll spell it out for you. In my post, the SJPD is symbolized by the poet laureate. The gender biased contributor data represents the ethnically skewed downtown arrest data. My conclusion regarding the poet laureate, which I based solely on the data, is obviously a foolish one. This is my way of pointing out that Raj’s and other’s (yours too, I believe) conclusion of racism in the SJPD, citing the skewed arrest data as evidence, is equally foolish.
I’ll readily admit that my post was off topic and a little obtuse. My humble apologies.