Tag archives: Poetry

A Community Center Once Again
By Kim Crail   |   July 8, 2021

Our library continues to thrive these days as we move from the intensity of the pandemic and open further. While the Montecito Library has been offering curbside pickup since last July and indoor visits since December, June 15 has ushered in a true feeling of normalcy. While we continue to wear masks indoors, library staff […]

Arts In Lockdown #29: Rod Rolle, Photographer and Musician
By Joanne A Calitri   |   June 10, 2021

Rod Rolle is both an esteemed professional news and public relations photographer and local jazz drummer with Tom Murray of 30 years in their duo, The Stiff Pickle Orchestra. His motto “Images with A Global View” is most accurate, currently an affiliate with SIPA USA, he has worked as a stringer for Getty Images, Associated […]

Montecito Author Releases New Poetry Book
By Kelly Mahan Herrick   |   May 6, 2021

OPEN, the newest book of poetry by Susan Read Cronin, explores issues of love, life, death, and family. Sometimes written as seen through the eyes of a child, Cronin’s poems remind the reader of what it is like to try to make sense of the world around us. Weaving steadily between dark and light, her […]

Patriotic Pandemic Performance
By Steven Libowitz   |   April 22, 2021

“Nay, why reproach each other, be unkind,For there’s no plane on which we two may meet?” The words might be a little too poetic and eloquent for modern times, but the sentiment is surely something that might have been spoken aloud on the floor of the U.S. Senate this week, say, perhaps by a centrist […]

Stern Talking
By Richard Mineards   |   December 24, 2020

Top lyricist Toni Stern is waxing poetic again with her third and latest work, Loops. Unlike her two previous collections, Wet in 2015, and As Close as I Can three years ago, Toni, who enjoyed a highly productive collaboration with singer-songwriter Carole King, describes the new work as “freewheeling within the medium of prose, poetry, […]

Seek and Ye Shall Find
By Ashleigh Brilliant   |   July 9, 2020

One of the most famous lines of all poetry (originally written in Persian a millennium ago, but first translated into English in 1859) comes from a book called the Rubaiyat, and is about a “moving finger,” which “writes, and, having writ, moves on” – and nothing we can do can bring that finger back, to […]

Potent Potable Poetry
By Steven Libowitz   |   April 23, 2020

If COVID-19 hadn’t caused everything to come to a close, and everyone to halt, suddenly in the middle of March, George Yatchisin would be hosting the sixth annual “Spirits in the Air: Potent Potable Poetry” reading at The Good Lion lounge this Friday, April 24, when the “Drinkable Landscape” columnist for Edible Santa Barbara and […]

Pandemic Pentameter
By Richard Mineards   |   April 2, 2020

The elderly residents of Casa Dorinda, currently under lockdown because of the coronavirus, are waxing poetic! Longtime resident Linda Beuret says residents are watching movies and participating in exercise classes on Casa TV, while food is delivered to the doors of cottages and rooms. “Keeping six feet from anyone you pass is absolutely mandatory,” says […]

Ruminating with Rumi
By Steven Libowitz   |   February 6, 2020

Montecito’s Rumi Educational Center’s mission is to spread understanding of the poetry of the famed Sufi mystic Jala Al Din Rumi in order to promote his wisdom teachings of Universal Love. The goal is to enable learners of all backgrounds to experience the messages of pluralism, tolerance, humanism and non-violence that are rooted in Rumi’s […]

Envisioning the ‘Final Asana’
By Steven Libowitz   |   January 23, 2020

Kick off the brand-new year with a workshop that’s all about anticipating the end. White Lotus Foundation’s Santa Barbara Retreat Center begins the 2020 series of monthly retreats with “Preparing for the Final Asana: End of Life Law, Medicine, Policy and What Yoga Offers,” co-led by landmark attorney Kathryn Tucker, who is the Executive Director […]

Good Neighbors
By Kim Crail   |   January 16, 2020

Saying hello, bumping into someone in line, knowing the cashier’s name, seeing people and being seen – these are all components of social infrastructure, studied by sociologist Eric Klinenberg and fleshed out in his book Palaces for the People. These everyday affinities are part of what makes public library life so vital, keeping us civil […]

Downtown Talk Explores Essays on Love, Wonder
By Scott Craig   |   October 10, 2019

Paul Willis, Westmont professor of English, will read selections from his award-winning collection, To Build a Trail: Essays on Curiosity, Love and Wonder, Tuesday, October 15, at 5:30 pm in the University Club, 1332 Santa Barbara Street.  The Westmont Downtown Lecture, “Not about the Numbers: What Really Matters in How We Learn,” is free and […]

Flight-Hearted
By Ashleigh Brilliant   |   November 22, 2018

If anybody asked you (for some diabolical reason) to use the word “unpremeditated” in a poem, you might think it a considerable, almost an unfair, challenge. The word isn’t very poetic-sounding, is it? But prepare to be flabbergasted: That word happens to appear in the first stanza of one of the most famous poems in […]

Stanzas of Sojourns
By Steven Libowitz   |   August 16, 2018

Santa Barbara poet Daniel Thomas celebrates the recent publication of his first collection of poems, Deep Pockets, with a second reading of works from the book at 7 pm next Thursday, August 23, at Chaucer’s. The book traverses Thomas’s path from snowy Minnesota to lush Southern California, where he moved in 2015 to work at […]

Musing on the Mesa
By Steven Libowitz   |   April 26, 2018

It was early last spring, just over a year ago, that Mark Ruskin published his second book of poetry, On Love’s Path ~ New Versions of Rumi, Kabir & Hafiz, in which he intuitively interprets the words of the great mystic poets through his own heart as a Chinese medicine healer. As with his first […]

Santa Barbara’s Poet Laureate (2007-2009)
By Beverlye Fead   |   March 15, 2018

Some people you meet in life by pure coincidence and others are put in your path. I do believe Perie Longo was not only put in my path for a reason but changed the course of my life forever. I was a painter when I met Perie, and now I am a writer; more about that […]

Avenue Q – a Road to Inner Freedom
By Steven Libowitz   |   March 15, 2018

Nearly all the spiritual traditional and psychological systems suggest that suffering comes from how we interpret our experiences. Life is always going to have painful moments – but it’s what we make them mean that determines our level of inner happiness on anguish. There are many paths that aim to help humans alleviate the symptoms […]

The Mud Must Go Somewhere
By Montecito Journal   |   February 22, 2018

Heal the Ocean (HTO) has received numerous (some irate) phone calls regarding the mud being deposited on Goleta and Carpinteria beaches. Television media has also called for a response from us. We told them, and everyone else, we were investigating and would let everyone know when we knew the answer. We at HTO don’t believe […]

Annual Reading to Honor Poet Stafford
By Scott Craig   |   January 25, 2018

Paul Willis, professor of English at Westmont and former poet laureate of Santa Barbara, hosts the 12th annual community poetry reading to honor the life and work of William Stafford (1914-1993) on Saturday, January 27, at 2 pm at the First Crossing Day Use Area in Los Padres National Forest, across from the Los Prietos […]