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ENDORSEMENTS FOR HOUSE OF THE UNEXPECTED Julie Rogers’ House of the Unexpected is a brilliant gathering from a life of making poems. I’ve stood in awe at the solitary pursuit of such art, of such a poet. Taken from several manuscripts, her first book is a Selected! “The voice of Julie Rogers is so pure,” I blurbed her powerful “Torch” seventeen years ago, “so unadorned with the usual poetic conceits it reads like the soul’s voice inside us all.” This is just the beginning. The uncompromised full manuscripts will follow. She articulates the inarticulate. And you too will live in the Unexpected. -Sharon Doubiago, Oregon Book Award Winner, author of Love on the Streets, Selected and New Poems & My Father’s Love. Few poems are written as close to the heart; no extra words just soul meanings as they are bodily enacted -- the kisses, the gashes, and the good and the agonizing memories. House of the Unexpected has politics and clarity. Especially the poems for David are brave. Love grows, matures, and is reborn alive, like the touch of Cupid's arrow. -Michael McClure, Beat Poet, novelist & artist Surpassing a consistency of sensitivity, Julie Rogers reveals that she can write with political and personal vision, and can make a truly visionary leap of imagination, the brilliance of which resonates through all the love poems she writes to David Meltzer. -Jack Hirschman, former SF Poet Laureate, translator & artist "I'm like everyone, familiar with isolation, nervous, but certain we're not strangers/I raise my head to look you in the eye." And she does look you in the eye & heart, never afraid of going deep into the darkest spaces, making light of them. The language is vibrant & spare in its expression of complexity and passion. This is such a profound & delightful collection of poems - you'll want to return again & again. House of the Unexpected lives up to its title. It's a treasure. -Agneta Falk, poet & painter ________________________ Find more reviews in 'Endorsements' HOUSE OF THE UNEXPECTED by Steve Deiffenbacher, writer for the Mail Tribune, Medford, OR I started ‘House of the Unexpected’ and was immediately swept up in it. It's honest, beautiful, visceral, often painful, but always mesmerizing. Its strength is in how the poet engages both the personal and political and how they mesh with moments of extraordinary grace and love of life. ‘House of the Unexpected’ works excellently, combining the personal dramas with the horrors that have been visited on women in the past and that still are going on in the present. I love its rage and fierce determination, its unstinting willingness to look at the worst and the best that we can be as human beings and its voice of female empowerment. In that sense, I think it's a rare gem. I can't remember the last book of poems I read with that kind of impact. After reading the last half of the book, I realize I hadn't grasped it's full scope, and my appreciation of it is even greater. It starts with the personal, melds it into the political, brings in the connection with nature and spirituality and then ends back with the personal in the tender and honest love poems at the conclusion. In the end, all these things become part of one another. All of them were there all along, but the full journey of the book completes the circle to make that even clearer. I realize again the uniqueness of Julie Rogers’ voice. Always between the lines of her work there is an awareness of the unseen, a felt but impossible-to-define mystery of being. It gives the poems great power.
photograph by Katie Heflin
Facing Beauty for George Floyd
Dark bears light, root of before & after. The space between stars, seeds from the womb, our world born & colored by patterns repeated all the way home linked across families, centuries, oceans, chains.
The songs I grew with, the music I dance & sing, open arms for Dr. King & alleged liberty but I’ve heard the news & rumors all my life followed by silence. There’s more to this story, hidden by white pride wasting whole black lives.
Truth is, my busted heart knows pieces of our legacy include me. I will not turn away. I swear to God, the pain makes me so sick I can’t breathe, but much easier than George Floyd his family, his friends
his nation, his brother. Your tears pool inside until I weep. Would this happen to me? No. Amazing we keep walking on the same streets and still give each other room to step away.
Facing us makes me pray we’ll sit down, tell our stories see the truth together & why grief tears us apart. Just gets to the fact we don’t understand dark and light are never separate.
BLACK FUTURES MATTER Jul w/tears 6-18/7-2/7-25-20 Oakland, CA
Grief: Another Perspective
Sad is a turd you step on more than once, stays deep in the tread, prints the hall floor as you come to meet the people who would notice, even if you remove your shoes the smell is unmistakable, you nod and smile at the table all the guests are your friends and you want to become a napkin gently protecting your lap.
From Street Warp (pub. by Omerta 2013) SF For the End of Submission for Jyoti Singh As they eyed her she appeared to be an object, clay yoni in a roadside stall breasts pressed flat in a centerfold, open faced easy target, a boy’s wet dream with no name, no heart, no home, no life.
When they took her, the child, the girl, the woman pinned as a butterfly in a black frame an alley, a room, a bus, a public toilet, they say she lured them– young skin, dark eyes, small soft hands, fingernails dug in, cries like a cat on prowled streets where porn hits back.
After they had her she fell a crumpled candy wrapper, half eaten fast food tossed in a gutter, a package ripped of strings like torn newsprint to wrap meat soaked in blood but why don’t they see her in the headlines? Screams from a gagged mouth become whispers. If she tells they don’t believe. They blame her.
Jul 7-15-16 Oakland
Draught The sun, a coin flipping deep in a pocket of heat that won’t give. Newscast: governor’s gruff voice rations water, Sierra snowpack dryer than a century green hills starved in torch yellow burnt hell in the woods empty lakes, asphalt melts as we slowly wash the dishes and tend to ourselves - turn off the faucet - trying to figure when it’s important. How clean and fresh is life? Do I look right? Can I see myself?
Jul 1-20-14 San Francisco, CA
Witness for Rodney King Beaten under by the clubs of his protectors he’s down for the count on asphalt not meant to hold his blood and he can’t get away his scars are monuments to ignorance his tears are dark water left running in the city filling toilets filling swimming pools flooding gutters with our trash and the homeless his screams are the sirens of Los Angeles forcing the traffic back: heart attacks suicide attempts, maybe a kid on crack taking a fast ride through overgrowth that won’t stop his family grieving, wanting revenge while the TV shows a cremation of dreams smoldering rage rising like smoke from neighborhoods burning at dawn. Witness the bashing of Mr. King on an instant replay while a jury argues his pain. Someone said he fought back. I saw a man struggle to stand on his own.
March 1991
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READING SCHEDULE BELOW TWO-TONE POETRY & JAZZ CD David Meltzer & Julie Rogers swinging with some sassy poetry and Zan Stewart on sax! "A spectacular CD! Wonderful joy, courage, and humor, all blended like braided starlight in the listening horn!" -- Gene Berson To order email: julmind@mtashland.net $10 + $5 shipping in the US = $15 PUBLICATIONS 'Trading Fours' and 'Sharing Breath' the love poems of David Meltzer and Julie Rogers and 'Life on Earth', new poetry of Julie Rogers, published by Omerta Publications 2020, available through this website. Send a message via 'CONTACT'. $15 each plus $5 shipping HOUSE OF THE UNEXPECTED published by Wild Ocean Press STREET WARP by Julie Rogers All new poetry of place written in and about the SF Bay Area - $15.00 - Order from Omerta Publications at http://lesgottesman.com/ 'WORLD OF CHANGE' The poem and essay, 'To Open the Eye of the Needle' by Julie Rogers, addressing the US medical machine's impact on women, have been published in the San Francisco anthology, 'World of Change'. Order from publisher David Madgalen by emailing: madgalen@sonic.net. Feather Floating on the Water — Poems for our Children! Julie Rogers' poems 'Teeny Power' and 'Living from the Heart', as well as two lessons designed for teaching educators, are included in this unique and culturally diverse anthology of poetry for children by over 50 San Francisco poets. Includes an appendix of 26 poetry lessons for teachers and parents based on poems in the book. Copies have been distributed free of charge to all the public elementary and middle schools in SF as well as all the branch libraries of the city system through a public fundraising campaign. A delightful collection for both young and old! A portion of the proceeds from sales supports poetry workshops in schools and community centers. To order go to: http://www.studiosaraswati.com/feather.htm
Three new chapbooks have been released by Omerta Publications! Trading Fours and Sharing Breath~with Beat poet David Meltzer and Life on Earth. Contact julmind108@gmail.com for more info.
READING SCHEDULE SAN FRANCISCO, CA Thurs. July 7, 2022 Featured Reading 7:00 - 9:00 p.m. Julie Rogers & Peter Marti ~followed by an Open Mic~ Omerta Publications Book Launch 'Trading Fours' and 'Sharing Breath' by David Meltzer and Julie Rogers and 'Life on Earth' by Julie Rogers, also reading newer work at Bird & Beckett Books and Records 653 Chenery St. San Francisco, CA
LINK TO GHOST TOWN POETRY READING APRIL 23, 2015 - VANCOUVER WASHINGTON https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=g_OFWb863iY LINK TO SACRED GROUND READING MAY 16, 2018 SAN FRANCISCO http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/114966853
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