"From The Inside Quietly"

The eighth-annual WordSpring creative writing conference is Saturday, April 27, from 8:00 a.m. - 3:30 p.m. on the Butte College main campus with workshops on poetry, fiction, and cross-genre writing.

The keynote presenter is Eloisa Amezcua. Originally from Arizona, now living in Ohio, she has collected many of her poems in "From The Inside Quietly" ($12 in paperback from Shelterbelt Press, shelterbeltpress.org), an exploration of the inner life as both hard-edged and fragile.

Tickets are $30 for students and educators, $60 for the general public, free for the first 50 attendees affected by the Camp Fire; visit buttewordspring.org.

Amezcua arranges her poems into four sections, each introduced by a poem about "E." "E Does Ballet" (and his called "chubby" by her mother); "E Goes To The Museum" ("the shark teeth tell stories/ she wants to learn by heart"); "E Walks Home: An Inner Monologue" ("wear nothing/ that clings to your shape/ be shapeless/ don't look scaredworriedpanicked/ don't look/ friendlyapproachableopen/ don't look back/ look natural...."); and "E Watches Mother Primp" ("trying on/ dress after dress/ stubborn/ as a tongue/ pressed/ to the roof/ of a mouth/ shut tight/ staring").

What travels through the poems is a growing sense that the poet does not have to remain silent in the face of fraught relationships with parents and lovers. 

In "Teaching My Mother English Over The Phone," "she wants to know how/ a word can be both/ a thing and an action/ like war and mistake// although I can't put into words in Spanish/ how I know the difference/ so I tell her I have to go/ and I go/ and she goes/ I haven't taught her anything"; "On Not Screaming" introduces a sinister voice: "I told you/ to be quiet,/ he said,/ is to love/ me enough/ to let me in--// ... This is how I was/ taught to love:/ to silence yourself/ is to let the other in."

No. One may not see oneself clearly, but one can speak. In the "Self-Portrait" at the end, "I'm dangerous," the poet avers, "I'm a mirror./ I see everything/ except myself./ This way I can't/ lose: even when// broken, a polished/ surface reflects/ whatever looks in."