The culture that shaped me goes back to the Depression Day Thirties. Few of you could know how differently people thought then. People were desperately poor but struggled to be cheerful anyway—and they made their own music. You would hear a lot of humming and singing and whistling and people told stories. Grandad sang “Oh, My Poor Nellie Grey” and “Old Dan Tucker” to us granddaughters. My dad sang, “It’s a Long, Long Way to Piccadilly” and “How’re You Going to Keep Them Down on the Farm After They’ve Seen Paree.”
Mother’s wide repartee included poems, Bobby Burns’, Homer Winslow’s—she was very fond of John Greenleaf Whittier’s, “One Hoss Shay”. On Halloween she delighted us with the poem about Ichabod Crane’s scary experience, crossing a haunted bridge on his mare Meg—told with a credible accent.
Lots of music in elementary school, art appreciation, and memorizing a poem to recite before the class. (I can still recite most of The Highwayman.”). In high school we could earn extra credit by attending one of the symphony concerts held in the school auditorium.
That’s how things began. I attended Modesto Junior College and landed a job with the Pacific Bell Telephone Company as an operator—which in those days was “number please,” technology.
Then came Pearl Harbor and World War II, changing our lives totally. It was a different world, new places, new jobs new friends. Shortly after the war ended, I took a position in the Circulation Dept. of the Oakland Tribune, where I worked with Bill Kohout, who had just returned from 4 years of Naval combat duty in the South Pacific.
We married in 1947, had 2 children, and celebrated our 57th anniversary just before he died in 2004. His work took us many places: Westchester County, N.Y. where I worked at Reader's Digest, Los Angeles, where I was a church secretary, and 10 years in San Francisco. Our son Tom began singing in The San Francisco Boys Chorus and that led to chaperoning at the Opera House which led to being Chorus Counselor, which ended when I began finishing up my BA at S.F. State University, then moved to Modesto to teach at Mark Twain Junior High for 15 years. What did I teach? Language Arts, and, of course, that always included poetry.
After retirement, when Bill’s work made a move to Sacramento desirable, in no time I was involved in a senior program at Sacramento Community College, then a Life History writing class at Hart Senior Center where a wonderful woman, named Janet Carncross Chandler, had begun a poetry group. Janet began writing poetry when she retired at 70, published 2 chapbooks, and was a powerhouse in the poetry community of that time, the 90’s, I guess. Soon after I moved to her group, she informed me that she was turning it over to me! It seemed like an overwhelming prospect, but using the principles of Group Process learned from the Curriculum Study Commission, it went well, and when Joyce Odam joined us about 5 years later, we became the Wednesday Workshop that flourished until Covid. Sue Daly and Olga Blu Brown have carried on with an every-other-Tuesday Zoom workshop.
My track record includes two chapbooks—the first, Family Treasure, self-published, the second, All Aboard!, published by Rattlesnake Press, as was a broadside, Out the Train Window. Through these many years, my verse has appeared in many Chaparral publications, local anthologies, Ina Coolbrith anthologies, publications like Tigers Eye, no longer in print, and recently, Song of the San Joaquin and Brevities. As time for this has diminished, I’ve focused on writing— less on getting published. As you know, poetry wants to be written; there’s a need for poets to give voice to the stirrings in the subconscious, and when you are not writing you feel vaguely dissatisfied. And there needs to be time for reading poetry.
I’d Like to Shrink Wrap
Video of Norma reading her poem
those family cookouts outs,
preserve them
in a clear plastic bag,
so we could see again that full moon
ascending the night sky,
revealing the woods and Bootjack Camp,
spilling over Mount Tam . . .
Even the black, cast iron skillet
would show through,
and the chicken,
sizzling on the campfire.
The salty freshness of sea air must be imagined,
rising up from the Marin headlands,
as well as the famous view of our “Alabaster City,”
across the Golden Gate,
But look through the wrap for a red fox
with a plumy tail
slipping through the hucklebrry bushes.
NormaM.Kohout, Sept. 18. 2019
Brought forward from June, 2019
If It Rains. . .
Video of Norma reading her poem
there will be vernal pools
in the foothills and fields
ringed with small wild flowers—
little yellow daisies
and purple lupine
the collected water will be teeming
with life—brine shrimp, minnows
and in the local park a pool will rise
full of small aquatic life,
summoning the egrets
with great white wings
they will sojourn there,
wading, rising in elegant flight . . .
and every sidewalk will abound
with brave greenery
as grass and weeds push up
through cracks in the cement
if it rains
Neophyte Choir at Mission San Juan Bautista
Video of Norma reading her poem
It was spread open on a table
where anyone could touch the ancient vellum,
hand-inked with musical staves and notes of black—a huge book, perhaps three feet wide.
The new docent’s passion for mission history
began spilling out, filling the adobe-walled room
with brown-skinned neophytes, Mutson and Yokut, dark eyes fixed on the Franciscan priest
and the square notes that told this music
they were singing in a foreign tongue, hymns
written with the quill pen of a mysterious Spaniard.
Their voices pealed off adobe walls and ceiling.
Apt students of the the talented priest, they were learning
to sing in harmony, which no other mission choir
had accomplished, and which brought invitations
to sing at neighboring missions, a walk of thirty miles.
Six or seven days away—escape from toil in the fields,
or the tedium of adobe brick-making,
or stoking the fire under iron cauldrons that fed
scores of hungry mission dwellers . . .
or any hard, hot labor the Fathers chose for their captives.
The two-day walk through the golden hills to Carmel
Mission, Soledad, or San Miguel Mission was good. The
big book of music, a key their voices used for freedom.
In Forward Gear on Kwajalein Atoll
Video of Norma reading her poem
Riding a bike after all these years!
That’s all one rides on this Pacific isle.
Now to manage a girl’s-bike with gears—
a tough change from my youthful style.
One rides only a bike on Tom’s isle;
it’s how folks are allowed to get around.
What a change from my girlhood style—
the second-hand boy’s-bike my Dad found.
Since cycling’s the way to get around,
I’ll need those youthful foolhardy skills
used with the tacky boy’s-bike Dad found,
causing me scars, scrapes and scary thrills.
At seventy, I’ll need those girlhood skills
to manage a new girl’s-bike with gears
that can bring new scars and scary thrills—
after not riding these many years.
Brought forward from August 18, 2005
Malaysian Pantoum
9-syllable lines
Rhyme Pattern:
A-1, B-1, A-2, B-2
B-1, C-1, B-2, C-2
C-1, D-1, C-2, D-2
D-1, A-2, D-2, A-1
The Days of Cream
Video of Norma reading her poem
Farm in Jennings District
Little Grandma Watson peered through
steel-rimmed spectacles,
turning the separator’s
galvanized cones, turning bossy’s milk
into skim and rich cream,
then churned that cream in a big glass jar
with wooden paddles,
saving the whey, and pressing the yellow mass
into a wooden mold
with a rose shape carved in the lid.
Farm in Laton
At night Aunt Hattie poured
the warm milk into shallow granite pans,
and in the cool morning she’d skim off
sweet clots of cream
puddling thick against the spoon to pour on
ripe figs taken
from spreading branches near
the screen porch
where we ate, where robins and mockingbirds
sang over their owns feasting in the fig tree.
