Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center is pleased to present Second Tuesday Poetry featuring Gary Thomas & Soul Vang 

Date: Tuesday, April 8, 2025
Time: 7:00 pm PST
Where: Bookish Modesto, 811 W. Orangeburg Ave, in the Roseburg Square shopping center

Open mic following featured poets (3 min per poet); sign up at the event. Hosted by Gillian Wegener

SOUL VANG

Soul Vang is the author of three collections of poetry:  Of Tigers and Wars  (Sahtu Press, 2024); Song of the Cluster Bomblet (HER Publisher, 2024); and To Live Here (Imaginary Friend Press, 2014).

Poet, educator, and U.S. Army veteran, Vang received his Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from California State University, Fresno, and is an editorial member of the Hmong American Writers’ Circle (HAWC).

Vang’s writing has appeared in Academy of American Poets (poets.org), Water~Stone Review, Abernathy Magazine, Asian American Literary Review, Fiction Attic Press, In the Grove, The Packinghouse Review, Southeast Asia Globe, and The New York Times, among others.

His awards and honors include the 2014 Imaginary Friend Press Poetry Prize and the 2015 Horizon Artist Award from the Fresno Arts Council.

About TO LIVE HERE

To Live Here is a triumph: a pure and graceful portrait of the poet from Sky Mountain and the Dragon River, as a young man in the United States Army, and as a parent and poet in Fresno. Part emotional cartography and pure mastery of the craft, this vital glimpse into the Hmong American experience is a heart, a history, and a gift of hard-earned wisdom.  Each poem is an artifact, a piece of art, and an important addition to American literature. This is poetry built to last.  You will not forget it. –Lee Herrick, Fresno Poet Laureate

GARY THOMAS

Gary Thomas grew up on a peach farm outside Empire, California.  Prior to retirement, he taught eighth grade language arts for thirty-one years and junior college English for seven.  His poems have been published in The Comstock Review, MockingHeart Review, Atticus Review, River Heron Review, Barzakh, Blue Heron Review, Split Rock Review, Book of Matches, and Hole in the Head Review, among others, in the anthology More Than Soil, More Than Sky: The Modesto Poets, and in Tule Review 2024.  He is a founding member of the Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center (MoSt) and of the Stanislaus County writing group known as The Licensed Fools.  A full-length collection, All the Connecting Lights, was released in August 2022 from Finishing Line Press.  His latest poetry collection, O Yes We Breathe, was published in November 2024 by Manzanita Writers Press.

ABOUT O YES WE BREATHE: 

In his new collection, O Yes We Breathe, Gary Thomas seamlessly weaves days-gone-by boyhood pastoral with the post-pandemic political and spiritual present. Moving between poems, I was transfixed by the gentle music within these pages. “I am beholden to beauty that breathes any way it can-” As inhale, Thomas’ keen eye for detail sharpens the blade of these poems on the sandstone grit of his father’s lessons on life. As exhale, Thomas delivers poignant and tender incantations summoning the deeper, higher self. “If all we ever have is what we trade invisibly in our hulls of flesh and fluidity, we can learn to care for what we have. We can partake our full portion as family. We can breathe easy.” Each poem is a circle within itself “still working with some astonishment,” rippling outward, a whole world. This collection: “Let it light the corners.”

-Kai Coggin, Poet Laureate of Hot Springs, Arkansas, author of Mother of Other Kingdoms and Mining for Stardust

Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center is pleased to present Second Tuesday Poetry featuring Bob Stanley and Dane Cervine. 

Date: Tuesday, March 11, 2025
Time: 7:00 pm PST
Where: Bookish Modesto, 811 W. Orangeburg Ave, in the Roseburg Square shopping center

Open mic following featured poets (3 min per poet); sign up at the event.  Hosted by Modesto poet laureate emeritus & author Gillian Wegener. 

BOB STANLEY

Bob Stanley studied poetry at Caltech and UCLA, and he taught English and Creative Writing at Solano College, Sac City College, and Sac State before retiring in 2021. Sacramento’s Poet Laureate from 2009 to 2012, Bob has organized poetry events in California for many years. His collections include Walt Whitman Orders a Cheeseburger (2009), Miracle Shine (2013), and Language Barrier (2024). Bob and his wife Joyce live in Sacramento and organize online poetry seminars that help support nonprofit organizations.

Bob’s most recent collection, Language Barrier, which is published by CW Books, is available on the Random Lane Press website: randomlanepress.com

ABOUT LANGUAGE BARRIER

“Language is no barrier to our enjoyment of the experiences Bob Stanley has distilled and decanted in these poems. His keen eye for detail takes us first on a passionate tour of China and then on a reminiscent journey through America, described through the prism of many poetic forms. As he says, ‘I could write with both care and abandon,’ and he has done just that. Here you will find tragedies in miniature, but also wonder at nature and the past. Through it all runs Stanley’s raconteurial charm, a Poundian respect for the world of the senses, and a tireless yearning for song: ‘keep the discord in the chord, / sing what’s hard to sound soft.’ The result, in Stanley’s own words, is ‘peach-perfect.’”—Brad Buchanan

DANE CERVINE

Dane Cervine’s recent books of poetry include DEEP TRAVEL – At Home in the [Burning] World (Saddle Road Press), The World Is God’s Language (Sixteen Rivers Press), Earth Is a Fickle Dancer (Main Street Rag), and The Gateless Gate – Polishing the Moon Sword (Saddle Road Press). Dane’s poems have won awards from Adrienne Rich, Tony Hoagland, the Atlanta Review, Caesura, and been nominated for multiple Pushcarts. His work appears in The SUN, the Hudson Review, TriQuarterly, Poetry Flash, Catamaran, Miramar, Rattle, Sycamore Review, Pedestal Magazine, among others. Dane lives in Santa Cruz, California. Visit his website at: https://danecervine.typepad.com/

ABOUT DEEP TRAVEL 

“I love the way [Dane has] taken the haibun back to its origins with Bashō—what a brilliant and perfectly executed form for [his] observations and musings. It’s such a rich book. Some of [the] haiku are so beautifully apt, little marvels, and one of my favorites is the one inspired by Ocean Vuong:

      I am a book—of bone,

   raft and river

 That seems to me emblematic of the entire book and [Dane’s] intents—to offer insights and responses without any trace of self-importance, and then to return to shore.   –Lynne Knight