Dear Media: Have I Got A Story For You!

Here is a copy of an email I sent to KCRA, our local news station, promoting More Than Soil, More Than Sky: The Modesto Poets.  I think this needs to get some NATIONAL attention.  This is huge, huge, HUGE.  Modesto has an amazing cultural community that desperate needs to be recognized.  Please read this, and also read the selected poems available on the Amazon preview.  And SPREAD THE WORD.  Send your own email, alerting the media to this accomplishment, to outlets like The Today Show, The Ellen Show, KCRA, Conan, Letterman, The Times, etc.  This accomplishment is major and needs to be known.
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This morning, at midnight, the online "launch" for a new poetry anthology occurred.  That anthology is entitled: "More Than Soil, More Than Sky: The Modesto Poets."  Edited by Sam Pierstorff, Gillian Wegener, Stella Beratlis, and Ed Bearden, this anthology has SKYROCKETED to become the #1 Amazon Poetry Best-Seller*, the #2 Amazon Mover & Shaker**, and is in the top 100 Amazon Best-Sellers*** all in under 18 hours since its launch.

Modesto has long been tainted by negative press, in no small part thanks to its rank as one of the top-ten worst U.S. cities to live in due to its unemployment rates, illegal drug production/sales rates, crime rates, gang violence, etc.  What those reports can't account for is the pulsating "underground" cultural community that has existed in Modesto for years and has experienced a rebirth in the past two decades.  There is a real and vibrant arts scene in Modesto, created in part as a response to the negative image Modesto portrays to society at large.  The familiar complaint of "there's nothing to DO here" has been taken to task by a determined and passionate group of artists, writers, thespians, gourmands, and visionaries.

The astonishing and amazing response that the online launch of the Modesto Poets' publication is proof--concrete and unavoidable proof that Modesto can no longer be defined by its poverty rate, its unemployment rate, its disproportionate cost of living, and its continued problems with drugs and violence.  If this achievement goes unnoticed, it will be at the potential cost of encouraging continued cultural growth.  The very social factors that this arts movement is in response to are also the factors that threaten it: dissatisfaction, neglect, and apathy.

Please, get in contact with Sam Pierstorff at pierstorffs@mjc.edu.  You can also find him on Facebook at http://facebook.com/sampierstorff  His insight and vision was one of the driving forces behind this book's publication and success.  This is a truly inspiring and motivating local story that deserves attention on both a local and national level.

Thank you,

Laura Dickinson-Turner

*Amazon Poetry Best-Sellers: http://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers-Books-Poetry/zgbs/books/10248/ref=zg_bs_nav_b_2_17

**Amazon Movers & Shakers list: http://www.amazon.com/gp/movers-and-shakers/books/ref=zg_bs_tab

***Amazon Best-Sellers list (#95 as of this mailing): http://www.amazon.com/best-sellers-books-Amazon/zgbs/books/ref=zg_bsms_tab#5

A poem, written today, Nov. 21, 2009

You were smaller then.
You did not know such things,
nor did you think to ask of them.
They simply were not.


But they crept in,
slowly, insinuating themselves
into the dark corners.


One day you turned too quickly,
and they stared you in the face.
You gasped, grasped for stability.
They would not leave.
Once seen, a thing cannot be unseen.
Once known, a thing cannot be unknown.


Now you knew where they were.
You tried to avoid the dark corners.
You took cautious steps.  You did not run.
Smiles became measured, laughter checked.
A too-loud sob could awaken them.


The colors on the trees never seemed as bright as they did that last autumn of childhood and you have wished every day since then that time would stop insisting its way forward so that you could reverse your step and unsee and in unseeing, un-know, but it cannot be done and so instead you walk through the streets with your head down and your eyes lowered for fear of what you may see.


All the while, they sit in the dark corners,
silently crying.
Were they so hideous, that you should fear them?