Ringing in the Wild

  • By: Traci Gourdine
  • Poetry
  • Buy Now

Beloved Sacramento poet Traci Gourdine has been a mainstay of the Northern California poetry scene for years. RINGING IN THE WILD is her debut full-length collection, long in coming. 

"Poems, like screenplays, lyricize. Words and pictures thread and needle us. Consider 'tired bras, proletariat panties / sleek cool satins / delicate lace made of thin air / all worth a month's salary / all for him' – and feel the weave of Traci Gourdine's spell. Consider 'steamy nights when all goes still' and young women who watch 'familiar men / light and gather noisily // crows on wires / men on front stoops' – and the pictures that her nudging, teasing poems almost begin complete. Still, mystery gathers. Consider 'They'll couple up with sudden dates / outside movie houses / karate films, stale popcorn / young girls popping gum, snapping Juicy Fruit in time / with the crisp click of thin heeled shoes' – and the reinforced heart of old-time heterosexual love and social need beats on. Gourdine's vivid poem-story reveries lay bare love-secrets we, all of us, covet and share."—Al Young 

  • Woman with chin in hand wearing a pink scarf and silver bracelet with gray curly hair
  • Traci Gourdine's poetry and stories have been published in numerous literary magazines, and she has been anthologized within Shepard and Thomas' Sudden Fiction Continued. Traci and Quincy Troupe were paired in a year-long exchange of letters for the anthology LETTERS TO POETS: CONVERSATIONS ABOUT POETICS, POLITICS, AND COMMUNITY (Saturnalia Books, 2008). She is co-editor of Night is Gone, Day is Still Coming, an anthology of writing by young Native writers, as well as We Beg to Differ, poems by Sacramento poets against the Iraq war. She has also co-edited the Tule Review with Luke Breit for the Sacramento Poetry Center. Traci Gourdine is a professor of English at American River College and chaired the Creative Writing department for the California State Summer School for the Arts. She was Chair of the Sacramento Poet Laureate Committee for four laureate terms. For ten years she facilitated writing workshops within several California state prisons in the Arts in Corrections program for the William James Association. RINGING IN THE WILD (2015) is Traci's debut full-length poetry collection, published by Ad Lumen Press.