A Friend Has Passed Away: Steve Sanfield

From November 21 2014

‘The Right Place’: Poet Steve Sanfield to read at North Columbia Schoolhouse

Steve Sanfield, one of the pioneers of the American storytelling revival and the founder of the Sierra Storytelling Festival, is the author of more than Thirty volumes of poetry, folklore and children's literature. Sanfield in his home San Juan Ridge area.

An Evening with Steve Sanfield

7:30 p.m. Friday, Nov. 21

Doors open at 7 p.m.

Tickets are $12 members/advance, $15 door, kids (5 to 12) $6

All proceeds to benefit the North Columbia Schoolhouse

Tickets can be purchased at BriarPatch Co-op and Mother Truckers

Poet. Storyteller. Children’s book author. Folklorist.

It can be hard to get a handle on Steve Sanfield and five decades of his creativity.

He laughs at the comment, quoting Whitman on containing multitudes and quipping that “I wake to confusion every day.”

But the common thread in Sanfield’s work, it seems, is the love of a good story, and of the power of words.

Sanfield, the author of more than 30 books, has been preparing for a fundraiser Friday for the North Columbia Schoolhouse by taking a look back at earlier work, as well as reading from his new release, “The Right Place: 77 at 77,” which is available locally at Tomes, Harmony Books and The Book Seller.

“This, for me, is very important to do,” he said. “I want to find out if anything I do has any effect on the world.”

Sanfield has been battling some health issues, but he said he will not let that stand in his way.

“It’s a real challenge,” he said. “I’m looking forward to it enormously, to sharing the new and the old with my community.”

Having the fundraiser at the North Columbia Schoolhouse – where Sanfield founded the now iconic Sierra Storytelling Festival — is “perfect,” Sanfield said, adding, “It has been the center of my culture, inner and outer, for four decades.”

Sanfield will read a number of selections from “The Right Place,” which is just out from Larkspur Press. The small fine press in Monterey, Ky., now has published five Sanfield books, with the first printed in 1980.

“My finest experience has been with the small press,” he said, calling Larkspur’s work “just gorgeous.”

“There is a deep satisfaction, a sharing of artistic vision.”

Working with a small press means that books get sold one by one, Sanfield recalls his publisher, Gray Zeitz, telling him.

But he doesn’t do it for the fame or the money.

“After scribbling, darkening the page with ink for more than 50 years, to think there will be a wave of attention (for the new book) ... I don’t have great expectations. But I am so grateful to be creating every day,” Sanfield mused. “I don’t know how people can live without that. I’ve been blessed, really.”

Of course, he said, it is part of the human condition to want validation.

“Looking back, a little more attention would have been nice,” he said. “But a light rain on a fall day is enough. Without my vision, my work, my vitality, I would not have survived. My life is my work and my work is my life. Therein lies the great blessing. If it reaches a person or two, I’m grateful for that.”

Sanfield said he is still winnowing through his selections for the reading, joking that “I’ve got it down to what I’m going to choose from.”

Looking back at his poems from the last 40 or 50 years has been a “revelation,” Sanfield said, adding, “I’ve been trying to figure out, were they true then, and are they true now.”

He will also read from “A Natural Man: The True Story of John Henry,” which recently found its way back into the world in the form of a new paperback and e-book.

“That was the first book of folklore for children I ever wrote,” he said. “It was first published in 1986. It got incredible reviews, it just hung around and hung around, and then it went out of print finally. Last year, August House asked if I wanted to do a reprint and an e-book, to keep it alive in the world. John Henry was the last man to fight a machine and win — I think that’s why it’s coming back.”

Sanfield said he has been trying to put together an evening that “weaves the whole cloth,” adding later, “The group will gather to share what we hope is the best of ourselves.

“I’ve been thinking about it a lot,” he said. “The one thing I want to get across is simply to bring back an awareness that poetry can be vital, can be important, can be a necessary part of their life. If they let it in, it can transform.”

To contact City Editor Liz Kellar, email lkellar@theunion.com or call 530-477-4229.