Local poet to release his latest collection
When Dane Cervine watches Stephen Curry play basketball, he sees a Zen Master. Perhaps not literally, but when Curry starts launching 3-pointers practically from center court, it is clear to Cervine that he has found a rarified level of attention that is pure poetry.
And while Cervine himself may not be in the habit of sinking shots 35 feet from the rim, he does have an exceptional eye for poetry and all the different ways it manifests in the world.
Aside from being a self-described “basketball fanatic,” Cervine, 64, is also an accomplished poet, retired psychologist, and committed Zen Meditation practitioner living in Santa Cruz. His latest book of prose poetry, “The World is God’s Language,” is set for release Friday. The book is published by the Bay Area collective Sixteen Rivers Press and it is Cervine’s seventh published collection.
While Cervine’s description of Curry as a Zen Master was lighthearted, it is an example of the intensely perceptive lens through which he views the world; where no detail is meaningless or goes unnoticed. Just as important are the three primary influences through which his lens is colored.
“I can’t help, when I’m a writer, of having my contemplative practice show up, and my life as a therapist show up, and the three of them kind of do their thing together and show up, hopefully, in a good way,” Cervine said of his writing practice. “But I am very suspect when one domain influences the other too much.”
Cervine’s unique cross-pollination of expertise gives him a poetic dexterity that makes his poems familiar and approachable, while remaining deeply contemplative. In the book’s preface, he writes, “Poetry is a way of reading this world.” In “The World is God’s Language,” Cervine manages to provide his own translation of this world, while inspiring readers to decipher meanings of their own.
The world of psychology was the first to capture Cervine’s attention and has impacted him personally and professionally for more than 40 years. At 19, a family friend offered him a job as an aide in a psychiatric hospital in Atwater, California where he was raised. “Once that started, I never quite looked back,” he said.
Cervine attended college at UCSC and graduated in 1980. After completing his Masters in Integral Counseling Psychology in 1984 and obtaining a License in Marriage and Family therapy in 1985, he began working as a therapist for the Santa Cruz County Mental Health & Substance Abuse Services in 1987. Cervine would go on to spend the next 28 years of his professional career there, eventually becoming the Chief of Children’s Mental Health in 1998 and serving in that role until his retirement in 2015.
“My career in psychology was really important to me all on its own,” he said. “It’s hard to describe how, but I felt a synergy in my work as a therapist and my writing.”
Cervine’s ability to find a natural synergy between the most prominent spheres of influence on him also effortlessly applies to his second passion—a longstanding meditation practice.
While attending UCSC, Cervine was introduced to meditation through the western Buddhist teacher and Psychoanalyst, Jack Engler. Cervine already possessed a keen interest in the metaphysical, but found resonance with Buddhism’s ancient traditions, folktales, and spiritual poems.
It was not until his early 30s that Cervine began writing consistently and found poetry to be his third major guiding influence. His wife, Linda, had just given birth to their first child and his career as a psychologist was developing quickly.
“I realized in some ways I did well under the pressure of no time. The poem itself is built around compression and smallness,” Cervine said. “If I had been trying to write The Great American Novel, I would have been sunk.”
The Santa Cruz poetry community—which frequently hosts workshops, writer’s groups, and public readings—has also played a vital role in Cervine’s development as a writer. His friend and mentor, Gary Young, has been
particularly influential in this regard. Young is Santa Cruz’s first Poet Laureate, a Continuing Lecturer at UCSC, and a maestro of the prose form.
Young explained that one of the unique characteristics of prose poetry—a lyrically narrative form without emphasis on line breaks and verse—is the abiding familiarity it cloaks itself in.
“Poetry in the prose poem can seduce and get into the psyche of a reader without them realizing it is happening,” Young said.
With regard to Cervine’s own special flavor of prose poems, Young said, “They are precise and grounded in the world and he doesn’t do a lot of tap dancing in his poems.” He added, “Dane’s poems, instead of saying ‘look at me,’ tend to say ‘look at that.’”
“The World is God’s Language” is composed in exactly that spirit; in the space where the personal
and the universal can coexist. Cervine’s personal experiences and habits are clearly present, but only for the purpose of encouraging the reader to explore something they may not have explored before.
When asked what hopes he has for this book, Cervine responded, “I probably do have a hope that the interface between the poetry and the mind and heart that is reading it, helps draw the reader deeper into their own sense of curiosity and inquiry into what it is to be alive.”
In other words, similar to the feeling Steph Curry gets when he drains a three at the buzzer.
“The World is God’s Language” can be found at Bookshop Santa Cruz and directly from Sixteen Rivers Press. Cervine will also be featured in a Zoom reading of poems from his new collection at 5 p.m. Friday. The Zoom link can be used to attend the event mailchi.mp/santacruzwrites/ zoomforward49.