tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17288682886453462142024-03-13T14:26:48.701-07:00Light in All DirectionsLiving with the book Light in All Directions from Poetic Matrix Press.augustosandinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06127985188470698391noreply@blogger.comBlogger41125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1728868288645346214.post-21466591887192848242022-04-21T09:53:00.001-07:002022-04-22T11:19:48.265-07:00Day 21 of Poetry Month: "Movie" by Olga GarciaBack in the early days of <i>The San Diego Poetry Annual (SDPA)</i>, I took my job as a "regional" editor literally: the poems we published should sound like they came from here. Not that I have anything against New York, but the publisher who rejected <i>A River Runs Through It</i> because "this story has trees in it" pointed out a big problem: the editor thought regionalism of the writer shut out the audience, but, in fact, once the University Press of Chicago published the book, The Contemporary West as a region turned out to be a bigger than most Big Apple publishers had been able to see from their center of the world. <div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6-MDFCpE0dO6FVew3xgBkL20GeaSMEkcc1_14vPx41OXNpAW-s25pSSGXpNHBsLx6BQGQ1CQDL43IkR4TX09ozvhvzFisa4QUTqxfYQXjtwLl4-yQJsQ4yVdaWReAovjLdmb9JK7yvH7Sxd1aE7h6upK-2evv675L-vhHh73w7UhTxfsWKOYC2z0sKw/s375/SDPA200910.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; clear: right; float: right;"><img alt="" border="0" height="320" data-original-height="375" data-original-width="250" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6-MDFCpE0dO6FVew3xgBkL20GeaSMEkcc1_14vPx41OXNpAW-s25pSSGXpNHBsLx6BQGQ1CQDL43IkR4TX09ozvhvzFisa4QUTqxfYQXjtwLl4-yQJsQ4yVdaWReAovjLdmb9JK7yvH7Sxd1aE7h6upK-2evv675L-vhHh73w7UhTxfsWKOYC2z0sKw/s320/SDPA200910.jpg"/></a></div>To extend the metaphorical ground, The Big Apple is fruit that doesn't always dig the branch it falls from, let alone its roots.</p><p>Since I grew up hearing Spanish spoken in my grandparents' house and my own home, I knew Spanish had to be in <i>SDPA</i>.</p><p>Influenced by the code-switching of Francisco Bustos, I tried my hand with "<a href="https://brandoncesmat.blogspot.com/2018/01/place-poems-ii-dreaming-america-and.html" target="_blank">La Boca de Tijuana</a>," and as part of the ensemble Drought Buoy, I wrote the lyrics to "Escondereños," both of which I included along with Daniel Charles Thomas' "CORREDOR," Michael Cheno Wickert's "We Were Born" and Olga Garcia's "Movie."</p><p>Although Olga also had work in the "Special Bilingual Section," it was her code switching about violence across the border that connected me to the many people I had known who came to the U.S. trying to avoid such violence.</p><p>Now more than a decade later, reading about the increase in the number of refugees from Nicaragua, the flight from gang wars in El Salvador and the Ukranians from Bucha, Mariupol and elsewhere needing homes, I feel the pull between foreign languages and empathy. One of the arguments against multilingual poems is that translations in the footnotes break up the flow, but that's only if encountering The Different jolts you to the end of the page. The music of The Different holds me in a moment's mystery:
<blockquote>Movie<br>
<br>
whenever i read her poems<br>
she watches me and<br>
I offer her Vallejo and<br>
a Swiss chocolate with almonds<br>
and I say, <i>hi, Emily</i><br>
<br>
today in the news<br>
ten decapitados and my friend<br>
Alfonso gunned down by kidnappers.<br>
he, an architect, could<br>
not build a barrier against them<br>
and as I write this<br>
<br>
superimposed on me the Great Wall<br>
along the border<br>
overdosed with mariachi music<br>
and blood<br>
por los siglos de los siglos? (51)</blockquote>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYK7ZcNG_PZTRQA0TpL8akyriTEYYUEiONXWJfLEvhNrUE0v53yJgiyQYkQ-gMcR5D4uIK5CDkbp0E1IgKXx6TSF7A97mBz9RL6shYQ3wL-vpUEMmDKvbJk-ywYsURNb0SS7C1frrBSj1RuDHphLF6OGWSVqVGs_k3c9HFrHJ8OWjzAmicPZ2xeVveJQ/s643/olgaGarcia%20%282%29.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; clear: right; float: right;"><img alt="" border="0" height="320" data-original-height="643" data-original-width="535" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYK7ZcNG_PZTRQA0TpL8akyriTEYYUEiONXWJfLEvhNrUE0v53yJgiyQYkQ-gMcR5D4uIK5CDkbp0E1IgKXx6TSF7A97mBz9RL6shYQ3wL-vpUEMmDKvbJk-ywYsURNb0SS7C1frrBSj1RuDHphLF6OGWSVqVGs_k3c9HFrHJ8OWjzAmicPZ2xeVveJQ/s320/olgaGarcia%20%282%29.jpg"/></a></div><p>Mentioning the Peruvian poet in the first stanza and using the cognate decapitados in the second stanza sets up the last line of the poem. Whether the reader speaks Spanish or not, the repetition of los siglos musically gives the sense of something multiplying.</p><p>And it isn't just the multiplication of violence. "the Great Wall" alludes to the Chinese wonder, which was consructed by several dynasties, none of which it protected. Her title and use of the word "superimposed" suggest that a facile approach to such a serious problem is repetition of a historic mistake.
augustosandinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06127985188470698391noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1728868288645346214.post-25573301287836903982021-05-20T12:41:00.247-07:002021-05-26T18:46:42.460-07:00See You Later, Poet-Sister: Abiding with minerva Gail Hawkins<p>For about 28 years, I worked with minerva, but it wasn't all work. There was the Stanley Clarke show at The Belly Up Tavern, sitting up nights at her church in North Park when it opened as homeless shelter, and watching her zip-line at the Safari Park. She loved teaching her students and passing along what she'd learned as a girl in Philadelphia, which she always called Philly, and I will, too, in loving memory of her. </p><p>One time, the poet Terry Hertzler, my son Jesse and I were helping minerva move in San Diego (I think it was from 7th to 32nd Street). Jesse called me, "Pappy," and minerva picked it up.<br /></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ZuYwG0tQohc/YKagVFe3dMI/AAAAAAAAGdA/nMG_WkT5DUYbo5OAgSia_5zV0OqYLKhvQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1043/minervaSanYsidro.jpeg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="782" data-original-width="1043" height="240" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ZuYwG0tQohc/YKagVFe3dMI/AAAAAAAAGdA/nMG_WkT5DUYbo5OAgSia_5zV0OqYLKhvQCLcBGAsYHQ/w320-h240/minervaSanYsidro.jpeg" title="l-r:minerva, Brandon Cesmat, Gabriela Anaya Valdepeña, Lisa Stouder & John Oliver Simon at Casa Familiar in San Ysidro." width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">l-r: minerva, Brandon Cesmat, Gabriela Anaya</div><div style="text-align: left;">Valdepeña, Lisa Stouder and John Oliver Simon</div><div style="text-align: left;">at a CPITS workshop at Casa Familiar in SanYsidro.</div></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p>As most of those who knew her as minerva, we also knew she used the lower-case <i>m</i> out of deference to the goddess Minerva. Consequently, she acquired the nickname "minnie," which some of us in her extended family call her, even now. </p><p>And minnie had a lot of extended family. minnie had lost her mother and father when she was young. Soon after her mother passed, her father told her to go to her fellowship in Italy. He died soon thereafter. He did not tell minnie that he was terminally ill; he sent her away with his blessing. She mourned in Italy while continuing with the education that so mattered to her father. <a href="https://brandoncesmat.blogspot.com/2019/04/gail-minerva-hawkins-41219-for-day-24.html" target="_blank">minnie felt her sister Patsy never forgave her</a>. After returning from Rome, minnie followed her niece & nephews lives, first from Washington D.C. and Baltimore, then San Diego, then Burbank.</p><p>When The Victory Theater took proposals on the theme of "The Kids Are All Right," minnie's was selected. In her poems, Charlie Mingus watches out for her, perhaps a bit like a father; the jazz drummer Roberta Morrison becomes part of minnie's family in "Mother Downbeat." Between the two poems, listen to some backstory minnie wrote for television series. minnie asked me to help her work on her story about about Natalie Ebony, a young woman who had just graduated from the University of Massachusetts and is taking her on play to workshop in New York, but on the way she gets held up in Philadelphia with her grandmother. </p><p>I loved writing with her. She wanted me to help with pace and plot-points. She had all the characters and a grasp of settings. Here's a monolog she wrote as a way of developing both character and as a way of closing the distance with her grandmother:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/4J1sQWlUSjA" width="320" youtube-src-id="4J1sQWlUSjA"></iframe></div><br /><p>minnie & I met around 1993 as poet-teachers in California Poets in the Schools. Our professional relationship grew as we critiqued each other's poems and eventually trusted one another enough to collaborate on screenplays. </p><p></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-OIoFDZNhqoY/YKah4g4gZ-I/AAAAAAAAGdI/KCXr34Kda4Uck64pT6Jp-vGSz1_aHRrQgCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/minervaNationalGeographic.JPG" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-OIoFDZNhqoY/YKah4g4gZ-I/AAAAAAAAGdI/KCXr34Kda4Uck64pT6Jp-vGSz1_aHRrQgCLcBGAsYHQ/w320-h320/minervaNationalGeographic.JPG" title="minnie in one of the books she edited for National Geographic" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">minnie in one of the books she edited for <br /><i>National Geographic.</i></td></tr></tbody></table>In the video above, minnie reads in the voice of Grammommy Sis, a woman much like her own grandmother who became a force in minnie's life after her parents passed while she was in college. Although minnie's own grandmother had been part of "The Talented Tenth," Philadelphia's version of The Harlem Renaissance, the two clashed, perhaps because they were alike. With her MA in anthropology in hand, minnie was on her way to Washington D.C. to work for <i>National Geographic.<br />
</i> In her screenplay <i>Those Ebony Girls</i>, Natalie is on her way to New York to workshop her drama thesis. At a stop in Phillie, as Natalie calls it, her grandmother and sister discourage her from going, and when a broken leg delays the move to New York, only Grammommy Sis' friend Aunt Gal gives Natalie secret encouragement. <p></p><p>In the first draft of the <i>Those Ebony Girls</i>, Aunt Gal was a real aunt, but one day minnie told me that she'd learned that although her grandmother and the real Aunt Gal lived together as sisters, they were not. </p><p>"What do you think about that?" I asked.</p><p>"There might be something there," she said, "because my grandmother asked me about my roommate, like there was something between us. Do you think she was talking about herself?"</p><p>"Could be," I said. "The good thing about writing fiction, though, is that it doesn't matter whether there was or not. It would be a good way to understand a character other than Natalie. In fact," I told her, "it's more suspense in the plot if Natalie doesn't know." </p><p>There is one other element of <i>Those Ebony Girls</i> that stands out to me. Besides prolonged time with her grandmother and sister, Natalie comes to depend on the doorman to her grandmother's apartment. There is a romantic spark between the two characters, but the distance in social classes was something that set up a longing. It seemed to me that with her sister's cajoling, Natalie would finally tell the doorman how she really felt about him. </p><p></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-2QIzceIj88A/YKayFSYnWzI/AAAAAAAAGdQ/7-6Pp9lgfdo7aPbIzi2W-89Jb3-BteOkgCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/minervaMarshallAllen.JPG" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="240" data-original-width="320" height="150" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-2QIzceIj88A/YKayFSYnWzI/AAAAAAAAGdQ/7-6Pp9lgfdo7aPbIzi2W-89Jb3-BteOkgCLcBGAsYHQ/w200-h150/minervaMarshallAllen.JPG" title="Marshall Allen and minerva" width="200" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Marshal Allen and minerva</td></tr></tbody></table>We talked about several possibilities for the relationship. Coming up with funny trouble can be troubling. Isn't that funny?<p></p><p>While her poem "Requiem for a Nubian Jazz Bass King" speaks to what Mr. Charles Mingus meant to<br /> her, minerva's album with jazz bassist Rob Thoreson is worth the listen. minnie played the flute, grew up in a neighborhood where she could hear Sun Ra practice, took flute lessons from Marshall Allen, who made her weird woodwind-&-stringed instrument. It was the music of her voice that often set minerva's poetry readings apart. She took every line as it came. It was in "The Church of What's Happening Now," not the overlay descending pitch, line endings arbitrarily broken.</p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-bCWe_I4jXNQ/YKayf_WOa8I/AAAAAAAAGdY/TW9nLpkYgyE3w7aejmGYCsoBjacSbh3NwCLcBGAsYHQ/s640/minervaMarshallAllenInstrument.jpeg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="640" height="150" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-bCWe_I4jXNQ/YKayf_WOa8I/AAAAAAAAGdY/TW9nLpkYgyE3w7aejmGYCsoBjacSbh3NwCLcBGAsYHQ/w200-h150/minervaMarshallAllenInstrument.jpeg" title="The instrument Allen made for minerva, with sheet music." width="200" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The instrument Allen made for<br /> minerva, with sheet music.</td></tr></tbody></table>minnie mentions loneliness in several of her poems. She longed for her family, frequently wishing she was well enough to travel to see a nephew in the hospital. But simply traveling form Burbank to San Diego took a toll on her health. She took time to build up her strength for readings, and she needed time to recuperate. She'd had multiple surgeries and had to go through rehabilitation to learn to walk again. <p>Consequently, she believed in the initiative Focus on Ability, which strove to let disabled people tell their own stories. You can see that part of Natalie's story beginning to emerge in Grammommy's monolog. </p><p>At minnie's celebration of life, one of her old friends told how minnie had confided that she struggled with depression and said that it was part of being a writer and facing things most people look away from. I loved to hear minnie laugh. I love the part where she breaks up the audience with the Grammommy's line, "Don't writers want to be alone anyway?" </p><p>Oh Grammommy, if you only knew, and minnie always prayed that one day she could tell you herself, that she wanted a family world with all of us in it. So here the three of us are, four if we count the reader, and I'd like to take this moment to thank you for my poet-sister who changed the way I teach, the way I write and even the way I walk down city streets. The distance between Phillie and VC is vast, but it isn't so big a distance that someone couldn't write from here to there. </p>augustosandinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06127985188470698391noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1728868288645346214.post-77160097110263834832021-01-20T15:06:00.003-08:002021-03-08T12:21:53.652-08:00<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/44179792-dandelion-wine" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px;"><img alt="Dandelion Wine" border="0" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1551602104l/44179792._SX98_.jpg" /></a><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/44179792-dandelion-wine">Dandelion Wine</a> by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1630.Ray_Bradbury">Ray Bradbury</a><br />
My rating: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2833796788">5 of 5 stars</a><br /><br />
<p>The word nostalgia is often used to put a disparaging end to something that won’t be forgotten.</p><p>After Terry Hertzler died, Patrick Heffernan and I were clearing out a storage locker full of Terry’s books. Terry loved a lot of literature, but especially loved speculative fiction, so he’d spent a lot of good time at Mysterious Galaxy Bookstore, talking with Patrick. </p><p>I didn’t know Patrick well, but Terry always spoke fondly of his knowledge of books; so when in the sad silence of all Terry’s books, Patrick turned and handed me <i>Dandelion Wine </i>and said, “Here, read this,” it was the kindest thing anyone ever did for me during our mourning. </p><p> In <i>Dandelion Wine</i>, Ray Bradbury ends The Summer of 1928 by letting it pass from memory into dream. </p><p>It's a book for mourning. The two chapters with Mr. Jonas are stellar, divine. Then there is the revival by imagination, the holy fictional breath. After a chapter about a great grandmother lying down to die, Bradbury follows with a chapter of Douglas contemplating his own mortality (while I think Terry contemplating death at 19). The book becomes about the reader. Everyone will sing a song of enough death, of enough life, but the music will move to a new movement. The conductor has provided an arrangement. I sing my part, bow, move into the wings, listen for a while there, then listen for a while outside.</p><p><i>Dandelion Wine</i> is poetic novel with its POV shifts within and across chapters. Even if it isn’t fair to Bradbury's narrative, it encourages comparisons outside the text. Miss Loomis asks William Forrester, “Between ourselves, we old ones wink at each other and smile, saying how do you like my mask, my act, my certainty?” (142). My favorite passage, perhaps the one that makes me think of Terry Hertzler is the chapter Douglas on playing statues with his best friend John Huff who’s moving away (111). Terry moved away. I remember watching <i>Mystic River</i> with him in Clairemont, how the story hit us. We didn’t always agree, but that one resonated with us. The details of history split us.</p><p>As for technique, <i>Dandelion Wine</i> is solid but not rigid. In one particularly well-structured chapter, <a class="jsShowSpoiler spoilerAction">(view spoiler)</a><span class="spoilerContainer" style="display: none;">[Miss Fern & Miss Roberta in a frightened medias res recount one scene of attraction to The Green Machine and then another scene of fear of killing Mr. Quartermain. Douglas Spaulding brings a revelation that their secret isn’t secret <a class="jsHideSpoiler spoilerAction">(hide spoiler)</a>]</span>(96). Col. Freeleigh’s time machine transports reliably but not necessarily accurately (87). </p><p>So now that a year has passed, I’m beginning a new phase of mourning: reading Bradbury as a way of being near Terry. I remember we’d gone to hear Billy Collins read at the Downtown Library in L.A. “Did you know Bradbury wrote <i>Fahrenheit 451</i> in the basement?” Terry asked. I didn’t. We were in a shrine of the closest thing to Terry’s religion.</p><p>During our time, Terry and I had made multiple road trips from San Diego to LA or San Francisco for books. Terry loved them, but he especially loved books signed by authors. He had no doubt books were an intimate touch that only became deeper if you got to hear the author’s voice in person and get the signature proving the book wasn’t some mass-produced bauble but bound thing with evidence of a human touch. If you didn’t believe that, a forensic expert could lift a fingerprint from beside the signature.</p>
<br /><br />
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/2296281-brandon">View all my reviews</a>
augustosandinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06127985188470698391noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1728868288645346214.post-61414660307704244582020-10-19T05:36:00.008-07:002021-04-06T07:48:02.857-07:00LoVerne Brown’s Garment for a Long Journey<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-1ijAECNwAZA/YGx0hh7TB0I/AAAAAAAAGYE/bOkVt0Ulf2AoABsoQ5EzeRnLmx0SYcixwCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/34753DBC-4D11-462E-9786-AB1B5912122C.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1542" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-1ijAECNwAZA/YGx0hh7TB0I/AAAAAAAAGYE/bOkVt0Ulf2AoABsoQ5EzeRnLmx0SYcixwCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/34753DBC-4D11-462E-9786-AB1B5912122C.jpeg" /></a></div><br />LoVerne Brown’s <i>The View from the End of the Pier</i> is one of the best books to come out of San Diego. Bringing it back into print in <i>Garment for a Long Journey: The Collected Poems of LoVerne Brown</i> along with Brown’s other books and unpublished work makes the book a major event for poetry.<p></p><p>While “Meeting of the Mavericks” might be her most famous poem (immortalized in <i>The Maverick Poets</i>, edited by Steve Kowit in 1988), her “Wild Geese” has become my touchstone for loss: “the perfect rose came perfectly apart,/tossing its petals into a spiraling wind.” The perfection in Brown’s poem is not just her euphony, but her ability to compress language and still get her arms around the multifaceted nature of a person or event. As with so many of Brown’s poems, the narrative has verisimilitude (When Brown’s husband died of a heart attack in 1952, Brown became a single parent long before women had the civil law protections against discrimination at work or in housing). </p><p>“The Rapist’s Child,” on the other hand, is a long narrative poem that gives compulsory pregnancy the long, concrete look that the topic seldom gets. When we think of Brown whose life spanned 1912-2000, we get a pre-Roe-v.-Wade perspective. “There was no way to tell you,” the narrator says, nevertheless telling her husband. “It was all locked up in my head....” Poetry is not always a key in these poems. “The Rapist’s Child” ends with an honest lie, honest because it clearly delineates the limits of love.</p><p>Brown's love of poets comes through in the number of poems addressed to other poets. Many of them, such as "The Life of a Minor Poet," were sprinkled throughout her earlier books, but <i>Garment for a Long Journey</i> introduces a new section titled "Poems About Poets and Poetry" that shows Brown's practice of using the writing form for the people who appreciated it. One particularly beautiful new poem is "For Wanda Coleman." Although Coleman is often thought of as an LA poet, Coleman read in San Diego frequently, perhaps because her in-laws Franklin and Roselyn Strauss ran the Poets' Circle in Ocean Beach, which Brown was a member. "Some books bleed /when hands touch them," Brown writes. While she is writing of Coleman, she might as well be writing of her own books.</p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p style="text-align: left;">Even on this quiet shelf</p></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p style="text-align: left;">I see them throbbing.</p></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p style="text-align: left;"><br /></p></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p style="text-align: left;">blood pools, thickens,</p></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p style="text-align: left;">spills heavy as summer rain</p></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p style="text-align: left;"><br /></p></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p style="text-align: left;">on the books below--</p></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p style="text-align: left;">those other offerings </p></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p style="text-align: left;"> pale</p></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p style="text-align: left;"> anemic</p></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p style="text-align: left;">so needing this transfusion </p></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p style="text-align: left;">that comes too late--</p></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;">I should have bought you</p></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;"> sooner.</p></blockquote></blockquote><p style="text-align: left;">What Brown thought Coleman's poetry might have brought to hers remains unstated. Both poets wrote with an edge. Without doubt, poetry flowed through Brown. </p><p style="text-align: left;">New sections include poems for her family and humorous poems, poetry of everyday use. Her wit cut fast and clean, as in "Modesty Is Where You Find It":</p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p style="text-align: left;">Our theater's gone porno;</p></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p style="text-align: left;">the window shows a crowd</p></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p style="text-align: left;">of topless girls. The sign below</p></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p style="text-align: left;">reads, "No bare feet allowed."</p></blockquote></blockquote><p style="text-align: left;">At some point, a book about Brown's life as a working widow needs to be written. Despite her long career with the City of San Diego, Brown came from that generation who lived when a single-women were denied home loans, yet she never used her poetry to attack this personal injustice. Instead, she takes on the larger system in poems like "Shell Games," a devastating poem about the devastation wrought by the status quo. The poem focuses on a father, Chandler, nothing like Brown, but her empathy for him in the scope of his life compressed into the poem is a mark of her poetry. "Shell Games," is one of the many poems in the book that "bleeds."</p><p>One of the new poems, "The Runner" maintains that empathy to the edge of her own life. The poem tells of an encounter with an old friend who has lost her mind. I once asked Brown if she'd seen Roselyn Strauss. She and her husband Franklin Strauss ran the OB Poets' Circle, which had been the energetic core that spun off Kowit, Terry Hertzler, Jesus Papoleto Melendez and Brown herself. Brown said that although Strauss still walked around OB, she was "gone" in her mind. Strauss had lost poetry. "The Runner" sounds like Brown's attempt to reach Strauss and bring her readers as close to edge as possible. The thought of a poet writing "The Runner" so late in life is daunting but, nevertheless, an excellent example of how long a journey Brown was willing to make. </p><p><i>Garment for a Long Journey</i> is a book that shows if you write away from yourself, you can't help but take yourself farther than life allows.</p>augustosandinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06127985188470698391noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1728868288645346214.post-30099703570200944192020-07-18T11:12:00.003-07:002023-11-29T13:56:38.284-08:00Whispers in the Background: I Read Djuana Barnes and Remember Seymour CasselListen to this chain of thought clank: I picked up an anthology of cinema essays and read Djuana Barnes interview with John Bunny on the contrast of acting in live theater to acting in movies. I choose the interview because of an off-hand line about Barnes' dancing in <i>Midnight in Paris</i>. I become interested in John Bunny, a silent-movie actor I've never seen. Notice how all those sentences start with “I” and links me to the deceased (The anthology was edited by Roger Ebert).<br />
<br />
I was an extra in a movie called <i>Cosmic Radio</i>. I did a party scene with Irene Bedard and Seymour Cassel. Bedard’s character was having an argument with her love-interest in the foreground while Cassel’s character mingled with guests in the background. I played one of the guests along with my mom.<br />
<br />
A four of us were given blocking to move on a tracking shot, but on the fourth take the director called cut. “That’s the wrong blocking.”<br />
<br />
The extras looked at each other as if asking how all of us missed the new blocking.<br />
<br />
“That’s the wrong blocking,” the assistant director echoed. “We cut it after the last take.” Whether the director had told the A.D. to cut the move and he forgot to tell us or whether the director had just made that decision and the A.D. was covering for him, we would never know, we just moved to our second mark and prepared to emote casual cocktails.<br />
<br />
Once the shot started, Seymour Cassel came up to where we were mouthing conversation and he asked soto voces, “Isn’t this the worst movie you’ve ever been in?”<br />
<br />
“It’s the only movie I’ve ever been in,” my mother murmured.<br />
<br />
“You’re in luck,” Cassel whispered back, “your career can’t go anywhere but up from here,” and as he made one of the extras snort a laugh, he moved off to liven up another cluster of human scenery. <br />
<br />
At first I thought Cassel was upset about being used as part of the scenery. While the drinks in our hands were fake, he was pulling real beers from an ice bucket. “Don’t you wish you had one of these?” he asked me on the next take, lifting his bottle to mine. But looking back on it, his joking made the party more like a party.<br />
<br />
I don’t know if Bedard felt the same way. Her character was frustrated, and between takes she stayed in character. Although Wes Studi wasn't in the scene, he was in the movie. He stood outside the shot, observing something, maybe Cassel’s clowning. Maybe something was going wrong on the movie. Somewhere around the seventh or eighth take, Cassel disappeared. Maybe his six-pack ran out.<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-h0awfpmojlM/XxM6YjvVM2I/AAAAAAAAFg4/87jz5KmdL_sEBORvJOsKnSgVGXRK9vPqACLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/MinnieMoskovitz.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="527" data-original-width="976" height="172" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-h0awfpmojlM/XxM6YjvVM2I/AAAAAAAAFg4/87jz5KmdL_sEBORvJOsKnSgVGXRK9vPqACLcBGAsYHQ/s320/MinnieMoskovitz.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Gena Rowlands and Seymour Cassel in <i>Minnie and Moskowitz.</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
But I still remember him from <i>Minnie and Moskowitz</i>, a movie that shocked me when I was a teenage boy. Having been raised on “wholesome” movies, I was amazed I felt compassion for such a transgressive character. I would come to associate Cassel with director John Cassavetes whose aesthetic had no pretense to glamour. I’d spend decades trying to figure out such characters.<br />
<br />
But I’ve never seen <i>Cosmic Radio</i>. The scene lives in my memory; I used words to incept it into yours, which is what Barnes did with John Bunny, an actor I’d never seen, and who had no dialog to incept himself into my mind.<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-6BIQcZlmzH8/Xf6C9KXRVwI/AAAAAAAAEu4/_GBPpmwqzVYetaPcwO9bD-VAE77EJubQgCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/614CEFA8-627B-436C-8147-472518479AE8.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" height="180" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-6BIQcZlmzH8/Xf6C9KXRVwI/AAAAAAAAEu4/_GBPpmwqzVYetaPcwO9bD-VAE77EJubQgCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/614CEFA8-627B-436C-8147-472518479AE8.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">John Bunny had the clown's rubber face that worked in medium-shot.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<i><br /></i><span style="text-align: center;">I'd never really seen Barnes, either, although I'd seen an actor playing her in </span><i>Midnight in Paris</i>. The real Barnes had watched Bunny, spent an afternoon listening to the silent film star, transcribed his words and embedded them in hers. Through her writing he breaks his silence. It's a great profile.<br />
<br />
Then, Woody Allen wrote her into <i>Midnight in Paris</i>' dialog, so I picked her essay out of Ebert's massive collection. It was such a random process, but it defied death. Barnes listened to the funny man say serious stuff. Bunny was going to die a month later. Writing and photography are part of the resistance to death. The camera loved Bunny. Not many could flow from the music hall stage, through the lens and onto the celluloid, but Bunny could.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-326TaBbryvA/XxM5pjJ6LQI/AAAAAAAAFgw/2pBGn-GiSrkzRHXOXB9xUNKPrkfZ4TlmQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/MidnightDjuna.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="554" data-original-width="1122" height="158" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-326TaBbryvA/XxM5pjJ6LQI/AAAAAAAAFgw/2pBGn-GiSrkzRHXOXB9xUNKPrkfZ4TlmQCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/MidnightDjuna.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"Wait," Gil exclaims in <i>Midnight in Paris</i>. "That was Djuna Barnes?"</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
And Barnes had the gumption to write down his words.<br />
<br />
So while reading her essay, I thought of Cassel whispering in the background of the shot. I thought of all the whispers that ended up more memorable than the movie's dialog and remembered the late Seymour Cassel.<br />
<br />
<br />augustosandinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06127985188470698391noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1728868288645346214.post-42274185289990091742019-10-29T14:32:00.018-07:002023-07-25T09:28:39.930-07:00Make Use of UsI just read a heavily foot-noted blog post on theory, and have the strong urge to bill the author. Or maybe I should bill my colleague who recommended the blog. Yes, as the post suggests, life can be ambiguous. Some ambiguity comes from shifting cultural barriers, some of it from changing vantage points. Yup. Got it.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Some of it comes from writing something so opaque that when people got to a passage like the following quote, they didn't notice the typo: </div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
What distinguishes images (including motion pictures) from language and from other modes of communication is the fact that images reproduce many of the informational cues that people make us of in their perception of physical and social reality.</blockquote>
Or maybe I'm the first person to ever read that far. Yes, many of "us" have been made constructs, and many of "us" have been made to see something, but if we have resistant spectators, aren't social realities up for debate? <br />
<br />
My point here is that although spellchecker did not differentiate between "make us" and "make use," the ultimate theory renders writers passive. The typo at least granted "images" some immediacy. The problem, however, is that the audience shares most of the responsibility for how images work in their imaginations, not how artists shape them, how writers collaborate with images or audiences. <div><br /><div><br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: 1em;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-bx1uymqgANc/YLEu8079IWI/AAAAAAAAGe8/9AMavJ70nD0W2tzFFoovEdVdWtfti1jfACPcBGAsYHg/s912/IMG_0985.JPG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="467" data-original-width="912" height="233" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-bx1uymqgANc/YLEu8079IWI/AAAAAAAAGe8/9AMavJ70nD0W2tzFFoovEdVdWtfti1jfACPcBGAsYHg/w454-h233/IMG_0985.JPG" width="454" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;">In a moment of despair, Solomon Northrup appears to look directly into the lens, as if looking through and past production to the audience, challenging us.</blockquote></td></tr></tbody></table>
<br /><div>I think it's great that Christian Metz theorized about a gaze beyond a particular character's, but John Gardner's modulation of psychic distance already had writers on notice. Gardner's writings on fiction technique are the smoking gun. But "the author's dead," and ballistics can't match the bullet in his brain to the semi-auto fire on screen or in theory.<br /><br />But who am I to dis a colleague who landed on the wrong side of auto-correct's double-edged tech? If you've read my blog, you know syntax will occasionally suffer friendly fire. </div><div><br /></div>
So I wanted to say three things, not because there are only three to say, but because three is an easy number to start with after melting one's brains in a vat of semiotics:<br /><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><br /></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;">1) Although people are more important than movies, people can use movies to give a sense of their lives; nevertheless, curve back around in person whenever possible to check out the verisimilitude of a movie, book, radio report, corrido, etc.<br />
2) Beside noticing the gaze and asking whom it belongs to, be honest when it approximates your perspective and be just as honest when you have to resist it (Diawara).<br />
3) Keep track of the diegetic shifts. Sometimes they will bring you far from yourself; when that happens, make a note to circle around and listen to The Other (person). Does ze confirm & reject a movie's details. Rinse & repeat.</blockquote>
<br />
In short: distinguish cues that make people us from those not-us. And spellchecker can be an evil genius.<br />
<br /></div></div>augustosandinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06127985188470698391noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1728868288645346214.post-10039560072665265412019-04-24T07:54:00.003-07:002019-04-30T08:51:23.864-07:00A Poem from minerva for Day 24 of Poetry Month 2019<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-jIgqAYJCo-o/XMBy48NMf6I/AAAAAAAAEAg/iPvKBH9MxDwuuac3XHqgZUoPEZqoM8lVgCLcBGAs/s1600/minervaSDArtInst.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="428" height="320" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-jIgqAYJCo-o/XMBy48NMf6I/AAAAAAAAEAg/iPvKBH9MxDwuuac3XHqgZUoPEZqoM8lVgCLcBGAs/s320/minervaSDArtInst.jpg" width="214" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Gail "minerva" Hawkins 4/12/19</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
For Day 24 of Poetry Month, we have a new poem from Gail "minerva" Hawkins.<br />
<br />
minerva read "Friendly Fire Forgiving Spirits" at the San Diego Art Institute earlier this poetry-month. The first Patsy mentioned in the poem was the wife of <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Lost-Pilgrimage-Poems-Joseph-Milosch/dp/0971400385" target="_blank">Joe Milosch</a> with whom minerva taught in California Poets in the Schools (CPITS). The second Patsy was minerva's sister.<br />
<br />
After long careers as a researcher and then as a poet teacher, minerva has turned to television writing. Her series is called "Those Ebony Girls," and is a comedy about a black family in 1970s Philadelphia, the matriarch being a member of the 30's intelligentsia and her granddaughter being a new post-graduate who has come to the edges of answers that don't match the new questions.<br />
<br />
The story also includes the post-grad's sister, not unlike the one mentioned in the poem below. "Friendly Fire Forgiving Spirits" is the voice of a woman writing her way through life's Act III, paying attention and respect.<br />
<br />
Gail "minerva" Hawkins will perform at The Victory Theater on May 19 as part of <a href="https://www.thevictorytheatrecenter.org/tickets-events/backstory" target="_blank">Backstory's "The Kids Are Alright" reading</a> at 7 p.m. The Victory Theater is located at 3326 Victory Boulevard in Burbank, California.<br />
<br />
<div style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 16px; left: 96px; top: 116.409px; transform: scaleX(1.0132);">
Friendly Fire Forgiving Spirits</div>
<div style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 16px; left: 96px; top: 116.409px; transform: scaleX(1.0132);">
--for Patsy's husband Joe and for my late sister Patricia</div>
<div style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 16px; left: 96px; top: 136.409px; transform: scaleX(0.923867);">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 16px; left: 96px; top: 196.409px; transform: scaleX(0.89485);">
Burning bright years after their friendly fires</div>
<div style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 16px; left: 96px; top: 296.409px; transform: scaleX(0.895085);">
Were said to have gone out forever</div>
<div style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 16px; left: 96px; top: 296.409px; transform: scaleX(0.895085);">
Patsy and Patsy passed away from a same-named illness.</div>
<div style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 16px; left: 96px; top: 336.409px; transform: scaleX(0.8937);">
Cancer separated them from their loved ones.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 16px; left: 96px; top: 336.409px; transform: scaleX(0.8937);">
Spirits times two. Linked bright eternal.</div>
<div style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 16px; left: 96px; top: 336.409px; transform: scaleX(0.8937);">
Both help me fight fire with fire each God-given day</div>
<div style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 16px; left: 96px; top: 336.409px; transform: scaleX(0.8937);">
Like the outdoor California nature job of a wife named Patsy</div>
<div style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 16px; left: 96px; top: 336.409px; transform: scaleX(0.8937);">
And the cold indoor bookkeeper’s bed-for-a-desk of my sister Patricia.</div>
<div style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 16px; left: 96px; top: 336.409px; transform: scaleX(0.8937);">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 16px; left: 96px; top: 336.409px; transform: scaleX(0.8937);">
The Patsys worked for years and retired with accumulated ER visits and sick days.</div>
<div style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 16px; left: 96px; top: 336.409px; transform: scaleX(0.8937);">
Laughter-laced warm conversations roamed their sick rooms from time to time</div>
<div style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 16px; left: 96px; top: 336.409px; transform: scaleX(0.8937);">
Answered by friends’ slips of tongues and lips outside hospital doors, metal and shivering</div>
<div style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 16px; left: 96px; top: 336.409px; transform: scaleX(0.8937);">
Conversations after ablaze, thundering with thoughts of what likely comes next.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 16px; left: 96px; top: 336.409px; transform: scaleX(0.8937);">
I’m alone again and again; gone are a friend, my mother-sister and yet another sibling-sister!</div>
<div style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 16px; left: 96px; top: 596.409px; transform: scaleX(0.894713);">
California husband Joe, me and the rest of us went down a few pegs when they all passed.</div>
<div style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 16px; left: 96px; top: 616.409px; transform: scaleX(0.889951);">
Poet Joe was back, I know, when he translated the alphabet, letter by letter</div>
<div style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 16px; left: 96px; top: 616.409px; transform: scaleX(0.889951);">
Each page a poetic matrix of poems by himself, on his own with his wife for life.</div>
<div style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 16px; left: 96px; top: 616.409px; transform: scaleX(0.889951);">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 16px; left: 96px; top: 616.409px; transform: scaleX(0.889951);">
Our Patsys were Frida Kahlo spirits of female forests.</div>
<div style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 16px; left: 96px; top: 616.409px; transform: scaleX(0.889951);">
They climbed Mount Everest like broken-bodied super hikers</div>
<div style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 16px; left: 96px; top: 616.409px; transform: scaleX(0.889951);">
Crossing a summit of earthly chasms between fullness of life and wholeness of pain</div>
<div style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 16px; left: 96px; top: 616.409px; transform: scaleX(0.889951);">
Morphed into a crescent moon of death, a cradle for a comfortable departure.</div>
<div style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 16px; left: 96px; top: 616.409px; transform: scaleX(0.889951);">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 16px; left: 96px; top: 616.409px; transform: scaleX(0.889951);">
Thank you Patsy and Patsy for allowing me to be human, right, and wrong.</div>
<div style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 16px; left: 96px; top: 616.409px; transform: scaleX(0.889951);">
To be one’s sister and the other’s friend, and forgiving me when I was neither.</div>
<div style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 16px; left: 96px; top: 616.409px; transform: scaleX(0.889951);">
My sister Patricia leaves off. The other Patsy remains in her husband’s care.</div>
<div style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 16px; left: 96px; top: 616.409px; transform: scaleX(0.889951);">
Friendly fires extinguished. Bright smoke wafting. </div>
augustosandinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06127985188470698391noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1728868288645346214.post-84050421399017394662019-04-22T22:34:00.000-07:002019-04-24T07:11:36.992-07:00Lori Davis "The Same Story Without the Weapon" from White Dime<div class="tr_bq">
<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-WxuS8Z2dojs/XLZPJrhcp5I/AAAAAAAAD_g/11tLMPlBHAU5u_OIaeoQ0_TotHlSUSVZACLcBGAs/s1600/WhiteDime.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="929" height="320" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-WxuS8Z2dojs/XLZPJrhcp5I/AAAAAAAAD_g/11tLMPlBHAU5u_OIaeoQ0_TotHlSUSVZACLcBGAs/s320/WhiteDime.jpg" width="185" /></span></a><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">For Day 23 of Poetry Month, here's a poem from Lori Davis' book <i>White Dime.</i> </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">When it came out, <i>White Dime</i> was one of my hard-edged favorites for a hard-edged year. The poem "Caring for Your Spider Plant" was a classic about the toxic romanticism of parenting. The epigraph about Andrea Yates, who drowned her five children, sets the context for a culture with policies that burdens future generations with environmental disaster, a huge national debt and multilateral destruction as a cultural values. Well worth the read if you can find a copy.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Davis has a dark sense of humor in some of her best poems like "<a href="http://www.epicentermagazine.org/contributors/relax.htm" target="_blank">How To Relax While Making Love</a>" or "The Same Story Without the Weapon" from <i>White Dim</i>e</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Pretend for the moment there is no knife in his hand.<br />This way you won't worry when he compliments<br />her necklace or suggests they go walking together, </span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">down a stairway, into an alcove she can't see into.<br />Even if without the knife, he gets right to the point.<br />Holds out his fist, as if to appropriate something. </span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">He tells her to take off her pants. Is he kidding?<br />She never learned alleys are like rickety bridges.<br />She giggles and says no. but senses something </span></blockquote>
<blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">mandatory about this man. He takes his words<br />and pushes them up against the pale of her neck.<br />From a distance, they look like two old friends, </span></blockquote>
<blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">reuniting, but if you stood closer you'd hear him<br />hiss quiet bitch in her ear. No, she says. Period.<br />That she has her period. And like so many men, </span></blockquote>
<blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">he believes her, immediately. She wonders why<br />he hasn't leaned how to hug without crushing<br />a girl's toes or how to look a woman in the eye </span></blockquote>
<blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">without liquefying her insides. Ok, let's pretend<br />for a moment, the knife has been here all along.<br />Unforgiving and lethal. This time it's in her hand.</span></blockquote>
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augustosandinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06127985188470698391noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1728868288645346214.post-8807255508038726332019-01-12T12:50:00.004-08:002020-08-25T09:15:50.138-07:00Good Reads Review of The Princess Bride 25th Anniversary Edition<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-gd9empXfeFk/XDpSrciUL_I/AAAAAAAADtU/Hl0xsPkUg9sUvBxHNT5oP90Z5k4CO6AzwCLcBGAs/s1600/PrincessBrideBook.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="575" data-original-width="1056" height="174" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-gd9empXfeFk/XDpSrciUL_I/AAAAAAAADtU/Hl0xsPkUg9sUvBxHNT5oP90Z5k4CO6AzwCLcBGAs/s320/PrincessBrideBook.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/21787.The_Princess_Bride" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px;"><img alt="The Princess Bride" border="0" src="https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1327903636m/21787.jpg" /></a><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/21787.The_Princess_Bride">The Princess Bride</a> by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/12521.William_Goldman">William Goldman</a><br />
My rating: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2604124629">5 of 5 stars</a><br /><br />
I look forward to the day when education has at last established good manners and literary studies can truly become inclusive. <br /><br />Take my own university, for example. Every Thursday, we get together for lunch to discuss books on the balcony of the faculty club on the 5th floor of Flitzshtien Hall. One of our faculty had the good fortune to study under Professor Shog Bongiorno at Columbia. So last week when the movie adaptation of S. Morgenstern’s book was named to the U.S. National Film Registry, I asked my colleague Dr. Annette Oleander what her fellow Florin literature professors thought.<br /><br />“No big deal,” she said. She was having the vegetarian pita plate, so there was plenty of time to chat while spreading the squash baba ghanoush and hummus. “Florin inducted <i>Princess Bride</i> into its film registry two years ago.” <br /><br />“I didn’t even know they had a Florin Film Registry,” said Dr. Nicola MacMuster, not even bothering to look up from his chicken shawarma. “I mean, isn’t the whole Florin thing a put on?” Dr. MacMuster specialized in cyborg literature. Most of his work was with the robotics department, but the university president insisted he be kept in the literature department for funding purposes. He had a huge pedagogical grant for silicon chip implants designed to trigger meta-cognitive ruptures during lectures. Basically, he kept students from falling asleep. It was the opposite of a screensaver. <br /><br /> Dr. Oleander paused mid pita. “Why would you think Florin was a put on?”<br /><br />Dr. MacMuster shrugged. “I’ve never met anyone who’s been there.”<br /><br />“Well now you have,” Dr. Oleander said and took a bite. “Why would you say something so demeaning?”<br /><br />“When I read it years ago, I took the book to be a satirical-reflexive-memoir, all very Tomas Borges in a Florin mensch sort of way,” Dr. MacMuster said, still not looking up from his food.<br /><br />“I assure you the book is all too real.” Dr. Oleander paused here for a sip of wine. “The sexism, for example, makes it difficult to teach Morgenstern today.” She lifted her hands to point to an imaginary PowerPoint and quoted, “‘Not that her best thinking ever expanded horizons….so long as she kept her thoughts to herself, well, where was the harm.’ That’s a direct translation. Classic silencing.”<br /><br />Dr. MacMuster nodded and chewed.<br /><br />“I suppose you could see the <i>Buttercup’s Baby</i> sequel as a satire on Goldman’s own <i>Adventures in the Screen Trade</i>,” Dr. Oleander said, diplomatically giving Dr. MacMuster a way out. “I mean all that stuff about securing the rights from Stephen King. The battling patriarchy. And don’t even get me started on Fezzik’s latent pediatric instincts.”<br /><br />“Isn’t Fezzik twice de-privileged, first by a hyper-pituitary and second by being a migrant laborer from Greenland?” Dr. MacMuster asked.<br /><br />At this point, Dr. Hortense Sriracha-Smith broke in because she had chaired enough department meetings to know that Dr. Oleander’s don’t-even-get-me-started comment was not hyperbole but a legitimate cry for help.<br /><br />“I have to say that despite the sexism,” Dr. Sriracha-Smith began, “I too appreciated the reflexivity of the storytelling and how it goes on and on.” Here she lifted her coffee cup, a cue for the rest of us to pick up that point. “Satirical or not.”<br /><br />“It’s not so much reflexivity, but a pilfering of Morgenstern,” Dr. Oleander said through a bite of ginger and hummus. “It’s very telling that Westley and Inigo’s verbal sparring while literally fighting was something Goldman had Butch Cassidy do with Logan decades before.” Dr. Oleander was having that moment every academic has when we get passionately on the topic that made us pursue our degrees. “One could effectively argue that S. Morgenstern deserves screen credit for <i>Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid</i>.” On the word “Butch,” a purple shred of ginger arced so gently that it didn’t land in Dr. MacMuster’s shawarma until the word “Kid.” Dr. Oleander continued, “I mean Fezzik and Inigo are clearly the source for Butch and Sundance.” <br /><br />“So are you fond of Goldman’s work or not?” Dr. Sriracha-Smith asked.<br /><br />“Oh”—Dr. Oleander took a sip to purge any remaining stray ginger—“his transgressions have given me my job security. In the next academic year my sabbatical project will be to have Morgenstern’s work on <i>Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid</i> recognized and inducted into the Florin Film Registry, and next semester Humperdinck University Press is bringing out my translation of Morgenstern’s work without Goldman’s omissions. It’s going to be required reading for all my courses.”<br />
<br /><br />
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/2296281-brandon">View all my reviews</a><br />
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augustosandinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06127985188470698391noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1728868288645346214.post-87557249489294030682018-11-16T07:57:00.002-08:002020-12-28T15:17:11.802-08:00City of Gold Changes How I Read "A Hunger" As I get ready to host the documentary <i>City of Gold</i> in the Cinema Series, I find myself hungry.<br />
<br />
<i>City of Gold</i> is a documentary about the <i>Los Angeles Times</i> restaurant critic, the late Jonathan Gold. The movie by Laura Gabbert shows Gold driving all over L.A. in his green pick-up, looking for places people make good food: an Iranian sandwich shop in Westwood, a Chinese restaurant in Alhambra, a Oaxacan restaurant in Koreatown. <br />
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I, too, spent a good deal of time driving around L.A. looking for something to eat, but as a delivery driver, I was always in hurry. I envy Jonathan Gold's investment of time, eating at one restaurant dozens of times before filing his restaurant review.<br />
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<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Cj_CCZhqrsE/W-7o6M6uytI/AAAAAAAACq0/rSRojrsJ8oskDU1gMkaxdeex_bAbbArkwCLcBGAs/s1600/CityGoldPass.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="704" data-original-width="1255" height="179" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Cj_CCZhqrsE/W-7o6M6uytI/AAAAAAAACq0/rSRojrsJ8oskDU1gMkaxdeex_bAbbArkwCLcBGAs/s320/CityGoldPass.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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So today, I'm going to take some time to retype a poem that was in the anthology <i>Poetry 180: A Turning Back To Poetry</i> but is not on the <a href="https://www.loc.gov/poetry/180/p180-list.html" target="_blank">current web page</a>. The poem--"A Hunger" by Benjamin Saltman--wants to get beyond food, much as Gold himself seems to want to do in his reviews. In the spirit of Billy Collins' anthology, I'm not going to say more than "A Hunger" makes me hungry...in several ways.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Do you seriously want peace or a good meal<br />
in a restaurant opening onto a garden?<br />
A garden with lights strung in a tree<br />
and raccoons visiting every night,<br />
cleverness in little hands? The raccoons<br />
ignore the lights and people watching.<br />
The light gleaming along wet telephone<br />
wires and collecting on the white<br />
stone bench.<br />
Inside the restaurant I think<br />
of reading my book or tarring my roof,<br />
knowing I can still do one but not the other.<br />
For five years I've been waiting to die<br />
and trying to think of something significant.<br />
I wait for a key to slam into a door,<br />
and I sit straight with folded hands.<br />
At least I know how to imitate peace.<br />
Earlier when I saw a man in a black coat<br />
standing in the cold with his children<br />
it was as if they had been standing forever<br />
on a little island. How could they not be<br />
significant? The man would touch his children<br />
on the shoulders at times as if to say<br />
that people would not be this way forever,<br />
that he would forget peace for a meal.</blockquote>
<br />
The pre-screening discussion for <i>City of Gold</i> begins at 1:30 p.m. on November 10 in <a href="http://www.carlsbadca.gov/services/depts/library/about/locations.asp" target="_blank">The Schulman Auditorium at The Dove Library</a>.<br />
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<br />augustosandinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06127985188470698391noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1728868288645346214.post-540023574194144492018-04-26T09:02:00.003-07:002018-04-26T15:45:02.104-07:00A three-fer for the last Thursday of Poetry Month: Kayla Krut<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ER0m7JArrD0/WuH3paIYTYI/AAAAAAAACbc/wTgN-HIMSTo9XlneTOcGni3Lo8gTOrDmACLcBGAs/s1600/kaylaTresspassing.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="402" data-original-width="604" height="212" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ER0m7JArrD0/WuH3paIYTYI/AAAAAAAACbc/wTgN-HIMSTo9XlneTOcGni3Lo8gTOrDmACLcBGAs/s320/kaylaTresspassing.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">In the best Robert Frost tradition, here's two poets trespassing on Palomar Mountain, 2009: "Whose woods these are, I think I know./His house is in the village though;/he will not see [us] stopping here to watch his woods...." </td></tr>
</tbody></table>
One of my assumptions is that writing poems is a process of discovery, so if I link to three poems by a poet, it will show a range of that process. Here are three from Kayla Krut, a poet I've known since she was in Mary Ann Loes 5th grade class at Del Mar Heights Elementary School. Kayla later earned a B.A. in comparative literature from U.C. Berkeley and an MFA in poetry from the University of Michigan. She's currently teaching in Vienna, Austria on a Fulbright. Here's one of her recent poems anthologized in the <i>San Diego Poetry Annual</i>:<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;"><b>He Laid Down</b></span><span style="font-family: "times" , serif;"> </span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">Our group of friends floated</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">back home, dancing into the
kitchen.</span> </blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">I leapt up on the counter.</span><span style="font-family: "times" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;"> </span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">My lover, who was not yet,
then,</span> </blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">lost his arm elbow-deep in</span> </blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">a produce box, feeling for
limes.</span><span style="font-family: "times" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;"> </span></blockquote>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">He brought a handful up,</span> </blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">a long stray lemon.</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">They rolled all over the
island.</span><span style="font-family: "times" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;"> </span></blockquote>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">Not-yet-lover slid a silver
knife</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">from its block; brutally
sheared</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">the green fruit into
rondelles.</span><span style="font-family: "times" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;"> </span></blockquote>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">I was not watching, he had</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">his back to me when I heard
another</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">friend cry out for him.</span><span style="font-family: "times" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;"> </span></blockquote>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">Neon blood hugged the knife,
which</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">he laid down. His full hand
quarantined</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">what lime was clean;</span><span style="font-family: "times" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;"> </span></blockquote>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">and he turned to offer me</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">his injury—surely an accident,
although</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "times" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">he sure turned fast.</span> </blockquote>
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<div>
I remember a December afternoon when I got the feeling Kayla didn't want to write. She was a busy kid and had a lot going on. It was near the end of the semester. Her mom, Mary Ellen, had got us together for a writing session at The Pannikin in Del Mar, which was a classic melange of caffeine and print. Hot chocolate can do a lot, but it has its limits. </div>
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<div>
Simon Ortiz once told said that poetry is telling a story only the way you can tell it, so I told Kayla about the poet Jim Milner surviving the Cedar Fire a couple of months earlier. His wife Galen Blacklidge didn't make it out. Kayla listened, wrote and later read her poem at a fundraiser for Jim. </div>
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<br /></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>Jim’s Song</b><o:p> </o:p> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The worst thing in the world<br />
Is stolen love<br />
A sleepless night where you are<br />
Overwhelmed with grief and gratitude<br />
They sink you into the dark<br />
<br />
Grief is desolate beauty<br />
A crimson fire screaming itself hoarse<br />
Its beauty is blinding<br />
Its destruction is great<br />
<br />
Charred skins of long oaks<br />
Tended to for decades<br />
Flutter past as you slouch down, sobbing<br />
<br />
No leaves, the remaining are off the tree and toasted<br />
They are still warm to the touch </blockquote>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-WlOeIsCFOxE/WuHpRQqHoFI/AAAAAAAACak/-yBjnHb84Ag5qr8joAeDgs0ocSIGMqxpwCLcBGAs/s1600/KaylaFullMoonCrop.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1244" data-original-width="1019" height="320" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-WlOeIsCFOxE/WuHpRQqHoFI/AAAAAAAACak/-yBjnHb84Ag5qr8joAeDgs0ocSIGMqxpwCLcBGAs/s320/KaylaFullMoonCrop.jpg" width="262" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Kayla picks up the mic to read "Jim's Song" at a fundraiser for Jim Milner, 2003.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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Kayla wrote "Jim's Song" in the 7th grade. </div>
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<div>
This three-fer of Kayla is like watching a time-elapse movie of a flower reverse-bloom into a bud. The sprouting, planting and tilling had already been done by everyone who had ever read to Kayla, especially Mary Ellen. But if there was a moment when I thought Kayla was going to become a poet, it was during a conference when she was in 5th grade. She had written several poems that semester, and as I recall, she liked all of them better than "The Rock." It was an assignment. She didn't like the chant of "the rock," but I was drawn in to how she emerged from the rock again and again with idea after idea. Ordinarily, I would have suggested revising for sensory detail, but Kayla seemed past that. I think I advised her to cut some words and try some different line-breaks but retain the arc.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<o:p><i><b>The Rock</b></i> </o:p><br />
The rock<br />
like a still locomotive,<br />
dead on its rails<br />
The rock<br />
smooth and silent.<br />
The rock<br />
under shady trees like<br />
squid ink covering a mass of ocean.<br />
yet air.<br />
A boy<br />
blond, blue-eyed<br />
The boy<br />
by himself, bored.<br />
The boy<br />
picks up the rock.<br />
The rock<br />
picked up and skipped<br />
across water by<br />
the boy.<br />
The boy<br />
could not throw without<br />
the rock.<br />
The rock<br />
could not skip without<br />
the boy.<br />
Unknown strengths of<br />
tossing trains under<br />
squid shadows. </blockquote>
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The poem was later published in a county-wide anthology of student poems. At the time I thought it was an excellent example of the process from invention through publication, the moment in conference when she revised being the essential step of making a piece of writing more of what it already was.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-EBhGJsvasD8/WuHxo6sq8TI/AAAAAAAACbA/rM_gEmEgGFYpGJB1NF-MdOQYPAGlpmGagCLcBGAs/s1600/kaylaBVfair.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="768" data-original-width="1024" height="240" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-EBhGJsvasD8/WuHxo6sq8TI/AAAAAAAACbA/rM_gEmEgGFYpGJB1NF-MdOQYPAGlpmGagCLcBGAs/s320/kaylaBVfair.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Kayla gives me a copy of her first chapbook, 2002.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
augustosandinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06127985188470698391noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1728868288645346214.post-60658073081152351162018-04-24T12:22:00.001-07:002020-12-28T15:31:59.060-08:00Remembering John Oliver SimonThis morning I’m missing John Oliver Simon. To me he was a poet, translator, maestro of poetry & administration. Always a compañero. His love of Latin American poetry was a expression of his humanity, a humanity that one continent could not hold. Whether it was teaching poetry, working with cool experience through administrative tumult or joyously presenting his own poems, he was a mensch. I cannot let him go yet, so I look to his poems.<br />
<br />
After meeting John Oliver at a California Poets In The Schools (CPITS) retreat in Marin, I invited John Oliver to San Diego County for a couple of readings & workshops at CSU San Marcos and Casa Familiar Community Center in San Ysidro. I’d been working with bilingual students in Escondido and Pauma, so I’d been tagged along with a half-dozen other poet-teachers to conduct workshops in San Ysidro where Spanish has been the language longer than English. Oddly, the director of the poetry project never appeared at the community center, so I suggested we bring John Oliver to give us an in-service. He’d directed The California Heritage Poetry Curriculum and was bilingual.<br />
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<br />
After the workshop, we walked across the border to El Patio Tijuanense on Calle Plaza Santa Cecilia. I’d been there before with poets who called a table near the religious shrine “the poets’ table.” A couple of poets invited us to sit down, and after some conversation about mutual acquaintances, the talk turned to Gonzalo Rojas. Red Dragonfly Press had recently released John Oliver’s translations of the Chilean poet. Here are a couple of stanzas from one of John Oliver’s translations of Rojas’ “What Do You Love When You Love?”:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
What do you love when you love, my God: the terrible light of life<br />
or the light of death? What do you seek or find, what<br />
is this: love? Who is it? Woman, with her depth, her roses, volcanoes,<br />
or this red sun, which is my furious blood<br />
when I enter into her up to the final roots? </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Or is it all a great game, my God, and there is no woman<br />
nor man but one body only: yours,<br />
split up in stars of beauty in fleeting particles<br />
of visible eternity? </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
I´m dying in this, oh God, in this war<br />
of coming and going among women in the streets, of not being able to love<br />
three hundred of them at a time, because I am always condemned to one,<br />
to this one, to this only one whom you gave me in the old paradise. </blockquote>
<br />
And Rojas’ original: ¿Que Se Ama Cuando se Ama?<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
¿Qué se ama cuando se ama, mi Dios: la luz terrible de la vida<br />
o la luz de la muerte? ¿Qué se busca, qué se halla, qué<br />
es eso: amor? ¿Quién es? ¿La mujer con su hondura, sus rosas, sus volcanes,<br />
o este sol colorado que es mi sangre furiosa<br />
cuando entro en ella hasta las últimas raíces? </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
¿O todo es un gran juego, Dios mío, y no hay mujer<br />
ni hay hombre sino un solo cuerpo: eso tuyo,<br />
repartido en estrellas de hermosura, en partículas fugaces<br />
de eternidad visible? </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Me muero en esto, oh Dios, en esta guerra<br />
de ir y venir entre ellas por las calles, de no poder amar<br />
trescientas a la vez, porque estoy condenado siempre a una,<br />
a esa una, a esa única que me diste en el viejo paraíso.</blockquote>
<br />
Latin American poetry was John Oliver’s poetry. The poets at El Patio Tijuanense thought of John Oliver as a Latin American poet. So it seemed fitting to me that he published some of his poetry in Spanish without translation. Here is a Neruda-esque poem of questions by John Oliver:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
¿Por qué esconden<br />
como los delfines<br />
adentro Del Mar<br />
en la boca de una niña?</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
¿Por qué no nos muestres<br />
tus preciosos chicles<br />
para que todo el mundo<br />
se muera de belleza? </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
¿Ya masticadas<br />
van a salir de la tierra<br />
como piedras blancas? </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
¿O dime por qué<br />
no los traques de una vez<br />
para sembrar los campos<br />
con flores calor de boca?</blockquote>
<br />
Here is my translation although, apologies to Maestro Simon, but I want non-Spanish speakers to imagine a poet-teacher encouraging a student to write a poem as if chewing gum:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Why hide them<br />
in a girl’s mouth<br />
like dolphins<br />
in the ocean? </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Why don’t you show us<br />
your precious chewing gum<br />
so the whole world<br />
can die from the beauty? </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
After chewing<br />
will they be left on earth<br />
like white rocks? </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Tell me why<br />
you don’t chew them all at once<br />
to sow the fields<br />
with flowers hot from your mouth?</blockquote>
<br />
Later John Oliver and I were asked to write essays about our experiences in San Ysidro for an anthology. My essay had included a story about the City of San Diego taking a fire engine from San Ysidro after annexing it. That story was the first thing Casa Familiar director Andrea Skorepa told me before I started the after-school poetry workshop. As a poet, I took it as a cautionary tale about taking and giving.<br />
<br />
The anthology’s editor, however, wanted something more suited for writing an upcoming grant, and I sensed he felt the story somehow reflected negatively on San Diego. The editor insisted on cuts, but I thought Skorepa’s story had been my introduction to Casa Familiar. It felt as if I was being asked to write a grant instead of an account of the after-school workshop.<br />
<br />
Later John Oliver told me he had been asked to cut his essay, too, which had included a meditation on the long lines—poets must talk about lines—crossing the border and the significance of the religious shrine in the bar and to add boiler-plate prose designed for future grants.<br />
<br />
I must’ve had a look on my face because, John Oliver shrugged and said we have to be arts administrators sometimes even though poetry is more important because that’s what gets us a seat at the table.<br />
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<br />
In El Patio Tijuanense, I’d told a story about my futile attempt to hunt ducks in Quitupan, Mexico. John Oliver tried to cheer me up and on, “Brando, para el pato salvaje, volando a la velocidad de la poesía” (for the wild duck [a nickname for French Canadians without visas] fly at the speed of poetry). It was good advice, some words I should thank John Oliver for everyday. <br />
<br />
<br />augustosandinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06127985188470698391noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1728868288645346214.post-4116240319993282322018-04-20T09:42:00.002-07:002018-07-23T17:02:55.663-07:00Deer Lit: Every Night Is Halloween, Part VIA student asked about Rick Bass' "Antlers." He had to write about it for another class. "What's it about?" he asked. It was a fast break between two classes: 19 students streaming out, 20 streaming in. In 10 minutes of prep to reset, what could I tell him? <br />
<br />
If setting in a story is a often a metaphorical cue related to theme, "Antlers" has something Halloweeny about it.<br />
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<br />
"It's about animals as masks for people," I guessed. The characters have a Halloween party at which everyone straps antlers to their head. There's a woman who can't be alone and moves from man to man in the small town but refuses intimacy with the bow hunter. Is he hunter or prey? The narrator, who is not the bow hunter, has his heart torn apart when she leaves him, just as--in a different scene--the bow hunter explodes the heart of a buck. <br />
<br />
Monsters everywhere. Monsters who hunt monsters. "Look at the bowhunter's face on the final page," I say. He said he would and moved against the current of the incoming class.<br />
<br />
But something stuck in head. It was those antlers that made me remember the title poem of Sharon Olds' <a href="http://www.loc.gov/poetry/poetry-of-america/american-identity/sharonolds-stagsleap.html" target="_blank"><i>Stag's Leap</i></a>. It's a poem in a cycle that turns, but what I love about this poem is the turn from the self at a moment when many other writers would have indulged the self. To love at this moment is a divine act.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>Stag’s Leap</b><br />
<br />
Then the drawing on the label of our favorite red wine<br />
looks like my husband, casting himself off a<br />
cliff in his fervor to get free of me.<br />
His fur is rough and cozy, his face<br />
placid, tranced, ruminant,<br />
the bough of each furculum reaches back<br />
to his haunches, each tine of it grows straight up<br />
and branches, like a model of his brain, archaic,<br />
unwieldy. He bears its bony tray<br />
level as he soars from the precipice edge,<br />
dreamy. When anyone escapes, my heart<br />
leaps up. Even when it’s I who am escaped from,<br />
I am half on the side of the leaver. It's so quiet,<br />
and empty, when he's left. I feel like a landscape,
a ground<br />
without a figure. Sauve<br />
qui peut—let those who can save themselves<br />
save themselves. Once I saw a drypoint of someone<br />
tiny being crucified<br />
on a fallow deer’s antlers. I feel like his victim,<br />
and he seems my victim, I worry that the outstretched<br />
legs on the hart are bent the wrong way as he<br />
throws himself off. Oh my mate. I was vain of his<br />
faithfulness, as if it was
a compliment, rather than a state<br />
of partial sleep. And when I wrote about him, did he<br />
feel he had to walk around<br />
carrying my books on his head like a stack of<br />
posture volumes, or the rack of horns
hung<br />
where a hunter washes the venison<br />
down with the sauvignon? Oh leap,<br />
leap! Careful of the rocks! Does the old<br />
vow have to wish him happiness<br />
in his new life, even sexual<br />
joy? I fear so, at first, when I still<br />
can’t tell us apart. Below his shaggy<br />
belly, in the distance, lie the even dots<br />
of a vineyard, its vines not blasted, its roots<br />
clean, its bottles growing at the ends of their<br />
blowpipes as dark, green, wavering groans.</blockquote>
Happy Day-20 of Poetry Month.<br />
<br />augustosandinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06127985188470698391noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1728868288645346214.post-42655839155846566102018-04-19T11:14:00.001-07:002018-04-26T09:33:00.877-07:00Three poems by Monica Navarro<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ltgq7CZUE8s/WuH5-7c3bpI/AAAAAAAACb0/FBrO_AYkb50sH8lTmhappQCommvp6-2dQCLcBGAs/s1600/gennycrop.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="93" data-original-width="210" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ltgq7CZUE8s/WuH5-7c3bpI/AAAAAAAACb0/FBrO_AYkb50sH8lTmhappQCommvp6-2dQCLcBGAs/s1600/gennycrop.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I, Monica Navarro and Ayzza Comacho share a laugh with Genny Lim on SD County Ed TV.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
I've been posting at least one poem a day for April, which is National Poetry Month. Some of the more popular posts have been about K-12 poetry, so since it's Thursday, I thought I'd post three by a poet I was blessed to work with K-12.<br />
<br />
Here's a poem Monica Navarro wrote in 2nd grade:<br />
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Strawberry Diamonds</div>
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One rainy afternoon,</div>
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my grandpa and I went shopping and saw flowers.</div>
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The blossoms opened their mouths to say, </div>
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“I am the most eautiful of all,”</div>
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but we ignore them and walk on</div>
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to the strawberry plants.</div>
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They lift their leaves and I see</div>
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a worm hiding from the birds.</div>
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“I am the ripest,”</div>
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“I am the juiciest of all,” and</div>
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I pull out my wallet</div>
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and we buy flowers and strawberries.</div>
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At home Grandpa and I lant them in the sun</div>
<span style="font-family: "calibri" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">where they shine like diamonds.”</span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> The following year she wrote a poem that had an edgy honesty for a 3rd-grader:</span><br />
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</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "calibri" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Blinding Yellow</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "calibri" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">
</span>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "calibri" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">I
have yellow hate so strong and bright</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">it
blinds my eyes. I can’t see anything,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">but
my sister sees me and says, “Monica,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">stop
pretending you’re blind.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">“I’m
not pretending,” I say and then</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">bump
into a wall and it hurts,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">a
red baseball hitting my head.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">My
sister laughs and jumps away to tell our mother.</span></div>
</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "calibri" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Monica's high school didn't have writing residencies, but she wanted to write for a contest. Over the years she would email me poems, so when David Avalos was creating his installation<i> Mi Coraz<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">ó</span>n Escondido</i>, I knew one of her pieces inspired by history would be perfect:</span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="ES" style="mso-ansi-language: ES;">Kings of Their Cities</span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">
</span>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<span lang="ES" style="mso-ansi-language: ES;">He always told me,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<span lang="ES" style="mso-ansi-language: ES;">"La familia es todo.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<span lang="ES" style="mso-ansi-language: ES;">Siempre acuerdate de donde eres,"</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">was most likely his second favorite line.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">He was my first educator,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">counselor</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">peer.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">I saw the way he came home from work</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">every afternoon</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">covered in dust and smelling of the land.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">The way his fingers always felt so rough</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">in my hands</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">the deep lines in his face</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">that had been born</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">from spending so many hours under the sun.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">You could hear his old white truck</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">driving in over the hill to the house</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">before you could even see it.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">I found it inexplicably amusing</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">how he would sit on the front steps</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">untie his mud encrusted boots</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">take off his hat</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">to fan his face with.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">I was his first
grandchild</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">and his querida.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">We had an old
large circular porch</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">in the backyard
where</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">we would sit for
what seemed like forever</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">listening to the
beat up old radio play rancheras</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">and the songs of
his old barrio in Michoacan.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">With me on his
right leg, a beer can on his left,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">we sat, and he
talked,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">talked about his
old country</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">where everything
was beautiful.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">Talked about how
he brought our family</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">over from Mexico.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">I could hear the
pride in his voice.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">He imprinted our
family history</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">into me like a
typewriter upon paper.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">In summer when it
was too hot to talk,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">we would sit listening
to </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">everything alive
around us, </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">balancing each
other out like scales</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">During family parties,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">the old men would
sit</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">in the shade of
the orange trees.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">He would hold me
on his lap</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">and I knew he was
proud of me.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">They talked about
the family,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">complained about
their wives,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">and discussed
everyone else’s business. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">You could tell
the men became excited</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">when they talked
about their cities in Mexico.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">They way they
rearranged themselves in their chairs</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">and stumbled over
their words</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">as they hurriedly
began narrating their memories</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">as if they were
afraid the taste of these stories would soon disappear from their tongues.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">In this way I
came to imagine</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">the land</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">we came from</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">to be so special</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">that it could
make old men laugh</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">and remember being
young again.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">Driving through
the fields in the old white truck,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">he would explain
to me</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">how the plants
grew and what they needed to live.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">He was always
trying to teach me</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">about life through
metaphors and old stories,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">as if how the
trees’ needs for sun and water</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">to produce the
oranges and lemons for picking</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">would somehow
teach me</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">about growing up
in my own family</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">and becoming
someone from whom</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">people could
learn,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">someone whom
people could look up to.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">This man was my
grandfather;</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">my abuelo.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">With me on his
right leg, a beer can on his left,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">we would sit listening
to </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">everything alive
around us, </span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">balancing
each other out like scales</span></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "calibri" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Poetry has a lot of magic. To find it young and keep it across time is a spell worth casting again and again.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "calibri" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-21NWalxbREQ/WuH7GdSgI_I/AAAAAAAACcA/aiPWTHkBHmgjFiSxp5y0opa61SsdgAyzwCLcBGAs/s1600/monicaCorazon.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="166" data-original-width="280" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-21NWalxbREQ/WuH7GdSgI_I/AAAAAAAACcA/aiPWTHkBHmgjFiSxp5y0opa61SsdgAyzwCLcBGAs/s1600/monicaCorazon.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">David Avalos' with a flush of hidden hearts: front, Carlos Von Son, Monica, Adrian Arancibia; back Avalos and I. </td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br /></div>
<br />
<br />
augustosandinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06127985188470698391noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1728868288645346214.post-85196585417440939952018-04-19T10:52:00.003-07:002021-04-06T08:06:49.784-07:00Place Poems III: "local-looking" As I was reading James Dickey's "In the Marble Quarry" to study his sense of "organic form," I was <br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
surprised to find the phrase "local-looking" lodged into a passage about sculptures emerging from blocks of stone. Of course, one of the most famous sculptures of all time emerged from what was believed to be a flawed block of marble: <i>The David</i>.<br />
<div>
<br />
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-FWq9E6osvo4/WnICgDFClUI/AAAAAAAACMI/nkGnljg_8LEV9dumLS6OJitx4X3cZtSZQCLcBGAs/s1600/David1.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="705" data-original-width="667" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-FWq9E6osvo4/WnICgDFClUI/AAAAAAAACMI/nkGnljg_8LEV9dumLS6OJitx4X3cZtSZQCLcBGAs/s200/David1.jpg" width="188" /></a>Dickey's move from the great sculptor to the poet himself covers the distance from Florence to Georgia, not that all poems need to cover that much distance. But as a field editor for the <i>San Diego Poetry Annual</i>, I am frequently disappointed to read through so many submissions that never look locally. </div>
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<br />
Dickey writes,</div>
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...the original shape<br />
Michelangelo believed was in every rock upon earth<br />
is heavily stirring, </blockquote>
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surprised to be an angel//<br />
***<br />
but no more surprised than I<br />
to feel sadness fall off as I myself<br />
were rising from stone </blockquote>
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held by a thread in midair,<br />
badly cut, local-looking, and totally uninspired,<br />
not a masterwork </blockquote>
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or even worth seeing at all<br />
but the spirit of this place just the same,<br />
felt here as joy.</blockquote>
<div>What if place/setting determines form? I would rather read a hundred more free verse poems about New York/Chicago/Los Angeles than a sestina or sonnet about those places; of course, form most often expresses the narrator's point of view. In an environmental crisis, the disconnect between setting and POV reflects that crisis. I grieve at so many poems in which the setting is a mind isolated from this planet. Too much nowhere produces more nothing.</div>
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Please notice that I'm not saying that I don't want to read poems in form. Nor am I saying I don't want to read poems about someone's inner space. I just want to read poems formed or in-formed by the place that has formed and in-formed them. That intersection of self and place can often arouse in me a "spirit" of "joy" as a poem lifts a moment from time's flow and suspends it on the sky of the page.<br />
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There is some weight to Dickey's metaphor that poems are sculptures, light ones perhaps twisting regardless of line length, or just as bad, freighted with nowhere-ness so the thread of interest snaps well before I turn the page or get to the final line. In organic form (Dickey disliked the term "free verse"), content in-forms the shape of the poem. </div>
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The thread of interest runs both ways, of course. A poem could be about my hometown, but if it doesn't connect with the spirit of the place in the first stanza, I'll probably stop reading. So it isn't enough to set a poem in SoCal; setting needs to touch--dare I write it?--spirit.</div>
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A reasonable objection to this aesthetic would be that it ignores interior settings. I agree. By the laws of geography and astronomy, there will always be more good poems about places removed from SoCal than there will be about SoCal. All the more reason for me to find the rare poem set beneath my feet.<br />
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And just to assure you that I look beyond SoCal, here's an introduction to an anthology I co-edited for Writers' Ink in San Diego: </div>
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If titles count, <i>A Year in Ink</i> is about what the writers who tumbled into the extreme southwest corner of the U.S. decided to submit halfway through 2011. No more, no less. And that’s enough. </blockquote>
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It’s not easy writing in San Diego. I don’t want to name names, but we are the town that proved “New York, New York” wrong: just because you can fake it there doesn’t mean you can fake it anywhere. As poet John Peterson noted, you can tell San Diego isn’t really a part of the rest of the U.S. because of the extra set of immigration check points at the county line on I-5, I-15 & I-8; it gives the impression no one wants to hear what we have to say. A calendar of “Southern California Poetry” managed to name 48 poets without one San Diegueño among them. A careful reading of certain “California” poetry anthologies shows that one of the best career moves a San Diego poet could make would be to relocate to San Francisco and die. </blockquote>
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So what’s a San Diegueño writer to do? Write and publish. In a previous edition of A Year in Ink, former <i>Union Tribune</i> books editor Arthur Salm wrote, “I confess to being a contrarian [when] it comes to the literal idea of writers as a literal, physical community….But a figurative, literary community? Oh, yes, indeed.” One good confession deserves another: any community that doesn’t manifest some point-at-able aesthetics is not a community but a multitude waiting for a miracle. It’s not just the bound pages but what’s on them that matters. Oh me of little faith. </blockquote>
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So what are the significant poetics of San Diego? In these pages, can a regional accent be heard? Do the form & content of these poems resonate with this time & place? Most of these poems have right margins like the coastline if you’re facing Tijuana. Sorry, neo-formalists. These lines break where image or music need to; it’s a border thing. It’s a form manifest. And it’s neo every day. </blockquote>
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Reading submissions, I did discover a consistent characteristic: most have nothing to do with San Diego during or around 2011. Yet 2011 was an astonishing year in this old city. The ocean that largely defines it changed. A cold current came ashore farther north than it had in the past, bringing with it black jellyfish that drove swimmers from the water. A photograph of a large fin among surfers in Cardiff went viral and raised discussions about sharks frequenting our coast. A band of Kumeyaay Indians put the name of their casino on the old Sports Arena, just off the historic Kumeyaay Trail to Playas (now called “Rosecrans Street”). The Pala Band of Indians continued their battle to purchase back their ancestral homelands in Warner Springs, a volta in the poem of history.<br />
Poetry, however, favors an intimate persona over a public one. The whispering of subtext can’t always be heard in the public voice of “we.” </blockquote>
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In poetry saying something while making it sound interesting is risky business. In a poem like “jazz is e.e. cummings,” if the poet can run a line of euphonic imagery in one direction, pivot without losing flow and avoid running in the ruts of the literal, it will be fine. We like our music imbued with more than sound. Poems like “Silent Movie,” “How the World Sounds” and “Why I Married Him” all have that music & luminous imagery that draws me. </blockquote>
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In a sense, “Why I Married Him” is a solid representative of San Diego poems: first, it has nothing to do with San Diego; second, it’s about leaving someplace (in this case, Milwaukee); and third, the poem ended up here. Most importantly for me it eschews the obvious and finds awe: </blockquote>
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I lived without music then, cut off from the Rain Prelude and nocturnes of fog, but the bridge! It buzzed – no, not like a giant bumblebee, but only as a metal bridge can sing, from the maws of Bethlehem Steel.</blockquote>
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“Familia Anclada” (anchor family) is another poem about leaving or at least needing to leave. It’s a poem that doesn’t offer an answer but raises the right questions.<br />
She cannot cross the desert with her babies, The able kids are throwing gang signs in the alleys littered in crime scenes</blockquote>
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In “What I Know,” Red-necked Phalaropes stop over at Mono Lake on their way here. The birders walk in “single file” on the path through the rare environment: “each soft step/we take in this tender landscape/says we wish to be nowhere else.”<br />
So does each poem in this anthology. At least for 2011.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
This anthology represents a community, a point of culmination from many directions. One morning in The Ink Spot, Kelli Wescott, Tammy Greenwood and I sat around that big table upstairs while the fierce sun lit the poems & prose. Kelli kept track as Tammy and I introduced pieces to each other, like planning a dinner party: “Seat this chapter beside this poem because they have a lot in common to converse about.”</blockquote>
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So cook last year and cancel the calendar. This place of pages is rocking, and it looks as if we’re going to party for the rest of the night. </blockquote>
Those were some poems from that year and place. No "London" by Blake. No 'Innisfree' by Yeats. No Langston speaking of the Euphrates or muddy Mississippi. My interest in setting might sound like a real estate agent's mantra--"location, location, location." Yes, the central location will ultimately be in the mind; nevertheless, the roots of endangered plants give a voice its distinct resonance if they connect. </div>
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augustosandinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06127985188470698391noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1728868288645346214.post-58001535225575201602018-03-05T07:37:00.003-08:002020-08-25T09:19:28.178-07:00Remembering James Luna<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-hMN4NVosJQs/Wp1eaHmUcLI/AAAAAAAACVE/SqiN7ukw_6oLDp8MFO13pURWGem7_RrBwCLcBGAs/s1600/homewild.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="229" data-original-width="263" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-hMN4NVosJQs/Wp1eaHmUcLI/AAAAAAAACVE/SqiN7ukw_6oLDp8MFO13pURWGem7_RrBwCLcBGAs/s1600/homewild.jpg" /></a></div>
This morning I am missing my neighbor James Luna. We worked together at Palomar College, but we weren't just colleagues and So Cal guys; I loved his work and went to his installations whenever I could. He showed California in it's complicated beauty. This image from the Chris Eyre movie <i>Bringing It All Back Home</i> shows James on an exercise bike while Marlon Brando in <i>The Wild One</i> rides along behind. James was a great installation artist and a "sacred clown."<br />
<br />
I could go on about why I love Eyre's movie about James' work, especially this shot, and James would expect me not to be quiet this morning. When an installation artist like James passes, the loss is too great to talk about immediately because it was James' use of his body and voice within his art space that can never be replaced, but later we will try as he did in making his <i><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AStOGFopWC4" target="_blank">Chapel for Pablo Tac</a></i>. To feel that loss, I think James would say that home was more important than art, so at La Jolla there's a great piece missing this morning.<br />
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I want everyone "down the hill" to have a sense of what we've all lost. I wrote the article below for <i>The Union Tribune</i> around 1995. It's not up to date because over the years James gave much more. Just a month ago after dinner he shared a movie he made using The Beach Boys' "In My Room."<br />
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James Luna told us, "we got it all...so tap it down." We will do so.<br />
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</v:shapetype><v:shape id="Picture_x0020_2" o:spid="_x0000_s1026" type="#_x0000_t75"
alt="James Luna" style='position:absolute;margin-left:-39.25pt;margin-top:0;
width:.75pt;height:.75pt;z-index:251657728;visibility:visible;
mso-wrap-distance-left:5.25pt;mso-wrap-distance-top:3.75pt;
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</v:shape><![endif]--><!--[if !vml]--><img align="right" alt="James Luna" height="1" hspace="7" src="file:///C:/Users/profe/AppData/Local/Temp/msohtmlclip1/01/clip_image001.gif" v:shapes="Picture_x0020_2" vspace="5" width="1" /><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><i>When James Luna says,
"I'm a California dude," he doesn't mean that he surfs. He means that
he knows who he is. And who he is an installation/performance artist who uses
traditional Native American art forms as well as surf music and video.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><i>Ironically,
much of Southern California does not know about Luna though he is nationally
respected performance and multimedia artist. Luna may have performed and had
his work in some the most prestigious museums in the United States--including
The Whitney Museum of Art in New York and the Smithsonian Institute's Museum of
Natural History--but he has yet to present a performance piece in San Diego
County where he is a member the Luiseño Indians at the La Jolla Reservation in
North County (He has, however, exhibited installations at Centro Cultural de la
Raza, and his "Artifact Piece" from the Museum of Man later gained
international attention at The New Museum of Art's Decade Show in New York).</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><i>On
August 21, The Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) in La Jolla will present Luna
in a lecture/performance that brings local audiences as close to a Luna
performance as they have ever been. Whether the evening at MCA conclude as
Luna's performance did at the Scottsdale Center for the Arts--with the audience
either standing on their feet or falling in worship at Luna's--is yet to be
seen.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><i>"Let's
get this out front: theater is not what I am, though there are any number of
similarities," Luna says. "Installation is very broad and that's one
of its strengths. I approach it as I approach a painting. I don't think about
acting. I am not a trained actor. But that's not to say that I don't script or
monologue. I do, but it comes out of the art."</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><i>Many
of Luna's monologues emerge from the objects he creates. As multimedia art,
Luna's verbal expression cannot be separated from his visuals. He uses anything
he can to get his point across. In his performance piece</i> The Shameman<i>, Luna
portrays an enterprising shaman who sells objects that combine such disparate
materials as condoms and a tennis racket, a cellular phone and a buffalo horn.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><i>Many
artists lecture on their work, but few move back and forth between
two-dimensional and performance work as Luna does. Consequently, Luna's
lectures are unusual. "James' lecture is unlike anything we've done,"
says MCA education curator Seonid MacArthur. "His use of sound, movement
and music in his performance pieces will be new for us...he's not so much about
ritual as he is about combining his heritage and sense of ritual with
humor."</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><i>Luna's
lectures did not always include performance. "I do this a lot and found
that showing slides or video of a performance didn't do it," Luna says. At
MCA, his lecture will include excerpts from </i>Artifact Piece, Places for People
to Meet<i> and </i>The Shameman<i>.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><i>"I
am not a trained actor," Luna emphasizes. "I am a visual artist when
I do a performance piece, which comes from a different place than where actors
come from," Luna said. "And I am not just about Indian issues . . .
that should be clear in </i>Shameman<i> because there were other issues in that piece.
I'm a therapist, used car salesman and an evangelist."</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><i>Luna
is a California dude of this century, if not the next: "I use pop imagery
because I like it. It makes a nice soup, a blend. . . . Political art gets
caught up in being the victim and loses sight of the whole person."</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><i>Humor
is a good portion of Luna's recipe. "I've had people come to see me
thinking I'm going to do a nice tom-tom dance. And as I unload, they realize
this isn't what they came to hear," Luna says. "But they have every
right to leave--or to laugh."</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><i>The
laughter at his performance of </i>Shameman<i> at the Scottsdale Center for the Arts
was loud and long, coming from an audience primarily made up of Indians. Those
who came to see him dance to a tom-tom instead saw him fancydance to Right Said Fred's "I'm Too Sexy."</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><i>Luna
asked the audience to hold hands: "It's not easy to hold hands. That's the
feel of humanity," he told the crowd." Touch that white person. Come
on you rich Arizona Indian."</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><i>In </i>The Shameman<i>, Luna's sense of humor cuts deeply in two directions:
first against "shamans" who sell spirituality and secondly whites who
buy it as a commodity. America may not be a happier place since European
contact complicated land, language and religion. But at least America is a
funnier place with white people here.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><i>In
"Notes on My Art Work #674," Luna writes, "I am not a healer but
can be considered a clown." And clowning has its own healing power; as
Luna says humor is "the first step in recovery."</i></span></div>
<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">"That's
an Indianism, to be able to laugh at ourselves," Luna said, discussing the
sharp satire in </span></i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Shameman</span><i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">. "We are really more alike than we are
different." It's the humor in Luna's work that lets the audience get close
enough to feel where the painful wounds are between us.</span> </i>augustosandinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06127985188470698391noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1728868288645346214.post-90796504268432713532018-01-31T08:14:00.002-08:002018-01-31T08:45:53.743-08:00Place Poems, II: "Dreaming America" and "Boca de Tijuana"<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">"What is the literature of Southern California today?" moderator Shadab Hashmi Zeest asked at a recent panel discussion at The Carlsbad Library. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">For me, the roots of literature in this area go back to the stories embedded in the bird songs of indigenous people. You won't find any bird songs in Erle Stanley Gardner's or Raymond Chandler's books. They got the weather into their writing. But if literature is a text that a culture finds significant, then the diversity of SoCal's migratory ebb and flow</span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">--especially where birds, animals, fish & plants are included--</span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">makes Zeest's question difficult and worth trying to answer. But diversity is difficult enough just in the context of people, so let's start there.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">When I was a boy, my grandfather took me to Mission Valley to see the late San Diego Chargers play the then-Cleveland Browns. The crowd was cheering the Browns loudly, and when I asked my grandfather why that was, he just shook his head and said, "There's no such thing as a home field advantage in San Diego." </span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: 12.8px;">Because he attended the same elementary school as my cousins</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: 12.8px;">and because one of his childhood homes </span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: 12.8px;">was on the the street I drive to work, </span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: 12.8px;">Juan Felipe Herrera has always been my poet-elder.</span></div>
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">The same holds true of literature. At a bi-national poetry conference in Tijuana, just months before <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/91751/borberbus#.WPQNh3QSNaE.facebook" target="_blank">Juan Felipe Herrera</a> was appointed poet laureate of The United States, the audience asked a California State University (CSU) professor about the poetry of Juan Felipe. </span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">"I don't know who that is," the professor said.</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">The literary crowd seemed to fidget as one in their seats.</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">"He's California's poet laureate," someone from the Tijuana home-audience said. </span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">"I don't care about things like that," the professor said. </span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Maybe there is no home-team literature in So Cal.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Another professor from The States leaned over to me and whispered, "I am not impressed."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">It was a sober moment. Of course that CSU professor would later bemoan why attendance at his east-coast dominated reading series was poor and why more students avoided majoring in his program. Meanwhile, the vice-president that same CSU invited Juan Felipe to a standing-room-only reading in the college concert hall. The home team, apparently, had become so rare at home, it's an exotic example of "multiculturalism."</span><br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-MfsWYj0GOFA/WnHr4lRubuI/AAAAAAAACLM/jrSR21pxrWIbNl4x05vGZ_X44l48wC0xQCLcBGAs/s1600/DblIndmChandler2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="953" data-original-width="916" height="200" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-MfsWYj0GOFA/WnHr4lRubuI/AAAAAAAACLM/jrSR21pxrWIbNl4x05vGZ_X44l48wC0xQCLcBGAs/s200/DblIndmChandler2.jpg" width="191" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Raymond Chandler's cameo in <i>Double Indemnity</i>.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">So Cal is the kind of place east-coasters come to get tenure on their way to a job at a liberal arts college in The Midwest. I've heard it called the "scorched earth career path," work like hell in overcrowded classrooms on the way to better job in Iowa, Ohio or some other state with only four letters. Since there's no home field advantage, So Cal lit has a strange rep. Raymond Chandler, for example, was an out-of-towner. Perhaps the most famous California novel written by a Californio is about emigrating here: <i>The Grapes of Wrath</i>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"></span><br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-KJM_pPm9ZBM/WnHnC1PtAzI/AAAAAAAACKw/PLP9T1dgKoY9TCSnUoNF-wjEU_RtZYdWQCLcBGAs/s1600/RCostillo.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="240" data-original-width="320" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-KJM_pPm9ZBM/WnHnC1PtAzI/AAAAAAAACKw/PLP9T1dgKoY9TCSnUoNF-wjEU_RtZYdWQCLcBGAs/s1600/RCostillo.JPG" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Roberto Costillo receiving the Felino Prize.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">But there is more to contemporary local literature. Roberto Costillo's friendship with the late Robert Jones has been and enduring story of literary love crossing the border. On the commemoration of Jones' birthday, Costillo sent a poem to el norte to be at a reading in Jones' old neighborhood near University and 30th in San Diego. On the centennial of LoVerne Brown's birthday, the late Steve Kowit--himself a San Diego treasure--gave a lovely overview of her work for the Ocean Beach Historical Society. But what seems to characterize the best-known California poets is that they were from elsewhere. </span><br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-x4rU7CEbt6g/WnHj4n4xgiI/AAAAAAAACKg/i_7b59Zq-aAoB55VnmalT8zLWyj3NMazgCLcBGAs/s1600/kowit.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="286" data-original-width="225" height="200" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-x4rU7CEbt6g/WnHj4n4xgiI/AAAAAAAACKg/i_7b59Zq-aAoB55VnmalT8zLWyj3NMazgCLcBGAs/s200/kowit.jpg" width="157" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Steve Kowit, whose many poems <br />
remain San Diego treasures.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"></span>
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">The current poet-laureate, Dana Gioa is the exception. He often introduces himself as being from Hawthorne, home of the Beach Boys, setting for several Quentin Tarrentino movies. And he does have a poem about a Beach Boys song; it might not be Southern California today, but his roots are undeniable. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">For my MFA thesis, I credited storyteller Rocinda Nolasquez as an inspiration. Nolasquez was the oldest living survivor of the removal of the Cupe<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">ño tribe from Warner's Springs. While working as a research assistant on the documentary <i>So My Grandchildren Will Know</i>, I had a chance to hear Nolasquez talk. Her stories were an incredible work of survival. She set the standard.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Although Nolasquez didn't write literary theory, I think she would have agreed with N. Scott Momady's "Man Made of Words" in which he said, </span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><block>Once in his life a man ought to concentrate his mind on the remembered earth, I believe. He ought to give himself up to a particular landscape in his experience, to look at it from as many angles as he can, to wonder about it, to dwell upon it. He ought to imagine that he touches it with his hands at every season and listens to the sounds that are made upon it. He ought to imagine the creatures that are there and all the faintest motions in the wind. He ought to recollect the glare of noon and all the colors of the dawn and dusk. (164-5)</block></span></blockquote>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-hPe_k-NWp_s/WnHjlQHNROI/AAAAAAAACKc/HRKniT43D5oHo3LB58wUrhp9bsr0N2XJgCLcBGAs/s1600/HouseMadeOfDawn.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="317" data-original-width="220" height="200" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-hPe_k-NWp_s/WnHjlQHNROI/AAAAAAAACKc/HRKniT43D5oHo3LB58wUrhp9bsr0N2XJgCLcBGAs/s200/HouseMadeOfDawn.JPG" width="138" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Although Momaday wrote most famously about the Jemez Pueblo in New Mexico, his tribe, The Kiowa, traced its origins to what is now Kansas. Once while in Greensberg, I went into the Kiowa County Library to look for Momaday's Pulitzer Prize-winning <i>House Made of Dawn</i>. That branch of the Kiowa County Library had no copies of the most famous novel by a Kiowa. When a tornado destroyed the library along with most of the town a few years later, it was more evidence for the aesthetic of the survival and the oral tradition... in other words, living to tell.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">So, here are a couple of place poems I've lived to tell.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><br /><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">
<block><strong><a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/gdol89rk1qjbdle/11%20Dreaming%20America%20w-Gunnar%20Biggs.mp3?dl=0" target="_blank">Dreaming American</a></strong></block></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Trying
not to be the white ring around the sun,<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">I
circle slowly like a raven over <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placetype w:st="on">Mt.</st1:placetype>
<st1:placename w:st="on">Soledad</st1:placename></st1:place> <o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">where
you sing down the sky.<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"></span></span><br />
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">The
man thinks a disguise of beads and weavings, <o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">but
I think otherwise, and being like a raven, <o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">I
want to call out but have the voice of adobe bricks stacking.<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">
</span><br />
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">On
this morning after a winter storm,<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">let
your eyes follow my turn away from the Pacific,<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">you'll see the Cuyamcas rise
higher than I can fly.<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"></span></span><br />
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">You
have a voice that would make a man fall from the sky,<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">so
I try to be a raven to follow your sound <o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">east
to <st1:city w:st="on">Tempe</st1:city> or <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Albuquerque</st1:place></st1:city>,<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">into
the desert where you will work your life<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">like
an olla, the mouth pouring <o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">the
precious water from the cool, quiet dark<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">and
into the dry light. I would be the man<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">who
waits with the patience of a boulder in <o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">the
gold desert light for water to bring <o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">out
the flecks of mica in my skin.</span></span><br />
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"></span></span><br />
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">One
world slams into the other so hard. <o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">I
can hear the rumbling from the quarry<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">and
under the river’s surface. In the Next World, <o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">I
want your voice to crease this desert where we know <o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">who
we are, and a black freeway<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">hisses
east to west, and we love nevertheless.</span><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">
</span></span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">
</span><br />
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">La Boca de Tijuana<span style="color: black;"> <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></b><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">
</span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><em><span style="color: black;">for Francisco Bustos y Michael
Cheno Wickert</span></em>
<br />
Cuando la boca del Rio runs into the ocean,<br />
when it rises onto the delta<br />
and you hear its united tributaries undercut the sets of waves,<br />
when this Tijuana River meets this Pacific Ocean, <br />
its mouth says "I know both sides of the border."<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Antes de la lectura en el faro,<br />
camin<span style="color: black;">é</span> a la boca donde las palomas y la migra
estan de pie<br />
y camin<span style="color: black;">é</span> a la boca del rio que cruza la
frontera,<br />
antes de la línea it made the same music but sang different words.<br />
It said “Gravity is my God and <o:p></o:p></span>
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">
‘here we are, here we go’ and <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">
we couldn't stop if we wanted to."<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--><br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
There are no roads to <span style="color: black;">l</span>a
boca.<br />
So I walked and listened before <span style="color: black;">return</span>ing to
the monument<br />
<span style="color: black;">w</span>here I <span style="color: black;">said</span>
whatever words <span style="color: black;">with whatever</span> music I carried
back,<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">
boca a boca.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
</span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">
</span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">
</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"></span><br />
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Works Cited</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Momaday, N. Scott. "Man Made of Words," <em>The Remembered Earth</em>, ed. Geary Hobson. University of New Mexico Press, Alberquerque, 1979.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"></span><br />augustosandinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06127985188470698391noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1728868288645346214.post-57676541276040431262017-10-21T10:18:00.001-07:002019-06-01T10:20:01.804-07:00Just Like a ProfessorI dislike catching myself in a lie. It's always bad to be caught in private. But it's worse in public.<br />
<br />
Yesterday, before meeting with my 101 college comp class, I reviewed an interview in which a colleague had asked if I bring into my classes things I think they should have already been taught. I said, “Yes”: cinema literacy and poetry are two things students need to know before college. This semester I was able to accommodate bringing in cinema literacy because Marjane Satrapi's <i>Persepolis</i> was one of the selections I could assign.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5h_usmiz8No/WfJGyMA0J2I/AAAAAAAACFE/twx67sazoPokQJ-H8cbgX3TytN6Z9APggCLcBGAs/s1600/PrsplsLsFthMv.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="281" data-original-width="510" height="176" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5h_usmiz8No/WfJGyMA0J2I/AAAAAAAACFE/twx67sazoPokQJ-H8cbgX3TytN6Z9APggCLcBGAs/s320/PrsplsLsFthMv.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">In <i>Persepolis</i>, Marji drifts numbed by the losses of Uncle Anoosh and God. </td></tr>
</tbody></table>
But somehow, my quote said, "I don't see poetry in the textbooks," which was a lie, one that would pass by most readers.<br />
<br />
I don't see <i>poems</i> in the textbooks assigned for college composition. But if analogy is a move of figurative language, then I see poetry often in the rhetoric manuals. It is of course for his sin of distrusting The Poets that Plato will be best remembered for his allegory of the cave.<br />
<br />
The problem is not that there is no poetry in college composition. The problem is that many if not most students can't see it.<br />
<br />
So after checking the interview for accuracy and sending it back to my colleague, I was standing in front of a class analyzing an introductory paragraph that compared itself to meeting someone: "we feel the pressure of wanting to make a good first impression on our readers, just as we feel feel the pressure of wanting to 'impress' our classmates or co-workers the first time we meet them" (Gorup 198). I came back to the word <i>as</i> and dwelled on the power of comparison. One student briefly looked up from her cellphone.<br />
<br />
I shifted gears and diagrammed the author's funnel on the board as an example of how to write an introductory paragraph, but my dry-erase picture couldn't raise all the heads. It went downhill from there. <i>As</i> was beyond the class' collective grasp. I was destined to read a large number of regurgitated summaries, analogy free for at least one more week. I said a silent prayer for God to send one analogy after the next deadline.<br />
<br />
My subversive consciousness whispered, "Bring in Sohrab Sepheri or Rumi next week, get them whirling like dervishes."<br />
<br />
Probably, I won't. The majority of faculty are non-tenured for good reason. Poetry is not on the syllabus even if it is a rhetorical device politicians campaign on: the assonance in "great again." Let that be another class, later.<br />
<br />
So I tried to focus on identifying the elements that made the thesis in the textbook complex, while my subversive consciousness whispered the late Richard Wilbur to me, thoroughly distracting me in front of the whiteboard: "Odd that a thing is most itself when likened." Standing there with the dry-erase marker poised over the whiteboard, I probably looked just like a college professor. <br />
<br />
Works Cited<br />
Group, Natalie. "How I Write an Introduction," Carol Lea Clark, <i>Praxis</i>. Southlake: Fountainhead, 2016. Print.augustosandinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06127985188470698391noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1728868288645346214.post-2260194516101224272016-11-26T11:23:00.004-08:002022-10-27T07:10:19.514-07:00"Where Was Fidel When I Needed Him?" The story Fidelito cracked The Castro Monolith for me. The separation of father and son and the quest for reunification. I envied<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fidel_Castro_D%C3%ADaz-Balart" target="_blank"> Fidelito</a>.<br />
<br />
More recently, the poem took on renewed meaning during the separation of parents and children at the U.S.-Mexico border. I was giving a themed reading with other writers on <i>Goldfinger</i> and spying. My father’s friends joked that he was in the CIA. Whoever he really was/is, I didn’t know him well enough to blow any cover he might have had.<br />
<br />
I included the poem in the Backstory reading at The Victory Theater because I realized that in the masculinity vacuum left by my father, James Bond was one of the bad examples who filled the space. Here's the poem from <i>Driven into the Shade</i>.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>Where Was Fidel When I Needed Him?</b> </blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"><b><i>to Elían Gonzalez</i></b></blockquote>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Because your father looked nervous during his interview with the INS,<br />
your granduncle’s attorneys don't believe you should go home,<br />
they say your father doesn't really want you,<br />
that Fidel is making him say such things.</blockquote>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
When I was six, my father was across the ocean, too.<br />
Divorced from my mother before I turned a year old,<br />
in arrears for child support, hiding from the court,<br />
he'd gone to Vietnam to research how the communists<br />
brainwashed people out of the comforts of exporting rubber.</blockquote>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
When I turned 16, I met him. He took me<br />
to a Baja bar where I listened to his voice<br />
as I tunneled beneath our wasteland of memory,<br />
trying to resupply our love, but<br />
the tunnel didn't lead that way.</blockquote>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Throughout the afternoon, he uncoiled his story<br />
how my mother and grandparents hid me from him.<br />
Later his story wound back on itself like a python,<br />
how he drank in Saigon, drank at San Diego State,<br />
drove around Berkeley with a Marine friend<br />
yelling "faggots" out the window at the longhairs.<br />
I could not hear myself in his voice.</blockquote>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
He said we were alike because we played football,<br />
but despite the distance between us,<br />
he'd never thrown one pass to me, nor<br />
had I been close enough to hit him with a block<br />
and feel him hit back.<br />
</blockquote>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
How I wish Fidel had walked into the bar,<br />
taken my father at gunpoint,<br />
locked him in Cuba's darkest prison<br />
without rum and brainwashed him,<br />
electrified the genitals I came from,<br />
made him scream that he wanted me with him.<br />
Where was Fidel as my grampy sang me too sleep,<br />
where was Fidel as my father bought Saigon Tea<br />
for the mothers of dust?</blockquote><p> </p>
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<br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWnl7M05RQVhhKpUUGk7UKvBTkVWUqt7H8eXHnFTNLzJDuGx0LzDswWBq1YlqxVeCzqhs_Sxh5qloPuHpz9CnsJK-OQbVqF1il7p95XiLOrbcRY6QNY6VaMPwrj7DORbPsjnoEZ5dX4hGJJ3Rxkeg4x_RxsFsI0weJ-2qqlSmIeF4P1YYD81kv8Qy5FA/s1097/FidelFidelito.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="743" data-original-width="1097" height="217" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWnl7M05RQVhhKpUUGk7UKvBTkVWUqt7H8eXHnFTNLzJDuGx0LzDswWBq1YlqxVeCzqhs_Sxh5qloPuHpz9CnsJK-OQbVqF1il7p95XiLOrbcRY6QNY6VaMPwrj7DORbPsjnoEZ5dX4hGJJ3Rxkeg4x_RxsFsI0weJ-2qqlSmIeF4P1YYD81kv8Qy5FA/s320/FidelFidelito.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Fidel Castro and his son Fidel Castro Diaz-Balart at the Havana Book Fair, 2002</td></tr></tbody></table><br />
augustosandinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06127985188470698391noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1728868288645346214.post-79246141297954379822016-10-06T15:35:00.000-07:002018-04-26T15:56:02.610-07:00Remembering Mark Steinbeck<b>Green Afternoon</b><br />
<div>
<div>
<b><i>for Mark Steinbeck</i></b></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Mark, sorry I didn't want to see The Louvre. </div>
<div>
At 17, What did I know of painting? </div>
<div>
40 miles inland, over the fireplace</div>
<div>
we had a Robert Wood seascape,</div>
<div>
moon through clouds doubled off a wave regressing, </div>
<div>
the beach now gray glow and hush</div>
<div>
while outdoors the orange groves took the beating sun, </div>
<div>
Santa Anas, late April frosts. Art was a kind of denial.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
You knew so much from books. You turned last pages,</div>
<div>
shut them and went into the world with educated momentum.</div>
<div>
I tried to catch up to your Thompson with my Huxley,</div>
<div>
you in Escondido, me in Northridge</div>
<div>
That acid we dropped in Chapman</div>
<div>
fell a long way. The cello played "When You Wish</div>
<div>
Upon a Star" just blocks from The Happiest Place on </div>
<div>
Earth. I couldn't believe our luck then, so </div>
<div>
now that it's run out, I'm not surprised.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Still I go around saying your name.</div>
<div>
Forgive me for calling you back from the paradise.</div>
<div>
When Dorothy scattered your ashes from the stern,</div>
<div>
I saw the gray flash green and recognized it: </div>
<div>
our afternoon off Ensenada Grande, the late sun off the </div>
<div>
sandy bottom. I call your name not in denial of death, </div>
<div>
not to fill the empty spaces (there's no such music);</div>
<div>
you are not alive on my breath,</div>
<div>
just ahead of me. </div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>So when I saw The Louvre,</div>
<div>
it was too late to tell you about it. Now I know,</div>
<div>
friendship is about going when your friend says, "let's."</div>
<div>
For everything we saw in the same space and light,</div>
<div>
I say your name and am blessed as so much memory </div>
<div>
regresses, how the images emerge from utterances</div>
<div>
letters at a time, the space between two words,</div>
<div>
never a full sentence, and no full epistle,</div>
<div>
but the kind of denial I keep in the center of home</div>
<div>
with the spirits homes are built to hold.<br />
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Photograph by Dorothy Steinbeck</div>
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augustosandinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06127985188470698391noreply@blogger.com0Ensenada Grande, Mexico24.902279246265749 -110.5983976312500123.07003374626575 -113.18018463125001 26.734524746265748 -108.01661063125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1728868288645346214.post-23479379633414766052015-12-12T14:55:00.002-08:002015-12-12T15:03:29.535-08:00Place Poems, Part I: "Poem in Black and White"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-bTHsBZmcHjI/Vmyes3T4NAI/AAAAAAAAB9Q/Q_NsA95AVlE/s1600/IMG_4681bsm.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-bTHsBZmcHjI/Vmyes3T4NAI/AAAAAAAAB9Q/Q_NsA95AVlE/s320/IMG_4681bsm.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<br />
As Califonia's snowpack returns, the poem "<a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/5fl97uz60wg26gu/05%20Poem%20in%20Black%20%26%20White%20w-Gunnar%20Biggs.mp3?dl=0" target="_blank">Poem in Black & White</a>" comes to mind. It begins with an epigraph from <i>Roget's</i> <i>Thesaurus</i>:<br />
<br />
The ... classification of colours does not entirely accord with the theories of modern science: Complete lists of shades are beyond the scope of this work.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
On a December afternoon so cold it would snow<br />
if the sky over Palomar weren't so dry,<br />
we move around to keep ourselves warm:<br />
run the mower back and forth over the umber grass<br />
and believe that it will grow back. But for today<br />
we natives want snow, while the snowbirds from<br />
Montreal and Kansas City tell us, “You don't know<br />
what you're asking for.”<br />
<div style="text-align: right;">
We want snow to fall on</div>
last Spring's ferns and hush their rustling,<br />
to cover the autumn montage of leaves from<br />
white oaks and sycamores that pile high,<br />
to hold the pages still and whiteout all<br />
but the wet, black trunks that stand up,<br />
through the heavy white.<br />
<div style="text-align: right;">
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span> <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span> We want the snow to fall and</div>
cushion the rocks and gorse bushes and<br />
leave nothing but the reaching trees. But the<br />
snowbirds tell us, "Only fools wish for snow."<br />
<br />
Why would we want a black and white movie, when<br />
under the blue sky we have the florid fallen leaves,<br />
and beneath Palomar, green fairways?<br />
<div style="text-align: right;">
We try to describe snowy light cooling our eyes, </div>
and the click of stones in our dry summers,<br />
dry like Chicago doesn't understand. <br />
<div style="text-align: right;">
We seem to have a drought of words</div>
to make them hear how we need the water, and<br />
how our sunny weather can sustain only so many streams, only<br />
so many towns where the chief joy is not having to shovel snow,<br />
how subtly ceanothus fades from purple to gray in March, and<br />
that gray is a color.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/5fl97uz60wg26gu/05%20Poem%20in%20Black%20%26%20White%20w-Gunnar%20Biggs.mp3?dl=0" target="_blank">Click to here Drought Buoy perform this poem</a>.<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>augustosandinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06127985188470698391noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1728868288645346214.post-4578342123859265432014-09-22T14:57:00.002-07:002020-12-29T09:38:17.959-08:00Peace Arch Revisited<div class="MsoNormal">
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-C4ntvrqTWhs/TdRrMdfBXeI/AAAAAAAAAHA/UojATyU8y40/s1600/TheseGates.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-C4ntvrqTWhs/TdRrMdfBXeI/AAAAAAAAAHA/UojATyU8y40/s320/TheseGates.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Although the sentiment since the end of The War of 1812 has been "May These Gates Never Be Closed," you can see in the background the construction of a reinforced crossing on the U.S. side.</td></tr>
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I’d visited Peace Arch during a trip to promote <span style="font-style: italic;">Driven into the Shade</span> back in 2006, and I remembered it as a special place: a big grassy meridian with a concrete arch on the border that said, “May These Gates Never Close.” Those words meant a lot to me because I’ve watched the park on the international border near where I live shut tight. Given the recent changes at Friendship Park/Plaza de Amnistad on the Mexico-U.S. Border, I wanted to revisit Peace Arch this year to resupply my hope.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-_aPP0WyhEW8/UwqckTztsiI/AAAAAAAAAa8/XyeGKMX445k/s1600/Communion1.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-_aPP0WyhEW8/UwqckTztsiI/AAAAAAAAAa8/XyeGKMX445k/s1600/Communion1.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A crowd gathers on the Mexico side to participate in communion with Rev. John Fanestil on the U.S. side.</td></tr>
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When <a href="http://laprensa-sandiego.org/archieve/2008/august29-08/Pat.Nixon.082908.htm" target="_blank">Pat Nixon had dedicated Friendship Park in 1971</a>, she shook hands with Mexican neighbors over the waist-high fence. Years later, that fence was replaced with a metal-grate wall. Still, we met occasional to play music, picnic and read poems across the border.<br />
<br />
Then in 2006, Congress suspended the Clean Water Act and the Environmental Protection Act (both signed by President Nixon), so Homeland Security could build a double fence along with a fenced pen in the middle so U.S. citizens with I.D. could speak for a half hour at certain times of the week. No more interlacing fingers through the steel mesh, no more taking communion (essentially the same rules for visitors at the prisons a couple miles down the fence). Using sign language and parabolic discs, we still managed to speak across the increasing distance. (<a href="http://laprensa-sandiego.org/featured/friends-of-friendship-park-present-design-celebrating-international-goodwill/">http://laprensa-sandiego.org/featured/friends-of-friendship-park-present-design-celebrating-international-goodwill/</a>)</div>
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On my second trip to Peace Arch, I noticed a Border Patrol SUV in the parking lot on the U.S. side of the park, but there was no fence, just a woman and two little boys, presumably a mother and her sons. They walked across the park and kept going until they went into a house in the Douglas on the British Columbia side of the park.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-HtHFlTF5cZU/UwqgJ2Pk1cI/AAAAAAAAAbI/mMOxHsX7SZU/s1600/PeaceArch2.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-HtHFlTF5cZU/UwqgJ2Pk1cI/AAAAAAAAAbI/mMOxHsX7SZU/s1600/PeaceArch2.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Looking north, we can see The Peace Arch reads, "Children of a Common Mother."</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
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The Peace Arch is not just a sentiment. It’s a memorial to the 100 years of peace following the War of 1812, which officially ended with the signing of the Treaty of Ghent in 1814. In 1914, Samuel Hill, a road builder and Quaker philanthropist, led the effort to commemorate the century of peace. Besides “May These Gates Never Be Closed,’ the Peace Arch also features the inscriptions, “Children of a Common Mother” and “Brethren Dwelling Together in Unity.” Could we do something like this in the south?</div>
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Besides Hill’s backing, Peace Arch has enjoyed the ongoing and evolving support of others. In 1931, school children from Washington and British Columbia raised money to expand the park from 7 acres to 40. Many other groups have made contributions, including the Kiwanis Club of Vancouver. In a pavilion constructed of the six kinds of wood from the region, I sat down at a table dedicated in 1947 by the International Peace Memorial Association. The acoustics were good for practicing poems. Berries grew along western edge of the park. I started walking north along the coast and eventually came to the band shell in White Rock. <i>What a bunch of cool spots to write, workshop & perform poems</i>, I thought.<br />
<br />
In this season of bicentennial of peace, I've thought about trying to get poets from the Americas to meet someplace where the lines don't overlap as much as they grow wide, so that differences are not out of sight. The "dominion" of both Canada and the U.S. are articulated in plaques around the park. The treaty to leave the border unfortified by soldiers or forts is becoming a thing of the past.The War of 1812 gave way to The Peace of 1814. Friendship endures despite the security measures, but future generations will probably not know what it felt like to meet at the border with family and friends.<br />
<br />
Links to news items about Francis Scott Key penning the lyrics to "The Star-Spangled Banner" have been appearing online, but the song doesn't mean what it once meant. What song does? History messes with the groove. Since the fall of The Berlin Wall, my country has rebuilt it many times over for "security," but the more cage-like protection becomes, the less safety felt. I'll take the relative peace of Peace Arch over "The Star-Spangled Banner," which is also a collaboration a bi-national collaboration with Key's lyrics and a melody borrowed from a British drinking song.I'd rather have Friendship Park back along with a new policies that admit <a href="http://economyincrisis.org/content/disastrous-nafta-failures-negatively-impact-u-s-jobs-illegal-immigration" target="_blank">NAFTA</a> has exacerbated immigration and counter-insurgency training of Latin American armies at<a href="http://www.soaw.org/index.php" target="_blank"> WHINSEC</a> has not made millions of undocumented immigrants feel like life south of the U.S. border was worth it. As Micheal Corleone says, "Keep your friends close, your enemies closer."<br />
<br />
So give me baseball season, a beer and a song. I'd rather keep the peace where we used to find it. But if all we have is beer and music, play on.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Sing "Anacreon" Again<br />
<br />
First-pitch politics<br />
we stand with foamy schooners--<br />
bombs bursting in beer.</blockquote>
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augustosandinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06127985188470698391noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1728868288645346214.post-32359195460308487602012-04-29T20:16:00.002-07:002023-07-25T10:12:59.547-07:00Regretting v. RememberingI was reading Faulkner's <i>The Mansion</i> yesterday, and was impressed by an uncle who tells his nephew who's just apologized <span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt;">not to be sorry. “Just remember it," the uncle says. "Dont ever waste time regretting errors. Just dont forget them” (231). The novel delves into, amongst other things, the difference between shame and sorrow, something I've been thinking about ever since the shootings in Tucson last week.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt;">I don't think anyone--probably not even Jared Loughner--understands yet why he killed 6 people and wounded 14. Mental illness appears to be the most likely factor. So the sane should know that if random violence is going to happen, we should avoid casual threats and </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px;">apologize </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt;">if we carelessly make one in a thoughtless moment.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt;">I keep thinking about one of Loughner's victims living under physical threat for months. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, expressed concern about violent rhetoric back in March. Now that her concerns have proven valid, a discussion about how we talk seems appropriate. Gun safety also appears to be something we need to talk about: if Loughner's 30-round clip had been smaller, the people who overwhelmed him when he had to reload could have stopped him sooner, perhaps saving lives and at least reducing the number of wounded. At least these three areas--mental health, public discourse & gun safety--appeared to be appropriate topics to discuss after the massacre. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt;">Unfortunately, that was not my experience. When I posted the interview of Giffords expressing concern about the "Take Back the 20" webpage that put her district in crosshairs, a couple of my friends said there was no connection. Not that they saw no connection, but that there was no connection. Their not seeing is a measure of their refusal to recognize the visual rhetoric of Take Back the 20. It's a literary failure: first, by the website designers who failed to recognize the associations of their design until after the shooting when they removed the image; second, the defenders of Take Back the 20's failure to recognize the tacit acknowledgement of guilt in the removal of the website by its designers after an actual gun-sight was pointed at Giffords and the other victims. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt;">My point was not that the Take Back the 20 caused Loughner to shoot (If his poetry is representative, his obsessions swing incoherently from linguistics to the gold standard); the point was that it was unseemly for the Tea Party to keep the metaphorical crosshairs on Giffords for months and then offer no apology when someone literally did what they'd suggested. When Spencer Giffords, the congresswoman's father, was quoted as saying the "whole Tea Party" was his daughter's enemy, all Palin needed to say was, "I'm so sorry. I didn't mean it literally." Her apology would have meant more than almost any other words. Instead, she issued a "condolence" that lasted about 29 seconds before shoe-horning in a long political screed to buck up Tea Party minions rather than off Spencer Giffords solace.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt;">Perhaps Jon Stewart said it most succinctly on <a href="http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-january-10-2011/arizona-shootings-reaction" target="_blank">The Daily Show</a> when he said, "It would be really nice if the ramblings of crazy people didn't resemble how we talk to each other on t.v. Let's at least make troubled individuals easier to spot." </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt;">Ability to understand figurative language might not only represent intelligence, it might be a measure of sanity. The Greek word logos includes as definitions both "word" and "rational discourse." In a video attributed to Loughner he makes an incoherent but specifically "political" argument. Although Loughner took a poetry class in college, there's little to show he thought figuratively. One of the most pathetic passages in his video is a syllogism: </span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt;">All humans are in need of sleep.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt;">Jared Loughner is a human.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt;">Jared Loughner is in need of sleep.</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt;">Sadly, we know from phone messages left by Loughner that he was awake in the early hours on the day of the shooting. His line "I'm a sleepwalker who turns off the alarm clock," appears at odds with the above syllogism as Loughner claims to sleep while in motion. His hallucination of sleep became Tucson's actual horror. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt;">In Faulkner's <i>The Mansion</i>, the uncle comes to regret his part in a murder that he cannot forget. We're not going to forget Tucson, even though Fox News has been working overtime this week to deny-forget-delete months of gun-toting campaign rhetoric. It isn't to argue that SarahPac's graphics or Tweets by Palin caused Loughner to shoot: it's that Palin & Co. metaphorically agreed with what Loughner literally did until he did it and then none of them was sorry. They purged the tweets and graphics, tried to disassociate themselves from their actions. No one can make them regret. No one can make them remember. But poets can make it difficult for them to forget. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt;">"A word is dead,/when it is said/some say," Emily Dickinson wrote. "I say it just/begins to live/that day."</span>augustosandinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06127985188470698391noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1728868288645346214.post-24157928027564918652011-09-23T17:15:00.001-07:002012-10-29T14:06:55.331-07:00Another America's Cup Village, Another Flashback<div style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><i><b>Author's Note:</b> In the news today, California will get another America's Cup Village, this one in San Francisco. I remember a couple of them we've had in San Diego: opaque photo ops miles out to sea, subsidies, corporate schwag, the lull between The Cold War and The War on Terror. Good times. </i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><i> </i></span></div>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-CpiDi4MXzqg/Tn0jpUX6sdI/AAAAAAAAAHE/x9hvWzqqPiw/s1600/kiwi.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-CpiDi4MXzqg/Tn0jpUX6sdI/AAAAAAAAAHE/x9hvWzqqPiw/s1600/kiwi.jpg" /></a></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><i>I wrote this column for the </i>Times Advocate<i> (R.I.P): "<span style="line-height: 115%;">Kiwis to get more than they expect: Curse of America’s Cup goes to New Zealand too</span>" (C2, 5/14/95). With The America’s Cup returning to California, excuse me if I don’t go with the flow. I’ve already been downstream.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">SAN DIEGO--The America's Cup is cursed. Look at the carnage around it, businessmen who should have known better: Alan Bond, Raul Gardini, Sir Michael Faye. Now Peter Blake wants a crack at holding the Cup. That's a real challenge.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"> The America's Cup was really England's way of getting even with the colonies for The Revolution. After winning the Cup from England, sportsmanship at New York Yacht Club was lost in a fog bank for more than a century. San Diego Yacht Club has done no better.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">Few moments define SDYC's stewardship of the America's Cup like the three-way defense deal struck before the Citizen's Defender Finals (Sponsored by Citizen Watches: "With Citizen, you won't run out of time") when the rules would have left Conner watching the America’s Cup on ESPN. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;">Allowing Conner into the finals only lit the fuse for more mistakes. Usually the captain goes down with the boat. In Conner's case, the captain went down on someone else's boat. </span></span></div>
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-YEYuMIDolg8/Tn0kpHePgVI/AAAAAAAAAHI/QPhx8VvIpCY/s1600/AC95.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-YEYuMIDolg8/Tn0kpHePgVI/AAAAAAAAAHI/QPhx8VvIpCY/s320/AC95.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;">So is the America's Cup a sport or not? </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;">Conner explained the three-way finals like this: ''It's best for the defense and its corporate sponsors, and what's good for the corporate world is good support for the world market if you think it through." </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;">So there it is. The America's Cup is a professional sport with the emphasis on profession. It’s like trickle- down sports: once sponsors get the rules committee to say what they want the rules to say, there will be competition.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;">Yachtsmen are not the best role models for the nation's youth. Wasn't it Bill Koch who said winning is the most important thing? And Conner himself defined yachting sportsmanship at the victory press confer</span>ence for the '88 Catamaran's when he hurled the supreme <span style="color: black;">put-down at New Zealand's boat designer: "You're a loser."</span> </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">Blake, however, is no loser. He won the Whitbread and met the Jules Verne Challenge to sail around the world in 80 days. Blake is a serious winner. Now he has won big, and big winning has a way of changing people. Sometimes it even helps them. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;">Not only does he stand taller than most sailors, but Blake also has the reptilian ability to never blink. So from a great height, he seems to look down at and right through people to a brighter day when we won't be here. Blake was allegedly the force who set U.S. hired gun Rod Davis ashore during the challenger's finals for the Cup in '92. The mood around Team New Zealand's compound has been described as "darkly militaristic." (This was the sailing syndicate that took a Navy SEAL reservist into custody in Coronado for taking underwater pictures of its boat’s keel.)</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;">And now he's going on the offensive. Consider Dennis Conner. Ever since winning the America’s Cup from Australia in 1987, Conner has hucked, shucked and liquidated so many pieces of himself that he fell apart like the U.S.S.R. In order to save his life, he had to lose the America's Cup. Look at Conner's tenure with Diet Pepsi. Most diet products want spokesperson who loses rather than gains weight. Conner may have talent for knowing which way the wind blows, but the product the man is most qualified to repre</span>sent is health care insurance. <span style="color: black;"></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">Now, by losing the Cup, the <span style="color: black;">U.S. can finally get even with Nuclear Free New Zealand for not allowing our nukes in their harbors. The America's Cup is like a neutron bomb that punches microscopic holes in the poise of whoever holds it, leaving only the hulking human remains of men behind. </span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"> </span><span style="color: black; font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; line-height: 115%;">Although New Zealand has the Cup, the real sport has only just begun: can Blake hold onto the America's Cup and his dignity at the same time?</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><b><i><span style="line-height: 115%;">Postscript</span></i></b><i><span style="line-height: 115%;">: In 2001, Sir Peter Blake was killed during a gun battle with pirates who had boarded his boat in the Amazon delta off Brazil. In 1995, winning at any cost seemed to be the greatest threat to the “dignity” of America’s Cup challengers and defenders. Although Blake surprised the pirates and shot one of them first, his gun then malfunctioned. </span></i><span style="color: black; line-height: 115%;"> </span></span></div>
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</span>augustosandinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06127985188470698391noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1728868288645346214.post-28301296814333077342011-04-03T12:06:00.000-07:002019-12-21T11:07:01.254-08:00Reading Rumi & Faiz @ Carlsbad LibraryFor four years, a circle of about a half dozen poets have celebrated National Poetry Month with a reading of mystic poets at the Georgina Cole Library in Carlsbad. Poetry from Dickinson, Neruda and Hafiz have been featured every year, making National Poetry Month international.<br />
This year, the poet Rumi will be featured. I'm blessed to read his “The Grave Is a Veil,” which considers the human beyond life. The impulse to imagine beyond the physical is perhaps the essence of mystic poetry. It isn’t about knowing but believing there is something to know. One of Rumi's metaphors is that existence is like the sun: just because it can’t be seen after what we call “setting,” the sun goes on; dawn will be a “reunion,” Rumi tells us. Rumi uses The Old Testament story of Joseph being cast into the well as an example of negation of the self that leads to a fuller understanding of the total self. Although the poem is in translation, the evocation of “nowhere air,” still startles me with its certainty.<br />
<blockquote>
On that fatal day when my casket rolls along,<br />
don't think my heart is in this world.<br />
Don't cry, don't wail in anguish,<br />
don't fall into a hole the demons have dug.<br />
That surely would be sad.<br />
<br />
When you see my procession, don't say I'm gone.<br />
It will be my reunion.<br />
As you see that lowering down,<br />
think of rising.<br />
<br />
What harm is in the setting moon or sun?<br />
What seems a setting to you is a dawning.<br />
<br />
Though it may seem a prison,<br />
this vault releases the soul.<br />
Unless a seed enters the earth it doesn't grow.<br />
Why are you doubting this human seed?<br />
Unless the bucket goes down,<br />
it won't come up full.<br />
Why should the Joseph of the spirit resent the well?<br />
<br />
Close your mouth here and open it beyond,<br />
and in the nowhere air it will be your song.</blockquote>
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This year Rumi will share The Cole reading with the Pakistani poet Faiz. Although Faiz is often thought of as a political prisoner (imprisoned for allegedly plotting against the Pakistan government although charges were later dropped). As a communist, Faiz subscribed not to Islam but to humanism, which might seem antithetical to mysticism. What’s the connection between Rumi and Faiz?<br />
The poet who organizes the reading (Shadab Hasmi—author of <i><a href="http://www.spdbooks.org/Producte/9780982734346/baker-of-tarifa.aspx">The Baker of Tarifa</a>) </i>says that mysticism is often about the glory of ordinary things. In Neruda’s poetry, it is the marvel of socks or onions, as praised in his odes. In The New Testament it is Jesus’ parables of simple things--loaves, water, mustard seeds--that become imbued with something ineffable. The notion that humanists do not perceive or allow for the ineffable because their belief system is not based on a theism seems to set up a false dichotomy. Although there are many things written about Faiz’ personal life and the balance between Marxism and Sufism, let him speak through his art (albeit in translation). In his poem "Before You Came," Faiz addresses one who changes physical reality by imbuing it with an unbearable vision of an essence beyond the corporeal:<br />
<blockquote>
Before you came,<br />
things were as they should be:<br />
the sky was the dead-end of night,<br />
the road was just a road, wine merely wine.</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<br />
Now everything is like my heart,<br />
a color at the edge of blood:<br />
the grey of your absence, the color of poison, of thorns,<br />
the gold where we meet, the season ablaze,<br />
the yellow of autumn, the red of flowers, of flames,<br />
and the black when you cover the earth<br />
with the coal of dead fires.<br />
<br />
And the sky, the road, the glass of wine?<br />
The sky is a shirt wet with tears,<br />
the road a vein about to break,<br />
and the glass of wine a mirror in which<br />
the sky, the road, the world keep changing. <br />
<br />
Don't leave now that you're here--<br />
Stay. So the world may become like itself again:<br />
so the sky may be the sky,<br />
the road a road,<br />
and the glass of wine not a mirror, just a glass of wine.</blockquote>
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The reading is free and begins at 2 p.m. on Sunday April 3rd at The Cole Library just east of I-5 on Carlsbad Village Drive.augustosandinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06127985188470698391noreply@blogger.com0