Michael Sedano
Los Angeles afternoon rush hour begins peaking around 4:00 when a quarter-mile jaunt turns into a forty-five minute ordeal on heated highways, or fifteen hectic minutes on rude surface streets. Public transit riders skip the hassles and pour into Union Station to hop a train or bus and enjoy a hands-free outbound commute. Today they get a second Rush Hour, a poetry reading for listeners on-the-go and a real tough audience.
Celebrating National Poetry Month, the Poetry Society of America with Poetry in Motion/LA, and most importantly hosted by Metro Art's staffers Amalia Merino and Heidi Zeller, sited the event for highest possible visibility in Union Station's sleek east terminal.
Subway passengers ascend the escalator into the hall. Waves of moving crowds pour in from arriving buses. Thanks to the rotunda's echo effect, people hear before they see the poet standing at the microphone in the middle of the concourse.
Most people hitch a step, glance over and nod approval or surprise with the spectacle. A few commuters irritatedly wheel briefcases through poetry-captivated slowpokes and those who join deliberately to stand and enjoy the unique setting and the Rush Hour four. A poet gets a few seconds of prime time attention in which to say enough that onrushing pedestrians catch something before passing out of range.
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| Robin Coste Lewis reads into a public address system that ensures hearing the poets for a few fleeting phrases by commuters thronging into the tunnel toward trains. |
Four poets stand at a lectern under magnificent rotunda and mural overhead, microphone connected to quality loudspeakers on stanchions. The artists' voices project into public space, reaching out to find a note of recognition wherever it will; from the couple with a baby in a stroller, the purposeless ambler, workshirts with names embroidered on them, to the hurried severe black suits who have no time to stop and stare.
Every few minutes, buses unload road-weary riders. Trains unleash waves of people who pour out from below on their way to somewhere else. And there's a poetry reading going on for this ever-changing audience. Maybe they get thirty seconds.
The line-up includes two Los Angeles Poets Laureate, 2012 Laureate Eloise Klein Healy, and the current Laureate, Luis J. Rodriguez, along with Robin Coste Lewis and Kate Gale.
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| 2015 Los Angeles Poet Laureate Luis J. Rodriguez greets 2012 LA Poet Laureate Eloise Klein Healy. |
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| Heidi Zeller takes Amalia Merino's foto with Luis Rodriguez. Metro Art produces various free arts and cultural programs at Union Station, including music, dance, poetry and film. |
The poets patch together a floricanto for fly-bys. Those able to take in the entire hour were treated to Healy's quiet thoughts, Lewis' nostalgic memoirs, then Gale's wit and delicate ironies were a welcome lead-in to Luis J. Rodriguez.
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| Eloise Klein Healy |
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| Robin Coste Lewis |
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| Kate Gale |
Rodriguez reads at an apogee of his oral art, a stunning performance blending memoir, history, cultura in a style he fits to time and place. Rodriguez chooses loud, expansive poems about living, and life in L.A. He reads for the gente in front of him, but more so Rodriguez projects deep into the tunnel, his poems following people as they walk away, listening through the din of the echoing passage to his urgent expressions.
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| Luis J. Rodriguez |
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| Luis J. Rodriguez at lectern during Rush Hour in Union Station |
Special On-line Floricanto para La Madre Tierra: Excerpt from Spirits of the Chaparral by Amanda Yeats Garcia
My pursuit of a perfect photograph of public speakers rewards me with often being in places where poetry is spoken, getting to hear poems performed by the poets. There's added stimulus of listening for a gesture, seeking a moment's eye contact, anticipating a dynamic posture to photograph, knowing to see it is to miss it.
Like others in the audience, I get to listen to the words and structure of spoken art, get into the poet's flow and allow the art to take over, immersing into the puro uniqueness that inheres in time and place. The lens is restrictive, technology requiring its mechanical and reflexive control. A speaker's portrait comes at a phrase with open mouth or tender whispering lips, eyes open, a person feeling words come out as dynamic gesture. Anticipation means releasing the shutter just before the moment.
Guess right and the image expresses distinctive blendings of poet poem time and place. Most are a miss. Technology reprieves the bad guess through the nearly infinite resources of digital. Whereas film limited one to 5 or 6 exposures to get one, today's media allow fifty or a hundred frames to find a keeper.
It was while waiting one of those moments and listening to Amanda Yates Garcia read about California's chaparral, I was struck by her love and deep understanding of the rough scrub, "sagebrush," covering Southern California's disappearing raw tierra, dry washes, arroyos, foothills and canyons. A single hearing wasn't enough. Here was a poem to match our mountains.
Recognizing sublime moments of spoken art like Garcia's reading occur irreproducibly and only at the one time and place, I know there's no pausing and rewinding. It is what it is, whatever I missed, I've missed forever.
There's no going back to Poesia Para La Gente's garden floricanto in Highland Park's Milagro Allegro Community Garden. La Bloga offers the next best thing, a one-woman On-line Floricanto for la madre tierra on the eve of Mother's Day. Amanda Yates Garcia shares an excerpt from her work-in-progress.
Introduction
Spirits of the Chaparral is part of a book of essays, prose and poems dedicated to the magical essence of the city of Los Angeles. I've been been working on this book for several years and expect to finish it in 2015.
The book includes pieces like Incantations for Navigating the Cardinal Directions for Los Angeles, Spell To Be A Writer, Spell To Mend A Broken Heart, and a Table of Correspondences for the elemental spirits of the city.
Excerpt from "Spirits of the Chaparral"
By Amanda Yates Garcia
“I call in the spirit of Mojave sage!” An intense aromatic field permeates the air, a wash of cleansing turpentine. Sage secretes terpenes in its blood, chemical warfare against hungry deer and other pests. But rather than kill its enemies, sage turns the chaparral into a temple. Sage is the beloved pope of the Southwest, surrounded by an army of celebrants: hummingbirds, bumble bees, native wasps all will fight fiercely in its defense. But they are no match for us descendants of warrior tribes: Trojans, Conquistadors, Marines. We snatch the sacred herbs from their plinths and use them to fragrance our yoga studios.
We’ve built our banks and tech firms upon the ruins of temples and shrines, the once vast and mighty civilizations of plant life. But know this: the plants still exist here as ghosts. As presences. For 15 millennia, humans and plants in Southern California lived in the same reality. Until a new crop of humans arrived by boat, from beyond the realm of death. The plants knew us as visitors from the future. Yarrow foretold that they were the harbingers of death. These new humans, she claimed, had traded belonging for power, for the opportunity to create and destroy. We had become great and horrible angels. Spirit beings from the other side. And as with so many angels, we were jealous. Always needing to be the ones who’re loved best.
But behold! Like Yarrow, we too can see the future. Peer forward to what lies beyond our own graves, where we will see the angels of our own creation. See the machines we now feed with the fruits of our own frenzied labor. Machines who will one day use our bones as fertilizer. Who will mulch us. Who will prune us like topiary bushes into fantastical creatures. Who will, as our own prophets warn us, turn us into slaves, into batteries, just as we make the corn submit its ethanol. And then we will become the garden from which our own machines are exiled. And just like us, they will always long to return.
Amanda Yates Garcia is a multi-media artist, writer and Oracle of Los Angeles.
Her artwork has been featured at venues such as Brewery Projects, REDCAT, Highways Performance Space, Public Fiction, Side Street Projects, the Ben Maltz gallery, the Laband gallery, Human Resources.
Floricanto on Spring Street
Michael Sedano
Here I am, a sixty-nine year old smiling public man taking the hand of a young man named Paul. We grab palms, turn it around with a wrist twist, then he slides to a knuckle clasp and some moves my hand doesn’t know. He offers a fist that I bump with mine, and off goes Get Lit’s Manager of Education to notch up the excitement outside the lobby doors. When, a few seconds later, another Get Lit staffer proffers a horizontal fist I react with a simple fistbump, but not so fast we both know how far out of it I am. Far out. I realize I don’t know how to shake hands with these kids.
What we share in common is wanting to be part of today’s floricanto, a poetry slam contest showcasing Los Angeles high school students as spoken word artists. Classic Slam comes as an important element of Get Lit’s mission to increase teen literacy through classic and spoken word poetry. “Words Ignite,” goes Get Lit’s motto. I’m fired up.
Fired-up audience erupts at the end of a presentation.
That’s why I am sitting in the Los Angeles Theater Center at eight on a Friday morning watching a well-oiled organization going through its paces. Get Lit staff work purposefully throughout the lobby carrying furniture, sorting materials, installing signage. People with questions make beelines to a woman already surrounded by other questioners. Lindsay Halladay, one of the producers of today’s event, keeps everything on even keel, quickly issuing directions and heads my way.
Halladay outlines the registration task for me and two college-bound women before returning to myriad responsibilities for this 2015 edition of Get Lit’s annual Classic Slam.
Teams of up to 90 students arrive to congregate outside the Spring Street doors in rising energy. Paul is out there holding a pep rally for poetry. Crowd control works as designed to collect groups and move them into auditorium seats. Guides step into the throngs holding up signs naming a handful of schools. Teams follow their sign, parading through the front doors in semi-ordered lines and disappear into their assigned auditorium. Impressively serious these kids, none of the horseplay common in some gatherings.
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| Preparations whirl around Lindsay Halladay |
It's a school day. Schools and coaches have moved mountains getting these students to an experience of a lifetime. There are children representing schools like Morningside, Alhambra, San Gabriel, LACES, Social Justice. They get a front-row seat to a magical experience that starts with reading a book.
LATC's larger theaters--two 300- and one 500-seat amphitheater--fill with six or seven teams. Large contingents indicate a measure of student body support and administrative effectiveness. They also are the experienced teams with better chances of training a winner in tomorrow evening’s Finals. The bigger the room, the likelier a finalist will come from there. Or so I hear, from background conversations. I look at the master list and stride out for my choice.
Theater 4, a 99-seat flat rehearsal space, matches teams including rookie competitor Social Justice Leadership Academy. Today is the school’s first Classic Slam, so I choose theirs as my first, too. Someone from this room will advance to the semi-finals later today. Then, it’s equal opportunity to earn a spot in the finals. It’ll be kid, content, delivery, style, memorization, and time, scored on a scale of one to ten, toss the high and low.
Halladay churns the crowd holding a hand mic regularly refocusing the house on the rules and etiquette. The powerful sound system blasts clear, clean sound. A DJ fills in audio space left by the high energy emcee. Halladay echoes what Luis J. Rodriguez tells his audience in Union Station the other day. Applause is the only coin poets get from a reading so go ahead and appreciate.
Snap your fingers, Halladay demonstrates, show some love. During the readings, supporters will urge on poets with the sound of hundreds of spontaneously snapping fingers. This is the kind of magic that enthralls kids with literature, oracy, poetry.
Contestants couple a classic poem to a response poem written by the performer. The audience expects important classic themes, listening with interest while demanding unique entertainment.
One contestant couples Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Sonnet 43, “How do I love thee?,” with his own rolling monologue on love, loving, lovers. Ethos and cleverness earn him lots of fingersnaps and engaged interaction. He works the house like a seasoned performer; in physical control, using the full stage, holding listeners in comfortable rapport.
I hope the contestant's essential simplicity is enough to move this message into the semi-final stage. Her apostrophe to a domineering father set against an agon of cultural fusion booms with quiet power. This demonstration of identity—the dancer becomes the dance--deeply moves judges and listeners.
For these kids, the nation's future leaders, keys to opportunity come from literacy and oracy, the confidence and poise that Classic Slam gives everyone. Seeing it, being there, generates strong commitment to having more in the future. Participants win by doing it. Next year, people in today's audience will find their way to the front, find herself in the spotlights of one of those big stages, looking into the darkness in the presence of 500 people snapping their fingers at something she just said.
Being able to read critically and choose a piece for an audience of peers offers personal satisfaction every kid deserves. Being able to express oneself in exuberant style and delivery, igniting emotion in good listeners by what you say and how you say it, that's the best reward of all! Poetry is power.
I hearken back to Aristotle’s belief that everyone should be able to defend themselves with swords. Equally unthinkable, he taught, was being unable to defend youself with your mouth. Get Lit Classic Slam is a poet’s sword, gente. I hope more schools seek it out.
Learn more about Get Lit at the organization's website.
On-line Floricanto for 5/2015
Sono Arima, Israel Francisco Haros Lopez, Frank de Jesus Acosta, Jose Carillo, Xico Gonzales, Betty Sanchez, Mario Escobar
"American Pie" by Sono Arima
"Echo" by Israel Francisco Haros Lopez
"Dream of Veneration" by Frank de Jesus Acosta
"Matter/Material " by Jose Carillo
"La Marcha" por Xico Gonzales
"Remedios Caseros" por Betty Sanchez
"Black Spring" By Mario Escobar
AMERICAN PIE
by Sono Arima
the pie is in the sky
flying really high
looping and soaring
ripping and roaring
a rich flavored conglomerate
that's chock full of nuts
so come to the table
its a free for all
be you short or be you tall
round or thin
straight or bent
rich or poor...
did I say poor?
it's first come that is first served
so hurry it up
just pick the right door
the one up front
with gold filagree
might not be one meant for thee
around the corner and down the street
through the back alley there's one to be
pass the mops and kitchen sinks
just sit at the table and grab a chair
plates are warm and the pie's right there
help yourself but do not take too much
because all that's left are the crumbs to munch
Sono Arima (c) 2015 All Rights Reserved
ECHO
by Israel Francisco Haros Lopez
Border politic amnesia
shedding its skin underneath social media lies
The serpent and the eagle are drowning in pools ofoil black and red blood digitized
and deleted but the facebookgeneration re-members for a second
to share. like. post. tag. re-share.
they might actually be re-called.
Israel Haros is currently working on 1000 border sketch poems as part of an artist residency. He has been accepted into the Immigration/Migration themed residency at Santa Fe Art Institute. He is a published author and has 6 published Adult Chicano Coloring Books. He is also currently working on 1000 sketches in a month as part of an inner artistic movement. He can be found using facebook as his office and also on his wordpress "waterhummingbirdhouse" Chicano from Boyle Heights with an B.A. in English From UC Berkeley and an MFA from California College of The Arts.
DREAM OF VENERATION
by Frank de Jesus Acosta
In this dream of veneration
I am moved by warm sounds
Winged beings of many colors
Span a cobalt canvas of time
A feathered tapestry of yesterdays
Etching glimpses of tomorrows
Eagle, quetzal, condor cry melodic
Gliding in a circle dance of prayer
Flesh returns to earthen brown
Crimson blood, emerald waters
Pacha mama’s womb of creation
Cradling sibling continents of tribes
In this dream of veneration
A harmonic song of many voices
Prophesy a painful journey of hope
Nations rising in sovereignty of love
MATTER/MATERIAL
by Jose Carrillo
matter doesn't matter
it comes
it grows
gets finished
it dies.
the human spirit matters:
the human spirit is constant
it goes on
sometimes with a murmur
sometimes with a cry
but it never dies;
Love is the energy
force of the eternal spirit
it is transmitted through
acts of
kindness
and
art.
Material
por Jose Carrillo
lo material no importa
viene
crece
se acaba
se muere
el espíritu humano importa
el espíritu humano es constante
corre siempre
a veces con un murmuro
y a otras veces con un grito
pero nunca muere.
Amor es la energía
la fuerza del espíritu eterno
que se transmite por
gestos de
bondad
y
arte.
jose carrillo
03/15/15
LA MARCHA
por Xico González C/S
Caminamos siguiendo al águila
That Huitzilopochtli
sent us as a sign - a black Aztec eagle-
that rises to the sky-
al cielo- donde hay esperanzas
y sueños de libertad
“¿Qué queremos?
¡Justicia!
¿Cuándo?
¡Ahora!”
Campesinos on the move
coming up north
migrating back to reclaim their land
esta es tu tierra - tienes derechos...
los rancheros son chuecos
pero la marcha los va a enderezar
“¿Qué si? ¿Qué no?
¿Qué como chingados no?”
Gritos y cantos fill the air…
“¡Se ve! ¡Se siente!
¡Los campesinos están presente!”
Todos son Tlatoanis
Hablando, cantando, gritando y marchando con dignidad
“¡La unión hace la fuerza!”
Cuando lleguen a Sacras
Gaba sordo ears will open y oiran!
Generaciones…
vieja y nueva
mano en mano - paso a paso
cambiando rumbos
de malos a buenos
y soñando un futuro mejor…
“¡Sí se puede!
¡Sí se puede!"
Ya con esta me despido
pero no me olvido
de mi gente en la labor
Que con pasos muy unidos
Marcharon con la Unión
De Merced a Sacramento
Y no miento
¡No señor!
Sé que ganaremos
Sé que venceremos
porque…
“¡El pueblo unido!
¡Jamás será vencido!”
“¡El pueblo unido!
¡jamás será vencido!”
I wrote this poem on August 19, 2002 to commemorate a UFW Marcha from Merced to Sacramento.
Here is what the UFW wrote about this action:
"Summer, Fall 2002--The UFW organizes massive public support, including a much-publicized 150-mile march from Merced to Sacramento, to convince then Gov. Gray Davis to sign the UFW-sponsored binding mediation law, the first time the Agricultural Labor Relations Act has been amended since its passage in 1975."
REMEDIOS CASEROS
por Betty Sanchez
Durante mi infancia
Y adolescencia
Padecí inapetencia
Y por consiguiente
Mi apariencia era
Frágil y debilucha
Y en consecuencia
Fui victima
de una miríada
De remedios caseros
Ser delgada era sinónimo
De enfermedad
De seguro tiene anemia
O parásitos
Comentaban las vecinas
En la línea de la tortillería
Déle hígado encebollado
Y capsulas de aceite
De bacalao
Y ya verá como en un dos
Por tres se pone gordita
Su chiquilla
Alguna comadre bienintencionada
Opinaba que la cura infalible
Para la desnutrición
Era tomarse un par
De blanquillos crudos
Con delaware (refresco de uva)
O una tasita de cerveza
En ayunas
Mi madre presionada
Por la opinión publica
Se sentía obligada
A seguir tales consejos
Sin importar si eran
Verídicos o inventados
Al cabo del tiempo
Y a fuerza de ser victima
De suplicio mental
Documenté en una libreta
Las torturas
A las que fui sometida
Con el fin de exponer
A mis agresores
En el momento preciso
He aquí
Algunas de mis notas
Malestar estomacal
Agua con carbonato
E infusión de hierbabuena
Dolor de cabeza
Una corona
De ramas de ruda
Ojos lagañosos
Unas gotas de leche de pecho
Piquete de insecto
Fomentos de árnica
Para lo rosado
Maicena
Dolencia dental
Un clavo de olor
Y gárgaras de sal
Espinillas
Un poco de pasta colgate
En el área afectada
Tos y mocos
Té de gordolobo
Y rodajas de cebolla
En el pecho
Me avergüenza
Pensar en las veces
Que fui a la escuela
Oliendo a ceviche
Resfriado
Una olla
De agua hirviendo
Con hojas de eucalipto
Y trapos en el pecho
Previamente calentados
Con la plancha
Retorcijones
No había ninguna duda
De seguro estaba empachada
Lo único efectivo
Eras unos jalones de cuero
En la espalda
Que me hacían
Pedirle al santo niño de atocha
Que me tuviera compasión
Y me recogiera en su seno
Dolores musculares
Ventosas de alcanfor
¿Pueden imaginar peor agonía?
Fiebre
Granos de café
En la planta del pie
Con una cáscara de plátano
Envueltos
En calcetines de lana
Piojos
No hay mejor remedio
Que el DDT
Así como lo oye
Querido lector
dicloro-difenil-tricloroetano
Un potente pesticida
Para eliminar plagas
Y nubes de insectos
Y cuya vida media
Es de 20 años
Era aplicado a mi sensible
Cuero cabelludo
Hoy que reflexiono en ello
Puedo explicar el porque
He actuado
Incoherentemente
Toda mi vida
Infección de oído
Un cono de papel
Y fuego
Para sacar el aire
Semblante caído
Señal de hechizo
Un collar de ajos
Y una limpia
Con huevos de rancho
Alejaba los malos espíritus
No podía faltar
el cúralo todo
vicks vaporub
El merthiolate
Que tenia un aplicador
Semejante a un matamoscas
Y la vitacilina
Era tan popular
Que me aprendi
El comercial
Ya lo sabe
En la casa y la oficina
Tenga usted vitacilina
Es muy buena
En rasponcitos
Quemaduras y barritos
Ah que buena medicina
Cicatrices
Hojas de malva machacadas
En el molcajete
Sábila o babas de nopal
Si todo lo demás fallaba
Un sana sana colita de rana
Si no sanas hoy sanarás mañana
Era el consuelo a mis males
Mi padre que poseía
Sentido común
Me llevo a un especialista
Que recetó
Ampolletas de beyodecta
Para aumentar
Los glóbulos rojos
Y comidas pequeñas
Cada tres horas
Para estimular el apetito
FIN DEL ABUSO
En mi edad adulta
Me confieso culpable
De haber aplicado
A mis hijos
Los mismos martirios
Por aquello de que
En cierta manera
Hubieran tenido razón
Mi madre
Abuela
Madrinas
Y vecinas.
Betty Sánchez
9 de Abril de 2015
Sus poemas se han publicado en Voces del Nuevo Sol, Mujeres de Maiz y La Bloga.
BLACK SPRING
por Mario Escobar
Esto no es una metáfora
escucha como se quiebra
el hueso dorsal
del negro Baltimore
Esto no es una metáfora
escucha como se apagan
los pulmones
del negro New York
Esto no es una metáfora
Llega el grito con su voz de piedra,
desatando campanas y lágrimas,
implorando: ¡Ya basta!
Esto no es una metáfora
la sangre asciende al corazón
por el dolor inquietante de rostros
desquebrajados
que los siglos
ya conocen.
Esto no es una metáfora
el miedo ha dicho basta
de sus pasos inseguros
y una primavera negra
despierta
mientras en Washington DC
Loretta Lynch
se une a la gente tuerta
-Mario Escobar 2015
2016 Américo Paredes Conference Call for Proposals
La Bloga-Tuesday omitted last week this link to the detailed call for panels, proposals. Roberto Cantu organizes the West Coast's most compelling C/S academic conferences. In hopes scholars will find investigatory riches in the subject of Américo Paredes' work and tradition, here's the missing link:
http://americoatcalstatela.blogspot.com/
To Read in Venice
Four writers will be taking the stage to read their work: Romus Simpson, Claudia D. Hernandez, Ruben Cruz, and Angel Garcia.
This is the second reading in a series. Also, on Friday, May 15th we will be screening, "Crying Earth, Rise Up" followed by a Q&A by the director, Suree Towfighnia.
Thanks Michael! Great La Bloga this week, as always, really enjoyed the poesia. Saludos, Odilia
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