Tomorrow in Santa Barbara! |
The Mission Poetry Series is one of the best poetry events. And, yes, I'm saying this because I am one of the curators. Emma Trelles titles this season's event: "Inventing a Country: Three Poets in Spring." The title is taken from a line from "In a Country," by Larry Lewis. Tomorrow, the Mission Poetry Series presents Gabriella Klein, Lee Herrick, and Pamela Davis. Here's a sampling of each poet.
Elsewhere Desire
By Gabriella Klein
As soon as you read of the boom
you read
they have moved on. The
gamblers, the outlaws,
the Argonauts in a cold stream.
The miners are ghosts. The
mines have been deserted.
Those lawless quick towns, the
fabricated.
Once there were prospects, now
there is sky, and elsewhere
desire has moved on.
Desert your expectation. A
ghost town is nothing less.
The wallpaper frayed, the
stamped tin
Corroded. Boredom and its
reflection in glass.
I fill it up with muttering but
still I am alone.
Except for heartbreak.
Sometimes a hunger
Means chewing your own cheek.
Monotony,
monotony. What I call gold.
My California
By Lee Herrick
Here, an olive votive keeps the
sunset lit,
the Korean twenty-somethings
talk about hyphens,
graduate school and good pot. A
group of four at a window
table in Carpinteria discuss
the quality of wines in Napa Valley versus Lodi.
Here, in my California, the
streets remember the Chicano
poet whose songs still bank off
Fresno’s beer soaked gutters
and almond trees in partial
blossom. Here, in my California
we fish out long noodles from
the pho with such accuracy
you’d know we’d done this
before. In Fresno, the bullets
tire of themselves and begin to
pray five times a day.
In Fresno, we hope for less of
the police state and more of a state of grace.
In my California, you can watch
the sun go down
like in your California, on the
ledge of the pregnant
twenty-second century, the one
with a bounty of peaches and grapes,
red onions and the good salsa,
wine, and chapchae.
Here in my California,
paperbacks are free,
farmer’s markets are twenty
four hours a day and
always packed, the trees and
water have no nails in them,
the priests eat well, the
homeless eat well.
Here, in my California,
everywhere is Chinatown,
everywhere is K-town,
everywhere is Armeniatown,
everywhere is a Little Italy.
Less confederacy.
No internment in the Valley.
Better history texts for the
juniors.
In my California, free sounds
and free touch. Free questions, free answers.
Free
songs from parents and poets, those hopeful bodies of light.
Blind Date with Baudelaire
By Pamela Davis
He gallops to a stop in a
silk-plumed carriage, cravat loose
at throat. I’m a party dress
craving ruin. We careen mad
crooked streets. Down to the
Seine. Up to Montmartre’s
butte. Charles unbuttons my
skin to sniff my bones.
Summoning our future by moony
lamplight,
his absinthe
whisper, we'll twine side by
side. Pilgrims will come, read odes to _
our stones. Leave roses. Red
granite kisses.
The night we wed, Charles
Gives me his spleen.
Pourquoi pas? Two
poets—one dead,
one buried alive—
in the same
plot.
*****
Martin Espada |
It's always exciting news when Martín Espada has a new book. Listen to an interview with Grace Cavalieri and hear this fabulous poet read from his new book, Vivas to Those Who Have Failed. Brought to you by the Library of Congress.
Martín Espada |
Click here for Martín Espada's audio: https://www.loc.gov/poetry/media/avfiles/poet-poem-martin-espada.mp3
1 comment:
El Morivivi !!!! Martin Espada's book is excellent. I hope he visits the city of poets soon.
Vincent-
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