State of the Art: Altadena & Beyond

Memory

Going It Alone Again

Michael Sedano

Sameth and unnamed valued tech guy. Livestreaming brings readings to you.

I go by myself to the poetry reading the evening of April 4 at the Altadena Library. This is my first solo venturing into the open world again, after what feels like countless years isolation caregiving my wife with Alzheimer's Dementia. Barbara died on February 4, the day has its auspicious elements I ignore.

The Library does the Land Acknowledgement, "we are on stolen land..."

Getting out among 'em has been a cherished goal of mine for years. When I first stepped back into the world, good friends had my back. Thelma Reyna took me to Home Girl Cafe for Rick Ortega's show and the powerful array of poets reading for Rick's arte. Jean Hooper took me to a previous Altadena Laureates' reading. I got to take fotos again of poets reading their stuff aloud. I felt almost like I was nearly all the way back.

Back when I was not a caregiver I had a goal: photograph every raza poet on the Eastside, or wherever, reading their stuff aloud to an audience. It was around 2017 I attended my previous reading. 2023 rolls around and I get to step back into what I'd been doing.

Excuse the interruption, que no?

Altadena, California occupies the piedmont of the San Gabriel Mountains above the other "denas", Pasa- and South. Sitting at the pinnacle of the San Gabriel Valley, the unincorporated region is so remote, racism ignored the community and the homes remained safe from redlining. Even before people realized it or used the term, Altadena was POC tierra. That also implies Altadena is a hip community. Órale, hasta they have two Poets Laureate!

Carla R. Sameth co-hosts Poetry & Cookies April 29

Poets Laureate Carla R. Sameth and Peter J. Harris mark their halfway tenure with Poetry & Cookies on April 29. A half-day event, readings start at 11:00 a.m. and continue until 1:00. The reading celebrates poetry on the main floor of the big library at the top of Christmas Tree Lane.

Carla serves as "named" host for my coming-out reading, but Peter attends as well. The two Laureates created an active program of beautiful evenings in the lower-level community room. Altadena, and the greater San Gabriel Valley, nurtures poets meaning good attendance of "regulars" and new tipos like me. I get a warm welcome as a stranger among us. Luckily, people read La Bloga and I'm not entirely a stranger.

Peter J. Harris shares Poetry & Cookies flyer

Tonight's reading features Vickie Vértiz and Angela Peñaredondo. The poets elect to read round-robin. Angela starts, Vickie follows, then Angela. The poetry begins with the "set" but bounces off the ambience with the poets choosing to develop a theme elicited earlier in the round-robin.

The artists tonight have been reading in tandem for a few other events, their narratives disclose. Their comfort with one another's work emerges as they mention changes tonight from earlier performances of a title, and when they choose just the right title to follow up and lead into other work. 

Synergy makes this reading sizzle. 

The reading is provocative as well, given the poets and their experiences. Vértiz is first-generation U.S. from Mexican immigrants. Her poetry comes in the code-switching Mezcla of chicanarte. Vértiz' performance moves fluidly and naturally English into Spanish into mezcla. Peñaredondo is queer, nonbinary Filipinx. Both are writing teachers, Vickie at UCSB, Angela at CSUSB.

Readers will find vickievertiz.com and angelapenarendo.com the authoritative source for the artists' work. You need to buy their work, gente.

Peñaredondo writes in English, offering a delighting story of a poem she wanted to publish bilingually, English and her mother's Visayan language. 

Like so many children of a cultural diaspora, Angela's linguistic competence in her mother's language outweighs her performance. She needs her mother to help translating. Peñaredondo grows increasingly animated recalling the process, "mom, what does this say?" then mom asking for help from other speakers. Inevitably linguistic controversy arises and soon a community evolves around Peñaredondo's poem and the results are her mom, friends, everyone has a great experience with poetry and the end result gets into the book. (click here to buy)

The story offers a wonderful contrast to Vértiz' performance as a writer not separated from her mother's tongue, and also the beneficiary of a seven sisters degree. Chicana poetry finds expressive maestría in Vértiz' work.

The Q&A part of the reading offers interesting insights into the poets' biographies and writing process and influence. As well, during their performances, the artists include readings from their books' footnotes, adding insightful dimensions that truly enhanced this poetry reading and made my first night out by myself a memorable one for all the right reasons.

Important note: Poets&Writers (link) sponsors the readings, along with host Altadena Libraries and Friends of the Altadena Library.

By Vickie Vértiz

Excerpted.

“Only We Make Beautiful Things Just to Destroy Them” from Auto/ Body, University of Notre Dame press, Sandeen Poetry Prize winner from the University of Notre Dame Press, 2022, pub date, February 1, 2023 (click here to buy copies)

The Mexicans and the Russians were always in on it

This is collaboration in zero gravity democracy

—blurry violet lights and no clear answer

This is a nuclear glow in the dark so we can start over

We board planes to Mars and six engines fire

You spin away. It’s candy guts out here— our voting machines are breaking

You tumble and can’t stop

Grab a harness—an adult pigtail

Six motors click on and your homie has to escape

Push you so you can swing at the exploding star

A way of thinking, una estructura doblada

Alguien cortó oropel azul en cuadritos

And stuffed it into the piñata. A yellow paleta

Big as a chicken, floats to the right hand corner and balances

Tipping into the comrade’s hands

What’s a layer of confetti and candy compared to DDT

The kind you sprayed over our naked bodies

We’re diamonds: hard, shiny, and we can go through some shit

We don’t infest, pendejo. We invest

There goes your friend again, diving toward

The paleta, which has to be pineapple

We were always in on it together

Me and my honey watching a video on loop

We gently hold each other like the beach balls we are

The light dims and that constellation swings

Only one Russian cosmonaut will smile at a time

They watch a homie swim away

Reach out

Don’t make someone else do your work for you

Some of us were grounded

The whole time

Update

Peñaredondo and Vértiz read together again in May at Pasadena's cozy, intimate answer to the the Los Angeles' Times' massive and wondrous book fair. Pasadena's main event comes the weekend of Cinco de Mayo.

Saturday, May 6, 12:30pm-1:30pm, Pasadena LitFest, “Queer Writers Tracing Literary Ancestries,” with Vickie Vértiz, Angela Peñaredondo, Heidi Restrepo Rhodes, and Cynthia Dewi Oka

Poetry & Cookies
38 poets read 52 ekphrastic poems responding to 14 artworks. The reading comes in lieu of a printed book this year.

There is little likelihood of gluten-free cookies, but all the poetry is gluten-free and hypoallergenic to good people. There is high likelihood La Bloga will donate a small supply of gluten-free macaroons--not macarons--from The House of Cookies on Washington Blvd in Pasadena. World's best macaroons by Armenian bakers.