Coming Full Circle in Twenty Years of Poetry

Melinda Palacio, Santa Barbara Poet Laureate

This column was first published in the Santa Barbara Independent.

Photo by Michael Sedano

  

The Santa Barbara Writers Conference began last Sunday. The conference has been an important part of my life for the past twenty years. I’ve participated as a volunteer, panelist and workshop leader at the conference. I wrote the poem that launched my writing career those two decades ago, “How Fire Is a Story, Waiting.” That poem that won first place at the Santa Barbara Writers Conference in 2003 became the title poem of my first full length poetry book in 2012, published by Tía Chucha Press. 

 

The poem is about a memory I have of my grandmother playing with the stovetop’s fire. As a child, I watched her cook and she would tell me stories about her life and our family. One day, she showed me how she could catch the fire in her hand without burning herself. I was mesmerized, and smart enough to realize I shouldn’t try her trick. I had already gotten into trouble for playing with matches and showing my young neighbor how to light a match on the side of the matchbox. To this day, my grandmother’s words, falling into the fire, continue to be a source of inspiration. 

 

I remember the day I workshopped the poem in Perie Longo’s class. After the workshop, she asked for a copy of the poem. I thought she was going to mark it up and give me suggestions for improving the poem. I had no idea she would nominate me to win the poetry contest at the weeklong conference. However, I do remember the confidence I received as an added bonus. The win encouraged me to try other genres, short stories and fiction. 

 

Two years later, at the conference, in 2005, I won honorable mention in fiction. But it wasn’t until 2011 that Arizona State University published my novel, Ocotillo Dreams, about the 1997 immigration sweeps in Arizona. Part of the publishing game is showing some sort of track record. In my queries for Ocotillo Dreams, I was able to say I had won first place in poetry at the SBWC and honorable mention in fiction. Every award and publication showed publishers I was serious about my writing career. 

 

I didn’t have the kind of overnight success that draws people to desire a literary career. My poems and book manuscripts have been rejected hundreds of times. It wasn’t until five years after the breakthrough poetry win that my first chapbook, Folsom Lockdown, won a publishing prize. The Fire poem didn’t make it into its own full-length book until nine years later when Tía Chucha Press published How Fire Is a Story, Waiting in 2012. 

 

Fast forward to two weeks ago at La Plaza de Cultura y Artes in Los Angeles, I participated in a poetry panel for Tia Chucha Press, the imprint started by former Los Angeles Poet Laureate and author of Always Running, Luis J. Rodriguez. I read from the one copy I have of How Fire Is a Story, Waiting. The book is officially out of print. The good news is Tía Chucha Press is reprinting the book. The title poem is also a song now. I never thought I would add songwriter to my writing resumé but over the pandemic, I became obsessed with learning the guitar and ukulele. Songwriting was a natural next step. I’ve enjoyed incorporating music in some of my poetry readings. In addition to writing new poems, finishing a second novel, my latest project is writing companion songs for some of my poems. I was surprised when I thumbed through my journal, looking for poem ideas and discovered I had a song. After writing the song, I wrote a companion poem for the song. 

Poetry and Songs at the Botanic Garden

 

This week, after a four-year hiatus, the Santa Barbara Writers Conference returns for its 50^th anniversary. I will join the faculty and volunteers and I will be a special guest in Perie Longo’s class and celebrate my 20^th anniversary as a returning poet and now Poet Laureate of Santa Barbara. 

 

 

 

How Fire Is A Story, Waiting

Melinda Palacio    

 

 

My grandmother caught the flame in her thick hands.

Curled fingers made nimble by kaleidoscope embers.

Fire burns hot and cold if you know where to touch it, she said.

 

I watched the red glow spit and wiggle as it

snaked down the thin timber, a striptease, 

born out of the festive sound of a half-filled matchbox.

 

Through orange windows framed by obsidian eyes, I saw the child she once was. 

A little girl who raised herself because her mother had a coughing disease.

Blood on her mother’s handkerchief didn’t stop her from dreaming.

Maria Victoria was going to be a singer with her deep, cinnamon stick voice. 

 

She watched novelas in the kitchen while waiting for dough to rise.

Her body, heavy with worry for two families and three lifetimes.  She tucked

Mariachi dreams under her girdle. Lullabies escaped on mornings 

warmed by her song falling into gas burners turned on high.

 

The flame on a stove was never the same.  It had a bad hangover,

didn’t remember the many matches lit when its starter broke down.

 

My grandmother rolled paper into a funnel, 

stole fire from the pilot to light the stubborn burner on the right.  

Crimson burned blue on the white paper, its folded edges 

curled black like a lace ruffle on a skirt.

 

The finicky flame can’t comment on its magic.

The thousands of tortillas and pancakes cooked over the years.

How I burned myself roasting a hot dog campfire style.

How a melted pencil smudged under my sister’s eyelid makes her beautiful.

 

My grandmother noticed the time, almost noon.

She needed to make three dozen tortillas to feed her family of thirteen.

The show over, she blew the match into a swirl of gray squiggles,

snuffed before it had a chance to burn hot on her finger.

 

Funny, how fire is a story, waiting.

 

 

Saturday in L.A. Is for Poets: Two Special Events

Melinda Palacio

If you're anywhere near Los Angeles on Saturday, November 18, there are two events you won't want to miss. First, at noon, Vroman's Bookstore in Pasadena celebrates its Author Walk of Fame with a dedication ceremony honoring Luis J. Rodriguez. Handprints, a signature, reception, and a conversation with Luis and Lynell George are part of the festivities to honor the literary career of Los Angeles Poet Laureate Emeritus, Luis J. Rodriguez. Saturday, November 18, 2017- 12:00 pm, Vroman's 695 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, CA 91101. 

Later in the evening, at 8pm, not too far from Pasadena, at Highland Park's Avenue 50 Studio, enjoy the book launch party for Daniel Olivas's poetry book, Crossing the Border. You might recall reading about this long-awaited poetry book last August. Finally, you can get your copies signed by La Bloga's Daniel Olivas. Read the previously published La Bloga review here. Saturday, November 18 from 8-10 pm at Avenue 50 Studio, 131 N Avenue 50, Los Angeles, CA 90042. 

Here Comes The Coiled Serpent: Poets Arising from the Cultural Quakes and Shifts of Los Angeles

Olga García Echeverría

 

the angels here

have pigeon's wings

blue collars

washed in sweat

the common salt

in tears

tongues swirl

in a stew of cultures

singing asphalt songs

in the mist of seagulls

bebop atop

the San Andreas

a humble plate

of beings

 

– “Los Angeles” by Kamau Daáood (from The Coiled Serpent)

Tia Chucha's latest publishing endeavor is an exciting anthology featuring a wide range of poetic voices. The Coiled Serpent: Poets Arising from the Cultural Quakes and Shifts of Los Angeles will formally be released on April 15th, 2016. However, copies will be available at the upcoming AWP conference in LA. We will keep you posted on events and readings.

Co-edited by Neelanjana Banerjee, Daniel A. Olivas, and Ruben Rodriguez, the anthology is dedicate to three late writers of color whose work and spirit have inspired so many of us--Wanda Coleman, John Trudell, and Francisco X. Alarcon. Coiled Serpent opens with a brief and powerful introduction by our very own Poet Laureate, Luis J. Rodriguez, who reminds us that “Los Angeles is one of the richest cities in the United States and one of the poorest. What lies beneath all the seething are the social and economic gaps.”


This is an anthology that speaks (sin pelos en la lengua) from and about those gaps. Hollywood (the industry that fabricates and sells so many glittery myths of our city) knows nothing about the real LA revealed in these pages. As Rodriguez writes, this is “poetry that captures a city, a dreamscape, the shape of land and culture… from its underbelly and from among the unseen and unheard. These are artistic weapons in the social battles upturning what America is today and what it can be—toward a grander sense of belonging and inheritance.”

Spanning 355 pages, the anthology includes the work of many well-known and beloved Angelino writers, including work by Coleman and Trudell. There are too many authors to name here, but among the featured poets are Melinda Palacio, Holly Prado, Ruben Martinez, traci kato-kiriyama, Lynne Thompson, Amy Uyematsu, Peter Harris, liz gonzález, Dorothy Randall Gray, Chiwan Choi, Mike Sonken, Terry Wolverton, Antonieta Villamil, Luivette Resto, Thelma T. Reyna, Abel Salas, Iris De Anda, Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo, Jessica Ceballos, Claudia Rodriguez, Erika Ayón, Alejandra Sanchez, and Jamie Asaye FitzGerald.

With shimmering scales made up of metaphor and verse, The Coiled Serpent slithers through the poetic landscapes of LA. It gives us an intimate welcome, “...please / leave your bags at the door / don't carry what you don't need / come in have a seat / because i want to confess to you/ everything...”(Ricardo Lira Acuña). It crosses continents in “Haze” by Tanzila Ahmed, “Today / Los Angeles smells like India, / Like heavy fog and survival trash burning / Like the thick air / of dawn and dusk.”

 

“The coiled serpent is connected to the earth, but also ready to spring, to strike, to defend or to protect,” Rodriguez tells us.

 

Everywhere the serpent goes, there are migrations and the honoring of migrants, like Iliana Carter's powerful portrait of her Salvadorean grandmother, “a woman scorned, brutalized, / the fire that must have burned in her, / courage forged into black diamonds, / beat into shape by his violence / she fled with those dark stars inside her...” and in Karineh Mahdessian's “Here”, a portrait of a father transplanting the most fragile of things, “He has traveled far / to arrive with packed dreams and two babies / Here / He breaks his knees / Bends his back / Callouses his hands / suns his cheeks...”

 

Yago S. Cura gives us a Los Angeles County Jail Sonnet. He poets, “Jail is the real Mother of Invention: I have seen shoelaces made from the elastic / of a T-shirt, I have seen three miniscule toothbrushes lashed together to form / a wavelet-taming brush, I have seen a playing card used as a telescope, / a rhinoplasty / performed with golf pencils, and portraits of 2Pac, Mandela, and Rosa Parks / made entirely from Bologna...”

 

Everywhere the serpent goes, there are forgotten people, little people. “The little people listen with a fancy step / Fire in the village /The little people can’t help but dance /Fire in the village…” (John Trudell)

There are two-tongued cantos in this anthology that ask, “Why must we bite one tongue to let the other speak...?” (Iliana Cuellar). 

There's traffic running through this collection—a prayer in traffic, a curse in traffic, a buzzing refrain in traffic. There are odes to pan dulce and buñelos, love letters, F. Douglas Brown seeking advice for a daughter who is all “cherry coke and a pack of bubble gum.” How to talk about and upack the horror of lynchings and Sandra Bland? Or the genocide so alive in our city (cities), our world, our times?

These are poems about ashes, those  of the deceased and those left behind on city blocks as evidence of rebellions. And water. The divergence of water. The longing for water. There are meditations on poverty, money, gentrification, illness, earthquakes, and the crumbling of precious things, cookies, hearts, memory, bone.

Abuelitas, mothers, fathers, uncles, bus stop prophets, street vendors, lovers, drunks, the homeless, and the poets —they all populate these pages not as victims or cardboard caricatures but as resilient three-dimensional urban angels who uncover and discover, who rise up and remind us all to “give thanks and kiss cracked cement / moist lips deposit seeds of sea / into abyss that is our barren world / until the ceremony of our breath / conjures enough tears / to water our next steps” (Iris De Anda).

This is an anthology not to be missed. Look out for it. Support it. Help us spread the word. Gracias.

 

Luis J. Rodriguez is founding editor of Tía Chucha Press, which has been publishing culturally rich, socially engaged poetry books for 27 years, and co- founder of Tía Chucha’s Centro Cultural & Bookstore. He is currently Poet Laureate of Los Angeles.

Neelanjana Banerjee, managing editor at Kaya Press and co-editor of the award-winning Indivisible: An Anthology of South Asian American Poetry (University of Arkansas Press). Her poetry, fiction, and essays have appeared in Prairie Schooner, Pank Magazine, The Rumpus, World Literature Today, the Literary Review, and more.

Daniel A. Olivas is the author of seven books including the award-winning novel, The Book of Want (University of Arizona Press). His first nonfiction book is Things We Do Not Talk About: Exploring Latino/a Literature through Essays and Interviews (San Diego State University Press). Olivas is also the editor of the landmark anthology, Latinos in Lotusland (Bilingual Press).

Ruben J. Rodriguez, a recent graduate of UCLA, Magna Cum Laude, was previously an editor at Westwind magazine and has read at UCLA’s Powell Library.

Guest Review: Anaya's Poems from the Río Grande. Poets Laureate of Two Cities.

Guest Review, Jesus Salvador Trevino: Poems From the Río Grande.

Rudolfo Anaya. Poems From The Río Grande. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.  ISBN: 9780806148663

Jesus Salvador Treviño

Rudy Anaya’s new poetry collection, Poems from the Río Grande, shares the language, imagery and landscape of his classic coming-of-age novel Bless Me Ultima and his more recent novels Randy Lopez Goes Home and The Old Man’s Love Story. This most recent work is an inspiring homage to New Mexico’s rich Hispanic heritage, its myths, legends and most of all, the vitality, perseverance and humanity of its people.

The poems are fresh, engaging, thought-inspiring and lyrical. They echo themes found in the more than thirty previous works which include novels, a short story collection, plays, essays and a slew of children’s books. In this first major venture into poetry, Anaya once again reveals himself to be a master wordsmith, equally adept at verse as he is at narrative prose.

The poems “A Child’s Christmas in New Mexico,” and “Song to the Río Grande,” resurrect the llano world of young Antonio Marez, protagonist of Bless Me Ultima, as well as many of the stories to be found in The Man Who Could Fly. A passage from“Song of the Río Grande” illustrates this.

You are the road
our fathers followed
to an enchanted land
to plant our roots.
Villages of adobe,
cities so beautiful.

In “The Adventures of Juan Chicaspatas” we are taken on a rambling journey with Juan Chicaspatas and Al Penco, both emblematic of the Chicano experience, as they search history and the present for the true meaning Aztlán, of the Chicano ancestral homeland. On their sojourn, they encounter iconic personages from the Chicano/Mexicano past–la Malinche, Moctesuma, Coatlicue. Their quest echos the issues of identity and empowerment to be found in Anaya’s novels, Heart of Aztlán and Alburquerque, such as in this passage.

To my jefita I sing
and praise her every step,
her strength, her daily work,
her love, her sacrifice,
so that I, Juan Chicaspatas,
a Chicano homeboy,
can grow into the future.

This poem accomplishes what was only hinted at in Rodolfo “Corky” Gonzalez’s classic epic poem, “I Am Joaquin,” – encapsulating the history of Mexican Americans within the context of contemporary struggle fueled by the power of enduring myths, legends and gods. As Anaya puts it:

History has turned and twisted,
and a new time is being born.
Now is the time for the Gods
To return to Aztlán!”

Anaya’s writings in his later years deal with themes of love, loss and death as seen in the novels Randy Lopez Goes Home and The Old Man’s Love Story. These same themes are reiterated in the poem “Forgetting,” Anaya’s reflections on growing old and “Barecelona” recalling an unforgettable trip to Spain with his late wife, Patricia. But perhaps it is in the challenging poem, “Isis in the Heart: A Love Poem for Patricia,” that we find Anaya at his best– structurally complex, lyrical, symbolic, and filled with heartfelt passion that only a lifetime of memories can evoke.

Isis, the Egyptian goddess, was revered as the ideal mother and wife, and is for Anaya, a curandera (healer) par excellence. No accident, then, that Anaya chooses her as the shared memory and metaphor in the love poem to Patricia–in his life an ideal mother, wife and curandera. On a life-altering trip to Egypt, Anaya and Patricia discovered and fell in love with the Isis myth. Anaya became obsessed with transporting the ancient Egyptian myth to contemporary New Mexico, an Egyptian curandera in the land of curanderas. In so doing he broadens the Chicano literary experience beyond the borders of Aztlán. As with all great literature, it takes the specific and elevates it to the universal. Chicanos and Egyptians may speak a different language, but we all have mothers, wives and curanderas that heal the afflicted. As Anaya puts it, “If I could bring [Walt] Whitman to New Mexico then I could also bring Isis and Osiris to the Río Grande.”

This melancholic yet ultimately uplifting poem, set in three movements, follows Osiris, the brother and lover of Isis, to New Mexico where he, and later she, become metaphors of the ebb and flow of life’s cycles and the seasonal changes over an enchanted land. It is here that we find some of Anaya’s most beautiful lyricism.

He kisses her throat, and a spring of sweet water
Opens in the fissure of the lava rock.
He kisses her lips, and roses bloom on barren earth.

Some poetry critics may call Anaya’s poetic style overly narrative. And indeed the perennial cuentista, storyteller, can’t help but infuse his poetry with story. And what’s wrong with that? Anaya himself admits, “…my poems often lean toward narrative.” Yet, fellow poet Albert Ríos reminds us that “every word has a tremendous story behind it,” and that in writing poetry, “there is absolutely no one way to do it.” Readers looking for simple iambic pentameter or rhyming free verse, look elsewhere. This is poetry wrought by a master word craftsman at his prime.

What becomes clear as one reads this poetry is not just Anaya’s passion for the people and places he writes about, but his love for the transformative power of words. He tells us that in stories and poems, “one catches a glimpse of the Truth, and when the story ends, one returns fulfilled to one’s community.” Thankfully, Anaya is not yet done, either with his prose or poetic works. The last line in this the last poem reassures us.

there is always one more poem
to shape the future’s path.

_________________________________________________________________

Originally published in Latinopia Word. Copyright 2015 by Jesús Salvador Treviño. Excerpts from Poems From the Río Grande used by permission of the author. Alberto Riís quotations taken from the video “How to Write a Poem,” copyrighted by Barrio Dog Productions and available at Latinopia Word. Poems from the Río Grande is available from the publisher, at your local indie bookstore, and internet booksellers.




Best of Times, Worst of The Times: Poets Laureate of Two Cities
Michael Sedano

If an historic poetry reading featuring the Poets Laureate of San Francisco and Los Angeles happens in Los Angeles and the LA Times doesn’t report it, does it still make a joyous sound?

Saturday evening November 21, Avenue 50 Studio hosted a standing room only poetry reading that joined Luis J. Rodríguez with Alejandro Murguía, along with emerging voices from Las Lunas Locas writing community.

The LA Times reaches one out of three adults in the basin, but none of them got the word from the number one print platform west of the Hudson River. It’s not a fluke that Avenue 50 Studio’s Community Room overflowed with enthusiastic listeners. The night’s audience illustrates the power of social media and the increasing irrelevancy of “major” media to the region’s literary interests.

Luis J. Rodriguez

That small arts institutions serving people of color are unimportant to the Times drills a genuinely tragic lacuna into the heart of this media giant’s responsibility. The paper boasts that “more than 8.6 million adults18-34 across the U.S. visit latimes.com each month. In fact, the Times reaches more adults18-34 than WSJ, CNBC, MSNBC, FunnyorDie, Break, or Esquire.”

Every one of these people deserve professional coverage about literature, culture, and the arts, but every one of these people doesn’t get the opportunity to click and learn, much less drive to the northeast side of town to Avenue 50, because of the paper’s deliberate editorial blindness. If that’s all it is. What a shame the mis-served public considers the Times a newspaper of record.

The Avenue 50 Stufio program, dubbed Poets Laureate de Califas: SF y LA, offered a synoptic view of contemporary Chicana and Chicano poetry. There’s an emerging body of scholarship exploring these arts in academic journals and books, but in a single evening, students, scholars, literature lovers in attendance enjoyed informative, critically important, personal, funny, emotional, slivers of the hearts of seven poets and observed the diversity and depth characteristic of contemporary raza literature. Poems offered English, Spanish, Farsi, Armenian, and German expression.

For artists, the evening offered a primer on how to read your stuff aloud. A poetry recital is, for the poet, a confrontation of the self. The greater the poet’s familiarity with one’s emotional state in front of an audience, the deeper the poet can reach inside to discover resources for presentation that enlarge the performance repertoire and enhance the listener’s participation in the act of doing verbal art.

Seasoned readers, Luis J. Rodríguez and Alejandro Murguía exhibited outlandishly powerful skill. Rodriguez is a manuscript reader, holding his book or typescript at shoulder level without blocking the sound, always speaking to the house while following the lines. The Los Angeles Laureate divides the reading into narrative introductions then transitions onto the page.

San Francisco’s Murguía works principally from memory. His narrative transitions blend seamlessly into the poem, the rapt audience not required to observe a boundary between extemporaneity and polished publication. In Murguía’s presence, the poet is the poem.

The two Laureates leave the audience immensely satisfied with the experience and aching for more, disappointed when they hear the signpost, “My final poem is…”

The evening would have been completely satisfying featuring the two Poets Laureate in extended sets. But at the Laureates' insistence, Ceballos invited emerging women poets to share the stage. As Murguía observed, once the elevator reaches the top, send it back to the ground floor. In this case, the well-grounded poets from Las Lunas Locas enjoyed the ascent.

The energy the audience provided sent readers from Las Lunas Locas floating on air. As host and event organizer Jessica Ceballos introduced each Lunas Locas poet there was none of the awkwardness that often accompanies the walk from seat to rostrum. Energetic applause signaled anticipation and once the reader took her place, she performed as if being before an audience were as natural as breathing, or polishing an expression.

Iris De Anda, whose El Sereno healing center, Here and Now,
hosts Las Lunas Locas' weekly workshops.

Sophia Rivera is a co-founder of Las Lunas Locas

Emily Fernandez

Nadire Luna

Karineh Mahdessian reads and chants a quadriglossic poem

Mahdessian's notebook

For this night, none of the performers adopted a “poet voice” but spoke in natural cadences. Each allowed feelings and images so carefully crafted to find their meaning in the connected lines, none read as if line breaks required a pause or sing-song inflection. If one or two felt stiff and reluctant, it’s not a trait but a temporary state poets overcome by imitating the models of others on the program, and thinking of the reading as simply an extended conversation with the audience. Instead of chatting up a seatmate, then engaging the person in the next seat, then another, open up to include all within earshot.

In future readings, one might elect to get rid of that music stand lectern altogether, or, as Ceballos has done, keep the device low, near waist level so the metal frame doesn’t loom as an obstacle between the audience and the reader. The technology of the full body is as powerful as one’s voice, so eliminating the lectern offers an experience that requires the best kind of self-confrontation: the poet, her work, her audience. A recitation doesn’t get much better than this. The poet honors her work and gives each poem its due, it’s the poem’s reward for demanding to be made public.

Alejandro Murguía joins Jessica Ceballos in an index moment

The provenance of the event traces to serendipity. I was cleaning out some files and happened across picture postcards from early 20th century Mexico. I scanned them and posted them on Facebook. A Facebook friend observed that San Francisco Poet Laureate Alejandro Murguía’s Mexico postcards collection was displaying at a San Francisco museum. Landscape Architect Rhett Beavers asked me if Murguía wanted a collection Rhett owned?

Rhett Beavers and Alejandro Murguía. Rhett's baseball card collection will soon join Murguía's.

 In the course of Rhett’s giving Alejandro the collection, Murguía mentioned he’d be in LA in November. Asked if he’d like to do a reading, the Laureate said sure. I related the news to arts organizer extraordinaire Jessica Ceballos. We’d hoped to make it a trio, but Juan Felipe Herrera has become the peripatetic Laureate. In Ceballos' indefatigably capable hands, the historic Laureates of two cities reading came to Avenue 50 Studio. It was the best of times.

Jessica Ceballos, Karineh Mahdessian, Sophia Rivera, Emily Fernandez,
Luis J. Rodriguez, Alejandro Murguía, Nadire Luna, Iris De Anda

4 Floricantos: Union Station. Chaparral. ClassicSlam. On-line. Updates & News.

Rush Hour Four: Poets in Union Station East
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.

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.

2015 Los Angeles Poet Laureate Luis J. Rodriguez greets
2012 LA Poet Laureate Eloise Klein Healy.

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.

Eloise Klein Healy

Robin Coste Lewis

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. 

Luis J. Rodriguez

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.

She has been published in a variety of publications in the United States and abroad such as the literary journal Black Clock, Entropy, and Cinema Publication (Synema Publikationen, Austria).

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.

Preparations whirl around Lindsay Halladay 

I can’t tell the contestants from the cheering section, all dress in everyday casual clothes. Tiny 9th graders file past followed by nearly-grown women and men in kids' clothing. They have permission slips, for photography and riding the bus. A wristband is lunch.

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.

A following performer offers stolid contrast, gradually working from unimposing conversational mien into a powerfully self-assured feminist declaration that has women cheering loudly in solidarity and all stomping their feet. Her comrades surround her in hugs of joy when she steps off stage.

The final performer I see takes the stage with a determined spark in her eye and attitude. The Classic poem, about bilingualism, defines the logic of this reading but artistically pales contrasted to the poet’s own voice.

 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

 Sono  Arima is a poetess, novelist, and a painter. The majority of her awakened time is spent in the pursuit of exploring and perfecting her creative energies. Most of her poems comes to her in the wee hours of the mornings between the ethereal edges between sleep and the awakened state. She is concern with the human footprint upon the earth and humaneness. A transplant from Los Angeles, California and Homer, Alaska, Sono now resides in Passaic, New Jersey along with her two kittens whom she adores. You can visit her at www.sonoarima@wordpress.com




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



Frank de Jesus Acosta is principal of Acosta & Associates, a California-based consulting group that specializes in professional support services to public and private social change ventures in the areas of children, youth and family services, violence prevention, community development, and cultural fluency. In 2007, he authored, The History of Barrios Unidos, Cultura Es Cura, Healing Community Violence, published by Arte Publico Press, University of Houston. Acosta is a graduate of University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). His professional experience includes serving in executive leadership positions with The California Wellness Foundation, the Coalition for Humane Immigration Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA), Downtown Immigrant Advocates (DIA), the Center for Community Change, and the UCLA Community Programs Office. He is presently focused on completing the writing and publishing a two book series for Arte Publico Press focused on best practices to improve the well-being of Latino young men and boys. Acosta most recently co-authored a published “Brown Paper” with Jerry Tello of the National Latino Fatherhood and Family Institute (NLFFI) entitled, “Lifting Latinos Up by Their Rootstraps: Moving Beyond Trauma Through a Healing-Informed Framework for Latino Boys and Men.” Acosta provides writing and strategic professional support in research, planning, and development to foundations and community-focused institutions on select initiatives focused on advancing social justice, equity, and pluralism. He is also finalizing writing and editing a book of inter-cultural poetry and spiritual reflections.





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

José was born in Durango Mexico in 1932; grew up in California, earned a BA in Theater at San Francisco State College. He has enjoyed a lifetime of working in community theatre, playing jazz music on saxophone, flute and clarinet, writing poetry. He is a member of Seattle Norteños Writers as an events producer and performance poet. Photo is by Gene Frogge, Seattle, a candid taken during a Peace Show reading, Richard Hugo House, 2005.





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

Betty Sánchez, poeta mexicana, miembro activo de Los Escritores del Nuevo Sol.  Ha particado en varios recitales tales como Noche de Voces Xicanas, Honrando a Facundo Cabral, Colectivo Verso Activo, Poesía Revuelta y Floricantos.

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

Mario A. Escobar (January 19, 1978-) is a US-Salvadoran writer and poet born in 1978. Although he considers himself first and foremost a poet, he is known as the founder and editor of Izote Press. Escobar is a faculty member in the Department of Foreign Languages at LA Mission College. Some of Escobar’s works include Al correr de la horas (Editorial Patria Perdida, 1999) Gritos Interiores (Cuzcatlan Press, 2005), La Nueva Tendencia (Cuzcatlan Press, 2005), Paciente 1980 (Orbis Press, 2012). His bilingual poetry appears in Theatre Under My Skin: Contemporary Salvadoran Poetry by Kalina Press.




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

La Bloga friend Yago S. Cura sends along the poster and invitation to a reading Hinchas de Poesia is sponsoring in conjunction with Gus Harper gallery. Yago writes:

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.