Honoring Luis Omar Salinas. Submit! August's Next On-line Floricanto.

In Memoriam for a Friend: John Martinez Honors Luis Omar Salinas

Luis Omar Salinas left giant footsteps across the landscape of Chicano Literature. Chronologically, Salinas' work stood both as elder and avant garde to el movimiento's thundering voice. Stylistically, Omar Salinas was the movement's lyric voice, favoring a personal subject matter often flavored with an indelible sense of humor. He was an Aztec angel, offspring of a woman who was beautiful.

At the 1973 Festival de Flor y Canto, Salinas stood next to Alurista and passed the baton when Alurista honored Salinas' greatness, declaring Salinas "our greatest poet." Salinas smiled, put his hand on the San Diego poet's shoulder. "You're the man," the great Fresno poet told the up-and-coming lion, the young Alurista.

La Bloga is happy to honor Luis Omar Salinas through the voice of Salinas' friend and erstwhile roommate, John Martinez. Click here to read a guest column about Salinas in his late years.

Omar Salinas 1973: Festival de Flor y Canto, USC

I CALL OUT TO THE FARAWAY COFFIN OF OMAR SALINAS
By John Martinez

Para Luis Omar Salinas

The night is swollen
In the puffed chest of a sparrow
Manicured Bermuda
With mumbling cats,
Television heroes
Fade into pixel dust

And sleeping bankers
On leather couches, dream,
Of nothing

So, tonight, I salute
My wandering,
And call out to
The faraway coffin
Of Luis Omar Salinas

And think of his memory
In pastel yellow
And orange peel orange,
And bruised poems
Scattered like milk
Chocolate Kisses
Under the tin roof
Of Lindsay and for
The world to see

The bones of his Tia,
Forever trotting across
The tar knot streets,
Whispered to me in a dream

“Está Vivo, Luis Omar Salinas,
Durmiendo encima de un
Bus stop bench"

A caravan of ice cream trucks
And unborn babies
Falling from his pencil hand,
Stop signs moan and bend
Around him-
In life and in death

"Still, this god damned loneliness"

And Barbital itches,
And Navane, sueno,
And College girls
With unscripted secrets
Undressing to
To his romantic rue
In a cloud of Kool-

His stanza fingers

Let the tower of
The Catholic Church,
Near the liquor store
Ring its bell,
Scatter the derelict dogs,
The unemployed
Deer Dancer,
The cross dressed
Little boy and his mother,
A murdered scream
Of his father in a lunch box,
The pessimistic trucker
And his bipolar parrot-

Let them open
To the Quixotic belch;

"Omar, está vivo, en las calles de
Lindsay, Califas…”

En los llantas of trucks,
Bent chain linked fences,
Wooden houses on mud,
Politicians and their
Runaway tumbleweeds

“Huelga, Huelga,
Huelga, against the common grid,
The sculpted dream,”
Is the harmony they sing-
This flock of drugged pigeons
In white tuxedos-

"Está vivo,
Luis Omar Salinas"

Under the Orange tree
Behind his Tia's house,
Whining his shadow
Onto trawled stucco

Forever grinding
Lead onto paper

Spinning the world
Into flour dust metaphors,

Dressing dead soldiers
Of liberation in khaki clean,
And hands painted red,
Breaking the cell
Of Miguel Hernandez

This Gypsy poet,
This lazy eye, meaty faced,
Visionary-
Holding
On to us,
With a sinew smile…his smile,
That meant, only;
He loved us with his pain

(C) John Martinez 2016

All Rights Reserved

Omar Salinas and Alurista at 1973 Festival de Flor y Canto at USC. ©michael v sedano

John Martinez studied Creative Writing at Fresno State University, in the late seventies, early eighties with the late, Philip Levine. During this time, he also performed music with Teatro De La Tierra (Agustin Lira) and toured with them for 2 years. After four years, at Fresno State University, and touring, on and off with Teatro, Martinez began working with the, now, U.S. Poet Laureate, Juan Felipe Herrera, and they formed the Music-Art -Performance Group, TROKA and, subsequently, went on tour, performing throughout the United States. He then moved to Los Angeles to further his education, and to possibly attend Southwestern Law School. But, owing to economic obligations (he was a single parent, and had a child to support) be began work in a Los Angeles Firm as an Investigator. 3 years later, he was appointed Chief Investigator for that firm. In 1987, he met his wife, and they purchased their first home in Los Angeles. For the next 24 years, Martinez did not write poetry. It wasn't until the passing of his brother, award winning Novelist, and Poet, Victor Martinez, in 2011, that John Martinez begin to write again; a last promise to Victor. Since then, John Martinez has produced three books of poetry, two of which are being published by Izote Press and will be ready for AWP in Washington in 2017. In addition, he has produced an unpublished novel, Wilshire Rain, which covers white collar crime in Los Angeles in the late 80's, and chronicles the formations of Special Investigation Units that are now mainstays in most large Insurance Companies.


Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery Adding Rudolfo Anaya to Collection

This foto of Gaspar Enríquez' portrait of  Rudolfo Anaya appears in the Albuquerque Journal.

Visitors to next year's AWP in Washington, DC will want to carve out time to visit the National Portrait Gallery to see in-person Gaspar Enríquez' portrait of Rudolfo Anaya.

The commission, accepted by the Smithsonian board in May 2016, is slated for unveiling in November at the New Acquisitions exhibition.

Anaya's is the only portrait of a Chicano in the National Portrait Gallery. No Chicana portraits hang in the gallery. Director Kim Sajet's letter to Don Rudy attests to the portrait as "the first that we devote to a Hispanic figure." La Bloga looks forward to reporting the Smithsonian's second, and subsequent, commissions of raza notables.


Latinopia Adds Interviews, Essay: Anaya on Poetry. Hutton and Ortego on Geronimo. 

La Bloga values our relationship with Latinopia. We are text-oriented, Latinopia video. We are multidimensional, or multimedia, as both sites feature foto, video, and essay.

This week, Latinopia adds depth and immediacy to two recent La Bloga columns, Michael Sedano's review of The Sorrows of Young Alfonso, and his Interview with Rudolfo Anaya on recent works. Last week, Sedano's review of Paul Andrew Hutton's The Apache Wars, linked to a Latinopia interview with the historian.

Click these links to navigate to an interview with Anaya discussing poetry, an interview with Hutton on the inevitability of Apache defeat. The third links to Felipe de Ortego's essay on the inevitability of conflict and Unitedstatesian hegemony.

Rudolfo Anaya
http://latinopia.com/latino-literature/latinopia-word-rudolfo-anaya-on-poetry/

Paul Andrew Hutton
http://latinopia.com/latino-history/latinopia-event-apache-wars-2/

Felipe de Ortego
http://latinopia.com/blogs/bravo-road-with-don-felipe-8-21-16-restoring-geronimo/

Call for Papers

The Inter-University Program for Latino Research in co-sponsorship with The University of Texas at San Antonio’s Mexico Center will host in San Antonio, Texas on May 17-19, 2017 the sixth biennial Siglo XXI Conference on the Mapping of Latino Research.

For detailed instructions, visit the University's Call for Papers website here:
https://iuplr.uic.edu/iuplr/conferences/siglo-xxi-2017-call-for-papers

The proceedings from the conference will be included in a report on the state of Latino research which will focus on what we know, what we need to know on how to achieve new knowledge. This publication will be geared towards private and public funders of research. We encourage cross-disciplinary discussions as well as panels that include practitioners.


Awards and Ceremonies

The new publicity for the annual Latino Book Awards bills itself as "The Academy Awards of Latino Literature & Culture." More power to the academy, entonces.

The affair should be a fun gathering of author hopefuls, friends, familia, and the raza servers schlepping drinks and finger food to the paying guests.

The producer promises "we will be saluting Zoot Suit (the movie) and many of the cast and crew will be presenters for the Awards. This adds a special Hollywood effect for our first independent Awards to be held in Los Angeles and will create an evening not to be missed."

You can order tickets for the event at this link. https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/YK9VDXS



Penultimate Tuesday of August 2016: La Bloga On-line Floricanto
Edward Vidaurre, Tom Sheldon, Tim WoZny, Elizabeth Marino, Ivonne Gordon


“Stray Bullets” By Edward Vidaurre
“cloudland” By Tom Sheldon
“The Emperor Has No Brains” By Tim WoZny
“Furrow” By Elizabeth Marino
“You Sang to the Sun” By Ivonne Gordon

When I was training salespeople the most challenging behavior was to ask for the order. The salesperson would do it all effectively and build to stressing the benefits and value of the proposal, and stop. The customer would say something like “that’s interesting” and the sales call was over.

Writers and writing is analogous, except instead of not asking for the order, some writers don't submit and don't get published.

What if they say no?

Do the math if rejection intimidates you. You have a 50-50 chance of a “Yes” if you ask. You have a 100% chance of “No” when you don’t ask.

The lesson about asking for the order comes out of today’s La Bloga On-line Floricanto, the fifth selection, “You Sang to the Sun.” Ivonne Gordon submitted the poem last year but it did not go into a floricanto. “You Sang to the Sun” had been submitted, thus the poem stood a 50-50 chance of nomination to the On-line Floricanto.

La Bloga On-line Floricanto is a joint project of La Bloga and the Facebook community Poets Responding to SB1070: Poetry of Resistance, founded by Francisco X. Alarcón qepd. In the community, poets submit poems on an Open Call. Moderators of the group read current submissions and review archived candidates. La Bloga limits the Moderators to five nominations per floricanto. It's not surprising some fine work doesn't get an immediate nod. This month, the Moderators decided Ivonne Gordon’s tribute to Francisco X. Alarcón had waited long enough.

Submit is easily typed, less so to do. In Los Angeles, Women Who Submit, an artivist collective of writers, invites peers to make submission a mutually-supportive community event. Writers don't have to be in LA to participate.  Visit Women Who Submit's Facebook page (click here to visit) and get details):

SEPTEMBER 10, 2016, JOIN US from 12-4pm at THE FACULTY: 707 N Heliotrope Dr., Los Angeles, California 90029.
"We, Women Who Submit, want to celebrate the last four years of submissions, rejections, and acceptances with one giant nationwide online submission party.
We are inviting all women and non-binary writers around the country to submit to at least one tier one journal on 9/10/16.
PARKING: Street parking is available, but there is restricted parking near LACC. MAKE SURE TO READ THE SIGNS. 
Let's inundate these top journals with our best work and shake up their slush piles."


Opportunities rarely knock after a few months. A regular flow of submissions keeps hope alive; every  submission has a 50-50 chance of being "Yes."

 - - Michael Sedano

“Stray Bullets” By Edward Vidaurre
“cloudland” By Tom Sheldon
“The Emperor Has No Brains” By Tim WoZny
“Furrow” By Elizabeth Marino
“You Sang to the Sun” By Ivonne Gordon

Stray Bullets
By Edward Vidaurre

Some people have
poems coming to them
in the form of shovels and graveyards.

In the form of broken
neck prose and romantic
death sonnets.

In molotov cinquains and
abstract chalk outlines.

In nonet form,
in a café
with a slow view of sundown.

The poem will hit you like
a bop and stray bullet
begging for a blood
transfusion.

A shadorma that leaves
the seventh line blank
with a sigh.


cloudland
By Tom Sheldon

The trials and trying of my life

in one breath i am living and dying

I've been waiting for showers to fall

I've been standing on these shifting sands

reaching out for an open hand

gyros and lightning speak to me

perched birds breathing in secrecy ~ days drift into night...

seasons collide in change...

cloud generators and steam rise

a gentle rain falls

as night unfolds...droplets caressing stone

seedlings grow

the sun rises

one eye goes laughing,

one eye crying.



Furrow
By Elizabeth Marino

Many fields lie fallow, waiting.
The hand lingers over
the pulse from the rounded belly.
Even when the potential is gone
the mystery remains.

No perfect child will unfurl tiny fingers here.
It goes to the heart of who we are, and beyond.
Imaging seeks and finds
one intact ovary. The other
hides behind fists of gristle and blood.

The hand lingers over
the pulse from the rounded belly.
Belly and hand are mine. Many fields
lie fallow, waiting.
I am legion.



The Emperor Has No Brains
By Tim WoZny

Sing a song of Trump/Pence,
A party full of hate,
Four and twenty liars
Start the world on fire.

When the fire started
The racists began to sing—
Wasn't that an ugly thing
We did to anoint our King?

The king was in the counting-house
Counting out his money,
The queen was at the beach
Stealing words for her speech,

The GOP was in an awful state
Now the party of no hope.
Neck deep in troubled waters
With no one to throw a rope.



You Sang to the Sun
By Ivonne Gordon

To Francisco X. Alarcón

You sang to the sun
and crossed yourself
with the moon. You heal,
you healed the leaves
wrapped in the trees.
You are the root
Edged on Mother Earth.
You are not alone.


Meet the Poets
“Stray Bullets” By Edward Vidaurre
“cloudland” By Tom Sheldon
“The Emperor Has No Brains” By Tim WoZny
“Furrow” By Elizabeth Marino
“You Sang to the Sun” By Ivonne Gordon

Edward Vidaurre is the author of four books. I Took My Barrio On A Road Trip, (Slough Press 2013), Insomnia (El Zarape Press 2014), Beautiful Scars: Elegiac Beat Poems (El Zarape Press 2015), and his latest collection Chicano Blood Transfusion (FlowerSong Books) was published this year. Vidaurre is the founder of Pasta, Poetry, and Vino--a monthly open mic gathering of artists, poets, and musicians. He resides in McAllen, TX with his wife and daughter

Tom Sheldon was born and raised in New Mexico and comes from a large Hispanic family. He has always loved and appreciated the gift of creating in various forms. Southwestern themes and landscapes are among Sheldon’s favorites—the wonder and beauty of New Mexico’s history and his surroundings continually inspire his artwork.

Tim Wozny started writing poetry on napkins at the coffee counters in his hometown of Chicago Heights. He eventually went on to publish "Heart of a Poet" in 1998 and continues to write poetry, take pictures and work hard at saving the world in Humboldt County California

Poet and educator Elizabeth Marino's work most recently appeared in print and online: LaBloga Best of 2014, The Significant Anthology (India), The Muse of Peace (Gambia), Overthrow Capitalism (RPB), 2016 Hessler Street Fair Poetry Anthology (Cleveland), Poets Responding to SB1070, and the online jazz poetry collection As Sweet as You Are. She studied with Juan Felipe Herrera at the first Las dos Brujas writing workshop."

Ivonne Gordon was born in Quito, Ecuador. Her work reflects her nomadic vision, which she expands to limitless inner geographies and borders. She is a poet, literary critic, and literary translator. She has a Ph.D. from UC, Irvine in Latin American Literature. She is a Professor of Latin American Literature at the University of Redlands. She has published: Cuerpos de Ceniza (forthcoming); Meditar de sirenas (Sweden); Meditar de sirenas Second Edition (Chile); Barro blasfemo (Spain ); Manzanilla del insomnio (Ecuador); Colibríes en el exilio (Ecuador). Has been invited to International Poetry Festivals in Colombia, Ecuador, Hungary, Nicaragua, United States and other countries. She was also invited to read her poetry on two occasions at The Library of Congress in Washington, DC. Her work has been included in several Poetry Anthologies published in the United States, Uzbekistan, Latin America, and Europe. Also published in poetry journals in the US, Europe, Africa and Latin America. Her work has been translated to English, Polish, and Flemish. She was Keynote Speaker at International Literature conferences at several universities in the USA. Was recipient of the Fulbright Scholar Award. Among her distinctions she received the Jorge Carrera Andrade Poetry Award in Ecuador, Finalist of the International Award Francisco de Aldana, and Finalist in the International Extraordinary Award of Casa de las Américas.

1973 Festival de Flor Y Canto Update: Digitizing U-matic Tape

Michael Sedano

They Exist!

When I return to California from overseas in 1970, a friend tells me about a tiny bookstore over the hill in Monterey Park that sells "Chicano Literature." Well, obviously I knew "Chicano," a word taught me by my Dad from my earliest years. But when I'd left civilization for the US Army in 1969, I had no sense that we produced published literature. So I drive down from Temple City,  over Atlantic and down to the little nook where, after a fascinating conversation with the old guy who owned the place, I laid down $1.25, I think, for a copy of Abelardo's "25 Pieces of a Chicano Mind." With that, the abstraction of "Chicano Literature" began to take on substance for me. (I lent that small pamphlet to a person who kept it. Damn you, I hope you know who you are and gut-wrenching guilt drives you return it to me, along with my El Espejo.)

By 1973, after a couple years working for a living, I am in Grad School at the University of Southern California on the G.I. Bill. Having selected a dissertation topic centering around Chicano poetry, I am tickled brown to see that El Centro Chicano will host a half-week long Festival de Flor Y Canto. I am the Chief Photographer for The Daily Trojan, so I assign myself the joyful task of shooting the event. The DT doesn't send a reporter to cover the event.

As I've described earlier, when Oscar Zeta Acosta gets up to read, he pillories the video company for being a tool of the LAPD, and demands "turn the fucking cameras off". They apparently do so, as the camera operators leave the room. Too bad mine will provide the only record of Zeta's moving reading. That week, I happily fill roll after roll of 35mm film, and the next week I publish a double truck of images and poems in the DT.

Fast forward to Spring 2007. Someone Emails me a link to Acosta reading from Revolt of the Cockroach People. Click. I'm stunned to discover it's Acosta reading at USC! That sneaky Tom Reddin has had the last laugh after all. My appetite whetted, I want to see and hear the other poets and writers I have on Tri-X negatives and a few Ektachromes. Search USC library. Nothing; how surprising. Search UC's Melvyl. Better; the University of California Riverside has 41 videos of individual readers. My plan hatches: to unite my still photographs with the videos as a way to introduce visually, today's students to the history and growth of Chicano Literature. There is already a published anthology of El Festival, now out of print (ISBN: 978-0-88474-031-5 ISBN-10: 0-88474-031-5), and my plan expands to include this as a revised and expanded multimedia publication.

When February 2008 finally arrives, and it's my first month of retirement from the world of work, I call Billy Vela, who heads USC's El Centro Chicano, thinking Billy can help me locate the original tapes. No such luck. Billy has an inkling there was a festival but the institution has not kept records from that period. In fact, El Centro doesn't have a photograph of the original El Centro. Eventually I contact the University Archivist at Doheny Memorial Library and, after a protracted conversation with a variety of gente, in early November, the University grants me permission to digitize UCR's videos into DVDs and use these for my own noncommercial purposes. USC--Doheny Memorial Library and El Centro Chicano, of course, will get a complete set of the DVDs as well as streaming videos to deploy through the university's modern mutlimedia channels. 

Technology Issues

Sony's U-matic videocassette format was once a popular standard for recording and distributing professional video. A 3/4" wide length of metal oxide coated mylar film, U-matic was the cat's meow of television production in the 1960s and 70s. Now, it's all but disappeared.

Juan Felipe Herrera, poet and UCR profe, helps find UCR's only functioning U-matic cassette player. Jim Glenn, Director of the Media Center, dusts off the tapes and sets up a viewing room for me. Fabulous hospitality. Mejor, Jim has already adapted the BNC terminal to an RCA plug. That had loomed as a minor headache. A preliminary visit to UCR verifies everything works, and it's now full speed ahead. 

To make the dub I connect a three-way RCA-to-mini cable to the BNC/RCA adapter and the Left and Right audio outputs. The mini plug goes into a digital video camera's AV port. Now it's a simple matter of starting the camera, starting the U-matic, and letting the cassette play to the finish. Unfortunately, only the right audio channel excites the VU meters.

Most of the Festival de Flor Y Canto performances run ten to twenty minutes, so I can get three or more readers onto a one hour DV tape. Sony U-matic, meet Sony DV. There are glitches, sadly, in several tapes, but overall the video and audio quality are more than satisfying.

I do a little work in Final Cut Pro, but use iMovieHD for the majority of my work. There are a few finer edits, and the creation of full quality and streaming QuickTime media. I use DVD Studio Pro to lay the files onto DVD.

Curiouser and Curiouser Issues

UCR's U-matic cassettes are at least two generations removed from the original programs. This is obvious when I observe some cassettes feature lead-in music, titles, and voice over introductions for two speakers, but only one speaker is on the cassette. Other performances begin with faint lead-in music and VO, a title slide, then the performer.

I remember the big semi-trailer production vans outside Town & Gown where the Festival was held (but didn't shoot them). Tom Reddin Productions would have recorded on 2" Ampex machines, in all likelihood. Where'd the originals disappear to? The gavel-to-gavel original tape is a national treasure. Is it sitting in some archive in New York City? Hollywood or the Valley? Or did Reddin burn off his 3/4" copies then erase the 2" tape--a standard practice of the day.

I contacted Silas Abrego, who headed El Centro Chicano back in 1973. Sy, recently retired from Cal State Fullerton, has no idea. I've had several Email conversations with Frank "Pancho del Rancho" Sifuentes, who stage managed the festival performers (and drove Zeta and Raúlrsalinas through the streets of greater El Lay in a guided tour of western Aztlán), and Frank has no idea (but he had a grand time).

Who sold what to whom? UCR and Texas A&M hold 3/4" videos. Sonoma State, Fullerton, Cal State Bakersfield, Arizona State and University of Arizona hold audiocassettes of the 1973 Festival de Flor Y Canto. The producers of "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," who did the DVD of Zeta, acknowledge UCR's help in making their copy. Did USC/El Centro Chicano get royalties? According to Sifuentes, he signed a release, and, Benny Luna, Frank says, remembers getting a check one time.

Status Report

UCR's collection includes 41 titles. Sadly, two artist cassettes are lost; José Montoya and Roberto Vargas. Texas A&M Kingsville has Montoya but not Vargas. Barbara Robinson at USC will inter-library loan the Montoya. Interestingly, Barbara was the librarian then employed at UCR who purchased the Festival de Flor Y Canto materials for the library, named after then-Chancellor Tomás Rivera. Barbara has searched the USC campus from top to bottom seeking the original tapes.

I have recorded and created DVD-ready files of 33 performances, leaving six to complete at my next session. I've done the dubbing in catalog number sequence, so I have numbers 36 through 41 remaining. These include three teatro crews and writers Ricardo Sanchez, Estevan Arellano, and Oscar Acosta.

I've made only a few streaming QuickTime files. I'm pretty sure I'll have to edit the performances to individual snippets, to save on file space and "bandwidth," so the only way for you to view a writer's complete performance, or the complete Festival, will be to get the DVDs from USC.

USC has not decided on a distribution or marketing strategy for the DVDs. My motive when I began the process was to package the DVDs with a revised and expanded anthology, to afford the reader text to follow along with the reading. Just as some gente love to listen to symphonies while following the score, I love to hear a reading while following text. Such media would be beautiful for literacy and speech training, as well as the puro enjoyment of hearing an artist read her or his own work. My next project will be to pursue that out-of-print anthology, update it with work produced after 1973, and augment the collection with work from today's poets and writers. And to hold the 2010 Festival de Flor Y Canto at USC, videotape it, and add this to the record of Chicanarte. ¿Que no?

In Their Own Voice

Here, as promised last week, in appreciation for Karen (Harlow) McClintock's eulogy for her friend Omar Salinas, is Omar Salinas--¡Presente!-- reading Ass. In addition, rrsalinas--¡Presente!--reading a beautiful piece, Songs of Love.

These videos are copyright 1974 and 2008 by the University of Southern California. Please do not make copies of these.

 Omar Salinas

Raúlrsalinas

La Bloga welcomes your comments on this, and every column. Click on the Comments counter, below, to share your observations. When you have a more than a brief response, or a book or arts review, or an extended report on a cultural event, or a writer's own ruminations, remember, La Bloga welcomes guest columnists. Click here to begin the invitation process.

Bits and Pieces of the King's Gold

Michael Sedano

2010 Festival de Flor Y Canto Call for Writers & Artists

Planning is now in the definite maybe stage for a literary and arts festival at the University of Southern California in 2010 during fiestas patrias observances, celebrated in the United States as "Hispanic Heritage Month" in September and October.

Linked here is the first call for participants. If you are a surviving writer or presenter from the 1973 Festival de Flor Y Canto, please click and send your contact information. The festival looks to showcase the growth of Chicana Chicano Latina Latino literature since 1973, so contemporary writers need to click, too, and send along your contact information.

La Bloga will continue reporting on developments of the upcoming floricanto. For some background, see this post.

And thinking of that 1973 cast of artists, Daniel Olivas' Monday column reported Christopher Buckley's tribute to Luis Omar Salinas. The portrait in Dan's article shows Salinas at an advanced age. Here's a photo of Salinas, left, with Alurista, when both appeared at the 1973 Festival de Flor Y Canto.

To view additional photos of Flor Y Canto of 1973, see this page. The full collection of photos will be part of a gallery show at the 2010 event, including a portrait series I call "¡Presente!" featuring images of writers, like Omar Salinas, who have died since that first Flor Y Canto.

Front Range Paper Leading the Way

Who hasn't witnessed the shrinking space newspapers allot to literature and book review sections? One paper, The Rocky Mountain News, is showing the big rags east and west how to do literature honorably. Celebrating its 150th anniversary--and the city of Denver's 150th--The Rocky Mountain News is showcasing local writers by commissioning original fiction. As the paper observes:

This November, the city of Denver celebrates its 150th anniversary. In April, the Rocky follows with its own 150th. To commemorate both, we're celebrating the creative spirit that has marked our city since 1858, with a special series titled A Dozen on Denver: Stories to celebrate the city at 150. For the series, we've commissioned 11 Colorado authors to write original fiction. We asked the authors to choose a different decade of Denver's history, to mention Larimer Street at least once in their stories and to keep it all to 2,500 words.

Today's Dozen on Denver featured writer is La Bloga co-founder Manuel Ramos. You can read his piece by navigating to The Rocky Mountain News' "Dozen on Denver" page here; make sure to listen to Manuel's interview linked on that page. Here's a link to Manuel's story, "Fence Busters".

The King's Gold Doesn't Quite Fill A Formula

Arturo Pérez-Reverte. The King's Gold. NY: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2008.
ISBN 9781436240598

They say the memory's the second thing to go, when you get old, and I don't remember what the first thing is. Or maybe it's inattention. A few weeks ago, Daniel Olivas cited Rigoberto González' review of Yxta Maya Murray's new novel, The King's Gold. Only the title stuck in my mind. So when I browsed the new books shelf at the Pasadena Public Library, I saw that title, something triggered in my memory. and I picked it up.

The King's Gold I held is the work of Arturo Pérez-Reverte, not Yxta Maya Murray. Ni modo. Manuel Ramos turned me on to Pérez-Reverte, and I enjoyed Pérez-Reverte's The Sun Over Breda hence walked away happily with with my borrowed novel. You'll share the sentiment if you find your own copy.

It's a confection of a novel. With Fall hard upon us, it's time for sitting by a fireplace with something to pass a few hours. Nothing heavy, puro adventure. This one fits that niche. If some kid were to ask for a definition of the world "swashbuckler" I wouldn't bother with a dictionary, I'd give the reader a copy The King's Gold.

Sixteen years old, Íñigo Balboa narrates the story of his and Captain Alatriste's return from Breda to Seville, Spain. War, the pair learn, is a simple affair of point and slash. In Spain, nothing is nearly that obvious. Moreover, mid-17th century Spain is a mess of political intrigue complicated by old enemies, old friends, petty local cops, Moorish slaves, whores and crooks, and royalty.

The story's a reminiscence of an old man. Balboa alludes to his own high adventures and heroics yet to come, and much as he builds the larger-than-life character of Alatriste, Balboa magnifies the reader's affection for Alatriste by reminding us that the hero will be slayed in some upcoming adventure. This interplay of future against current events is an interesting technique to be on the lookout for, or have your emotions toyed with:

By God, it's been a long road. All the people in this story--the captain, Quevedo, Gualterio Malatesta, Angélica de Alquézar--died a long time ago and only in these pages can I make them live again and recapture them exactly as they were. Their ghosts, some loved, some loathed, remain intact in my memory, along with that whole harsh, violent, fascinating time that, for me, will always be the Spain of my youth and the Spain of Captain Alatriste.

The King's Gold is a work of translation, with the attendant cultural traps of vocabulary. These are reduced by the technology and setting of 1626, and the skill of Margaret Jull Costa. "The bluebottles," the cops, is so frequently used that I'd like to see the Spanish to see if this is a cultural substitution or a literal translation.

Irrespective of one's historical knowledge, Pérez-Reverte and his translator provide a vivid portrait of gritty hand-to-mouth existence of soldiers thrown into a world without a Veteran's Administration. To survive, some turn to thievery and murder. Our heroes accept a mercenary job to turn pirate and capture a treasure ship freshly arrived from Mexico. Sadly--because it would be such fun--the author misses an opportunity to draw out his story with the formulaic recruiting of his warriors like the movies "The Dirty Dozen" or "The Magnificent Seven". There's a colorful visit to a condemned killer and a fleeting glance at a couple of recruits. But drawing out character studies would take away from the focus on swordplay and bloodletting, and half of them will be killed in the raid, so we get a list of names and descriptions of their blades.

And use their blades they do. That's what swashbucklers do.


Book Give-Away Winner

Last week's winner came as a late entry, a Denver resident who discovered La Bloga by reading Manuel Ramos' bio in the Rocky Mountain News. Hachette / La Bloga are happy to recognize Marie Madrid's 100% correct responses to Saturday's questionnaire. Marie is receiving by US Mail these eight outstanding titles:

Dream in Color by Linda Sánchez, Loretta Sánchez
Gunmetal Black by Daniel Serrano
The Gifted Gabaldón Sisters by Lorraine López
Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya
Brownsville by Oscar Casares
The Hummingbird's Daughter by Luis Urrea
The General and the Jaguar by Eileen Welsome
Tomorrow They Will Kiss by Eduardo Santiago

Look for your opportunity to win the final set of eight this weekend.

And that's the antepenultimate Tuesday of October, 2008. A Tuesday like any other Tuesday, except, we are here. Thank you for reading La Bloga, and gracias de antemano for your comments on this, and any, La Bloga column. To comment, just click on the Comments counter below. And remember, La Bloga welcomes guest columnists. If you'd like to share your thoughts on books, arts, culture, or respond to something you've read here, click here to declare your interest in being our guest.

Because I do hope to turn Aged Eagles' honor...

Michael Sedano

I am not a television watcher so it came as a surprise to me that the Public Broadcasting System has sponsored a documentary series on World War II that will ignore the role Chicanos served in what one writer calls, with unintended but bitter irony, "the greatest generation."

Ignored. As in, a seven part television series and not a reference to the guys like my father who left Redlands, California in 1944, to train at Ft. Knox, then ship over to England, then drive a tank in George Patton's armored corps from France to Leipzig. My dad's stories bring him nightmares, sadness, and names. Many of them raza. Ignored by PBS. Ignored by Ken Burns.

Ignored. As in the Chicano Felix Longoria, who died in the Philippines. His remains recovered and returned to the United States in 1948, his family was forbidden burial of their son's body in his hometown of Three Rivers, Texas. The soldier was, in life, a Mexican, all the reason needed to deny the family access to their hometown funeral chapel. Through the intercession of the American GI Forum and Lyndon Johnson, Longoria's final resting place is Arlington National Cemetery. But not his hometown. Ignored by PBS. Ignored by Ken Burns.

Ignored. As in the bloody crossing of the Rapido River in Italy, 1944. German artillery and machinegunners enjoyed the killing. Wave after wave of Texas National Guardsmen paddled their rubber boats into the river, to be cut to pieces. 2100 GIs died. Ignored by PBS. Ignored by Ken Burns.

So this Ash Wednesday, as I read again T.S. Eliot's poem for the day, I think about the hubris of PBS and film maker Ken Burns and wonder why they do not hope to turn again, to tell the world some of our story, too, and not just their chosen few?

Because I do not hope to turn again
Because I do not hope
Because I do not hope to turn
Desiring this man's gift and that man's scope
I no longer strive to strive towards such things
(Why should the aged eagle stretch its wings?)
Why should I mourn
The vanished power of the usual reign?

Does Eliot want me to be so hopeless? I refuse. I don't want Ken Burns' conscience. I sure would like to see my dad's generation of aged eagles stretch their wings with pride and joy that their contribution has been acknowledged, remembered. But not ignored. Yes, I'd love to see the usual reign of PBS and the selective memory of Ken Burns vanish. Let him construct something we can all rejoice in.

Because I know that time is always time
And place is always and only place
And what is actual is actual only for one time
And only for one place
I rejoice that things are as they are and
I renounce the blessed face
And renounce the voice
Because I cannot hope to turn again
Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something
Upon which to rejoice

Today, I honor the men of the Rapido River, Felix Longoria and our thousands of war dead wherever they may lie. The guys I was in the Army with. I acknowledge and honor the men who fought with my father, who sits at home in Redlands. He hasn't forgotten, nor does he hope to turn again.

I share two poems with you. I hope you'll read these and think about writing PBS and Ken Burns a letter, asking them why, with all their media power, couldn't they make a greater effort?

Let these words answer
For what is done, not to be done again
May the judgement not be too heavy upon us

Robstown.
Omar Salinas.

La llorona
is in town
by the river
or so the people
say.
Tomorrow
the sun
of Robstown
will rise
at 6:15
and if we catch any
of you drunk Mexicans
on the street
we’ll drive you out of Town.
1947.
Mother, why do they look
at us like
that?
We’ll go to
the rosary
at San Antonio
and pray.
Anita’s brother
has a Congressional
and they
wouldn’t serve him
at Texas
restaurant.
We’ll go to
the rosary
at San Antonio
and pray.
San Antonio
Is the Catholic
Church in Robstown.

In Voices of Aztlan. Chicano Literature of Today. Ed by Dorothy E. Harth and Lewis M. Baldwin. NY: New American Library, 1974. 188-189

To brothers dead crossing the rapido river…194?

in a day
in an afternoon
in a night
in years of fury
and tears
alone and far from home
away from familiar sounds
tender arms
you fell on the earth of italy
blood of mexico
blood of the northern
deserts
blood of the bitter border
spilled on earth of italy
on the earth of italy
hope of america
the vain hope of america
never realized hope of america
against a wall of teuton steel
you waded the chilling river
waters tasting of death
far from home
tasting of sudden death
left your dead on the river banks
tears of mothers on the river banks
hopes of sweethearts on the river banks
left tomorrows on the river banks
bitter yesterdays on the river banks
for a hope
vain hope

Anonymous pp 42-43 in Antonia Castañeda Shular, Tomás Ybarra-Frausto, Joseph Sommers. Literatura Chicana. Texto y Contexto. Englewood Cliffs NJ: Prentice Hall, 1972.