Gratitude, Martín Espada and Acentos


1. Give what you want to receive. The flow of Abundance is already all around you. To step into this flow is easy. Give to someone else the very thing you would like to receive. And give it freely without expectations of receiving, as if you already had more than enough. If you want more kindness in your life, be kind to someone, if you want more happiness in your life, make someone else happy, if you want more money in your life, share a little of what you have. Give it away easily, like you already had all that you need and there is plenty more from where that came from. 


2. Trust and know. The next step is to trust and know you have just stepped into the flow of abundance and are now aligned with what you want. Know there is more than enough to go around. 
 


3. Take Action. Participation is an important part of Abundance. While you are knowing you are now aligned with the flow of the abundance you want, it is also important to participate and help make things happen. Follow your inner knowing and your intuition and do your part to help create the abundance you would like to have. Continue to participate until you are receiving what you want.
 


4. Be Grateful. Gratitude is a vital step in the flow of abundance. It is a powerful magnet which keeps us in the flow and aligned with receiving all the wonderful things we desire. Fill yourself with gratitude all the time, even about the small and seemingly simple things in your life. There is always something to be grateful about. When you notice a little of what you want flowing to you, take a moment and be grateful for what you have received, regardless of how big or small it may be. Be grateful and say thank you. 



5. Pass it on. When you receive a little abundance take a moment and pass some of it on and assist someone else in feeling a little more abundant. When you pass on some of what you receive, do it easily as if you already have more than you need, expecting nothing in return. When you pass it on in this way you are now starting the process all over again and have once again taken the first step to "give what you want to receive." In this way the flow of abundance continues and becomes more and more each time.

Martín Espada 

From Our Friends at Acentos:

Acentos Writers Workshop welcomes Martín Espada 

Eugenio María de Hostos Community College 

Friday, May 8th, 2009 at 7pm.

Acentos Writers Workshop welcomes Martín Espada to Eugenio María de Hostos Community College on Friday, May 8th, 2009 at 7pm sharp. FREE!

We are extremely excited to announce that Martín Espada will facilitate a workshop for Acentos. Called “the Latino poet of his generation” and “the Pablo Neruda of North American authors,” Martín Espada was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1957. He has published sixteen books in all as a poet, editor, essayist and translator, including two collections of poems last year: Crucifixion in the Plaza de Armas (Smokestack, 2008), released in England, and La Tumba de Buenaventura Roig (Terranova, 2008), a bilingual edition published in Puerto Rico.

The Republic of Poetry, a collection of poems published by Norton in 2006, received the Paterson Award for Sustained Literary Achievement and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Another collection, Imagine the Angels of Bread (Norton, 1996), won an American Book Award and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Other books of poetry include Alabanza: New and Selected Poems (Norton, 2003), A Mayan Astronomer in Hell’s Kitchen (Norton, 2000), City of Coughing and Dead Radiators (Norton, 1993), and Rebellion is the Circle of a Lover’s Hands (Curbstone, 1990). He has received numerous awards and fellowships, including the Robert Creeley Award, the Antonia Pantoja Award, the Charity Randall Citation, the Paterson Poetry Prize, the Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award, the National Hispanic Cultural Center Literary Award, the Premio Fronterizo, two NEA Fellowships, the PEN/Revson Fellowship and a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship.

His poems have appeared in the The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review, Harper’s, The Nation and The Best American Poetry. He has also published a collection of essays, Zapata’s Disciple (South End, 1998); edited two anthologies, Poetry Like Bread: Poets of the Political Imagination from Curbstone Press (Curbstone, 1994) and El Coro: A Chorus of Latino and Latina Poetry (University of Massachusetts, 1997); and released an audiobook of poetry called Now the Dead will Dance the Mambo (Leapfrog, 2004). His work has been translated into ten languages. A former tenant lawyer, Espada is now a professor in the Department of English at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, where he teaches creative writing and the work of Pablo Neruda.

Espada will facilitate a 2 hour poetry workshop for free. Yes, I said free. We are welcoming the community at large. Yet, there will not be massive chaos. There will be a registration process. If you have not e-mailed Fish@louderarts.com to register, you will not be able to take the workshop. Notice, this workshop is on a Friday evening at 7pm. Bring your pens, bring your paper, bring your hearts. Palante papi, Siempre palante.

Eugenio María de Hostos Community College Savoy Building, 120 East 149th Street, corner of Walton Ave, Multipurpose Room, Second Floor New York 10451 • Phone 917-209-4211 7pm sharp! Directions to Hostos Community College

Hostos Community College is located at a safe and busy intersection just steps from the subway station and bus stop. By subway: take the 2,4,5 IRT trains to 149th Street (Eugenio María de Hostos Boulevard) and the Grand Concourse.By bus: take the Bx1 or cross-town Bx19 to 149th Street (Eugenio María de Hostos Boulevard) and the Grand Concourse. By car:From Manhattan, take the FDR Drive north to the Willis Avenue Bridge to the Major Deegan Expressway (87N). Proceed north to Exit 3. Take the right fork in the exit ramp to the Grand Concourse and proceed north to East 149th Street (Eugenio María de Hostos Boulevard) From Queens, take the Triborough Bridge to the Major Deegan Expressway. Continue north to Exit 3. Take the right fork in the exit ramp to the Grand Concourse and proceed north to East 149th Street (Eugenio María de Hostos Boulevard).From Westchester, take the Major Deegan Expressway south (87S) to Exit 3.

Turn left at the light. Turn left again at Grand Concourse and proceed north to East 149th Street (Eugenio María de Hostos Boulevard) .From New Jersey, take the George Washington Bridge to the Major Deegan Expressway south to Exit 3. Turn left at the light. Turn left again at Grand Concourse and proceed north to East 149th Street (Eugenio María de Hostos Boulevard)


Fish Vargas 917-209-4211

Lisa Alvarado

Teatro Vista, Tanya Saracho and Our Lady

TEATRO VISTA, THEATRE WITH A VIEW is firmly committed to sharing and celebrating the riches of Latino culture with all Chicago theatre audiences. This commitment stems from the belief that there are as may similarities as there are differences, and that perhaps the answer to breaking down the walls of prejudice and stereotypes lies in understanding these differences. Ultimately, it is through this "view" that Teatro Vista intends to bridge the gap between Latino and non-Latino cultures in Chicago.

A Message from the Founders Henry Godinez, Director-Founder Edward F. Torres, Artistic Director-Founder WE MET IN 1989, while working on a play together here in Chicago. We both felt that it was a shame that Latinos weren't getting roles outside of stereotypical casting. So we founded Teatro Vista. We hoped that all of Chicagoland could enjoy the sort of theatre that we had envisioned. Our Mission Statement is from our hearts and we hope that our "view" is one you share. We hope you like our "Theatre with a View" and will visit us in person, as well as our website, as often as you can.

Our Lady of the Underpass by Tanya Saracho 

The same week that Rome announced a new Pope, a woman driving home from work spotted an image of the Virgin Mary on a discolored wall of the Fullerton Avenue underpass.


Playwright Tanya Saracho renders the voices of those who were drawn to that wall, exploring issues of faith and desire in present day Chicago. Tanya Saracho (Playwright) Tanya Saracho was born in Sinaloa, México and moved to Texas in the late 80's. As the proud Co-Founder and Co-Artistic Director of Teatro Luna: Chicago's All-Latina Theater Ensemble, Tanya's writing has been featured in most of Teatro Luna's ensemble-built works including Generic Latina, Dejame Contarte, The Maria Chronicles, SOLO Latinas, S-E-X-Oh! and Lunatic(a)s.

Tanya's play Kita y Fernanda has received productions at Teatro Luna (2003) and 16th Street Theatre (2008) along with a reading at Repertorio Español while a finalist for the 2003 Nuestras Voces playwrighting competition. Other Awards include: The Ofner Prize given by the Goodman Theatre, Finalist for the Christopher B. Wolk Award at Abingdon Theatre in NYC, nominee for the Wasserstein Prize and winner of the Khan Award.

Her solo play Quita Mitos received a world premier with Teatro Luna, in November of 2006 and has toured colleges and festivals, including the International Hispanic Theatre Festival and the Goodman's Latino Theatre Festival. Other productions include: Jarred (A Hoodoo Comedy) and Lunatic(a)s. Tanya is working on a fellowship in collaboration between The Goodman Theatre and the Institute for Women and Gender Studies at Columbia College on an interview-based piece titled 27 where she will interview one woman from each of the 27 countries that make up the Latin Diaspora.

She is also under commission from Steppenwolf Theatre to adapt Sandra Cisnero's "The House on Mango Street" slated to open in the fall of 2009. Directing/co-directing credits include: Solo Tu, Lunatic(a)s, the remount of Generic Latina, Piece of Ass for Estrogen Fest, The Maria Chronicles for both the Goodman's Latino Theater Festival and the critically acclaimed full-length run at Teatro Luna, and S-e-x-Oh!, Que Bonita Bandera and Three Days for SÓLO Latinas. Also an accomplished actor, Tanya's performing credits include Neil Labutte's Fat Pig with Renaissance Theatreworks in Milwaukee, Migdalia Cruz' Another Part of the House with Teatro Vista, Living Out with American Theatre Co./Teatro Vista, Electricidad at Goodman Theatre, and Angels in America and La Casa De Bernarda Alba with Aguijon Theater. Tanya is a Resident Playwright at Chicago Dramatists and her voice can be heard around the country in radio and television commercials.

Sandra Marquez (Director) has been a proud ensemble member of Teatro Vista, the mid-west's only Equity Latino theater company, since 1997 and served as the company's Associate Artistic Director from 1998-2006. In 2005 she made her main stage directorial debut with Teatro Vista's production of Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner by Luis Alfaro. Previously she had conceived and directed an ensemble studio piece for Teatro Vista called Vampiros y Bebes. Other directing credits include student productions at various venues as well as her work with Yollocalli, the Theater Summer Outreach Program under the auspices of The Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum and The Goodman Theater which served the young people of Chicago's Pilsen neighborhood. Teatro Vista acting credits include Icarus, Another Part of the House, Santos and Santos, Living Out (for which she was Jeff nominated). Other credits include The Oregon Shakespeare Festival (Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner), Victory Gardens (Anna in the Tropics); The Goodman Theater (Mariela in the Desert, Electricidad, Massacre, Zoot Suit & A Christmas Carol); Steppenwolf Theater (Sonia Flew, One Arm, A Streetcar Named Desire, and The Boiler Room); Madison Repertory Theater (Our Town).

Ms. Marquez is a member of AEA, AFTRA, and SAG and has worked in many industrial films and national commercials. Film and TV credits include Timer, Stranger than Fiction, Early Edition, Prison Break, Women's Murder Club and Big Bang Theory. Ms. Marquez has been on faculty at Loyola University, Eastern Michigan University and Columbia College of Chicago. Currently she is an adjunct faculty member at Northwestern University where she has been teaching since 1995. Teatro Vista...Theatre with a View is at the forefront of the Latino theatre movement in the U.S. Chicago and ensemble based Teatro Vista is universally redefining the American landscape through the use of new, provocative and unique voices that reflect the Latino experience in the U.S.

After 18 years of existence it has empowered and encouraged "first voice" among the community and its artists. 

Our Lady of The Underpass opens to Rave Reviews:

"Absolutely don't miss this really special piece! Saracho's ear is terrific." – Kelly Kleiman, WBEZ Dueling Critics

"It is quite the artistic achievement." Randy Hardwick, chicagocritic.com

"Our Lady veers — just like real life — from laugh-out-loud hilarious, to gut-wrenching to enraging to contemplative." – Catey Sullivan, examiner.com

"This is brilliant work that is worth the trip to see. Director Sandra Marquez has assembled the perfect cast to bring these characters to life." – Alan Bresloff, steadstylechicago.com

"The details of the monologues are perfect..." – Laura Molzahn, The Reader Newspaper

NOW Through MARCH 29

GREENHOUSE THEATER

2257 N. LINCOLN AVE.

CHICAGO, IL

(To read our reviews visit this link:www.theatreinchicago.com)

Tickets are available now! To purchase please click www.teatrovista.tix.com or call 773-404-7336

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THE EVENT:

Support Chicago HOPES, an educational program for the city's homeless children, at:
Casa Aztlán
1831 S. Racine Ave
Chicago, IL 60608
(312) 666-5508
THURSDAY, MARCH 19TH 7PM



Acknowledging the strengths of Mexican families, Casa Aztlán seeks to sustain the strong cultural identity of the Pilsen community by organizing and educating residents and providing supportive services in order to combat social violence, discrimination and poverty.

what i'm on

With a performance by Luis Humberto Valadez

THE BOOK: what i'm on

Camino del Sol: A Latina/Latino Literary Series, 64 pages
ISBN: 978-0-8165-2740-3, $15.95 paper

Luis Humberto Valadez is a poet/performer/musician from the south side of the Chicago area whose work owes as much to hip-hop as it does to the canon and has been described by esteemed activist writer Amiri Baraka as "strong-real light flashes."

His debut poetry collection what i'm on is frankly autobiographical, recounting the experiences of a Mexican American boy growing up in a tough town near Chicago. Just as in life, the feelings in these poems are often jumbled, sometimes spilling out in a tumble, sometimes coolly recollected. Valadez's poems shout to be read aloud. It's then that their language dazzles most brightly. It's then that the emotions bottled up on the page explode beyond words. And there is plenty of emotion in these poems. Sometimes the words jump and twitch as if they‚d been threatened or attacked. Sometimes they just sit there knowingly on the page, weighted down by the stark reality of it all.

José García put a thirty-five to me
my mother was in the other room
He would have done us both
if not for the lust of my fear

THE BUZZ:

This new Mexican American/Chicano voice is all at once arresting, bracing, shocking, and refreshing. This is not the poetry you learned in school. But Valadez, who received his MFA from the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poets at Naropa University, has paid his academic dues, and he certainly knows how to craft a poem. It's just that he does it his way. Luis Humberto Valadez works as a coordinator and consultant for the Chicago Public Schools Homeless Education Program.

Recordings of Valadez performing his poems can be found at MySpace.com, Reverb Nation, and other Internet sites. 

“Brave, raw, and exposing of a young mans consciousness. Luis’s work is not confessional in the limited, put-it-in-a-box way that big publishers like to market their material to liberal guilt.” -Andrew Schelling, author of Tea Shack Interior

“In voices colloquial and church, reverent and riotous, serious and sly; in rap and fragment, sound and sin; from gangs and minimum-wage jobs to astrology and Christ, Luis Valadez makes his fearless debut. This poetry is a painfully honest disclosure of identity and anger, and it is as mindful of falsity and as hard on itself as it is playful, loose, and loving. Sometimes the language is clear and cutting, while other times it disintegrates into sonic units and primal utterances: Luis calls upon the whole history of oral and verbal expression to tell his story—going so far as to write his own (wildly funny and disturbing) obituary.” —Arielle Greenberg, author of My Kafka Century

“On the trail blazed by innovators like Harryette Mullen and John Yau, Luis Valadez sends wild, canny, charged, and vulnerable prayers from the hard camp of contested identities. Each line, each word, is a blow against “impossibility” and the heavy pressure to be silent as expected. Interrogations of tradition(s) as well as celebrations, the irresistible poems in Valadez’s first collection exist at the exact fresh moment of deciding to live and to love.” —Laura Mullen, author of After I Was Dead

“Valadez’s work is not simply fierce language poetics… here is a writer—the genuine article—whose style is that of a truth-speaking curandero, offering sacred cantos to anyone interested in illuminating that inner revolution called corazón. To read his work is to discover the future of American poética! “ —Tim Z. Hernandez, author of Skin Tax

“Valadez’s impressions abruptly transport the reader from swaggering elucidation to raw pain. In a sometimes-resigned glance around for divinity, what I’m on triggers equally sudden heart-rippings, laughter, and cinematic naturescapes.” —Claire Nixon, editor Twisted Tongue Magazine

Holly Schaffer, Publicity Manager
University of Arizona Press
355 S. Euclid Ave., Ste. 103 Tucson, AZ 85719
Ph: 520-621-3920, Fx: 520-621-8899
hollys@uapress.arizona.edu
www.uapress.arizona.edu

Lisa Alvarado

Valadez is on the truth

what i'm on

Luis Humberto Valadez

THE BOOK:

Publication Date: March 19, 2009
Camino del Sol: A Latina/Latino Literary Series 64 pages
6 x 8 ISBN: 978-0-8165-2740-3, $15.95 paper

Luis Humberto Valadez is a poet/performer/musician from the south side of the Chicago area whose work owes as much to hip-hop as it does to the canon and has been described by esteemed activist writer Amiri Baraka as "strong-real light flashes."

His debut poetry collection what i'm on is frankly autobiographical, recounting the experiences of a Mexican American boy growing up in a tough town near Chicago. Just as in life, the feelings in these poems are often jumbled, sometimes spilling out in a tumble, sometimes coolly recollected. Valadez's poems shout to be read aloud. It's then that their language dazzles most brightly. It's then that the emotions bottled up on the page explode beyond words. And there is plenty of emotion in these poems. Sometimes the words jump and twitch as if they‚d been threatened or attacked. Sometimes they just sit there knowingly on the page, weighted down by the stark reality of it all.

José García put a thirty-five to me
my mother was in the other room
He would have done us both
if not for the lust of my fear

THE BUZZ:

This new Mexican American/Chicano voice is all at once arresting, bracing, shocking, and refreshing. This is not the poetry you learned in school. But Valadez, who received his MFA from the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poets at Naropa University, has paid his academic dues, and he certainly knows how to craft a poem. It's just that he does it his way. Luis Humberto Valadez works as a coordinator and consultant for the Chicago Public Schools Homeless Education Program.

Recordings of Valadez performing his poems can be found at MySpace.com, Reverb Nation, and other Internet sites. VALADEZ BLURBS: “Brave, raw, and exposing of a young mans consciousness. Luis’s work is not confessional in the limited, put-it-in-a-box way that big publishers like to market their material to liberal guilt.” -Andrew Schelling, author of Tea Shack Interior

“In voices colloquial and church, reverent and riotous, serious and sly; in rap and fragment, sound and sin; from gangs and minimum-wage jobs to astrology and Christ, Luis Valadez makes his fearless debut. This poetry is a painfully honest disclosure of identity and anger, and it is as mindful of falsity and as hard on itself as it is playful, loose, and loving. Sometimes the language is clear and cutting, while other times it disintegrates into sonic units and primal utterances: Luis calls upon the whole history of oral and verbal expression to tell his story—going so far as to write his own (wildly funny and disturbing) obituary.” —Arielle Greenberg, author of My Kafka Century

“On the trail blazed by innovators like Harryette Mullen and John Yau, Luis Valadez sends wild, canny, charged, and vulnerable prayers from the hard camp of contested identities. Each line, each word, is a blow against “impossibility” and the heavy pressure to be silent as expected. Interrogations of tradition(s) as well as celebrations, the irresistible poems in Valadez’s first collection exist at the exact fresh moment of deciding to live and to love.” —Laura Mullen, author of After I Was Dead

“Valadez’s work is not simply fierce language poetics… here is a writer—the genuine article—whose style is that of a truth-speaking curandero, offering sacred cantos to anyone interested in illuminating that inner revolution called corazón. To read his work is to discover the future of American poética! “ —Tim Z. Hernandez, author of Skin Tax

“Valadez’s impressions abruptly transport the reader from swaggering elucidation to raw pain. In a sometimes-resigned glance around for divinity, what I’m on triggers equally sudden heart-rippings, laughter, and cinematic naturescapes.” —Claire Nixon, editor Twisted Tongue Magazine

Holly Schaffer, Publicity Manager
University of Arizona Press
355 S. Euclid Ave., Ste. 103 Tucson, AZ 85719
Ph: 520-621-3920, Fx: 520-621-8899
hollys@uapress.arizona.edu
www.uapress.arizona.edu

THE EVENT:



Lisa Alvarado

Martín Espada on Barack Obama

Litany at the Tomb of Frederick Douglass
Mount Hope Cemetery, Rochester, New York
November 7, 2008

This is the longitude and latitude of the impossible;
this is the epicenter of the unthinkable;
this is the crossroads of the unimaginable:
the tomb of Frederick Douglass, three days after the election.

This is a world spinning away from the gravity of centuries,
where the grave of a fugitive slave has become an altar.
This is the tomb of a man born as chattel, who taught himself 

to read in secret,scraping the letters in his name with chalk on wood;

 now on the anvil-flat stone a campaign button fills the O in Douglass. 

The button says: Obama. This is the tomb of a man in chains, 

who left his fingerprints on the slavebreaker’s throat so the whip 

would never carve his back again;  now a labor union T-shirt drapes itself 

across the stone, offered up by a nurse, a janitor, a bus driver. 

A sticker on the sleeve says: I Voted Today. 

This is the tomb of a man who rolled his call to arms off the press,
peering through spectacles at the abolitionist headline; now a newspaper
spreads above his dates of birth and death. The headline says: Obama Wins.

This is the stillness at the heart of the storm that began in the body
of the first slave, dragged aboard the first ship to America. Yellow leaves
descend in waves, and the newspaper flutters on the tomb, like the sails
Douglass saw in the bay, like the eyes of a slave closing to watch himself
escape with the tide. Believers in spirits would see the pages trembling
on the stone and say: look how the slave boy teaches himself to read.
I say a prayer, the first in years: that here we bury what we call
the impossible, the unthinkable, the unimaginable, now and forever. Amen.

~~~ Martín Espada

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Tips for Better Life

1. Take a 10-30 minutes walk every day. And while you walk, smile.
2. Sit in silence for at least 10 minutes each day.
3. Sleep for 7 hours.
4. Live with the 3 E's -- Energy, Enthusiasm, and Empathy.
5. Play more games.
6. Read more books than you did the previous year.
7. Make time to practice meditation, yoga, and prayer. They provide us with daily fuel for our busy lives.
8. Spend time with people over the age of 70 & under the age of 6.
9. Dream more while you are awake.
10. Eat more foods that grow on trees and plants and eat less food that is manufactured in plants.
11. Drink plenty of water.
12. Try to make at least three people smile each day.
13. Don't waste your precious energy on gossip.
14. Forget issues of the past. Don't remind your partner with his/her mistakes of the past. That will ruin your present happiness.
15. Don't have negative thoughts or things you cannot control. Instead invest your energy in the positive present moment.
16. Realize that life is a school and you are here to learn. Problems are simply part of the curriculum that appear and fade away like algebra class but the lessons you learn will last a lifetime.
17. Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and dinner like a beggar.
18. Smile and laugh more.
19. Life is too short to waste time hating anyone. Don't hate others.
20. Don't take yourself so seriously. No one else does.
21. You don't have to win every argument. Agree to disagree.
22. Make peace with your past so it won't spoil the present.
23. Don't compare your life to others'. You have no idea what their journey is all about. Don't compare your partner with others.
24. No one is in charge of your happiness except you.
25. Forgive everyone for everything.
26. What other people think of you is none of your business.
27. However good or bad a situation is, it will change.
28. Your job won't take care of you when you are sick. Your friends will. Stay in touch.
29. Get rid of anything that isn't useful, beautiful or joyful.
30. Envy is a waste of time. You already have all you need.
31. The best is yet to come.
32. No matter how you feel, get up, dress up and show up.
33. Do the right thing!
34. Call your family often.
35. Your inner most is always happy. So be happy.
36. Each day give something good to others.
37. Don't over do. Keep your limits.
38. Share this with someone you care about

Lisa Alvarado

Words to Live By

Poetry is the universal language which the heart holds with nature and itself
William Hazlitt

Poetry must have something in it that is barbaric, vast and wild.
Denis Diderot

Poetry, whose material is language, is perhaps the most human and least worldly of the arts, the one in which the end product remains closest to the thought that inspired it.
Hannah Arendt

Poetry
makes nothing happen.
It survives
in the valley of its saying.
Maxine Kumin

Poetry is plucking at the heartstrings, and making music with them.
Dennis Gabor

Poetry is not only dream and vision; it is the skeleton architecture of our lives. It lays the foundations for a future of change, a bridge across our fears of what has never been before.
Audre Lorde

To help kick off the poetic year, I would like to feature ACHIOTE PRESS

Achiote: a shrub or small tree indigenous to Central and South America. Introduced to the Pacific and Asia by the Spanish in the 17th century, Achiote now has firm transnational roots. Achiote produces pink flowers and red spiny seed pods. Peoples have used the seeds as a dye for clothing, arts and crafts, as body paint in times of war and celebration, as spice and coloring for food.

The editorial board named the press after the Achiote tree because they believe poetry has the very same powers to enrich our surroundings, inspire our passions, enhance our senses, and heal our wounds. Achiote represents the unrepresentable, transnational, migratory, and adaptive. Achiote Press asks what it means to bear witness, to use adaptation as resistance, to cross borders, to map ourselves onto a dislocated world, to speak in exile, and to suffer diasporic hunger.

Achiote Press was founded in 2006. Every season, they publish two chapbooks: a single-author chapbook and a chap-journal featuring poetry, prose, essay, or translation by authors from diverse cultural and aesthetic backgrounds. In addition, we publish special project chapbooks, including chap-anthologies and collaborative work.

The press is not currently reading manuscripts. Please query if you would like to be considered your poetry or your artwork for a future issue. Achiote Press is located in Berkeley, California.

Craig Perez, Editor
Jennifer Reimer, Editor
Jason Buchholz, Art Director

Ballast (excerpt below)

Ballast IV: Flung Out Like A Fag-End

The ships that sank never really stood
a chance; the captured in the holds, less.
In water, gravity numbed at the cost of oxygen
made their breaths catch for a taste
of weightlessness; space, centuries before
the Buzz became news. Odd, how we explore
the high and deep, rarely the middle - that belt
of rarefied air which balloons occupy, where
the brutal cargo would have avoided the fury
of waves. Battered, at worst, by hurricanes, there
was still the likelihood of a short period of calm
at the axis - a respite from evil winds - before
the centrifugal drag of the eye wall: a flutter of
freed bodies floating to the ends of the world
to feather new nests, a basket falling, an envelope
drifting, a fire augmenting the speed of migration
from Africa beyond a fast-fingered jazz solo, minus
the 500 years of insult: in the bodies, fire;
in the basket, gifts; in the envelope, odds on whether
the seeds of the scattered would have avoided Katrina
- the dancing wind that exposed the unchanging water
-borne illness of prejudice caught in the holds of
the ships that made it across the sky's reflection two
centuries before the eerie shimmer of a hot air balloon.


Ballast X: Final Cries

If the river cries blood, it is not the sun's
reflection rosy beneath a retiring light, it is
not riverside berries, betrayed by skins too gorged
to contain the sweetness of their juice. It is not
a dream. It is our forebears, battered and branded by gain-
seekers, dripping iron, rusting, as they hover tethered
in baskets strung to sun-shaped fabrics that consume
fire to rise above the desire for freedom. Their voices -
like them - know nothing of the borders to come, slip
between clouds to metamorphose into birdsong. They
inhabit the air, absorb its language by osmosis, observe
its scattering versatility - the way it hisses and dances.
Some escape, diving into the spaces where hurricanes are
sown, to learn the equations that govern pressure; how
the cold air is enough to make them pop like champagne
bottles on ice. The fliers bequeath the inheritance of falling
gracefully; a blessing for dancers, a curse in love. Yet
in the end the method matters little. The sea being mirror
to the blue of the skies, the ship is the genetic cousin
of the balloon - both anchored to the Xs of density,
surface area and flotation. The question is of ballast,
that which gives weight to the ship, balloon, story; and this
interpretation is a vessel to reclaim the history of love, a history
of hatred, discrimination, survival, science, music... language.



Nii Ayikwei Parkes is a writer of poetry, prose and articles, and author of the poetry chapbooks: eyes of a boy, lips of a man (1999) and M is for Madrigal (2004), a selection of seven jazz poems. A former associate writer-in-residence for BBC Radio 3, and writer-in-residence at California State University, Los Angeles, he is also the Senior Editor at flipped eye publishing - where he has overseen the production of four award-winning titles. Nii is the current International Writing Fellow at the University of Southampton and his debut novel, Tail of the Blue Bird, will be released in June 2009 by Jonathan Cape.

Cover art by Ketzia Schoneberg. Ketzia Schoneberg creates portraits of individuals of other species in order to show the viewer a mirror - an image of the earthy, biological and spiritual origins we share with other creatures. She does not sketch before beginning a painting; when entering the studio she doesn't know beforehand what her subject or palette will be. This approach keeps her work honest both technically and energetically. She uses live models and photographs as starting points for all of her work. Ketzia's educational background includes undergraduate work at the San Francisco Art Institute, art studies at Kibbutz Yavne in Israel, a BFA from San Francisco State University and graduate work at New Mexico State University. She has been showing her work nationally for over 15 years, and makes her home in Oregon. View more of Ketzia's work online at www.ketzia.com.

Teaching Thinking

Hugo García Manríquez. Author of two books, No Oscuro Todavia, (2005), and Los Materiales (2008). His work has appeared in Mandorla, Damn the Caesars, New American Writing, and others. His translation of William Carlos Williams' poem, Paterson, will be published in Mexico next year.

Originally from Strasbourg, France, François Luong currently lives in San Francisco. Other work of his has appeared or is forthcoming in Cannibal, Parthenon West Review, New American Writing, Mirage #4/Period(ICAL), and elsewhere. He is also working on a translation into English of Chutes, Essais, Trafics by Rémi Froger and into French of Wide Slumber for Lepidopterists by A. Rawlings.

Evie Shockley is the author of A Half-Red Sea (2006) and two chapbooks,31 words * prose poems (2007) and The Gorgon Goddess (2001). Her poetry and critical pieces appear in numerous journals and anthologies, recently including Foursquare, The Southern Review, No Tell Motel, Ecotone, PMS: poemmemoirstory, The Ringing Ear: Black Poets Lean South, Mixed Blood, Center, and Jacket. She currently serves as co-guest editor (with Cathy Park Hong) of Jubilat. A Cave Canem graduate fellow and recipient of a Hedgebrook residency, Shockley teaches African American literature and creative writing at Rutgers University, New Brunswick.

Roberto Harrison edits Crayon with Andrew Levy and the Bronze Skull Press chapbook series. Two full-length collections of his work appeared in 2006: Counter Daemons (Litmus) and Os (subpress). Elemental Song, a chapbook, also appeared in 2006 through Answer Tag Home Press. Recent work can be found in Chicago Review, Brooklyn Rail, Court Green, War & Peace 3: The Future, Cannot Exist, and string of small machines.

Cover art by Mary V. Marsh. Mary V. Marsh has exhibited paintings, drawings and artist books in many venues, including solo shows at the San Jose Museum of Art, Berkeley Art Center, and the San Francisco Public Library. She received an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1992. Old library books and checkout cards are reconstructed to explore memory, propaganda, and consumer society.

Lisa Alvarado

Conspiracy Culture: From Kennedy to The X-Files

"Everything is some kind of plot, man." - Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow

Agent Scully: "What makes you think that is a conspiracy? That the government is involved?" Kurt Crawford: "What makes you think it isn't? - Memento Mori / The X-Files

"The paranoid person is in possession of all the facts." - William Burroughs

Conspiracy theories are a particular and salient feature of post World War II America. From McCarthyism to postmodern novels, The X-Files, and gansta rap to feminist polemic, there is widespread suspicion that sinister forces are conspiring to take control of our national destiny, our minds, and even our bodies. Conspiracy explanations can no longer be dismissed as the disorganized ramblings of far right crackpots, the left wing intelligentsia, and the techno cognoscenti.

Particularly as evidenced by the popularity of a show like The X-Files, mainstream America became more than willing to embrace the idea that there is a cabal of men planning our futures, that we cannot trust institutions, that the enemy is closer than we were taught to believe. We have lived through grassy knolls, Cointelpro, the assassinations of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, infiltration and disruption of a host of Chicano groups, especially La Raza Unida Party, as well as CIA-led coups in Chile, Iran, Namibia. Events of the last decade bear witness to this brave new world.

While the major spin on 9/11 identified virulent Islamic terrorist bent on destroying us, there were still news threads that linked the Bin Laden family with the Bush family and the Bush family to international oil interests. We had Dick Cheney heading the shadow government from deep in the bowels of the earth, and FEMA hawking duct tape and plastic sheeting as protection from invisible enemies. Can anyone say "WMDs"?

Conspiracy Culture author, Peter Knight, a lecturer in American Studies in Manchester, attempts to provide his own analysis using such diverse sources as Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique, Don DeLillo's Underworld, Oliver's Stone's JFK, and soon his new flick, W, The X-Files, and a host of internet sites.

He explores how conspiracy theories developed from the 1960's through the 1990's. The focal points of these theories range from the Kennedy assassination, alien abduction, body horror, AIDS, crack cocaine, the New World Order; as well as what he terms "the usual conspiracies...of patriarchy and white supremacy." I found this level of research, its detail, and its scope impressive.

Beyond this, we part company. When it comes to his analysis as to why ideas of conspiracy have proliferated, Knight is completely ahistorical. He posits the growth in the wider acceptance of conspiracy as policy to intellectual inferiority and sloppiness, poverty, and a spiritual paucity. I was astounded at this polemic disguised as dispassionate deductive reasoning. I personally remember when, in the late 70's in Chicago, Black Panther leader Fred Hampton was murdered in his bed by Chicago police - police who were aided and abetted in that execution by moles paid by the FBI through the Cointelpro program of "neutralization."

Semiautomatic assassination appeared to be a fairly neutralizing force in communities and the community of social change as a whole. That level of challenge to the government, to capital, to imperialism and its domestic and international control has yet to be re-created, although perhaps we see the seeds of its rebirth in the resistance to the Iraq war. Rather than Knight's position that a conspiracy theory's popularity is solely due to a lack of sophistication, education, and contemplation, I believe the proponents are literate, distrusting the narrative of authority, and suspicious of the authorized narrative as to the health of the body politic. In a nutshell, what message may be taking root in a deep and irrevocable way is: Trust no one.

See Scully, I told you this was coming.

ISBN-10: 0415189780

Bad news:

Journalist Teresa Puente was laid off from the Chicago Sun-Times editorial board Today. She was the only Hispanic on the board and also wrote a twice monthly column. Puente also was the only writer at the Sun-Times that regularly covered Latino issues and immigration.

Also, her colleague, Deborah Douglas, the only African-American writer on the editorial board, was laid off Wednesday. This means there are no people of color on the editorial board any more.

To voice an opinion on this matter please send an email to:

Michael Cooke, Sun-Times editor, mcooke@suntimes.com

Tom McNamee, Editorial page editor, tmcnamee@suntimes.com

Cyrus Freidheim, publisher, cfreidheim@suntimes.com

Finally, GOOD NEWS:

The National Museum of Mexican Art celebrates Folk Art Week!

October 17 - October 26, 2008
10am - 4pm

1852 W. 19th Street, Chicago, IL.
For more information, please call 312-738-1503 or visit www.nationalmuseumofmexicanart.org



Artist Demonstrations:

Ceramic Sculptures by Demetrio Garcia Aguilar, Ocotlan de Morelos, Oaxaca
Textile Weaving by Celia Santiz Ruiz, San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas
Huichol Yarn and Beadwork by José Benitez Sanchez, Santa Catarina, Jalisco
Wood Carvings by Jacobo & Maria Angeles, San Martin Tilcajete, Oaxaca
Wooden Masks by Orlando Orta, Tocuaro, Michoacán
Amate Paintings by Marcial Camilo Ayala, San Agustin Oapan, Guerrero
Sugar Skull Demonstrations by Alejandro Mondragón Arriaga, Elvira Garcia Zinzu & Elvira Mondragón Garcia, Toluca, Estado de México




Wishing for more good news,


Lisa Alvarado

Art Is Not Business!!!!

I've been thinking a lot about art-making, about ownership of art and the internet. One of the things I love about the 'net, and here I mean NON-PROFIT blogging, non-profit journals, etc., is the way in which it frees the creation and analysis of culture from corporate control. It unchains creatvity and criticism from the side of the elite, snatches it from the dominant culture and puts it in the hands of everyday people. It is incredibly democratic, populist, and as such, subversive.

I remember in graduate school catching high holy hell for my love of sampling, of the ways that hip hop artists take from the past and fuse it into something else. (And yes, Virginia, where there's a buck to be made, I wholeheartedly support recording artists, visual artists and writers getting their due.) But there is something about participatory culture, communal creation that keeps grabbing people by the throat, blurring the boundaries, something irresistible.

A while back I read a book that made me think about art as commodity, art as communal property and here are my thoughts about the book and its ideas.

"Fan fiction is a way of the culture repairing the damage done in a system where contemporary myths are owned by corporations instead of owned by the folk." --- Henry Jenkins

"Get a life," William Shatner told Star Trek fans. Yet, in Textual Poachers, Henry Jenkins makes the case that fans already have a "life," one that gleans from popular culture, then revisions and redrafts its ownership into something akin to new mythology. Further, it is a consumer-driven culture, one outside the control of the corporate universe. I was initially drawn to this book in its exposition, when I read Jenkins' repudiation of fans as cultural dupes, social misfits, mindless TV and movie junkies. Jenkins, Director of the MIT Comparative Media Studies Program at MIT, author of: Textual Poachers, Fans, Bloggers, and Gamers, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide, makes a well-argued case than fans are active participants in a burgeoning underground of cultural consumerism as "owners."

These owners are skillfully producing new genres, i.e., fan fic, as well as being a kind of nomadic poacher, constructing mythology, alternative social communities, and cultural representation. Having attended fan conventions, corresponded with fans via websites and Listservs, he offers an insider's perspective. Approaching this as an ethnographic study, Jenkins is able to identify major areas of fan interest (Star Trek, Beauty and the Beast, Alien Nation, etc.)

Given the date of publishing, Jenkins did not have access to the blowup in fandom that occurred after the first two seasons of the X-FIles, when it moved from cult favorite to cultural phenomena, to say nothing of the fandoms surrounding today's cult hits, Battlestar Gallactica, Lost, Heroes.

In addition, he describes the fan community as initially white and female. Although now, more and more men and people of color are swelling the ranks of fanfic, and there seems to be gender and racial parity in the blogging community. Further, according to Jenkins, fan groupings contain more working-class and middle class people than other "art" related constituencies. He goes on to say some more intriguing things.

That the fan community sees itself in opposition to the capitalist control of culture, choosing to create what he terms meta-stories. Meta-stories are the online writing of non-industry people, based on television shows and movies. Through these meta-stories or fan fic, fans clearly express alternative "ownership," and in fact, have begun to impact the original "producers." For example, Jenkins reports that several studios monitor fan websites in order to gauge trends when considering television or movie sequels.

In addition, fic writers push the envelop for what themes their favorite icons now contain. Fic writing has dealt with: alternative endings/or plot extensions of film and televison series, explicit sexuality, queer-oriented alternate plots, gender roles, and the construct of emerging literary genres, etc. And we have only to look at the surge of interfacing today between "hard" network broadcasting, pod casts, film and TV episode downloads with alternate content, to see a major shift in how pop culture, already underway full steam, is experienced.

As a fan (X-Files) and fic writer myself, I found it a useful delineation of a fiercely loyal, now international, subculture of renegade consumers of culture. Everyday people are becoming outlaw storytellers, seizing modern-day archetypes and making them our own.

Lisa Alvarado

Luis Omar Salinas: Casting a Giant Shadow

in the greenrooom with Alurista is Luis Omar Salinas

I received an email this morning from Juan Felipe Herrera: "Yesterday, in Sanger, Califas, we lost another great carnal, hermano and singer of the heart. He was ill for some time....."

The body of the living word is now diminished by the passing of Luis Omar Salinas...

Going North
(for my grandfather)

Those streets in my youth
hilarious and angry,
cobblestoned by Mestizos,
fresh fruit
and dancing beggars.
Gone are the soldiers
and the nuns.
My Portuguese friends
have gone North.
The school girls
have ripened
overnight.
I hum Spanish tunes
waiting for the bus
in Fresno.
These avenues
I watch
carefree
young, open collared
like my grandfather
who died in a dream
going North.


 

Gracias, Luis....

A postscript....This ran in today's Fresno Bee

http://www.fresnobee.com/263/story/634870.html

Lisa Alvarado

Demetria Martínez: Walking the Walk

DEMETRIA MARTINEZ

La Bloga readers were encouraged to buy and be moved by Demetria's phenomenal book, Confessions of A Berlitz Tape Chicana. The reasons why are here. Social activist, journalist, esayist and port, we were lucky to catch up with her recently, and this is our conversation.....


Your life is very much bound up in social action. How would you describe to role of the writer, of the poet as it relates to the body politic?

Poets are citizens first, lucky enough to be literate, and therefore part of a global elite. That brings with it a special responsibility, and that is to help bring forth voices that are silenced. Our gift--the imagination-- allows us, if we choose, to write out of a place of empathy for those who are suffer--often as a result of our nation's own policies (NAFTA for example) and those of massive corporations.

We are also compelled to imagine a world that is healed, made whole. What would that look like? I think the poet Martin Espada is a good model of poet as prophet--denouncing evil, and proclaiming a new vision. Personally, I draw great energy from my work on behalf of women immigrants, great energy from activists who carry on despite it all. And so they appear in my work--I'm writing a collection of short stories about three women activists living in Albuquerque. We need to draw close to such visionaries--the activists, the community organizers--or our work can grow stale.

Obviously what happened to me 20 years ago solidified my commitment to immigrant issues: I was charged with conspiracy to transport Salvadoran refugees into the U.S.--and faced a possible 25 years in prison. In fact, I was accompanying church workers who were transporting refugees as part of the Sanctuary Movement---I did this as a reporter. I was acquitted on First Amendment grounds. The whole affair gave me the opportunity to speak around the country--not only about reporters' rights, but about the U.S. subsidizing of El Salvador's death squads. So a blessing emerged from the pain and fear.

Speaking of body...Your work also seems to return to female presence. Who are sources of inspiration for you? How do you feel being a woman informs your work.

Grace Paley, the great short story writer who passed away last year, is my role model. She wrote about the every day lives of women. And she was an activist. Some writers teach one how to write. But, if you're lucky, you will encounter that person who teaches you not only how to write but how to live. Grace was one of those people.

In 'Confessions' you're very opposed to the 'romance' people people associate with mental illness, especially your own bipolar issue. Can you talk about that external projection of others, about your own response to it.

It's important to tell the brutal truth about bipolar disorder. Manic states very quickly turn into irritability, anger, paranoia and worse. The great American novel that you started to write on a napkin at a coffee house is illegible; when you regain your wits, you're lucky if you can remember what the great idea was all about. Harmony and balance make production possible--and for the long haul. The only side effect I've had from my medicine is mental health. It feels great to be alive, to write, to be involved in the world.

How do you feel your own spirituality today is reconciled with the Catholicism of your youth?

I center myself every day,, sometimes several times a day, with prayer, something as simple as a Hail Mary. And I recently attending a novena, a praying of the rosary, that my parish held for peace and disarmament. It's important as a writer and an activist to learn to cultivate silence. Catholicism gives me the tools for that. Obviously I disagree with many of the church doctrines (women priests, gay rights, etc). But that will change.

What 's been on your plate recently in terms of your writing?

I've finished my first children's book, co-authored with a friend, Rosalee Montoya-Read. What a joy it was to collaborate! Writing is so solitary. And I continue work on a collection of short stories, the working title of which is What Saves Us.

Where would you like to see yourself ten years from now?

I'd like to become a terrific gardener (I've just started my first one recently). I'd like to learn more about traditional remedios. And soup, I love making soup but there is much room for improvement. Somewhere in there I'd like to write a novella, and a book of poetry in Spanish.

Tell us something not in the official bio.

I missed my calling as a doctor. My poor friends are always getting diagnosed (even if they feel fine) and offered unsolicited advice on how to improve their health. Chile cures colds and flu. In Boston once, I couldn't get any chile and I felt a cold coming on. So I ordered a bowl of clam chowder, a large side of Jalapenos and tabasco sauce. I mixed it all together and I was well in twelve hours.

Lisa Alvarado