Javier Huerta : Harriet the Blog : The Poetry Foundation

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THURSDAY FEBRUARY 12
8:00a.m. R100. Conference Registration. Attendees who have registered in advance may pick up their registration materials at AWP’s pre-registration desk on the lower level of the Hilton Chicago. On-site registration badges are available for purchase at the 8th Street side of the lobby level.

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02.09.09 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (1)

Javier Huerta

OCHO#22: DEAR AMERICA, DON’T BE MY VALENTINE

Miguel Murphy (Editor) discussed his call for submissions for this issue of OCHO in his intelligent, passionate, and poetic guest post here on Harriet. I just wanted to say that the issue is now available and features the wonderful work of the following poets:
Eduardo C. Corral, Mary Meriam, Jeremy Halinen, Christine Leclerc, C. Dale Young, Julie R. Enszer, Matthew Hittinger, Steve Fellner, Linda Benninghoff, Scott Hightower, Franciszka Voeltz, Brent Goodman, Christian Gregory, Jen Currin, Charles Jensen, Tamiko Beyer, D.M. Solis, Brian Leary, Dean Kostos, Julie Weber, Blas Falconer, Francisco Aragon, Elizabeth J. Colen, RJ Gibson, Jee Leong Koh, Carol Guess, Christian Gullette, Monica Teresa Ortiz.

02.07.09 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (1)

Javier Huerta

¡El que no brinque es migra!

My first creative attempts as a child were narcocorridos. Influenced by movies and songs like La Banda del Carro Rojo, my friends, cousins, brothers, and I played “narcotraficantes,” a game that always ended in the heroic tragic death of the narcos. As we lay on the ground, I composed corridos that narrated the events of our role-play. My father made it his goal in life to become notorious enough to have a narcocorrido written about him, preferably by Los Cadetes de Linares. His exploits didn’t land him a song; no, they landed him in a Jalisco prison for the last two decades. Perhaps the desire to write that song for my father is what drove me to write poetry in the first place. With the special role that the corrido has played in my life, you can understand why when my friend Oscar Bermeo alerted me to the news that the Border Patrol is now in the business of producing corridos I felt as if something essential had been stolen from me.

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02.03.09 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (2)

Javier Huerta

On Advice to Young Poets: an excerpt from The Monk by Matthew G. Lewis

‘My verses, my Lord?’
‘Nay, I am sure that you have been writing some, for nothing else could have kept you awake till this time of the morning. Where are they, Theodore? I shall like to see your composition.’
Theodore’s cheeks glowed with still deeper crimson: He longed to show his poetry, but first chose to be pressed for it.
‘Indeed, my Lord, they are not worthy your attention.’
‘Not these verses, which you just now declared to be so charming?
Come, come, let me see whether our opinions are the same. I promise that you shall find in me an indulgent Critic.’
The Boy produced his paper with seeming reluctance; but the satisfaction which sparkled in his dark expressive eyes betrayed the vanity of his little bosom. The Marquis smiled while He observed the emotions of an heart as yet but little skilled in veiling its sentiments. He seated himself upon a Sopha: Theodore, while Hope and fear contended on his anxious countenance, waited with inquietude for his Master’s decision, while the Marquis read the following lines.

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01.13.09 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (2)

Javier Huerta

2008 American Book Awards

The Before Columbus Foundation announces
Winners of the Twenty-Eighth Annual
AMERICAN BOOK AWARDS
Moustafa Bayoumi, How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? Being Young and Arab in America (The Penguin Press)
Douglas A. Blackmon, Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II (Doubleday)

Nora Marks Dauenhauer, Richard Dauenhauer, and Lydia T. Black, and Anooshi Lingit Aani Ka/Russians in Tlingit America: The Battles of Sitka, 1802 And 1804 (University of Washington Press)

Maria Mazziotti Gillian, All That Lies Between Us (Guernica Editions Inc.)

Nikki Giovanni, The Collected Poetry of Nikki Giovanni: 1968-1998 (HarperCollins)

C.S. Giscombe, Prairie Style (Dalkey Archive Press)
Angela Jackson, Where I Must Go: A Novel (TriQuarterly)

L. Luis Lopez, Each Month I Sing (Farolito Press)

Tom Lutz, Doing Nothing: A History of Loafers, Loungers, Slackers, and Bums in America (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Fae Myenne Ng, Steer Toward Rock (Hyperion)
Yuko Taniguchi, The Ocean in the Closet (Coffee House Press)

Frank B. Wilderson III, Incognegro: A Memoir of Exile and Apartheid (South End Press)

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12.11.08 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (1)

Javier Huerta

Achiote Press Reading in Celebration of 40th Anniversary of UC Berkeley Ethnic Studies Library

It’s good to be a Bay Arean. (Wait. That doesn’t sound right.) It’s good to live in the Bay Area, partly because of all the great readings. I don’t think anyone covers a reading better than Oscar Bermeo. Oscar’s personal and intelligent reports are the best thing other than actually being at the reading. He’s always had the best flickr, and now he’s also capturing readings on video. The video(s), a playlist, above is of the most recent Achiote Press reading, organized in collaboration with the UCB Ethnic Studies library, which turns 40 this year. The featured poets are Naomi Quiñonez, Lee Herrick, and Hugo Garcia Manriquez. I highly recommend you check out Oscar’s videos, get your hands on the new Achiote Press chapbooks, and donate a/your book to the Ethnic Studies library.

12.07.08 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (2)

Javier Huerta

“Good Bad Poetry”: A Conversation

Now, far be it from “Poetry & Popular Culture” to take particular umbrage at the Poetry Foundation’s use of the term “good bad poetry”–despite the fact that Huerta doesn’t cite the essay “Writing Good Bad Poetry” that appeared in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine and that was excerpted on this blog back in October. No, there is no umbrage taken, in part because the term “good bad poetry” is an adaptation of George Orwell’s term “good bad fiction.” While the Poets & Writers essay did acknowledge the Orwellian origin of “good bad poetry,” it’s perhaps no surprise that the folks at the Poetry Foundation want to make it seem like the term originated there—in the million-dollar Chicago offices of the nation’s oldest and most prestigious little magazine. After all, it’s Poetry’s own standard-bearer T.S. Eliot who famously quipped that while good writers borrow, great ones steal—a quip Eliot himself cribbed from Oscar Wilde.
I apologize to Mike Chasar for troubling him over my use of the phrase “good bad poetry.” (And thanks to Jeff Charis-Carlson for pointing out Chasar’s blog post.) Chasar faults me for not citing his essay “Writing Good Bad Poetry,” which appears in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine. I have not read Chasar’s essay, but now that I know about it I definitely plan to read it. Perhaps had I known about it sooner I would have added his essay to my 3rd field/”Aesthetics of Bad Poetry” list for my PhD qualifying exams. The list, which I’ve been working on for a year and a half now, includes a section of primary works called “Good Bad Poetry.” I didn’t feel that I needed to cite a source for my use of “good bad poetry” in the McGonagall post because the phrase is commonly used in the literature I’ve been reading for my field. A difference: Chasar sees his supposed coining of the term “good bad poetry” as a discovery, as a revelation; I see the term “good bad poetry” as the given, as a starting point. Had Chasar had access to my reading list he might have been more familiar with the history of the phrase in question.

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12.04.08 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (7)

Javier Huerta

“undocumented poem”

El Deportado, by Anonymous
No tengo papeles, by Abelardo “Lalo” Delgado
Running to America, by Luis J. Rodriguez
Human Resources, by Monica Teresa Ortiz
Imperfect Utterances, by Monica de la Torre
Mariachi indocumentado, by Lucha Corpi
187 Reasons Mexicanos Can’t Cross the Border, by Juan Felipe Herrera
Elena, by Pat Mora
Mexicans Begin Jogging, by Gary Soto
Añoranza a mi patria, by Leticia Samaniego
When the Paw Brought us Down, by Marcos McPeek Villatoro
My Father, by Estella Gonzalez
Freefalling toward a borderless future, by Guillermo Gomez Peña
El Mojado y La Migra, by Juan Felipe Herrera
Statue of, by Carmen Tafolla
X antecanto: the xicano sign, by Alfred Arteaga
Canto Primero. Arrival, by Alfred Arteaga
My Freedom Song: Wire Skin, by Melissa Lozano
Dead Taco, by Violeta Ramirez
Heart of Hunger, by Martin Espada
Storm and Crisis: Immigrants, by Gabriel Gomez
While Late Capitalism, by Paul Martinez Pompa
Fence on the Border, by Sheryl Luna
Into America, by Blas Manuel De Luna
To a Mojado who Died Crossing the Desert, by Eduardo C. Corral
Journeys, by Benjamin Alire Saenz
Southwest Border Trucos, by Tato Laviera
Quicksand, by Urayoan Noel
The Border, by Emmy Perez
Noches Fronterizas/Sleepless Border Nights, by Gabriela Erandi Rico
may 12, 2008: postville, iowa, by Lauro Vazquez
Immigrant Voices, by Mario Escobar
The Fifth Dream: Bullets and Deserts and Borders, by Benjamin Alire Saenz
Canto Hondo, by Francisco X. Alarcon
The Border-Crosser’s Pillow Book, by Rigoberto Gonzalez
Numbers, by Agustin Palacios
sobre piedras con lagartijos, by Gloria Anzaldua

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12.01.08 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (3)

Javier Huerta

Verse Charades

I offer you two charades:
1.
My first doth affliction denote,
Which my second is destin’d to feel
And my whole is the best antidote
That affliction to soften and heal.
2.
My first displays the wealth and pomp of kings,
Lords of the earth! their luxury and ease.
Another view of man, my second brings,
Behold him there, the monarch of the seas!
But, ah! united, what reverse we have!
Man’s boasted power and freedom, all are flown;
Lord of the earth and sea, he bends a slave,
And woman, lovely woman, reigns alone.
Thy ready wit the word will soon supply,
May its approval beam in that soft eye!
(I’ll give your ready wits an opportunity to solve the charades. “My first” and “my second” refer to syllables. “My whole” is the word you’re trying to guess. For the answers click on “Continue Reading.”)

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11.30.08 PERMALINK | NO COMMENTS

Javier Huerta

McGonagalls All

Javier Huerta: More and more I am convinced that what we need now is a revival of bad poetry. So I’m working on a book of bad poems.
Friend Unnamed: You mean another one.
JH: Ah, well . . .
FU: Listen, why do you speak of “revival’? Don’t you think bad poetry has been alive and well all these years. In the biggest journals. In the smallest zines. In slams. In MFAs.
JH: I’m not interested in passing judgments. Those poems you consider bad poetry, I’m sure, have their defenders. When I say “bad poetry,” I mean a value neutral category of writing that involves the affected, the hyperconventional, the ornamental, the anticlimactic, the disproportionate.
FU: Neutral, you say.
JH: Well yes, you can have good bad poetry or bad bad poetry. I read somewhere that the International Society for Humor Studies discontinued its annual Julia Moore Good Bad Poetry Competition because the entries failed to ascend (I was going to say descend) to truly memorable badness. Writing good bad poetry is an art. When I say I’m working on a book of bad poems, all I mean to say is I want to engage this art form. Now, if you consider my first book to be bad poetry, I can only say that that badness was not intentional.

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11.29.08 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (5)

Author Archive

Javier Huerta

AWP: My Would-be Itinerary

Javier Huerta

OCHO#22: DEAR AMERICA, DON’T BE MY VALENTINE

Javier Huerta

¡El que no brinque es migra!

Javier Huerta

On Advice to Young Poets: an excerpt from The Monk by Matthew G. Lewis

Javier Huerta

2008 American Book Awards

Javier Huerta

Achiote Press Reading in Celebration of 40th Anniversary of UC Berkeley Ethnic Studies Library

Javier Huerta

“Good Bad Poetry”: A Conversation

Javier Huerta

“undocumented poem”

Javier Huerta

Verse Charades

Javier Huerta

McGonagalls All

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