I’m sorry that I haven’t been posting. Every time I got a free second to start a post, kerplop: A poem would come out. I suppose that’s no excuse or perhaps, in this setting, it’s the best (or only) excuse. But I do apologize for being remiss. Nevertheless, I was out with a friend last night (wait, I thought you just said, every free second you were writing, ADA?!) and we were sort of sharing our literary loves and the projects we were working on. And at one point we started talking about how difficult it is to talk about a project that is in the works, in the making. The project that is still nascent; before it is the final thing. The book. Of course, there are the pat answers that you give a parties, our well rehearsed tidbits of nada. When everyone else is talking about their jobs, their new houses, writers HAVE to have something to say.

In reading Linh Dinh’s wonderful post about Montana and thinking of Bill Knott’s insightful comment in which he asked, “Is the regional poet extinct?� I began to think of how regional poetry is defined and, indeed, how I might define myself. Having been in New York now for 9 years, where I hope I have not let the “hegemonic nets� blind me to my own personal territory, I find it difficult to find a determinative factor that leads one to the self-proclamation of “regional poet.� I live in New York, but I know every name of every street in my hometown of Sonoma, California (okay, not the every single one, but MOST of them), I am personally invested in the town’s well-being as an artistic community, and I still read the local paper. I return often, sit quietly, and memorize everything from the inanimate objects to the singular stunning landscape.

“To be of the air. I'm saying this to myself like a prayer, because I don't know that we can be free—of nationality, body, belonging.�

—Miguel Murphy from Blood and Breath: A Conversation

There is very important new member of the poetry world. (This odd world of beasts and bones.) He is brand new and he is very handsome. He is made out of the river’s ripples and green mesquite. His name is the Latino Poetry Review. Bienvenidos LPR…y gracias.

With its first issue just now arriving, I’d like to applaud the little one and say first, you rock (that’s an official poetic term) and second, what took you so long? We’ve needed you.

“I will know my song well, before I start singing�
—Bob Dylan, A Hard Rain’s Going to Fall

I hope you got out your window yesterday. I did, just for a couple of hours, but it was worth it. My friend M (we’ll call her that) is a young, new poet and she’s learning how to write, and doing quite well. But she worries that she’s trying to copy her favorite writers when she reads them all the time and then writes her own verse. This post is particularly for her.

A dear poet friend of mine is taking me out for a belated birthday dinner tonight (it was almost 2 months ago, but that’s apparently how busy our lives ended up). Afterwards, because it’s a bit of a tradition, we might sing a little karaoke. I hated karaoke until I met her. I sang a bit in school, the national anthem for high school homecoming (which was horrendous), then a bit in college, but for some reason karaoke made me cringe. But then, I learned to pick the songs I really loved. Even if they weren’t popular (usually old standards, some real grandma pleasers). I practiced them, and then I actually learned to be okay at it (not great, but you know, not terrible). Don’t show up and hold me to that, alright?

I bring this up because today, I was having lunch with a fiction writer and we talked about how important mimicry is when you begin delving into your own writing. At least it was very important to me, still is really.

“I teach my sighs to lengthen into songs.�
—from The Renewal, Theodore Roethke

This morning, I was reading Roethke on the train (I admit, part of me was trying to block out the news, having been chained to its great sorrow all morning). And the sun is out today in the city; spring is fully upon us and racing full-fledged into summer warmth. The weather and the blooms reminded me of when I was studying as an undergraduate at the University of Washington in Seattle. It is the spring quarter poetry class that I remember most (I took it only in my senior year, having exhausted all of my other electives from drama to dance). The classroom we were in overlooked the quad where all the cherry trees blossomed in some unnatural frenzy of suggestiveness. We’d read poems and then most of us would stare out the window wide-eyed and restless. I was madly in love of course, as I usually am in the spring. (Aren’t you?) Anyway, my professor, Colleen McElroy, told this story of when Roethke was teaching there (the last place he taught before his death), in that same classroom on the ground floor.

In less than a week, one of my favorite teaching artist programs in New York City, The Community Word Project, will turn ten years old. And so will I. Well, sort of. I started teaching with them almost 9 years ago when I was in graduate school and it was my first foray into the world of both second graders, teaching, and the Bronx. It was also my first year in New York, so as you can imagine, my whole world was on overload. I remember my first day, I could barely breathe and I thought, “How is it possible that students, tiny, beautiful, little students, could make me so nervous.� But they did and I was and it was hard. But it got easier, and eventually, it got addicting. I still miss it, although occasionally I still feel like I work with, ahem, second graders. Now, CWP is a whole ten years old. They’d be in fourth grade! They’d be rocking the elementary school with their new kicks and poems about big kids stuff. So, hats off to The Community Word Project and to the amazing work they do. I’m including a bit of information about their work and their benefit next week.

Feliz Cinco de Mayo

First let me start with a brief description of this day. Being of Mexican heritage, I’ve had to explain it on a regular basis. So, I thought I’d just give a quick rambling, if only to say: This day is not just about margaritas and tortilla chips (although I find nothing wrong with either of those things and hope to partake in both shortly).

The first thing that I find myself reminding people of is this: Cinco de Mayo is NOT Mexico's Independence Day (which is actually September 16th or midnight of the 15th depending one what you’re reading). Instead, it is in celebration of the day, May 5th, 1862, when 4,000 members of the Mexican Militia defeated 8,000 members of the French army in the town of Puebla. (Napoleon wanted to take over and install Maximilian as ruler of Mexico).

I grew up going to the track. Well, that’s a slight exaggeration. My stepfather—a writer and a wonderful human—likes to bet on the horses. Every time I go back to Sonoma, my hometown, he and I take at least one day to drive up to OTB and lose a little money. I lose. He wins. So, it’s only fitting that I’m thinking about him today as the Kentucky Derby gets underway and I still need to get my bets in before post. Mostly, on the drive to the races we end up talking about language and poetry in one way, shape, or form. These long drives up Warm Springs Road to Bennett Valley and back has done very serious things to my brain. For starters, it has linked horses and poetry forever.

For many Latino (and non-Latino) poets, Jimmy Santiago Baca is a hero of sorts. With a long sordid history of pulling himself out and up from the mire, Baca has traversed the poetic world as both a rogue and a wayward leader. Still, I am often surprised that he is not as well known as he should be. With his first poems published in Mother Jones and lauded by Denise Levertov while Baca was still in prison in the 70s (he spent 6 years in prison on drug possession, read his book, A Place to Stand), he has since made a life and a living out of writing. Based in New Mexico and spending the majority of his time writing and running workshops in prisons, in schools, and in the community, Baca has become an epic figure in Mexican American poetry. His book, Spring Poems Along the Rio Grande (New Directions, 2007) is a quieter Baca, an older, less angry Baca. Full of ruminations and reflections on his life along the bosque, this is a book meant to be read in the sage bushes without the noises of the city tuning out the birds. Two days ago, I pulled it off my shelf since first reading it when it came out last year, and thought I’d give it a shout out. I suppose I needed its quietude and whisper.

To speak the unspeakable, that is often the poet’s job. Finding a language for what otherwise goes shoved under the worldwide carpet. In Dawn Lundy Martin’s beautiful and uncompromising new book, “A Gathering of Matter/A Matter of Gathering,� we are given a language for the body. The body as object of obsession, the body as lover, the body as slave, the body as violator, and violated. The winner of the Cave Canem Poetry Prize and published by the University of Georgia Press, Martin’s book has made her a Lambda Literary Award Finalist. And I for one, hope she wins.

Lately, the graffiti in my neighborhood has been getting very positive. I find that each day on another block I’m getting bombarded more and more with messages of Magic and Think of the Future. On good days I find it practically overwhelming how lovely it is, on bad days I take offense. But either way it reminds me of how many of us feel like we must write things down and then share them with other people. (Yes, I know there are many legal implications, and I’m not encouraging graffiti. I might add to that however, that some of my favorite artists started out making street art including Basquiat. And some of my favorite artists are still making street art, such as Shepard Fairy.) I like the urgency of it, the immediacy of having to write on the wall.

In reading the insightful discourse on online intimacies, I found myself thinking deeply about the importance of the online community for poetry. Mainly I was thinking about the odd and blossoming event that has happened every April for the past five years: National Poetry Writing Month. Now, we all know it’s National Poetry Month, but to some poet/bloggers, it is also the month where they challenge themselves to write one poem for each day of the month. And post their journey online. Founded by Maureen Thorson and inspired by National Novel Writing Month, the participants are now upwards of fifty and the fevered attempt to write everyday is celebrated, sometimes embarrassingly (as when I participated), in full view of the public eye.

The first time I heard Abraham Smith read I was shot back in time. I pictured me, a scraggly beat-girl, hearing Burroughs and thinking Whitman while rocking back and forth to a new sort of preacher’s sermon. Smith has a rolling rhythm come from deep in the backwoods of Ladysmith, Wisconsin that rocks a bit like a boat on the rough Mississippi heading for the West Village circa 1963. All this to say it felt, at the same time, familiar and utterly alien. In his new book, Whim Man Mammon just out by Action Books, Smith pounds out a rhythm with a boot heel and sits you down to listen to the man behind the pulpit. Although the title might suggest a book heavily steeped in the language school, Smith shakes off any sort of categorization by blending his singular narrative deep into song that harkens back to Woody Guthrie and those storytellers intrinsically interested in the mythmaking of American culture.

I have had the great pleasure of introducing Jennifer L. Knox in a few different writing courses. The first thing that happens is a dilation of pupils, as if an art history teacher suddenly flipped the next slide to reveal the students’ own family photographs. There amongst the van Gogh’s and the Gauguin’s is a picture of their sister wearing only her underwear and carrying a 40 full of gas near the aqueduct. The picture stands up to the others, but it’s wildly close to home. Colors rich and unflinching. This is to say, there is an immediate recognition of language and landscape. With her second book, Drunk By Noon (Bloof Books 2007) Knox continues to simultaneously pierce and please the reader.

It is the first day of spring. Renew. Read. Rev up.

In attempting to carry on some of Rigoberto’s wonderful work introducing new books and old favorites from his collection, I thought I’d start a Thursday shout out series. (Unlike Rigo, I may not be able to do it every Thursday, but I will do my honest best.)

Often, the poems that thrill me the most, the ones that make me ignore all the clutter on the table and commit myself to reading them, often memorizing them, are poems that take a stand, that have a strong sense of risk and urgency (I said NOW!). Add that to an individual voice that won’t quit and language that sandblasts the paint off all those ordinary houses we drive by, and you’ve got Alex Lemon.

I woke up this morning thinking of the Irish. In midtown Manhattan the parade barreled through and people wore their green sweaters and talked about their heritage and well, drank some. Mainly, I thought of cultures that are inherently linked to poetry, where the legacy of poetry is something highly celebrated, is viewed as an essential commodity. Perhaps I’m dreaming that up (it’s easy to fantasize about other countries when you’re living in another, like admiring someone else’s meal). Also, today I was thinking of Yeats. Okay, while it may seem almost cliché to bring up Yeats (like bringing up Paz on Cinco de Mayo), I stare at this quote everyday on my desk:

Now that my ladder’s gone,
I must lie down where all the ladders start
In the foul rag-and-bone shop of the heart.

And so I thought I would. Bring him up, that is. Forgive me, my average-self. This quote is also on my refrigerator, and sometimes, on days when I need it; it’s in my pocket. Also, I think, the poem in its entirety is in my memory. I see it as an instigator.

Speaking of art & politics:

CAESAR
What man is that?
BRUTUS
A soothsayer bids you beware the ides of March.
CAESAR
Set him before me; let me see his face.
CASSIUS
Fellow, come from the throng; look upon Caesar.
CAESAR
What say'st thou to me now? Speak once again.
SOOTHSAYER
Beware the ides of March.
CAESAR
He is a dreamer; let us leave him: pass.

It’s hard not to think of Caesar on the ides of March. All those knives, all those men of politics. However, I often find that it is not Caesar or Brutus that I think of the most, rather, it is the Soothsayer. The poor nameless fellow who wanders in to warn his dictator of the coming fall only to be shoved out of the way as men with important business to attend to go about their day. Mainly, I think, Hey, I’d like a soothsayer! Or an oracle. Or a Ouija board, a magic eight ball, even a good horoscope. Unlike Caesar (there’s really little comparison between he and I), I’d listen. Someone says, “Beware,� and I do, I pay attention.

Maybe the soothsayers of today are the poets: Poor, often nameless, often shoved aside, often shouting something that no one is listening to.