APRIL 30, 2009: Poem In Your Pocket Day

I am carrying a poem by Martín Espada in my pocket today. How about you?

LATINO POEM-IN-YOUR-POCKET DAY: 4/30/09

Letras Latinas Blog would like to get in on some NaPoMo fun with the following invitation, taking its cue from the Academy of American Poets, who have designated April 30, 2009 as:

Poem in Your Pocket Day:

Between now and April 30 choose a poem, any poem, by a Latino or Latina poet---one that is perhaps not too long and lends itself to being read in a brief stretch of time---say twenty five lines or less, or a poem that doesn't occupy more than one page in a published book. Once you've identified your poem, here are some suggested steps and things to think about:

Step one (two options):

1. Type the poem out and print it.
2. Photocopy the page of the book you're taking the poem from.

[Option 1 comes from a workshop I took as an undergraduate at UC Berkeley with Robert Pinksy in which during the course of the semester we were required to type out an anthology of our favorite poems that was at least around forty pages long. It was one of the most useful exercises I've done, ever].

Step two:

Practice reading the poem out loud to yourself in preparation for April 30, but refrain from reading it to anyone, live....until April 30.

Step three:

Look ahead and think about where you're going to be on April 30, and where that day's itinerary and routine is going to take you. Start brainstorming possible scenarios...

Step four:

Starting thinking about how many times you might want to read your poem aloud that day, and to whom, from where, and in what circumstances.

Will you read it to someone you know? If so, will it be to someone who already reads and listens to poetry on a regular basis, or perhaps someone you know who has very little, if any, experience with poetry. I'm thinking the latter scenario would be more interesting.

Will you take a chance and stop a stranger in a public space and read it to him or her? Or perhaps corral more than one stranger for an impromtu poetry reading of one poem? If you decide to incorporate this option, what space will you do this in: on a subway, on the sidewalk, in the post office while you're waiting in line to buy stamps, etc?

I know for myself, I'm going to attempt to do a combination of the above.

Step Five:

April 30 arrives: fold the poem, put it in your pocket, and walk out the front door....be sure you take the poem out of your pocket, unfold it, read it aloud to another human being at least once, perhaps twice, perhaps three, perhaps four times that day. It's up to you.

Step Six (optional)

Consider making photocopies of your poem (making sure that the title, author and source of the poem are included) so that: after you read the poem, you can give it to the person you just read it to, and he or she can carry it in their pocket the rest of their day and, who knows, read it to someone else, in turn...

Step Seven (concurrent with Step Five):

Take mental notes, or keep them as best you can so that: at the end of the day, you can write up a little something (500 words, more, less?) to report your findings:

Which poem did you read (title, author)?

Who did you read it to, and where?

What kind of response did this gentle gesture of guerilla poetry reading elicit from your audience of one or two or three or more? Did anyone thank you, curse you?

How did you feel each time you read the poem? Did it get easier as the day progressed?

Step Eight:

Post your report on your blog and let me know so I can link it. Or: consider sending your report to me to post here at LETRAS LATINAS BLOG as a guest post.

Finally, these are meant to be loose guidelines and suggestions only. Letras Latinas Blog is asking you to read a poem by a Latino or Latina poet in order to help carry out its mission. The only thing I would gently discourage is reading one of your own poems. Give the gift of someone else's literary art that day.

Choose a poem, join in.

A FOUND POEM

Paul Muldoon Can't See Latinos

Princeton Poetry
Festival: April 27

& 28, 2009:
Durs Grünbein

Michael Hofman
Seamus Heaney

John Ashbery
Tina Chang

Lucille Clifton
Michael Dickman

Matthea Harvey
Naomi Shihab Nye

Gerald Stern
Kevin Young

after Dan Vera

source:
NY Times, April 17, 2009
"A Celebrated Princeton Poet Organizes a Festival of His Peers"

J. Michael Martinez: a brief interview and fragment

J. Michael Martinez received an MFA from George Mason University. His poems have appeared in New American Writing, Five Fingers Review, The Colorado Review, Crab Orchard Review and others. He was winner of the 2006 Five Fingers Review Poetry Prize and is co-editor/co-founder of Breach Press. He has poems forthcoming in the anthology Junta: Avant-Garde Latino/a Writing. He teaches literature and cultural studies at the University of Northern Colorado. He lives in Boulder.

And (this just in over at lorcaloca): J. Michael Martinez is the winner of the 2009 Walt Whitman Prize, whose final judge was Juan Felipe Herrera.

Denver Post:

What inspires you artistically?

Martinez: I suppose it's an attempt to achieve a clarity and a unity, because so much of what I experience in my own individual world — and the more cultural realm of politics — is fragmented. It's fragmented and chaotic in the sense that how I experience employing language in poetry is a way for me to clarify and to achieve a certain sense of beauty. That's not to say that I achieve it, but I aim for it. And the strange and difficult thing that beauty is — I have a yearning for it, and I hope to one day achieve that in a poem. The other aspect of that is that poetry always occurs as a community. It's language so it's a dialogue. And for me — I operate with language, in a sense, with the theories of Martin Buber, where, at the highest level of communication, there's this arcing toward a level of the unattainable — and for him, it's divinity, dwelling with divinity. For me, the concept is sort of old- fashioned — this sort of arcing toward communion is old- fashioned. I definitely have a sense of operating with that in mind. One other thing that comes to mind is a quote by Reginald Shepherd. He said that poetry aims for the end of poetry, which is unattainable. And I think that's really true for me and what I try to do.

DP: Who are your favorite poets?

Martinez: Oh, man. The one that I always return to is Rainer Maria Rilke. And then the others that I go back to are Susan Howe , Rosmarie Waldrop, and H.D. (Hilda Doolittle), one of the first Imagist writers. I love all of those writers, and they're the ones I consistently turn back to for inspiration and a guide to excavate what language is guiding me forward.

DP: Why do you think poetry is important?

Martinez: The first word that came to my mind is reconciliation. And a lot of what deals with language in postmodernism deals with fragmentation of language itself. For me, that's beautiful. However, what's implicit in that fragmentation is that language mends at the same time what it's tearing. What that makes me think of is a quote by Maurice Blanchot, and I'll paraphrase it. It embodies what I'm trying to say: In fragmentation, in that space between the fragments, is almost a stronger unity because the fragments beckon each other, and are almost a stronger hole than the whole itself. That speaks to the paradox of language to me.

***

The first time I read J. Michael Martinez's work was a few years ago in New American Writing. I had no idea who he was (had not had the pleasure of meeting him--yet) I can't remember the last time someone won me over in that fashion with a single poem.

Xicano [a fragment]:

[...]

a wind settles in the body.
Echécatl the breath, the flint & spark.
the house of prayers.

I am

when sounds exchange questions
when light enters the lung

[...]

Congratulations!

Who Said What

"Poems are transmissions from the depths of whoever wrote them to the depths of the reader. To a greater extent than with any other kind of reading, the reader of a poem is making that poem, is inhabiting those words in the most personal sort of way. That doesn't mean that you read a poem and make it whatever you want it to be, but that it's operating so deeply in you that it is the most special kind of reading."


---Kay Ryan

recently appointed to a second term as U.S. Poet Laureate

PALABRA PURA welcomes Dan Vera this Wednesday!

Dan Vera

Gerald Early Can’t See Latinos

by Dan Vera

He can’t see Latinos.
He can’t see Sammy Sosa.
And he can’t see Pedro Martinez.

I don’t even like baseball
But I can see them.

When Gerald Early writes 800 words in Time magazine
About how Jackie Robinson’s legacy has withered away
And asks why there are so few “black players in baseball?”
But can’t bring himself to mention all the dark-skinned Dominicans,
Cubans, Panamanians and Columbians,
I figure Gerald Early can’t see Latinos.

But this is Gerald Early!
Esteemed professor of jazz, boxing and modern letters,
Biographer of Miles and Jack Johnson,
Writer on Race, Identity, and the Ambivalence of Assimilation.

If Gerald Early can’t see Latinos,
You know something must be going on,
Like some perpetuation of a rule,
Perhaps we’ll call it the rule of “Unforgivable Latinoness”
(To riff on Gerald Early’s take on Jack Johnson),
The rule that reads that if you speak with an accent,
Especially a Spanish accent, you’re invisible in the African-American imagination.

Tell that to Julio Franco, Edgar Renteria, or José Contreras.
Tell that to Orlando Cabrera, Orlando Hernández, or his brother Livan.

But someone else better tell them.
Because Gerald Early can’t see Latinos.

*
What I didn't know, at the time, was that one of the first editors to give this poem an online readership was the African American writer, Ishmael Reed. The venue was:

Ishmael Reed’s KONCH MAGAZINE, a journal that's been in existance since 1990.

Here is the poem in KONCH's online archive.

It's strident literary journal, KONCH is. What does it say that Reed would publish "Gerald Early Can't See Latinos"? To my mind, it suggests that he isn't shy about providing a space for challenging art---in this case a poem that's willing to take on the still challenging subject of race, perceptions of race among people of color.

It would be quite a while before I'd see "Gerald Early Can't See Latinos" on the page, but I remember being struck by Dan's measured reading of it, admiring its directness. It embodies, I think, one of the strands that Vera cultivates in his work: the political. It's just one strand, though. Dan's work "delights" with its humor and irony. And his love poems are understated in the best way.

One place to sample his work is at Beltway Poetry Quarterly, founded and edited by Kim Roberts:

“Constellations of Delight”
“A Poem of Delight”
“Father’s Day for Gay Boys”
“Winter Solstice for Meditation”
“DC to Newark/Astral Woman”

appear in volume 7, number 1, winter 2007
http://washingtonart.com/beltway/vera.html

*

“Sterling Brown on 12th Street”
(for Sterling Brown and Brookland)

appears in a special issue: The Evolving City
Volume 8, number 4, Fall 2007
http://washingtonart.com/beltway/vera2.html
*

“We Abide In the Irony”
“Uncle Sam Regrets”

appear in the special issue:
Split This Rock: Poems of Provocation & Witness
Volume 9, Number 1, Winter 2008
http://washingtonart.com/beltway/vera3.html
*

Pick up Dan Vera's full-length collection poems, The Space Between Our Danger and Delight, published by Beothuck Books. This is what Martín Espada has to say about it:

"The poetry of Dan Vera is clear is clear, strong, honest and funny. He's the sharp-eyed observer in the corner who doesn't say much, but makes every word count. He handles the political and the personal with equal grace. Whether he is ruminating on the perils of bilingualism, giving voice to the bewilderment of his Cuban immigrant family, cursing the censors who tried to repress gay writers over the years, waiting for the late great poet Sterling Brown to turn the next corner in Washington D.C., or taking delight in all things delightful, Dan Vera is damn good company. You'll see."

* ---Martín Espada

"But then something organic starts to happen."

ESSAY
Got Poetry?

by Jim Holt

A few years ago, I started learning poetry by heart on a daily basis. I’ve now memorized about a hundred poems, some of them quite long — more than 2,000 lines in all, not including limericks and Bob Dylan lyrics. I recite them to myself while jogging along the Hudson River, quite loudly if no other joggers are within earshot. I do the same, but more quietly, while walking around Manhattan on errands — just another guy on an invisible cellphone.....

"But then something organic begins to happen." is from later in this NY Times article. It's worth a read and finding it today was timely:

Tomorrow I have a conference call with staffers from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) about the upcoming "nationals" here in DC for Poetry Out Loud, the poetry recitation competition for high school students. I'm one of a few judges for the semi final round on April 27. The final round is April 28; among the judges for the final round are Luis Rodriguez. I'm looking forward to being a part of this, and want to do a decent job. I've been doing my homework, which includes viewing a DVD of past winners. I've been moved and impressed by the caliber of the recitations. One that really stood out for me was Amanda Fernandez's recitation of Anne Sexton's "Unknown Girl in the Maternity Ward." I was hoping I'd find this video on the Poetry Out Loud website, but it doesn't include student recitations. But the site is worth a visit. There's a 9-minute video documentary on the 2008 California State Finals, which I quite enjoyed.

***

Regarding Gathering Words/Recogiendo Palabras: María Luisa Arroyo sent me her book, and I've really been enjoying it. I'm hoping to get permission from Bilingual Press to post an entire poem here at Letras Latinas Blog. In any case, Latino Poetry Review will definitely be commissioning a review of it, and an interview as well. She has a website---HERE.

And speaking of Latino Poetry Review....Yes, it's way way late, but I've been working (finally) on the pieces steadily and sending them off to the ILS web person. Won't venture to promise when the issue will be completely posted, but we're aiming to have it up before the conclusion of National Poetry Month.

In the meantime, what are you doing this NaPoMo?

National Poetry Month 2009

María Luisa Arroyo
[more soon!]

A NPM Initiative: Poems Out Loud

Willie Perdomo

I got an e-mail today from Norton announcing the start of their month-long Poems Out Loud program for National Poetry Month. I forget how I found out about it, but remember taking an interest and suscribing because I heard that Robert Pinsky would be blogging about poems he enjoys reading aloud, with recordings of him reading and commenting.

I went to the POL website this morning and began browsing and listening to a few poems. I particularly enjoyed one read by Rita Dove, called "Ludwig van Beethoven's Return to Vienna." Check it out. The site also includes some YouTube video shot at the AWP bookfair in Chicago this year. Also curious is the fact that the poets are represented not by photographs of themselves but by what appear to be artist-rendered sketches.

The one small reservation I have about the site is that it seems to only feature poets published by Norton. So while it's striving to promote and share poetry, it's limited if it only puts out poems they publish. But, it's their dime so I guess they can do what they want.

Having said that, there is poem featured by Willie Perdomo, called "Poet in Harlem," with the author himself reading it.

If you'd like to read the poem, learn more about Perdomo, and then listen to him read it, click---HERE.

If you'd like to go straight to Willie Perdomo's voice click---HERE.