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The road to winning as a poet hasn't always been smooth for Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo. However, this month she won the 2013 California Writers Exchange, sponsored by the Poets & Writers, Inc. The prize was judged by Marilyn Chin and includes an all-expense paid trip to NYC to meet with top agents, editors, literary magazine editors, and authors. When I spoke by Skype to Xochitl-Julisa, she was already thinking of her wish list of people to meet, something Poets & Writers asked her to do. She will spend a week in New York and at the top of her wish list is a meeting with Martín Espada.
Six years ago, the poet, 32, decided to get serious about her writing and start taking classes at PCC and in 2007 she enrolled in Antioch's MFA program and started working with Los Angeles Poet Laureate Eloise Klein Healy. "I wanted to do something I was passionate about," said Bermejo who also teaches high school in Arcadia. She is also the curator of the Poetry Series Hitched at Beyond Baroque and a founding editor of The SplinterGeneration.
Antioch's low-residency allowed her to work full-time and teach British Literature at Arroyo Pacific Academy. Bermejo explained why becoming a poet made teaching easier: "One of the reasons I had a hard time teaching in my early twenties was because I didn't think I had anything to teach people.
Bermejo continues to receive words of wisdom and advice from Eloise Klein Healy, who recently called Xochitl to congratulate her on her award. The news came shortly after Xochitl had called Eloise to congratulate her on her Poet Laureate of Los Angeles appointment.
"Eloise called me on the phone yesterday and gave me some advice. She said, 'don't waste your time doubting yourself and stay positive and enjoy the moment.' I was looking at the list of the runners up and they are all really great writers."
Xochitl tells La Bloga this wasn't the first time she had applied to the California Writers Exchange award; she also tried three years, during the last cycle the award was offered to California writers. However, this year she had support from the group, Women Who Submit. She was invited in June of 2011 by Alyss Dixson, who is also a member of VIDA: Women in Literary Arts. Women Who Submit hold submission parties in response to a case study by VIDA that showed women authors were under-represented in the nation's biggest literary journals; extra kudos for Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo for being a woman, a native of Los Angeles, and a Chicana.
The poet also had an inkling she might place in the prestigious award because the poems she submitted were all written during a transformative Summer she spent volunteering for Tucson-based humanitarian aid organization, No More Deaths. "I never had poems that were so solidly connected," she said.
"I was shocked, there was lots of screams, profanity, and expletives when I heard the voicemail. I enter contests and it always feels like a complete shot in the dark and I never expect to win. I rushed to call my mom."
Xochitl's mom is very proud of her daughter and often calls her the Number One Princess. Imelda Bermejo will celebrate her daughter's feat with a repeat trip to Knott's Berry Farm. Xochitl shared a fun memory about how her mother took her to Knotts Berry Farm when she was in the fifth grade and had won her very first writing contest. In another touching moment, Mrs. Bermejo recently surprised her daughter by bringing a poem she had written at Nuvein Foundation's Día de Los Muertos cultural event in El Monte; Xochitl was invited to host the open mic by Christopher Luke Trevilla and Kimberly Cobian.
Congratulations, Xochitl-Julisa Bermjo! Read an excerpt of the award-winning submission here.
Here's to more great surprises during the Sixth Sun. Happy Solstice. Felíz Navidad and all that jazz.
If you are in New Orleans, Don't miss Lucrecia Guerrero and Melinda Palacio at the Maple Street Bookshop, December 29 at 3pm.
Melinda Palacio also reads from her first full-length poetry collection, How Fire Is a Story, Waiting, at the Maple Leaf Bar on Oak Street in New Orleans, this event is in part funded by a grant from Poets and Writers, Inc.
2 Comments on Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo's Road to Winning, last added: 12/21/2012
Review: Martín Espada. The Trouble Ball. NY: W.W. Norton, 2011. ISBN 978-0-393-08003-2
Michael sedano
Martín Espada’s new collection, The Trouble Ball doubles a reader’s pleasure with two parts. The second section, Blasphemy, comes with ten poems, the title section fourteen. Adding a soupçon more, the poet adds a notes section to fill in allusions and inform personages for eighteen of the twentyfour...one searches for the mot juste to encompass the experience of reading this most recent publication of America’s best English-language poet.
Diversity is too trite a term, but here is a diverse collection. Humor; eulogy; polemic; prayer. Each of the 24 pieces has its own beauties, some sizzle with passion that makes the others fade from memory. As it should be.
Masterpiece similarly suffers from overuse, like standing ovations at the Phil. The Trouble Ball floats a few masterpieces that will sustain the poet’s reputation as the best American poet writing in English. Like Dudamel at every concert, Espada once again earns his ovation with this diverse collection of masterpieces and pieces.
The title poem starts out as one of those evocative baseball panegyrics in the ilk of “Casey at the Bat,” “Take Me Out To The Ball Game,” “The Boys of Summer.” The poem is dedicated to the poet’s father, Frank Espada, the boy in the poem. The reader is prepared for simple and warm emotions. The reader prepares to endure nostalgia for old-time legends of the sport, the Brooklyn Dodgers, a father takes his boy to Ebbets Field.
In its first three stanzas nostalgia gives way to understated anger explaining the brutal moment a little boy learns segregation and how to fit in: baseball kept black players out of the spotlight and the money in 1941, no los dejan, the poet’s grandfather explains sotto voce so their language doesn’t give them away to the social myopia of this blindly complicit mob.
Readers will follow the next five stanzas with interest as the poet turns the lens back on himself. What’s Espada going to do with this now?
Blasphemy--speaking impiously—comes naturally to some poets. Chicana Chicano, Puerto Rican poets cut their teeth goring sacred cows, so Blasphemy as the title of a section in a poetry collection implies much beyond the hieratic. For some poems in this Part Two, humor motivates, for others, death itself becomes the point of the joke.
The title piece comes second in its section. An eight line gem, its blasphemy comes with a smile, “poetry can save us” and “not the way Jesus, between screams, / promised” and its ultimate irony, poetry can save some of us.
The lead Blasphemy poem prods with humor, "The Playboy Calendar and the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám." The poet as a teenager has a Playboy calendar and a copy of The Rubáiyát. Like a healthy boy he one-hands Miss January, his favorite, until December when he tosses the useless calendar. Onanism is not the blasphemy here. The furtive teen boy hides his copy of Omar Khayyám in the folds of the calendar, lest someone open his door while he’s on the bed memorizing poetry instead of mammaries. Blasphemy? The boy hides his poetry behind sex and therein comes his passion. There’s always a Miss January but only one different drummer.
0 Comments on Review: The Trouble Ball. Bits&Pcs. On-Line Floricanto as of 4/12/2011 12:54:00 AM
Ry Cooder Donates Proceeds to MALDEF from Sale of “Quicksand” Created in Response to SB 1070
LOS ANGELES, CA – Ry Cooder created his new single Quicksand in response to anti-immigrant law SB 1070 and the ongoing Arizona immigration battle. SB 1070 requires police to demand "papers' from people they stop who they suspect are "unlawfully present" in the U.S. As described by Cooder, Quicksand is a slow-burning rocker that tells the story of six would-be immigrants making their way from Mexico to the Arizona border. Ry Cooder's Quicksand went on sale exclusively on iTunes, and Cooder has pledged to donate all proceeds from the song to MALDEF.
Thomas A. Saenz, MALDEF President and General Counsel, stated that Defeating Arizona's SB 1070 - and the potential copycat laws that have since been announced by unscrupulous legislators around the nation - will require a broad national community effort to reinforce the constitutional principles and values that characterize our nation. Our heartfelt thanks to Ry Cooder for being a leader in that necessary community effort.
Cooder produced the 1996 album Buena Vista Social Club, followed by solo projects with Ibrahim Ferrer and Manuel Galban, of Los Zafiros. Quicksand features Cooder's son Joachim on drums, with backup vocals by Lucina Rodgriguez and Fabiola Trujillo of the Mexican roots band Los Cenzontles. The artwork for the single features the piece Nuthin' To See Here, Keep On Movin'! by frequent collaborator Vincent Valdez.
The Devil’s Highway has been used by migrants traveling on foot for over 100 years, says Cooder of the journey depicted in the song. You should try it sometime. Out there, temperatures can get above 130 degrees. If you fall down, you have religious hallucinations, then you die, cooking from the inside out. If you get lucky, you might make it to Yuma, but then what?
You can find a link to Ry Cooder’s page featuring “Quicksand” here.
To show your support for Ry Cooder and MALDEF, visit the iTunes store to purchase Ry Cooder’s Quicksand here.
Founded in 1968, MALDEF is the nation’s leading Latino legal civil rights organization. Often described as the
0 Comments on Fight SB1070 With Music; Poets; Su Teatro Summer as of 1/1/1900
Called "the Latino poet of his generation" and "the Pablo Neruda of North American authors", Martín Espada was born in Brooklyn, NY in 1957. He has published seventeen books in all as a poet, editor, essayist and translator. Two more books are forthcoming: The Trouble Ball (Norton, 2011), a collection of poems, and The Lover of a Subversive is Also a Subversive (Michigan, 2010), a collection of essays. 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. He has received numerous awards and fellowships, including the Robert Creeley 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; collections of poems have recently been published in Spain, Puerto Rico and Chile. 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.
On Sunday May 16, Martin Espada will facilitate an Acéntos poetry workshop from 5-7PM in the Savoy Building at Hostos Community College in The Bronx.
The Acentos Foundation is a Bronx, New York-based organization fostering audiences for poetry through the discussion, promotion, teaching, performance, and publication of poetry by Latino and Latina writers.
Check out Martín Espada at the 2008 Dodge Poetry Festival:
0 Comments on Acéntos welcomes Martín Espada as of 1/1/1900
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.
Martin Espada
From Our Friends at Acentos:
Acentos Writers Workshop welcomes Martin Espada Eugenio María de Hostos Community College Friday, May 8th, 2009 at 7pm.
Acentos Writers Workshop welcomes Martin Espada to Eugenio María de Hostos Community College on Friday, May 8th, 2009 at 7pm sharp. FREE!
We are extremely excited to announce that Martin 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 [email protected] 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 FloorNew York 10451 • Phone 917-209-42117pm 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 Vargas917-209-4211
Lisa Alvarado
0 Comments on Gratitude, Martin Espada and Acentos as of 4/30/2009 9:45:00 AM
I was teaching an intro to lit class yesterday and afterward one of my students said that reading Federico's Ghost changed his whole view of poetry. He said he previously thought poetry was irrelevant to everyday people, obtuse, precious. However, Martín Espada changed what he thought and what he was going to read. He went on and on about the use of images that got under his skin, images that made the labor and the suffering a visceral, unforgettable experience.
(Ah, we poets, we teachers, live for that!)
Please take a look at that life-changing poem and a repeat look at my review of his Pulitzer Prize nominated book, The Republic of Poetry.
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Federico's Ghost
The story is that whole families of fruitpickers still crept between the furrows of the field at dusk, when for reasons of whiskey or whatever the cropduster plane sprayed anyway, floating a pesticide drizzle over the pickers who thrashed like dark birds in a glistening white net, except for Federico, a skinny boy who stood apart in his own green row, and, knowing the pilot would not understand in Spanish that he was the son of a whore, instead jerked his arm and thrust an obscene finger.
The pilot understood. He circled the plane and sprayed again, watching a fine gauze of poison drift over the brown bodies that cowered and scurried on the ground, and aiming for Federico, leaving the skin beneath his shirt wet and blistered, but still pumping his finger at the sky.
After Federico died, rumors at the labor camp told of tomatoes picked and smashed at night, growers muttering of vandal children or communists in camp, first threatening to call Immigration, then promising every Sunday off if only the smashing of tomatoes would stop.
Still tomatoes were picked and squashed in the dark, and the old women in camp said it was Federico, laboring after sundown to cool the burns on his arms, flinging tomatoes at the cropduster that hummed like a mosquito lost in his ear, and kept his soul awake.
Martín Espada's The Republic of Poetry reminds me of Oscar de la Hoya's boxing. Beautiful to behold, it's unerring in its aim. Pared down to the essential--it's body blows to the chest, to the gut, head blows that annihilate the opponent and leave the viewer stunned, reeling, gasping for air.Democracy subverted in Chile and by implication, everywhere, reverberates on every page.
The Republic of Poetry is not an elegy, it's an upper cut to complacency, a left hook to amnesia. Wake up, remember what was, see what's happening right in front of you.The comparison of Espada to Neruda, to Whitman are many, but to me, what comes to mind is poet warrior, able to fight and raise an army with the power of his words.
But in case you're not convinced, here is some additional praise for this remarkable book.
“What a tender, marvelous collection. First, that broken, glorious journey into the redemptive heart of my Chile, and then, as if that had not been enough, the many gates of epiphanies and sorrows being opened again and again, over and over.” —Ariel Dorfman
“Martín Espada is a poet of annunciation and denunciation, a bridge between Whitman and Neruda, a conscientious objector in the war of silence.” —Ilan Stavans
“Martín Espada’s big-hearted poems reconfirm ‘The Republic of Poetry’ that (dares) to insist upon its dreams of justice and mercy even during the age of perpetual war.” —Sam Hamill
“Martín Espada is indeed a worthy prophet for a better world.” —Rigoberto González
This is tight, muscular writing. Espada make his point with an economy of language, concealing a dense terrain of imagery and meaning. In this universe, the dead are not ghosts, but fully fleshed--staving off the soldiers, marching in the battlefield, struggling in the streets, and inspiring new generations. Read these and you'll see what I mean.
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The Soldiers in the Garden
Isla Negra, Chile, September 1973
After the coup, the soldiers appeared in Neruda’s garden one night, raising lanterns to interrogate the trees, cursing at the rocks that tripped them. From the bedroom window they could have been the conquistadores of drowned galleons, back from the sea to finish plundering the coast.
The poet was dying: cancer flashed through his body and left him rolling in the bed to kill the flames. Still, when the lieutenant stormed upstairs, Neruda faced him and said: There is only one danger for you here: poetry. The lieutenant brought his helmet to his chest, apologized to señor Neruda and squeezed himself back down the stairs. The lanterns dissolved one by one from the trees.
For thirty years we have been searching for another incantation to make the soldiers vanish from the garden.
The soldier leaves, not because the poet is super human, but because he's supremely human. Poetry taps into a power that no bullet can halt nor cancer eat away. Armies of everyday people have been set loose with words like Neruda's. Then and now, the men in power with bloody hands know it's dangerous, know it's subversive. But in the end, it remains unstoppable.
Black Islands for Darío
At Isla Negra, between Neruda’s tomb and the anchor in the garden, a man with stonecutter’s hands lifted up his boy of five so the boy’s eyes could search mine. The boy’s eyes were black olives. Son, the father said, this is a poet, like Pablo Neruda. The boy’s eyes were black glass. My son is called Darío, for the poet of Nicaragua, the father said. The boy’s eyes were black stones. The boy said nothing, searching my face for poetry, searching my eyes for his own eyes. The boy’s eyes were black islands.
What possibility dwells in those black eyes? What page of history will be written for him to read, and what page will he write himself? Knowing that Espada is a father, I can only imagine how many times he's asked himself those questions in the still hours of the night, watching his own child sleep. Toward the end of The Republic of Poetry, Espada meditates on the "smaller" world of family and relationships, personal joy and private grief. Every fighter has his scars, and every poet, his pleasures.
Now, stop reading this, it won't get the job done. Go. Get the book. Read that instead. It's time to wake up.
The Republic of PoetryW. W. Norton
ISBN-10: 0393062562
ISBN-13: 978-0393062564
Lisa Alvarado
1 Comments on Martín Espada, A Writer's Life, last added: 4/23/2009
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
0 Comments on Martín Espada on Barak Obama as of 1/21/2009 5:55:00 PM
Universal health care for all Universal literacy and the means to achieve it Meaningful work at a true living wage for all A planet without us wounding it by thoughtless use of resources And end to gun barrel diplomacy
I am grateful for...
a spiritual outlook and a real relationship with Spirit some small gift to be able to write a larger gift to be able to appreciate the genius, hardwork, and talent of so many others Martin Espada Dina Ackerman Luis Rodriguez Pablo Neruda the blogueros Ann Cardinal in particular strength, both physical and emotional the ability to find joy and beauty in everyday life the ability to laugh
Lisa Alvarado
1 Comments on First day of 2009, last added: 1/2/2009
cover of Raw Silk Suture copyright Maria Arango 2008
Dear Reader: First of all, much love and congratulations to Daniel Olivas for the gorgeous work of Latinos in Lotus Land, and to Manuel Ramos, whose poetry continues to garner well-deserved attention and acclaim. (Ay, I am one lucky writer -- Michael, Manuel, Rudy, Rene and Ann make me bring (I hope) my best self every week....)
And if you only have limited reading time DO NOT HESITATE to buy the following books of poetry:
The Republic of Poetry -- Martín Espada
187 Reason Why Mexicans Can't Cross The Border -- Juan Felipe Herrera Teeth -- Aracelis Girmay
Raven Eye and Naked Wanting -- Margo Tamez
I Praise My Destroyer -- Diane Ackerman
The Wind Shifts -- edited by Francisco Aragón
andFull Woman, Fleshly Apple, Hot Moon--- because if you're not reading Pablo Neruda, there is something seriously wrong with you Personal Notes:
I'd be kicking myself for a very long time if I didn't share with you some wonderful news. I have recently signed a contract with Floricanto Press for the release of a volume of poetry, Raw Silk Suture, edited by Carlos Mock, author of Papi Chulo. This project has been blessed by Carlos' unflagging support, the wonderful layout by Bill Rattan and by the phenomenal illustrations by woodcut artist, Maria Arango. Advance copies should be ready mid-summer, with a full release scheduled in September.
Here are two advance quotes about the project I am very gratified to have received.
Alvarado's call for "a quiet remaking of cells" is northing short of revolutionary. Read this book, look at yourself and the world around you and know: anything is possible. Demetria Martinez, author, Confessions of a Berlitz-Tape Chicana.
The poetry of Lisa Alvarado thunders across the page.Fiery and smoky, these are poems for midnight whiskey and pre-dawn espresso. These are poems for what ails us. Manuel Ramos, Moony's Road to Hell, Author La Bloga, Founder and Columnist
RECLAMO
En este sueño estoy completa. No tengo que guardar las historias de otra gente. No tengo que buscar y escudriñar a través de los restos de sus palabras. En este sueño paso mis dedos através de la cabellera de Frida. Con esa cabellera, tejo flores obscuras del color de la sangre. Y me dice que el jaguar viene a traerme su poder. La medicina que calma este dolor es como comida para calmar esta hambre. En este sueño hago magia con el lodo del Rio Grande. Arropado en corridas y música ranchera, que son el hechizo y el encanto que anula la edad del olvido y el adoctrinamiento. En este sueño tengo un amante cuya cara es de piedra, como el antiguo marcador del templo. Su boca es carnosa, sus ojos están entrecerrados y murmura: Ven conmigo mi India, mi pequeña perdida. Recuerda quien eres. Recuerda quien eres.
MEXICO: 90 DAYS AND COUNTING OR YOU REALLY CAN’T GO HOME AGAIN iridescent electric pink bougainvillea line the boulevard next to where someone’s pissing right in the middle of the day yesterday’s pozole slick and greenish stains the street around the corner from the Monument to the Revolution where a golden angel looks down on prostitutes with imitation Chanel bags and taxis are green and yellow beetles carrying sour businessmen who ask the teenage pimps how much the cross-eyed boy in the Lucha Libre mask stares at me and runs past barefoot beggar children in clown makeup but the clowns never smile and they’re on every corner they block the path of women going to work wearing not quite put together cheap copies of clothes they saw in Vogue or Cosmo but nothing really matches they always wear white heels or a belt with a giant buckle and the requisite miniskirt that makes their ass stand out so that the pesero driver with one gold tooth always holds their change for just that extra second I don’t get the shits but baby-faced doctors run IV’s in both arms for migraines and food poisoning the fat man who served me chiles rellenos laughed at my buzz cut and winked when he slid me the plate outside the ER stand private guards with tight lips and clenched pistols working their job they scowl at the howling sushi delivery boys on motorbikes who rush to the bar for a quick one in between deliveries inside the Museo Bellas Artes I see the outstretched arms of Rivera’s peasants and refuse the outstretched arms of the Indian sitting at the bus stop I clutch my postcards with Frida’s self-portraits the one with the red dress the one with the hammer and sickle body brace down the street from my favorite helado stand the one with flavors like guayaba mango cajeta a man grabs my crotch to see if I have any balls I almost knock over a tianguis stand of charro Barbies the seller’s daughter a girl with an olive oval face blinks her long lashes in disbelief What is this American doing here?
Thursday, April 24: 7 PM, Studio Theatre, College of the Arts, California State University, Long Beach, CA. Contact: Víctor Rodríguez, 562-985-8560;[email protected].
Friday, April 25: 8 PM, Fé Bland Auditorium, Santa Barbara City College, Santa Barbara, CA. Contact: David Starkey, 805-965-0581, X2345; [email protected].
a wondrous collection of images of one of my favorite cities. what a powerful opening contrast of bouganvillea and publlc pissers, that, and small details like "yesterday's posole/ slick and greenish" makes the city come alive in my own memory. sounds as if the book will be out by xmas?
mvs
Lisa Alvarado said, on 4/24/2008 6:58:00 PM
Michael -- D.F. is vibrant, sexy, holy, verdant, dingy, thriving, boisterous, lively, inspiring, overwhelming, home of giants and invisible workers, desperately poor, and Euro-chic.
I lived there for a year in 1997 in a duplex apartment, with the main living space on the first floor and the bedroom in the basement on Calle Sullivan not far from El Monumento de la Madre, and the most amazing corner coffee shop. It was at the very tip of andiron building, octagonal, with glass walls facing three intersection, and the most heavenly hand roasted coffee....
CALL FOR PAPERS JOURNAL OF AFRICAN CHILDREN'S & YOUTH LITERATURE (JACYL)
Editor:Osayimwense Osa Associate Editors: Betsie van der Westhuizen, North West University, South Africa Chikoko Muponder, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa
The Journal African Children's & Youth Literature invites contributions from Children*s and Youth Literature theorists, practitioners, scholars and graduate students.
Please email papers to the editor, Osayimwense Osa, at [email protected] OR Send a copy to the editor using the following address:
Osayimwense Osa, Editor Journal African Children's & Youth Literature Department of Languages and Literature VIRGINIA STATE UNIVERSITY 1 Hayden drive, Petersburg, Virginia 23806, USA
For almost eighteen years, JACYL has provided a forum for scholars in African children's and youth literatures to share their ideas and findings and promote the growth and development of scholarship in the genre.
We are interested in receiving essays in all aspects of children's and youth literatures in Africa and in the African Diaspora. Case studies illustrating the successful use of children's and youth literature in indigenous African languages and the like are welcome.
The following is a list of some areas you might like to address: New directions in African children's literatures - African Children's literature and the media - Storytelling and African children's literature - African Children's literature in African languages - Online research in African children's and youth literatures - African children's literature in the primary/elementary school - African children's literature in the high school- African children's literature in colleges and universities - Interdisciplinary nature of African children's and youth literatures - Research into African children's and youth literatures in English, French, Spanish, and in indigenous African languages - History, Roots, or Ancestry in African Children's and Youth literatures - African roots of world children*s literatures - African children*s and youth literature and AIDS.
Please note that this list is by no means exhaustive, and we welcome submissions on any aspect of children's and youth literature in Africa, in the African diaspora and in the international/global community.
By: Maryann Yin,
on 10/14/2013
Here are some literary events to pencil in your calendar this week.
By: Melinda Palacio,
on 12/20/2012
LOS ANGELES, CA – Ry Cooder created his new single Quicksand in response to anti-immigrant law 
Martin Espada 
Martín Espada
By: Jenny,
on 10/16/2007
Thanks for searching out the story behind the story, Melinda. You cover the happenings in the poe-life. Congratulations to Xoxhitl and Eloise.
Fren
So fantastic and well deserved.