Emmy Pérez

Congratulations to Emmy Pérez, who recently won The Alfredo Cisneros Del Moral Foundation Award. Emmy was a big reason why I decided to pursue the MFA at UT-Pan American. She was my thesis chair. She was a wonderful teacher and I miss not having a workshop with her this year. Last year, when I was going through some deep family trouble and poetry was the last thing on my mind, she helped me focus and recover. She introduced me to the works of so many other writers and poets. She taught me to be more generous and open in my work. I cannot say enough about how she has influenced my writing and the way I view myself as a Chican@/post-Chican@ poet. Thank you, Emmy. Congratulations.

Syzygy

Well, I'm working again. I mean the real work, not the stuff I do for money (a.k.a. my job, which, however noble it might seem when my head is biggest, is not real). The drought didn't last all that long. I was gone to Austin for a couple of days and the bats cleared right out. I decided to work on my manuscript again for a contest and am revising a few poems to send out to presses. Working on a pair of book reviews. Working on a short story that starts "There have always been three Mrs. Garcias." I have no idea what it's about, but my nephew reminded me how good a book A Wrinkle in Time is, and I got in my head the image of three witches, from MacBeth, only more quotidian, less learned. It will feature a hurdy gurdy somehow. I have to work in a hurdy gurdy, yes. I have no clue about how to write fiction, but godamnit, I have a story to tell and I'm going to tell it.
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Be at peace, Barry Horn. I knew him only in passing. I met him only once, when I asked what pieces of Chican@ art were at his museum. (He was the Executive Director of the Brownsville Museum of Fine Art.) He didn't understand what I meant, or he thought I was trying to trap him, maybe. He ignored my question and told me about the Mexican pieces. He had a sort of green glow to him. Very kind. The Museum, and Brownsville, have lost so much.

Some Visual Poems

I haven't written much in the last month or so. The practical world has got its claws in me, and I haven't had time to sit down for any length of time and write. When I'm not working or studying I'm tired, and when I'm tired all I want to do is dunk my head in a vat of mindlessness, which explains my unhealthy attraction to television. And zombies. (I've been into zombies ever since I read (or tried to read) David Chalmers' The Conscious Mind. Those zombies have since been replaced by the more colorful kind in Zombieland and The Walking Dead.)

I decided to post some visual poems here that I had been working on in late August. A professor of mine asked me to send these and some others to some people she recommended (professors and writers) as a way to introduce myself and my work to a wider circle of interested people. I took down her direction with the honest intent to send them out, but I've decided not to contact anyone. Why? Partly because I'm afraid of what they'll think. (Wouldn't it be awful to get a negative response or, worse yet, no response at all?) Partly because these poems are my children, and sending them out to people I don't know doesn't feel very fatherly. Putting them up on the web sends them out to the whole world--a blanket release that provides safety in its receivers' anonymity.

Both are visual poems. Not quite concrete poems. Not quite iconic. They are both ekphrastic, although the one about the grackles is only notionally so. I don't have any overarching aesthetic guiding them (at least that I'm aware of). They just are.

Indecisive Chacmool
(click for larger views)
















Two Painters Standing at the Same Mural

The True Problem of Philosophy

"EL VERDADERO PROBLEMA de la filosofía
es quién lava los platos"

-Nicanor Parra, "Algo Por El Estilo"

Still Wise After All These Years

Gabriel Richardson Lear on Plato on poetry:

"Plato thinks the effect of being exposed to bad poetry is that you become a multiple person."

"[Plato] thinks poetry is crucial in moral development and that's because, at the end of the day, he thinks of poetry as a form of play."

"Poetry has a performative context for Plato and Plato doesn't firmly distinguish the poet and the performer in a way that we might think is crucial."

"He thinks of the poet as somebody who becomes very good at making himself seem like a variety of different kinds of people."

"Plato does think that the poets aim to give pleasure . . . . this vision of poets as master producers of pleasure that's addictive and deliciously sweet . . ."

Check the link for a more complete picture of Plato's views. At the end of the day, Plato wasn't very charitable towards poets.

Praise be to Chac

It's a rainy day. Praise be to Chac. The string of 100-degree days is over. I'm chilling out under the clouds with a little Portishead and Massive Attack (mood music), sipping on a cola, writing some reviews and printing up a manuscript for two contests. Gina's out at La Nena's birthday party. Mambo's crashing on the couch. Sneaking in snippets of Susan Jacoby's The Age of American Unreason when I can. (Although, what's up with that misdirected attack on video games? She's never played Bioshock or Fable, I don't think.) Also reading Brian Carr's awesome short story in the latest issue of Front Porch. Looking forward to some wings and then a long, long night of well-deserved sleep. (Unless I get a panic attack.) A new batch of classes start tomorrow night. Lost faith in another politician I'd recently heard speak at a public meeting and was impressed with. (That was quick.) Thinking about leaving the Valley again. Wanted to print out some chapbooks for Thursday's reading, but no time. New resolution: do not read any news for a week; try to forget about this whole health care 'debate' that the alarmists and shills have poisoned. Life is good.

Reading at South Texas College

September 3 (THURSDAY--Poster below is wrong)
5:30 pm - 7:00 pm
Cooper Center @ South Texas College

The flyer:

Dr God

"If all must hurt at once, let yet more hurt now,
so I'll be ready, Dr God. Push on me."

-Dream Song #194
***
I am officially an MFA graduate on Saturday, the 22nd. I will celebrate by sleeping most of the day. Some day soon I'll blog about my MFA experience, which has been wonderful. In about 2 weeks I will begin MBA classes. I've been reading my finance, management, and marketing books. They are so interesting. I never knew what the Delphi technique was! Now I know. It is not a sin to love poetry and practicality, is it? Except that I can't imagine having taken the business classes earlier in my education. I can't imagine how undergrads can make sense of this stuff without having had full-time jobs. I can't imagine how they can take it seriously without having first read the great thinkers and writers. Everything else is a footnote.

For Sonia

"Tell us, Latina, was it what they
assumed it was, broken language,
poetry of a lesser nature, a wound?"

-Sheryl Luna, "Poesia de Maquiladora"

Dangerous

This is the time of year when it is ridiculously hot and all I want to do is sleep, but I can't because I have so much to do. And when I manage to find some downtime I am so wired up I can't seem to rest or relax, and so the cycle perpetuates itself. This is the time for great art or, in my case, unrelenting gauze.
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New pieces in Borderlands and The Marlboro Review.
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I have set myself the task of revising my manuscript for some contests in September. What principles of revision do I use? Application of time. The last time I looked at these poems I thought they were pretty good. Now I see all the loose meat. Next principle: ruthlessness. Cut the loose meat. Next principle: psychometry. Remember what the meat was about. Do the poems still make sense in that context? Last principle: eat, eat and enjoy. Go with the gut. Conclusion: I am prepared for more rejection.
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Tomorrow Gina and I will get a copy of Michael Jackson's Dangerous.