Tag Archives: City Lights Books

Learning More from Eduardo Galeano in SF: On Listening and Being Present

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This is about process, I think. First, behold my fancy Instagram pictures from yesterday’s Eduardo Galeano event at City Lights Books. This was a rare thing, to have such an intimate event with such an immense human being. Big treat. And I am clearly ecstatic still. Galeano is one of my major literary idols, even though “idol” may not be the best word, and even though maybe it’s not the best thing, to have “idols.”

But he is BIG in my literary pantheon; without knowing it, he’s been a tremendous informer and influence on my work for years now. Whether it is about sustaining the form and hence sustaining the meditation; sustaining acute attention on the smallest moment; focusing the gaze even finer than I thought possible and then panning out macro within the same body; finding the most specific, most direct, and most clean ways of saying, telling; forging the connection, however tenuous, however unapparent and unlikely; learning how to empathize and/or write with compassion. He calls it feel-thinking, or think-feeling.

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Save the Date: 09/19/2010: Al Robles Literary Tribute (Sponsored by Intersection For The Arts & City Lights Booksellers)

Intersection For The Arts & City Lights Booksellers present

A Thousand Manong Heartbeats Rappin in the Light : A Literary Tribute to Al Robles

Sunday, September 19, 2010, 6:00 P.M.
Intersection 5M | 925 Mission Street | San Francisco, California, 94103
Donation requested $5.00 (sliding scale, no one turned away due to lack of funds)

Hosted by Sean San Jose & D. Scott Miller with Jessica Hagedorn | Jack Hirschman | Janice Mirikatani | Alejandro Murguia | Jaime Jacinto | Ishmael Reed | Barbara Jane Reyes | Allyson Tintiangco Cubales | Paul Yamazaki

Intersection for the Arts and City Lights Booksellers are pleased to bring together members of the Bay Area literary community in a literary tribute casting light upon the life and work of an extraordinary figure. Poets, writers, editors, and booksellers, all offer a unique view, via poetry, prose, conversation, and recollection, in an evening of storytelling in honor of a great storyteller.

Poet, educator, community activist, and advocate for the poor and senior citizens, Al Robles walked in many worlds. Born a Filipino American in the Fillmore district of San Francisco, his life was informed and nourished by the rich cultural fabric all around him. He lived at the intersection of African American, Japanese, and Pilipino cultures. Jazz was a much a part of his upbringing as zen. His forays into edges of North Beach, via Manilatown, brought him into contact with the poetry and personality of the Beats as well. His empathy with the marginalized peoples around him brought him into the frontline of the struggle to preserve the civil rights and the heritage of Manilatown culture. He was a tireless fighter against the demolition of the I-Hotel on Kearny Street. He worked closely with the Pilipino elders to preserve their stories and heritage. He worked with Pilipino youth to engender within them a deep connection to their culture. Al Robles’ art and poetry were inextricably linked to his activism and his concern for people. He lived his life as a gentle warrior, always in the service of the community.

For more info on Intersection 5M visit: www.theintersection.org

City Lights Books: Sesshu Foster, World Ball Notebook

I am saddened to read this morning about the poetry reading Eileen Tabios recently attended (see her blog post here). Actually, that type of poet, what I’ll call the entitled poet, really gets me negative about po-biz and how folks get consumed about it. For more on po-biz, and the importance of each of us controlling our own careers, hence, avoiding its consuming you, do read Guy LeCharles Gonzalez’s post here. But po-biz and poetry are two different things, and I am a firm believer in the poem, the work to birth the poem, the body of poems, the book, and the connection made with the reader and audience.

world-ball-ntoebookOK, that’s my preface to Sesshu Foster’s City Lights Books reading from his latest book, World Ball Notebook. This is the second time I’ve seen Sesshu read; the first was with Small Press Traffic for their evening of fiction which also included R. Zamora Linmark, and so I was very happy to be co-hosting that event. I’m a big fan of his work, having come to City Terrace Field Manual nearly a decade after its release. Still, I realize I came to this book at exactly the right time in my poetics, writing process, ongoing education. At his SPT reading, I picked up Atomik Aztex, which was bloody, surreal, absurd, crazy, and dense, and really very very funny.

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Poetry: SPD New Lit Generation at City Lights Books, and Talking to Students

Yesterday evening, Oscar (whose blog post includes video and photos), Jenn, Craig, and I trekked over to City Lights Books for the SPD New Lit Generation, nicely hosted by Laura Moriarty, which featured, among others, Javier Huerta and two students from Newark Memorial High School, Anthony Boyd and Hong Le. Cathlin Goulding is their teacher, whom I first met when I was a creative writing instructor at KSW. Yesterday evening, she brought a group of her students up to SF via BART. It’s always so great to see young folks growing up learning how to be interested in and excited about poetry, learning how to write, polish, and present/perform poetry, and very importantly, how to support one another as a poet community. So that’s the first thing, much props to Cathlin for this great job with her students, and to the students for their poetry and poetic work.

Second, it’s always a pleasure to see/hear Javier Huerta read. He’s another poet who seems to really enjoy writing and performing poetry, as he did yesterday evening. And he is absolutely right when he says that to be a poet reading poetry/sharing poetry with an audience full of poets and poetry students and enthusiasts at City Lights Books is indeed a very special thing, something for which to be thankful. Indeed, Cathlin told me prior to the reading that she was just trying t0 explain this to her students on the ride to SF.

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Reading Update: Lawrence Ferlinghetti's Pictures of the Gone World

Pictures of the Gone World (City Lights Pocket Poets Series)

Pictures of the Gone World (City Lights Pocket Poets Series) by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

What I quickly want to say about this collection is that I am not sure where or what is my way in. I feel like maybe what Ferlinghetti is doing is elegizing a “gone world” which we see in an unacknowledged Dante sculpture amid a bustling city, almost out of place in a modern world or in a setting of modernity.

In terms of his use of sprawling form, lines unanchored to any margin, but rather, floating in this ether-like white space, perhaps this is meant to express that disjunctiveness between the “gone world” and modernity, i.e. reading Yeats does not make him “think / of Ireland, / but of midsummer New York,” and the Yeats book he found on the El.

For me, really the only memorable poem in this collection is “The world is a beautiful place / to be born into,” because I believe it’s here that he starts to reconcile the encroachment of the modern world into the “gone world.”

PS: As well, what is also memorable about this collection is that it is #1 in the City Lights Books’ Pocket Poets Series. This is some formidable history.

STRIKE: Igniting the Fuse of Possibility

Thanks to City Lights Books’ tireless Peter Maravelis, for inviting me to be a part of this May 1st event, called STRIKE: Igniting the Fuse of Possibility. The blurb from the website reads:

Join City Lights and friends for an evening of narratives that cut through the core of the neo-liberal agenda

30 local poets, performers, fiction writers, playwrights, and musicians deliver 3 minute pieces offering imaginative responses to the hunger of global capital and its effects upon community

STRIKE addresses strategies of resistance. We pose the question: what serves as meaningful resistance in an age of disaster capitalism? We shall explore the liberation of the commons- through poetry, performance, music, and magic.

Peter and I spoke about this yesterday evening, and since then I have been thinking about what “meaningful resistance” means. I am thinking about this within the context of being a resident and homeowner in West Oakland. I am thinking about this within the context of sustainability; things we do in our everyday lives, in our homes, in our families, in our neighborhoods and communities. I am looking forward to this piece of mine which I haven’t written yet. Funny thing is I don’t think I will be writing poetry for this event.

Some (quick) thoughts on curating publication

OCHO16.cover[Addendum: Speaking of curating publication, if you haven't gotten your copy of OCHO, here is incentive to do so. Didi Menendez has lowered the prices on recent issues, including OCHO#16.

OCHO for ocho dollars, folks, and you get to read dope new work by Tara Betts, Brian Dean Bollman, Sasha Pimentel Chacón, Ching-In Chen, Linh Dinh, Sarah Gambito, Jessica Hagedorn, Jaime Jacinto, Nathaniel Mackey, Craig Santos Perez, Matthew Shenoda, Jennifer K. Sweeney, Truong Tran, Dillon Westbrook, and Debbie Yee.

So do get to it and support your indie publishers!]

Curating I suppose is another way of saying editing but also something else on top of editing? I am thinking about Silliman’s post on annuals, journals, and anthologies, and whether/how we can differentiate between them. His post caught my eye because of his lukewarm thoughts on Zoland Poetry, which is one of the annuals/anthologies in which some of my work is included. So I don’t mean to come to Zoland’s defense, as much as to say that I believe the intent of an “annual” is similar to the intent of an “anthology,” in providing something of a snapshot of literary scene or even a community.

Silliman brings up the now defunct New Directions Annual, and this reminds me that City Lights Books once had, along the same vein as the NDA, the City Lights Review, which I remember seeing in the bookstore back in the day. Dig this list of contributors for Ends and Beginnings: CLR #6, edited by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and published in 1994:

Robert Anbian, Amiri Baraka, Alberto Blanco, William S. Burroughs, Andrei Codrescu, Susan Etlinger, Dario Fo, Barry Gifford, J.T. Gillett, Allen Ginsberg, Howard Hart, Elaine Katzenberger, Phillip M. Klasky, Steve Kowit, James Laughlin, D.H. Lawrence, Subcomandante Marcos, Kaye McDonough, Daniel Moore, Norman Nawrocki, Mimmo Paladino, Julian Palley, Pier Paolo Pasolni, Nancy J. Peters, Mark Petrie, Pina Piccolo, Ezra Pound, Jeremy Reed, Arthur Rimbaud, Ed Sanders, Alberto Savinio, Andrew Schelling, Laura Stortoni, Mark Terrill, Ingeborg Teuffenbach, Allen Tobias, Nanos Valaoritis, Georgii Vlasenko, Ron Vroon, Anne Waldman.

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Indie Publishing: Some Thoughts

There’s a pretty interesting discussion going on in list serve world regarding small presses, independent presses, and self publishing. This last item really is the sorest point of contention, given the apparent stigma of “vanity publishing.” I don’t know so much what the difference is between “vanity publishing” and doing DIY. IS there a difference? How is each term defined?

One point being discussed is publishing houses and prestige, and under what circumstances is it important to be published by a prestigious publisher. I wonder how prestige is defined or determined, first of all. Still, the part of this discussion that’s most interesting to me is this: if your intent as a poet is to get your work out into the world, to reach your perceived readership, audience, and/or communities, then whether or not your publisher is prestigious should not be so important (in grad school, one of my professors said to me that whether a publisher had an effective distribution system in place was more important). If a major part of your publishing career revolves around university tenure, then landing book contracts with a prestigious publisher is more of a concern. But not all poets operate within that system.

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