Happy Birthday, T! Some Thoughts On On

Happy Birthday, T! Feliz cumpleaños, Compañero. Hope it was a happy one, luz de mi vida. I know you won't be reading this for a while, taking a long break from work life, driving life. Home from driving home. And, driving home the point.

I've been taking some time from the blog for something I've been wanting to do for a long time; and like some good things, it happens when it means to happen. Some intent. Been making a mixed tape -- romance for a romantic soul -- for the long ride home, for the gone there and back.

Been thinking about fidelity, frankness, separation -- and how good that year was for me, how awful -- forgiveness, how to do it, how to take it back. Been thinking, compiling, recapitulating; listening to the "B" side over again as well as the "A" in all it's stereophonia. How to be. Good in one's skin. To love the one you are alone as well as the one you are when you are with your love. "I'm not a bad girl," as Memphis Minnie sang it. I'm not a bad girl. And still here. Another day here. With you. Perennial and nonpareil.

"Unconscious Mutterings #177 On 6/27/06"

1. Newspaper :: sadness airs the life, the sly


2. Crucify :: and wilt away of destiny -- death's


3. Sausage :: rolled into tomorrow,


4. Handy :: harlequin of heterodeathsexuals,


5. Cloak :: of dagger and dodge.


6. Drunk :: infidels swarm the streets,


7. Fuel :: the flagrant conflagration. Chance


8. Caress :: or the stroking of love, winching, the


9. Itch :: of dogs testing the battle -- all G-d's


10. Vehicle :: of desire -- willing to live.

* Live to tell it, test your own cement, put your paw prints in the sand at La Luna Nina's.

All Hail, June 24

The other morning, me to T: "If it weren't for me, you wouldn't have any flowers at all." "That's right," he said. I spent the morning as I do now every morning, outside. I harvested a lot of lettuce, not all, but a lot of it. Spent all day digging another vegetable bed, double-digging, the hard way. I was going transplant all the wee volunteers scattered about: a watermelon, a couple of tomatoes, lots more seed. My son asks, a bit too sarcastically: "Every summer you spend all this time putting in a garden and doesn't something always go wrong?" Yes. A a freak summer snowstorm comes and freezes everything on the vine. A drought means I can only water a tiny bit on alternate days. Hail. "Yes. I say. Every year. Watch, this year, everything'll get wiped out by hail." We laughed. He knows I like that sort of thing. Nature's ironic moments. Sometimes you just gotta laugh. I spent hours weeding, dead-heading, admiring. I've got this rainbow thing happening -- a "blue room" with blue and purple flowers around a small patch of lawn, a low rock wall around the apple with a slab for sitting behind the tree, the way I like it, "where I can look out and nobody can see in." I had just transplanted blackberry volunteers in the corner to discourage the dog from cornering squirrels there. Then it goes around the yard: purple, lavender datura plants, blood red chrysanthemums, red bee balm, poppies, orange, yellow, a white datura ready to open in the center, a new silver lace vine on the trellis T's been building and placing around the yard. Not much white or yellow, some alien looking bromeliads, new sunflowers, white and yellow flowers being my least favorite, but I was getting ready to put in some seeds. The purple bean plants growing way high and full, I was to get around to weeding there at sunset, and putting up a nice fence for my bean wall around my little "blue room", my little haven where I fancied I'd write the novel in the dog-days. I had just finished weeks of hard work taking down my bamboo reed fence around the yard, for "privacy" but you have to say that like an Englishman to say it the way I do -- sounds more private that way, and goofy. Many of the sections were torn and shredded from our other dog; weathered. I turned it inside out, patched it, wove it. I had just finished. We had just finished pouring cement for the first fence post in a dog run to keep the dog doo out of the beds. It looked good. Strong, deep and a straight. I leveled off and smoothed over the concrete, thinking of grandma. And, looked up. Big black clouds in the north, hot blue clear sky in the east. Hmmmm. We start gathering things as a sprinkle hits; shovels, rakes, gloves. I get some plastic bags and cover the cemented post, just in case. T says, "For when it rains -- not that it ever rains much." I had just set the rocks on the black plastic. And had come inside, taking my newspaper, and a few other things. T goes up to shower. It's time to start dinner. The wind is picking up, knocking the blind against the houseplants, so I start to close it just as it hits. Chunks of ice the size of my fist start to fall, slowly, like someone tossing 'em out the refrigerator for a joke. Then I hear it, loud rocks on the roof, on the metal patio, the car in the driveway. Everywhere at once. "So this is golf-ball sized hail," I remember thinking. Except that it's not, it's fist-sized, deadly. The noise is deafening. I can't back away from the window, though I know I should. My son comes running over from the news report -- "Get away from the window!" and "Brucie!" The dog is still outside. I go in the back where fist-sized hail is still gouging big divots out the lawn, exploding climber sticks as they hit. The dog is not on the porch. We can't find him, he's outside somewhere and won't come to the call -- if he can ever hear it over the pounding. We think he might be dead, battered and bleeding somewhere where we can't see him as we're both afraid to go out from the porch. Lots of thunder and lightening. Finally he slinks out from the exposed place in the back where he's been hiding. He slinks along the side, under the roof overhang -- smart dog. He's soaking wet. We bring him in, much relieved, and he runs into his "bedroom", the extra downstairs bathroom. I go back upstairs. My son tells me the window in my office is open, my papers are strewn, wet -- my old computer is wet in the back. Oops. Major. I wipe it off as best I can. I still can't look. I go to the bedroom and start video-taping. The smell of broken trees and foliage is pungent. I smell cedar and spruce. Outside looks like November snow. I'm getting close-ups of T's car, case of insurance, the neighbor's roof in case my own is damaged, trees. A new truck is parked under my neighbor's giant sycamore, afraid to move. The baseballs have turned into golf-balls and gumballs, but harder and more of them. Then a sheet of water. Literally, like, yes, pails and pails emptying on our heads. I shut off the camera and go outside. MY GARDEN! The patio roof is leaking. The dog's sheepskin bed (which he adores, he's a rescued stray from Mexico -- I can't tell you how much he adores that bed) is soaked. The patio is small swimming pool, so is the lawn -- and I think to myself, I had just watered before coming inside. A section of my fence has been hit by hail and is now stripping off in the rain and wind and falling onto my blue plants. The water is up to almost 5 inches. T comes out of the shower and starts shoveling and sweeping water. Lettuce, beans, gone. My rainbow, vanished. A few snaky "red hot pokers" stand, but some look like Russian royalty: "Off with their heads!" My son and I laugh. Sometime, you just gotta laugh. $300 in new perennials this year, but I'm laughing. All the neighbor kids are outside with bicycle helmets on, playing in the new "snow". My son saves a big hailstone in the freezer. I get out the staple gun which is soaked along with the tablecloth, the staples and our left-over breakfast things, and tack up the fence in the rain. The temperature has plummeted almost forty degrees in five minutes for all the surrounding ice. Weird thing is, I knew. I had free tickets to an outdoor jazz concert that day -- "Nope," I say, "It will probably hail." There is almost no shelter at the venue. So I pick almost all the lettuce that morning. Today, there's nothing left but mud. But most things, the things I love, are still there. Like me, battered but hanging in there. And, laughing.

My Hero - Kid Douglas (June 3, 1896-August 6, 1973) - The Mother of Rock 'n' Roll: Memphis Minnie

Kid Douglas Kickin'
Originally uploaded by Lorna Dee Cervantes

To hear more about her go to her MySpace site, kick off your shoes and sit a spell among her and her old time friends. Then, tell me if y'all don't hear a sewing machine outta her guitar on this version of "He's a Dirty Mother Fuhya." Can't ya just envision the scene in the factory when the boss is out and all the gals are singing?

If it weren't for hearing this downhome girl at 14, this down homegirl wouldn't be around today to tell y'all all about it.

Been thinkin' 'bout my movie
been thinkin' all night long

More about her and the American Eugenics Society soon.

RIP, Kid Douglas (aka Memphis Minnie), we'll git it all told.

Good Poem by Michael Magee - 'War Sonnet'

Here's a good poem by flarf artist, Michael Magee, "War Sonnet", written 9/28/01, at Shampoo, 13.

Good Poem by Alison Stine - 'I Would Still Be'

Found a good poem today by an awfully serious girl, Alison Stine. Just another reason why she makes the top - just a cell shaving ahead of Rebecca Loudon and others - of my list of best po' bloggers I've discovered this past year blogging. Not sure how I missed this last week, other than that I've been saving for the savoring. Whenever I want a break from things, I turn to Ali, not to get away from the world, to go ahead and enter into it. Thank you, Ali. And remember, if you should ever find yourself in the gutter. . . .

"Here's to the world working out." Like a good poet, it follows the advice of a clown: Leave 'em wanting more.

Tim Pans Glitteringly

Good piece by Tim at Tympan on Flarf and those glittering gay guys.
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Last night, Me to T: Writing prose is exhausting, makes me all sweaty and smelly.

LDC On CU's New MFA Program and "The Diversity Debate" Going On At The MFA Weblog

I almost never discuss "work" here unless I mean my creative work or the good work of others. But I decided to post these comments I posted this morning on Tom Kealey's MFA Weblog, a blog I just found this morning. You can go there and check out the original question Tom posted from a writer searching for creative writing programs as well as another comment I made on a related post here. [Oh, yeah, this also covers my flarf.]

------------------------
Come to CU Boulder. Despite being one of the oldest Creative Writing Programs in the country for serious writers, we just received our MFA; it's brand new this year. The long delay had to do with state university red tape in that Fort Collins (CSU) already offered one and we could not replicate programs within the university system. That policy has changed now, so we're free to go. We, too, operated under the assumption expressed here in this forum by some which, as my esteemed former colleague, Ed Dorn, once put it in a meeting in which I was pushing for a PhD if we couldn't offer an MFA -- "What writer --that you respect -- has a PhD in Creative Writing?"

But that was then, and we live (and work) in this millennium.

I don't think anyone has addressed the original concern: style and race/gender issues. And this: "It's tricky, navigating what's a problem of cultural/gendered impasse, and what's a legitimate writing problem."

I've seen too many students break down in tears with frustration over this. Students of color, that is, or, the term I prefer: People of Experience; racism, sexism, homophobia are all experiences which only rarely translates to the page. But they are locked and layered within language as language is embedded history -- and, most importantly, these experiences are the consequences of historical facts and acts: The Asian Exclusion Act, slavery, The Bear Flag War, The Treaty of Guadalupe, the Jim Crow act, Amer-Indian genocide, the American Eugenics Society which sponsored generations of federally funded abortions and involuntary sterilization of "negroid", "mongoloid", and indigenous American Women, including tens of thousands of Puerto Rican women. Euthanasia was carried out in Guam and the Soloman Islands and supported by a congressional hearing. All facts and acts which would take, at least,, a 4-year program to uncover, to study, to understand -- too much to explain to ourselves, sometimes, much less to people who have *no idea* as they are beyond the horizons of the direct experience of the, shall we say, consequences of these acts and actions. For example, I knew about the forced sterilization of American Indian women which went on for decades because it affected me directly: while my hippie friends could live the lives they imagined and carved for themselves, I couldn't go off and join them (in the "Bear Tribe", for example, a local commune I was interested in joining) I couldn't because once I graduated from high school, if I were out of work or "vagrant" or otherwise apparently destitute or "derelict" (there were other, legal terms I can't remember now) as a Native person, I would be sterilized -- even before the "Free Love" issue, which would have been grounds for forced sterilization on its own. (Bet you never had to think about that when imagining your futures as a new grad, huh?)

And, hey, I'm a poet -- who has time for all that? Well, some people have the luxury of not having to think about it. Or, write about it. I could tell you anecdotes for months about students in workshops telling other students: "Well, this doesn't seem like the way Black people act" and "I wouldn't have guessed that this poem was about a Chicano, he's too debonaire" (I know this will make her cry if she reads it and remembers the workshopping of her father poem) and never having the freedom to write about anyone but your own race (if you're raced) and if you do (and why not?), never having anyone actually read the words you wrote on the page, what for all that other stuff "you represent" and all the, mostly harrowingly destructive, stereotypes "you people" provoke. I tell you, it gets dang exhausting. And MFA programs are no worse or better -- my own experiences as a PhD student included having my own mentor, in class, say (about anthropology and American Indian history) "Who cares! Who wants to hear about the losers?" and (concerning feminist theories and Lacan) "What can you say about a vagina? There's nothing there!" Sometimes you just gotta laugh, ya know? Oy ve, indeed. Can you say holocaust? And, do it with style?

But when it comes to your own writing, it gets personal. And for me, a poet who has always said that "Poetry is an exercise in freedom", it's simply limiting -- limits being the death of any creative act, from choosing to give birth to birthing that "Great American Novel" -- and wouldn't ya know it, just when some of us, POEs, are just getting close, The Great American Novel is declared dead and someone else has rediscovered African masks, for example, and it's all postmodernity from there.

Here's a real example: one of my students was the recent Pulitzer finalist, Luis Urrea. He writes it all: novels, poetry, essays, songs, feature articles, literary nonfiction, and is a brilliant cartoonist and collage artist besides beng a musician (he sat in with the original Remainders). He came to our program from Harvard where he taught comp and rhetoric, and he was teacher in the Writing and Rhetoric program while at CU. Once, when the chair was addressing a large gathering of grad students in the department on pedagogy, he went around the room suggesting examples of what students could teach, when he got to Luis he hesitated, too long, sputtered a bit, then declared, "And you," (had he forgotten or even know the name as he addressed the others by name?) "you can teach the corrido!" Now, Luis may be a lot of things, including fluently bilingual, but he is no expert on the "corrido" -- it's kinda like telling a Shakespearean scholar who "happens to be" white (as Lucille Clifton once said before reading a poem: I don't "happen to be black: my mother's black, my father's black, my grandmother's black ..."), after a long hesitation, "and you, you can teach Hank Williams songs!" Now, see, he may have nothing against Hank Williams songs, but you get my point. As we say, and said, shaking our heads when I was told what occurred: Como siempre! Same old Same old. Problem is, it robs you of your differentiality. It robs you of your choice. It robs you of your change.

Too long for a blog, or even, perhaps the written word.

Try trying to come and break bread and morphemes with us. We have a new and developing fiction program which includes the Jamaican born poet and novelist, Marcia Douglas. We have a replenished and enriched poetry component which will include a new tenured poet, Ruth Ellen Kocher. I can't promise more of the same, or not, or anything truly new. Perhaps that's up to you to produce. To synthesize from the grit.

When it comes to this question (thanks for this great blog I just discovered today!) of choice of Creative Writing Programs, I always answer como siempre: "That's the wrong question. You should be asking yourself, 'Who blows the top of your head off and where do they teach?'" Second question I ask is: "Can you live there?" Not, "can you write there?" As this, for everyone and in different times in our lives is different. For some are like wolves and only if they are demarcating and dwelling within their territories does the Muse speak (Hey, I can say that, I'm a just a poet) to them. For others, they can never home a language until they are away from it, and dwelling within it in their memories and the imaginaire of it. Third question: Is this person accessible? Nothing worse than going to a place far away to study with someone who won't have anything to do with you. Or, worse yet, when they do, uh, all they want to do is do you. This experience not exclusive to younger female POEs. (sigh) That pesky history again.

And, to the last. We have various resources to support POEs (all quite murky dunking to attain) and use them whenever we find "The Best.") I, for one, never look at GREs unless it's a borderline and questionable in quality manuscript or if it's a great manuscript but the app is getting bad reviews due to low GRE scores. I, for one, only consider the manuscript. It's either excellent or it's not -- successful or not on its own terms. The sample manuscript is everything. To me. And,, even if it's not excellent, "promising" might get you in as well, no matter who you are, what ya got or who you know. (I save reading letters of rec until the last.) And anyone applying to MFA programs, if you have published works, send them, too, unless the app specifically says not to -- I read those too, especially carefully -- along with new work.

And, if you're a POE, especially from my block, you better be The Best. Sample of The Best? Sherman Alexie. I tried to recruit him as an undergraduate by simply, when I travel around the country, asking CW profs and instructors: "Who's the best?" If I were going to select a fellow native person to "represent" than she or he better be not just "any Brown face" as I am so often placed, but The Best. Unfortunately, for us -- he never made the move as he never finished his BA having walked out of required courses: US History 1A and B. Hahaha! Having advised a President, now, he could endow his own Chair. Hahaha. Ha!

Anyone interested, just contact me at Lorna dot Cervantes (at no-bot) colorado (you know) edu if you're a serious poet. Contact the Director, Jeffrey DeShell, if you're a fiction writer or "other" (a discussion topic in itself) and please say that I directed you to him. If, you're a serious poe-POE (haha) and want to get down to it, and correspond, you can try me at "home", my blog site at lornadice.blogspot.com where you can find my home email address or just shoot me a query, to me, LornaDee, at my full name domain, LornaDeeCervantes. And remember, we don't hold our students to any one particular genre. And, we must adhere to graduate school standards under the English Department. And, of course, you must take literature courses.

But, as I always say on the first day of class: "Read. Read. Read. Write. Write. Write. And the rest will, pretty much, work out for itself." And, "Writers don't work in a vacuum."

Sorry for the length. Thanks, again, Tom. (I think you have one of The Best right now in Alison Stine, I believe she's there on a Phelan.) This is a valuable site. I hope it's okay if I plug my own program here. As a writer of "diversity" and an 18-year faculty member of a CWP, I thought I should respond from that point of view.

Maybe CU -- Write In The Rockies?
(just a little slogan I invented when I was directing)

Hope that helps.

"Punctuate This" A Hay(na)ku

punctuation
is power
"Normal" punctuation is

political (...)
Lack of
punctuation spells P=E=A=C=E+.

'It takes a lot of tending of crocus bulbs to produce enough saffron for the paella' - Lorna Dee Cervantes on Craft

Get it while you can, this may not be up for long. This long chunk of a raw interview with poet, Celeste Guzman for The Texas Observer was sent to my last book publisher, Bryce, as a friendly gesture. He ended up putting the entire thing on the Drive website. I just noticed it. You can go there and read the rest if you want. I think I need to tell him to take it down, as this is very raw, unedited, and, I think, as yet unpublished -- but commissioned by TO. Since it's an interview, my written words emailed -- and unpaid for -- the borders are a little blurry to me, but I wouldn't want to jeopardize its publication. But some of you might be interested in some of these answers. I get a lot of people looking for me and what people write about what I've written or what they think I think, so it seemed a good idea and time to post this. Sorry, it's long. I wasn't thinking about length as I knew this was going to be edited and reworked. I just wrote until I had nothing else to say. And anyone who's been reading this blog for a while knows how long that can go on!

Besides, Bryce just called: the press is in a cash crunch right now, about $20,000 worth what with the reprinting of Black Like Me and my hard back, and now, a beautiful leather bound special edition in a wooden cover just waiting for me to sign the signature pages. Good time to order the book (there's a long section of the interview just on Drive), especially if you're thinking of using it for a class, directly from Bryce. Soon it will be sold only through the distributor (freeing Bryce up to work on books and and his own writing rather than mailing stuff off.) You can also order directly through me via check or paypal or the Amazon honor system link below. Just $25 now to me will also get you a copy of the Bloomsbury Review where I've got the cover, a long profile written by Jeff Biggers for Poets & Writers, (the Mar-Apr Issue which would have been distributed at the AWP and which was dumped for Franz Wright on the cover of that issue). Maybe buy it directly from me so I can pay Bryce for this latest box of books he sent me. (Jenn, yours is on the way, I had to surface mail it to Canada.)

Also, if you have donated $50 or more to Alfred Arteaga's heart fund, I'll send you both for free. $100 or more, I'll throw in some other rare goodies, maybe even an unpublished manuscript of your choice. How's that? Have a heart, help to give one. (search my blog for info on poet and Chicano litcrit and theorist, Alfred Arteaga)


Now, enjoy. Buen provecho. It's free.

________________________________
YOU AND YOUR CRAFT

GUZMAN: Do you write literary criticism? If so, how is your literary criticism (as a poet) different from that of a critic?


CERVANTES: No. And, yes. As a Chicana, I consider my poetry to be critical theory enacted. I don't believe in the project of literary criticism and its uneasy relationship to the present crisis of legitimization we see in the institutions of higher learning. I firmly believe that a poet ought not engage in criticism of one's own age or era -- or even in one's own language. I would much rather put my time and energy into publishing, and helping to bring into print or translate excellent manuscripts than to spend all my time insisting that blah-blah who writes like me or thinks like me or is a personal friend to me is better than blah-blah because. This is never for us to say. But maybe that's just the India in me. You count coup, and it's up to others to say whether or not it's any honor.

I am beginning to write reviews (oops, there's one due now), but I would rather edit a series. I've dedicated my entire life to knowing who's out there writing and who is good. I have high standards of literary excellence, and I believe I'm a fine judge of it. (Ha! Any NY agencies listening?) But I have no desire to wrestle with prose just to prove how bad someone else's book or school of poetry is -- as I like to say: Competition's for horses and schools are for fish. I read everything I can. I would assume, and hope, that others will as well. I read all the literary criticism I can find time for, but only after reading the books themselves. I read Chicana literary criticism -- the best one's are poets.

That said, I just had a prose book solicited by my publisher (and timed to come out along with a collection of literary criticism on my work), a book on teaching and writing poetry, tentatively titled, "Ecopoetics: A Writer's Way of Knowledge." It will include much critical theory, theories of the text, semiotics and a discussion of Frederic Jameson's theory of the political unconscious, as well as practical exercises and suggestions for how to approach the poem. Much as I teach in my workshops: the primacy of the line and an acute attention to the words on the page, I train them to stick to the words on the page and how and what they are doing where they are, rather than waste time on polemics and interpretations based upon differential experiences, fooled by the ways language is charged; for example: melopoetically, phanopoetically or logopoetically -- that is, physically, psychologically or culturally.

As a poet, I prefer to regard literary strategies on a pragmatic level -- poem by poem. It can be detrimental to the poet as well as the poem to be squished into narrow definitions and parameters before anything is even placed on the page: the MFA student, for example, deciding whether or not his thesis is "postmodern" or "New Sincerity" before even getting down to any of the poems. Absurd to me. Give me morphemes and phonemes any day. And a good poetry reading, if not the book.


GUZMAN: You were a major founder and moving force of the Chicano literary movement and canon. What is its present place in American literature? How has this development affected your own work over the years?

CERVANTES: Sure. I'll go along with that. I was the first to publish and promote Chicano canonical writers such as Sandra Cisneros, Alberto Rios, Ray Gonzalez, Ana Castillo, Jimmy Santiago Baca and others alongside Victor Martinez, Orlando Ramirez (my co-editor), Beverly Silva, Geraldine Kudaka, Wendy Rose, Jose Antonio Burciaga, Ricardo Sanchez, Jose Montoya, Luis Omar Salinas, Joe Bruchac, Ernesto Trejo and others; Gary Soto asked to come on board as the editor of the Chicano Chapbook Series, something I had already started as a regular feature in my magazine, MANGO, I had already published Pancho Aguila, ronnie burk, Orlando Ramirez and Jimmy Santiago Baca in the series, and was looking for this suspected Chicana poet stranded in the MFA program at Iowa, Sandra Cisneros, as I had seen a poem of hers in a magazine, so I asked Gary to solicit a manuscript.

The present place of the Chicana/o literary movement is pretty much where I predicted it to be twenty years ago when I was first asked that question. The poets who came before me, "Walking behind the Spanish," as one, Luis Omar Salinas, once titled a collection of poems, created the way for me as they walked. As I like to think that my work can be a freeway for others. Certain poems get written, certain things get said, and in a way that opens the ways for others and then one can move on, to something new or the next. Art has always been affected by leisure, or rather, the lack of it. It's no surprise that the work becomes more refined without losing its relevance or urgency. My generation of Chicano writers, we were acutely aware of this process and conscious of taking our role in it.

There is, also, a direct relationship in terms of socio-economic class and access to better educational opportunities which impacts our literature; and negatively impacts the new immigrant generation of writers deprived of the right to education. Presently, we have many new and exciting writers, most young, some not. Some MFA trained, some not at all. We are a strong force to be reckoned with as, as I predicted twenty years ago, maybe even 30 years ago, the hegemonic forces that forged us have become progressively globalized. The threat of global nuclear war, or annihilation due to a nuclear accident and other environmental disasters as well as, now, the threat of terrorist attacks and the high rise of violence against women and children, have left us "Chicanized," for lack of a better word. These texts, that consciousness, a Xicana consciousness in the sense of the "helper" we are socialized to be, reverberates now among the dominant classes. These books and authors bear an impact upon the popular consciousness and the *imaginaire* of all who read and listen to them. Just read the latest by Pulitzer Award finalist, Luis Urrea, or Cecile Pineda, Carmen Tafolla, Reyes Cardenas, Benjamin Saenz, Rosemary Catacalos, Victor Martinez, Roberto Tejada -- just to name a few -- along with the first books of the new and upcoming "Xicanerati" (a term I made up and prefer) such as Eduardo Correa, Diana Marie Delgado, Blas Manuel de Luna, Sheryl Luna, Tim Hernandez, Maria Melendez, Rigoberto Gonzalez, and many others: these are writers writing books and poems of lasting quality securing a place in the canon of American Literature to come. And why not? It's like what a good line of poetry gives you: the unexpected inevitable.

Chicana/o poetry is a poetry written out of a consciousness of resistance -- resistance against a dominant dominating and repressive force.

And like a good poem, there is a symbolic core to it, a reversible logic: that is, some word, "Chicana" for example, becomes a signifier which somehow holds all of one's oppositions, contradictions and contrarieties, paradoxes and cross-implications, in check, as if held in some impossible balance of "good" and "bad" and all of the levels of ironies that generates "Chicana poet." It's a symbolic resolution. It's both confining and liberating. Good to be emerging and always conscious of that, as Plato and Machado have said, building the road as we walk it. The ultimate liberation of not having a chunk of literary tradition and literary role models to abide by; and burdened under the extra pressure of then having to serve as that , a model, while still living -- and writing. Bad to never be liberated from the pigeon-holing of literary critics and other academics bent on defining you into extinction to fit their schema.

In relation to contemporary literary criticism, my place in the canon (dubious though it is) is both a blessing and a serious curse. But, like for many Chicana and Chicano writers, I am marginalized, trivialized and ignored by it. After 30 years I think this may never change, not in my lifetime. It's my lot in life, along with my history and my skin. I've resigned. I'll never be a writer considered in my own right(write). I might as well play with it. And, play. I am glad if it opens up worlds for others.


GUZMAN: I love the Play section of the book. What courage to publish poems that you wrote in seven minutes. I also see on your blog that you do this daily, write seven-minute poems. Tell me more about your writing habits or rituals?

CERVANTES: Thank you. There's a lot more of them, a lot I like.

I'm not sure I have writing habits or rituals. I like what the astro-physicist and quantum theory mathematician, Hans Bethe, had to say about it: "I get up in the morning, I pick up a pencil, and I try to think." But I do believe, as my father once wrote, that "ceremonies heal." My writing is a ceremony that heals. Writers write. And I am only a writer when I am writing. I try to write when I can.

What I do have are constant writing blocks I am always working to clear -- the biggest being in relation to writing prose. Sheesh! It's like living with a colony of beavers and I'm always unclogging the dams. I feel I can never relax into it for the fear of sudden rising or falling water. Anything to make it play these days, a controlled folly. To make it not matter so much is the only way I can make it into matter from memory and voice.

Lately, for April, National Poetry Writing Month, I've been writing what I call "7-Minute Poems", the "play" poems every day. Not writing in a group, like the ones in the book, but alone in front of my computer clock, scribbling the poems from topics/words on scraps of paper left over from my various workshops. I'd also been writing 1-minute, one-a-day hay(na)ku poems from a website, oneword, that gives you one word a day and has a cool rainbow 60 second timer. I've also been doing weekly "Unconscious Mutterings" poems from another site which gives you a list of ten words you are to respond to spontaneously. It seemed kind of boring early on, so I started making 10-line poems out of them beginning each line with the given word. I also spent 26 days writing 26 hay(na)ku poems for a collection of abecedarian hay(na)ku poems, one for every letter of the alphabet, all of them written in words in alphabetical order. After writing 30 poems in 30 days, I'm a little glad to be over that experiment. But, I really like them. They are a zen practice, a commitment to the moment and craft. From the very first words, it's a commitment, so much like real life, or real death, rather, which can cancel the contract at any moment rendering everything you do permanent and unrevised. I really like these poems, especially these April ones. (I think I'll call the manuscript "30 Pieces of of Cruelty" or "30 Pieces of the Cruelest" after "April is the cruelest month" and Lalo Delgado's practice of naming his manuscripts.).

The difference between these poems and others, I realize now that they're written, is that the ones written in 7 minutes or less, I don't hear these in my head. I *hear* poems. I hear a voice. Sometimes just a cadence before language. I speak the poem out loud, over and over, usually while pacing around the room as I write them. At a certain point, the Voice makes me put down the pen and speak it out loud. When I read, I often close my eyes if I'm feeling self-conscious, trying to retrieve, in auditory terms, that *voice* I heard in my head alone in my room, writing. These 7-minute poems, they come from someplace else, where good jazz riffs come from, perhaps. They are gifts from the goddesses, I suppose, so it seems only natural to give them back to the readers -- in the form of free poems you can read on the internet as soon as they are typed. The blog is a ritual I am embracing. It has certainly made all the difference in gaining confidence and busting through my prose block. I hope, for good. As for writing, and writing well, the more the better. It takes a lot of tending of crocus bulbs to produce enough saffron for the paella.

GUZMAN: What poetic models do you employ in your own verse? Which do you not?


CERVANTES: I don't think in terms of models, I negotiate the moment through literary strategies. A shell is the model of what? A good poem, like a fine shell, is an artifact of the conditions of resistance and opposition, of lived forces and contradictions.

I can't help but believe in *Voice* and the development of one's own Voice -- as much as I resist it I have to agree with Eliot on this. It can happen. Across genres, styles, literary fads, cultures, languages, a poet's Voice comes shining through. For example, just the other day I was reading an article in a magazine left behind in an airplane, and one paragraph into it I knew it was written by Anne Lamott -- that Voice (and it's distinct quality of observation and turn of phrase); the way one can always distinguish a poem by Levine or Eileen Myles or Jose Montoya or Yusef Komunyakaa or Creeley, for example, despite the style or subject matter or form. Poetic voice, to me, is the marriage of literary technique to the moment when craft and subject are one -- the body and the experience of a particular body to the body politic as it is experienced by particular bodies at a particular time and place.

Poetic models are only useful to me in terms of resistance.

As a poet, I am all for increasing the conditions of possibility. Let a hundred thousand blossoms bloom! And as many poetic models flourish as there are dollars being spent on the present undeclared war.

I have always said that poetry is an exercise in freedom.

"I don't have to show you no skinkin' poetic models," didn't somebody once say that? And as soon as someone says I can't do something, like use the words "heart" or "dreams" in a poem, then I am sure to spend time discovering a way ("there's always a way") to do it, and not-do it.

That said, I have to say that language is both personal and private at the same time, always already, it is social and communal. We are walking on models all the times, not all poetic, and not all of our making -- or liking. But one of the phases in the creative/ critical process requires an abandonment of ambition; much in the way a potter at the potter's wheel must give up her model of the ideal vase, and give in to the will of the clay, to conditions, elements and chance. In other words, as soon as I declare that this poem is going to follow this or that model, I am sure to fail. The Muse always has a mind of her own; she just lacks the form.


GUZMAN: How does your extensive reading of philosophy influence your poetry?


CERVANTES: Poetry and philosophy are both burning the ends of the same candle, they are both shooting cars down the same Mobius strip race track. And the institutions of both are both in denial.

Think about it. How many philosophers are failed poets and vice versa?

Otherwise, I would like to think that my extensive reading of philosophy, 30 years worth including intensive study with David Hoy, Teresa de Lauretis and Hayden White during my doctoral work at UC Santa Cruz's History of Consciousness program, has no influence on my poetry at all -- other than, perhaps, a keen sense of personal irony.

GUZMAN: Who are the literary and non-literary figures that most influence your writing?

CERVANTES: My poetry Gurus: Virginia de Araujo, Robert Hass, Stanley Kunitz, like those Masters in the tradition of the early haiku poets of Japan: should their house burn down, I would gladly help build them another, and cook good things for them to eat while it was being built just so they can go on speaking and writing about poetry. Those people you find, "Elective Affinities," as Goethe suggested who just help align your molecules. You know? Like a certain phenomena in theoretical nuclear physics whereby two disparate objects can be placed together, just so, so that the space between them forms a new and different matter. There's no other way for me to talk about it. Like what happens when one opens a book to just the right page, just the right poem, the right line, to make something -- anything -- possible. They have been like that to me.

The bulk of black muses, that early "Negro Poetry" I devoured as a child, the renaissance of black women's poetry published in 1970: Lourde, Walker, Jordan, Clifton, Sonia Sanchez, Angelou's "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings", too, published in 1970. The breath of early Chicano writers: Jose Montoya, Lalo Delgado, raulsalinas, Luis Omar Salinas, Bernice Zamora, Jose Antonio Burciaga, Carmen Tafolla, and early Puerto Rican poets: Pedro Pietri in particular, Victor Hernandez Cruz, Julia de Burgos of the earlier generation, Sandra Esteves, Miguel Algarin and the Nuyorican poets; Socialist poets; Cesare Pavese; Latin American poets, Pablo Neruda among them, being the longest, most lasting and heavy influence.

And of course, my peers, among whom, as I remind my students, the real work happens.

I may not adhere to poetic models but I do believe in literary role models, among whom I have many and they are constantly changing and replenish like a river of good poetry freshens a dying lake: Marge Piercy, Philip Levine, Robert Creeley (to whom I owe the title and inspiration for DRIVE), Those unsung women beats: Diana Di Prima, Diane Wakowski, Anne Waldman, and since I'm in the confessional mode, Plath and Eliot, as well as brand new writers, most very young without full first books that I've found on poetry blogs -- I have a list of 30 in ranked order of excellence, posted on my blog. Really good poets always have a positive influence on writing. I think that's my investment in teaching. If my students are writing well, to the best of their potential, it inspires me.

I've always read widely and voraciously.

Artists of all kinds inspire me. The influence of my father is immense. Irving Norman, Frida Kahlo, Kathe Kollwitz, Georgia O'Keefe (I'll admit it), all of the surrealists, Visionaries, Chicana/o artsists, muralists, conceptual artists and happenings (Karel Apel). Dylan Morgan who's paintings grace the inside covers. James Crabb, whose paintings I have been living with all of my adult life. All of my friends who are artists.

I can't always remember who or what I was reading when I wrote any particular poem but I can always remember who I was listening to; good singer/ songwriters influence me: Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Richie Havens when I was young, "my ladies," numerous female composers: Memphis Minnie (my earliest and lasting influence), Joni, Bonnie, Buffy, and others which may or may not get me labeled as a nerd for listening to; Dougie Maclean, a Scottish singer songwriter I've been listening to incessantly across the decades, Dick Gaughan, Billy Bragg, Celtic music in particular; Chicano music all day long! Ruben Blades, Ricardo Arjona (who along with Dougie is probably the best poet), Billie Holliday, even though she's written only a handful of songs she's ever sung for the intonation and the intelligent phrasing, Ana Gabriel and the tradition of Lola Beltran and rancheras for the same reason; Afro-Cuban music, drumming, and "New Song" movement. My brother, Steve Cervantes.

I have many in the soundtrack. It's all an influence. It all becomes a part of the living weave.

This, too. Thanks for asking.

"Unconscious Mutterings #176 On 6/19/06"

1. Voice :: of the victimless crime,


2. Us :: in the battle


3. Passionately :: in love with freedom's bird,


4. Humbly :: accepting of this trial. Grant us our


5. Love songs :: , drones though they may be,


6. Dim :: in what ever light lights the wicked


7. Calendar :: of our dog days. In and out the wan


8. Careless :: streets, the vendors of soul flourish on the


9. Block :: Last though they may be, the late


10. Goal :: of the universe is love.

Be the keeper of your own flame, invest in your present thoughts at La Luna Nina's.

Remembering My Father

San Francisco Chronicle - May 2, 2005
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Luis Cervantes -- Muralist Who Inspired Generations of Artists

Memorial for Danan Schufman June 18

Memorial for Danan Schufman will be held this Sunday, June 18th at the Unity Church, 2855 Folsom (at Valmont) at 3 p.m. Here's a beautiful memorial page for him at the Boulder Daily Camera - click here. Scroll down for more info and to read some of his poems.

More Sad News - Chicano Artist Luis Jimenez

from Yahoo News, Canada:


Wed Jun 14, 11:41 AM EST
HONDO, New Mexico (AP) - Luis Jimenez, a successful but often controversial sculptor whose work has been displayed at the Smithsonian and the Museum of Modern Art, died in what authorities called an industrial accident.

ADVERTISEMENT

The Lincoln County Sheriff's Office said part of a sculpture was being moved with a hoist at Jimenez's New Mexico studio on Tuesday when it came loose and struck the artist, pinning him against a steel support. The 65-year-old sculptor was taken to the Lincoln County Medical Center, where he was later pronounced dead.

The accident remained under investigation late Tuesday.

"Luis Jimenez's loss to the United States, to New Mexico, to the Chicano community is great," his friend David Hall told Albuquerque TV station KRQE. "He was an icon, he was a very famous and well-respected artist. ... We will dearly miss him."

Jimenez, a native of El Paso, Texas, was known for his large and colourful Fiberglas sculptures that depicted fiesta dancers, a mourning Aztec warrior, steelworkers and illegal immigrants. His work often started arguments and spurred emotions.

"It is not my job to censor myself," Jimenez once said. "An artist's job is to constantly test the boundaries."

Jimenez's Vaquero and Plaza de Los Lagartos sculptures have become civic landmarks in El Paso, where he grew up learning to paint and fashion large works out of metal in his father's sign shop.

"I think Luis shared this border region with the world. Those images will continue to live on," El Paso art gallery owner Adair Margo told the El Paso Times. "You look at the images he left us, you realize he was a voice that mattered, that gave form to this region and communicated it with people."

Jimenez studied fine arts at the University of Texas in Austin and spent time working in New York.

In 1969, he created Man on Fire, a sculpture of a man in flames that drew its inspiration both from Buddhist monks in South Vietnam who burned themselves and the Mexican story of Cuahtemoc, set afire by Spanish conquerors. The sculpture was displayed at the Smithsonian.

More recently, Jimenez completed a mud casting of firefighters and three Fiberglas flames as part of a memorial for the city of Cleveland. He was also working on a piece that was destined for the Denver International Airport.

Jimenez won numerous awards and his work is on display at public sites across the nation and in New Mexico, including at the University of New Mexico and Albuquerque's Martineztown.

Some Cool News From Lorna Dee Cervantes

Hey, thanks to Sheryl Luna, I discovered this review of my new book/s DRIVE: The First Quartet by the fine poet, Rigoberto Gonzales in the El Paso Times. Very cool. It was unexpected, but I was hoping -- I've been wondering what Rigoberto thought. He has to be, hand's down, the best new poet and writer out there.

[Oops, forgot to say that there's a typo in the last quoted line in my poem in the review. Someone typed "bowl" instead of "bow" -- the lines should read:

I was looking for your hair,
black as old lava on an island
of white coral. I dreamed it
deserted you and came for me,
wrapped me in its funeral ribbons
and tied me a bow of salt.

Oops. But wadddayagonnado?]

A new poem, "Mate and Love", appears in the new magazine of "new and cutting-edge" lit from UC Riverside, CRATE, in their "Monsters and Villains" theme issue. It's the first poem from this new manuscript of what I call "radical reconstructions" of poems in my first book, Emplumada, ESKELETONADA, to hit print. I call it my 250 dollar poem. I sent out a batch anonymously this last season, nearly all the poems from this manuscript, determined to place something from this more "experimental" manuscript. I have to put the scare quotes around that word, a term I don't usually think in (with?) -- not because I am adverse to experiment, but I don't get it, I live my life, as a Xican@ poet, in an entirely experimental biosphere. Isn't that what language and trying to communicate with it is? A series of experiments in crossing over? Well, some experiments are expensive. Hats off to you, play poets of the world. Play Poets of Experience. Why is it that every time we come up to bat the sun goes down? Or the rules are changed? Or everyone is tired of the game of making sense and god is dead and my taking offense is irrelevant to the greater goal of scoring one in the (w)hole? Why is it when I want me some of that hole, I get stuck back in the kitchen making the enchiladas? Where's ronnie burk when you need him? I like these poems. Besides being phanopetic, melopoetic and logopetic, they make a numenapoetic, to me. And, I just made that up. :-) But, check out the poem, and some good poets in this issue of CRATE. And if you come out scratching your head, well, I warned ya.

New news: If you're in Texas this fall, come check out the Southwestern Writers and Artists Festival at A & M University outside of Houston, October 24 - 26. I'll be giving a reading, among other things. I'd love to meet y'all. You know how I LOVE Texas. (links to follow)

And, this just in: I've been invited to be a guest blogger for a week for the Poetry Foundation. (!) You can now read one of my favorite poets, C. Dale Young, at the site, www.poetryfoundation.org -- just click on the link at the main site. I told them: I think my first post will be "To Voice Or Not to Voice - That is the Answer." Oops. Guess I just lost the gig.

Keep smiling. I think that's an imperative to the self -- myself.

Something to both shake my head and smile about: I was counting manuscripts and who to give them to this past week. I have no fewer than 15 new books!! 16 projects, most ready, if I count the music collaboration with pianist/composer, Gabriela Lena Frank for which I was just awarded a small grant from the Puffin Foundation. Cool. Very cool.

Keep smiling.

[Now I've got to go fix my fence and teach my kid how to swim.] [And, no, I didn't submit to Fence.]

"In the Mimosa" - Haiku for Danan

In the Mimosa



Red breast, setting sun.
Full moon in June, too, bleeding.
Stay! So green, the world!

"Unconscious Mutterings #175 On 6/11/06"

1. Band :: a bird.


2. Tan :: a hidden skin.


3. Mount :: the aviary of don't-look-back.


4. Arcade :: anchronism in the nth desire,


5. Customize :: the ride to heaven.


6. Hamburger :: hell is just a shot away,


7. Solid :: and in derision,


8. Forbidden :: episode when the feet fly off and


9. Deter :: you with their indecision.


10. Torment :: less and puncture more -- with cure.

Put your own sun up to dry, try a line at the subliminal Luna Niña's lair.

Danan Schufman's Poems (1979 - June 3, 2006)

At the request and on behalf of Danan's family I am removing these poems from this page.

My sole and original intent in posting them was in order to find family members and give them to them. Last week, soon after I posted them (the next morning?) I was contacted by a family member who thanked me for posting them and requested the manuscript so he could pass it on to Danan's parents and so that he could include them in a eulogy. I made one copy for him and included the original manuscript in a folder for the family and gave it to him the next day. So, in a certain way, my post has done it's work.

My sincere condolences to the Schufman family and loved ones. My deepest, deepest regrets if my posting these poems (selections of a few poems I marked in the manuscript as his "best" and not the entire packet) was in any way upsetting or an invasion of privacy. The poems were poems he shared in class with others, had workshopped and read out loud. (I may even possibly have a videotape of him reading them at our final reading as I usually videotaped all my students then.) But Danan was not the type to share his private thoughts and was always extremely modest and humble. I over-stepped the bounds of that modesty by posting them here without permission because when I did locate them and reread them, I was struck by their literary excellence, their profundity, their beauty, and a deep sense of loss at their promise -- Danan was a beautiful soul as these poems expressed so exquisitely. His loss is immeasurable. In my role as professor, literary judge, grant panelist, editor and a former publisher of poetry I believed that they should be published and read by all as I believe they stand up to the best of what's out there today, particularly given his young age and stage of development at the time they were written. Danan came a long way as a writer in workshop, these last poems are a testament to what a tragic loss his passing is to all who loved him or was otherwise touched by him. We shared an interest in philosophy and I encouraged him in this track. I found the *presence* of him in these poems, and found that to be comforting to me, selfish though it was, and felt the need to pass that comfort to others who knew and loved him -- to those who are grieving now. To the Schufman family, and in particular, to his mother, please accept my sincere apologies. I can not imagine your grief. I know when my own mother was murdered, and when my father passed last year, any reminder, any mark, any trace, any word of them was precious, particularly anything they had written. I have an 11 year old son, my only child, and I know -- I can not imagine. I am so so sorry for your loss. Words are never enough.

I know these poems have been a comfort. I have received many emails of gratitude and comments to that effect. Many people are visiting this site searching for any word of him at all. Please keep him in your hearts, and deeds, Danan will be ever missed.

In the future, should the family desire, do not hesitate to contact me regarding his poems, and any future help in editing a collection of his writing for publication on any level or terms. I may be erasing this page in a few days if there is still a trace of it in google cache, but until then, I leave this for his many friends, family and loved ones to find. In particular, I would like to host a page with the ad that ran in the Daily Camera as it is so, so beautiful, and, a comfort. I just wished to keep something of him alive.

Again, my deepest regrets and apologies. I had assumed that they remained here with the knowledge and permission of the family. Of course, they were given to me, they are a copy to do with as I wish, to publish if I wish, and I wish to honor the wishes and concerns of the family -- and remove them.

Here's the email I sent to Danan's cousin last week along with the response that was sent to me:

Dear Lorna,

Thank You for your kind and sincere words of Danan. You described him BEAUTIFULLY!!!!!! I will definately pass on your condolences to his parents.

I will call you tommorrow afternoon (Tue 6-13) when I get into the Boulder area and let you know when a good time is to pick up his manuscript.

Sincerely,
xx

Lorna Cervantes wrote:
Dear XXX,

I am so very sorry for your loss. Please extend my deepest condolences
to the family, and to all whom he touched and befriended in his too
short life. Danan is remembered well and mourned by other faculty at CU
as well; he is remembered for being "gentle and patient", mature,
talented, highly intelligent and, I thought, wise beyond his years. He
was sensitive, polite and considerate, always tactful and helpful to
other student writers. I so remember that half-smile with which he
graced the world. I didn't know him real well or as deeply as I get to
know some students in Poetry Workshop, but I remembered him well. I
encouraged him in what he called "my more philosophical kind of poems"
which I found profound and stunning. Now, in the aftermath, they are
that, and more. It is such a tiny comfort to know that I have them and
was able to share them with those who loved him and with those whom he
loved. I didn't hesitate to type them up and post them, to publish them
in this manner -- as I felt as if he would have wanted it that way.

I would love nothing more than to pass his poems on to the family. I
have an 11 year old son, and I can imagine how very precious these
pages will be -- and comforting in some way. They portray a beautiful
soul. I posted them in order to, somehow, locate his family and pass
them on. They would make a moving eulogy. Thank you so very much for
contacting me and asking. I would hope that they would give the same
small comfort I received from the touching portrait of him that was
published in the paper yesterday -- I was so moved to see him honored
in this way. It's all so so sad. And, such a sad Fathers' Day -- and
yet, I know his parents must, also, feel blessed and proud to have
raised such a decent and beautiful man. He touched many in his all too
brief time -- I know that my website has been visited by dozens in
Boulder, Denver and other parts of the country searching for the tragic
news.

I live at (snip)
I have a box that I leave on my front porch for students to pick up manuscripts, I
could leave the manuscript there if you wish, and you could get it at
any time at your convenience night or day. Or we can meet; there is a
coffee shop close to my house (snip)

I'll be looking around here and in my office on campus in case I have
more of his work. I know I wouldn't have thrown any of it away. I'll
let you know in case I do find more. I'll also try and type up some
more of the poems and maybe try to print them up nicely along with his
original typescript pages.

Please express my sincere condolences to the family in this very hard
time. Danan was a lovely *man* in his too short life. I know he will
always be missed.

Sincerely,


Lorna Dee Cervantes


Associate Professor
English Department
UCB 226
University of Colorado
Boulder, CO 80309-0226

(303) 492-4620 (office)
Lorna.Cervantes[AT]colorado.edu

http://lornadice.blogspot.com
http://www.lornadeecervantes.com

LornaDee[AT]LornaDeeCervantes.com

Sad News Yesterday - Danan

[UPDATE: Read Danan Schufman's poems here in the latest post.]


I just found out yesterday morning -- "readin' the news/ and it sure looks bad/ they won't give peace a chance/ that was just a dream some of us had...." -- that one of my former students, an undergrad poet, Danan Schufman, died last weekend early saturday morning in a tragic car accident. It's possible it's not the same person -- but not very likely with a name like Danan Schufman, "a 27 year old Boulder man."

I wish my files were organized by now and I could just check the crosslists, see if I still have a copy of one of his poems. I might even still have his manuscript he never picked up -- as I never throw any of my former students' work away. Maybe this is the reason why not. Maybe this is the reason I have yet to create the files. I've only had one other student die, that I know of, Rex Webster, an exceptionally gifted Amer-Asian poet (his mother was Vietnamese and may have died when he was young) -- tragically, a suicide. One small grace was that it was a decade after that I learned of it. I would have been crushed had it happened while he was in my workshops. I know I have saved copies of his poems, as he was so promising. It's one of my greatest fears. It seems so important just to talk to people, que no?

Maybe that's why I blog: to keep the memory of the dead, to make memory with the living.

Today's observation: The first and last memory to remain of the dead is their smile.

Congratulations to My Son

who is graduating from elementary school today. Congratulations to his Mami who is trying not to bawl.

Sure, I Remember the '60s -

I just can't spell anymore.


~ LDC

'It's Brotherhood, Not Competition" - Luis Urrea Back in January

from Luis's' Blog

My Life in Words, January 3, 2006

"Last night, the Giorgini brothers, Mass and Flav, drove up here from Indiana. Those punk rockers among you might recognize them as the core of the famous band, Squirtgun. They brought their guitars and went into the basement with Eric. It was one of the most gracious things I ever saw--these grizzled rock and roll vets jamming with our boy and teaching him, on the spot, how to write and arrange a pop-rock song. They extended their gentlemanly gesture by taking the basic track home to their recording studio so they can send Eric a cd with the music. This, to me, is what art is all about. It's brotherhood, not competition." . . . more

Boy. . .

did I have a hard time publishing that last blog post -- took almost an hour to do what normally takes me about 5 from start to finish, including writing the poem! Give or take a few seconds. I'm a fast typist.

"Unconscious Mutterings #174 On 6/5/06"

1. Fraud :: election, miserable


2. Cure :: for injustice -- the wan


3. Slate :: is wiped of its protrusions,


4. Pretentious :: diplomats stun on the road:


5. Splendid :: road to Freedom.


6. Geek :: partitioner, you


7. Blister :: pop the guise of indecisions.


8. Pizza :: on the face of the public, blind indifference.


9. Revive :: what you know won't sell. Poetry.


10. Visionary :: politics. The West.

Wag your own puppy at La Luna Nina's lair for a weekly revival. You have nothing to lose but your mind.

"Unconscious Mutterings #173 On 6/3/06"

1. Bounce :: and hit right back. Stop


2. Wasting time :: in a barrell.


3. Utility :: or vagrancy, a rut in


4. London :: where the still eugenics lie.


5. Pregnant :: and a battle, she waddles her


6. Cranberry :: belly to the sea - ward


7. International :: , the Casino Royale of her


8. Disappointment :: and shuttles off, the shaft


9. Sponsor :: now weaving the threads.


10. Second :: minute to stand: Your muteness or your life.

Take a spin on the subliminal wheel, where the word lands, no body knows at La Luna Nina's House.

Lorna Dee Cervantes In Denver Tonight - Taza de Cafe

If you're in Denver or thereabouts tonight, join me for a Taza de Poesia at Taza de Cafe, 3565 W. 44th Ave, corner of 44th and Lowell, Friday, June 2 from 7 pm. Come early, 5-7 for an artist reception for artist Manuel Martinez ("Daniel?" "David?" oops!) with proceeds going to a children's fund. Then poets, Dr. Ramon del Castillo and Hector Munoz, two of my favorite Denver poets, will be joining me along with music. I'll be featuring my new book, and maybe even new work. Sorry for the late notice. Too much po-mo makes us late on the self-promo. But, if you're around and free, I'd love to see you there. I'll be celebrating my new book and seeing old friends. It will be a great event -- and free to the public, I believe. Sorry, again about the late notice. It's something I'm doing for Ramon and I don't have all the info on it yet. But I know it will all be good. And, a good chance to get a signed copy of the book.

More On Michael Magee & Flarf as Poetry

I thought I'd post some of these comments here. I've responded to a piece by Michael Magee by "writing" a flarf poem, and, now, a series of 86 poems in answer to issues raised in these comments: on his blog, Kasey's and at another blogs (oops! links to follow). I'm also responding to many good comments and observations from CS Perez, Chris Chen, Gary and others. It's worth spending the time to read all the threads.

Thanks for reading.


P.S. No offense taken, CS!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

CS - check out what I did yesterday: not one more, but 86 "more unreadable poems" - but the nice thing about flarf is that I can, yes, cop a feel of privilege, and claim an "invisible hand" as I didn't "write" these "poems" but generated them, unedited, from Leevi's google-a-poem engine (or, whatever it is; heck, after all, isn't "high" technology for the "Invisible White Man" and not for "N- Savage Wenches" like me) (I am also African American -- but as I have come to believe, after my father's death last spring, that a distant relative was "passing" in the relative calm of the relatively savage Montecito mountains during a time of relative state savagery, there's no way to document it).

But, document this. Check out these poems, just a few posted on one post on my blog here tracing exactly your arguments and my comments to those and others -- a trace of the American "N" word: a Nazi Sestina. But I had to go, first, through the lowly Pantoum (from a "mongrel race") to get there. Check out just of a sampling of my flarf pantoums on legalized abortion and euthansia in America and the funding of eugenics experiments in Nazi Germany.

Some of us bear one trace. Others, an/other.

Cs: I've agreed with most of your comments and positions, uh, up until the mean ones directed at me. I didn't just start writing what y'all kids are now calling Flarf. For me it began with Pedro Pietri on the page, and, earlier, with the happenings and conceptual art installations in my father's gallery in 1960 when I was too small to see up on the cheese table. Duh DAH Dada from dada -- how boring. It usually is, and the talk about the event-object is the aesthetic. But, no. I represent. I have a manuscript of poems, intentional cut-ups of every poem in my first (quite readable) book in the order they were published that were sent, blind, to some of the major competitions and presses, who ordinarily would love to publish my more accessible poetry if for nothing else but the name in their search engines. Ya know? And nobody wants them. "Teach me how to read these," my publisher pleads. So I do know what it's like for the Post Post Po'Mo'. No one but one self-described "cutting-edge" university press; or, as I used to say when I was first studying HisCon ("that's a program, son"): Achieving the "Cutting-Edge" is easy when you've always been the side getting cut. Or something like that. If y'all want presentational poetry go to the poems I wrote all April, 30 "readable" poems written in 7 minutes or less (like these in this new series); it will be an experiment and experience to see how many of them get published next season, especially in a blind judging. If they represent. But, that's what it is to be like The Chinaman, to always be the Wooden Indian in the Starbucks -- and those should all be in scare-quotes and Starbucks should have a registered trademark symbol if I were that technologically advanced-- if I knew how to make a "universal" one that would show up on everybody's keyboard the same. ;-)

M & K, thanks for your comments. Do check out this new, book-length series. It's scary. Sorry, Michael, for using your name, but it was a way to interpellate -- and boy did it percolate. K, if you think the last one was raspy wait til you see some of the others.

Yes, M. Thank you. To not "simplify but complicate" - that was my intent; that, and intimidation of the level of discourse. That's why, on my blog, I sub-title the first one "On Intent, Voice and, Who's On First" in answer to these threads. I have a theory about good poetry never being essentially racist and offensive -- not the good ones. The essay being the point thrust of power; Poetry being like William Tell's son waiting for the apple to fall. Or, is it the other way around? I guess this is what I was trying to do -- by chance and by the seat-o-my-pants. A dissertation in poetry: How Much Can You Disconnect? Is Disjunction Even A Choice Given Gaia and Genocide (which does not deconstruct)?

Problem is, I can dance to it. It's gotta a backbeat you can't lose it. Rather than boring, these poems interest me. I like to read them aloud. They are very performative. "Make it new" is not all that Pound pounded. He was also useful for pointing out the ways in which poetic language is charged: an "inescapable" "3" - melopoeia, phanopoeia, and logopoeia. And he ranked his list.

Thing is, I really like my Flarf poems -- they turn me on in all those ways. I call them ouiji board poetry. Gifts from the goddesses of Gaia I might as well pull a Yeats in all this, with traces of the Papist shredding off like a peasant's clothing in another century. I started writing them as soon as I found a convenient engine -- otherwise I've done them in my head, kinda like picking and fanning the deck of poetry for a card. "Teach me how to read this" is like saying "Teach me how to like Mexicans." It bears the trace of an insult which is nonetheless better fare than the trace of a threat. The point, I think (the feminine qualifier and feminine projection) - the trace.

Anyone care to trace my sources? After all, it's just some pansy pantoums not pontoons. Not me.

"I'm frightened by the Devil/ And I'm drawn to those one's that ain't afraid"


Posted by Lorna Dee Cervantes at June 1, 2006 02:42 PM

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Books are a mongrel medium." ~ The Invisible White Man

My Comments On Harryette Mullen, Flarf and More On Kasey Silem's Limetree

I've been following several threads at once, including Sheryl Luna's post on "Aesthetics and the Marginalized Chicana Poet" that seem to converge for me on Kasey Silem Mohammad's blog. At least to the point of erupting into speech at Kasey's Response to Tom and, quite literally getting me to get my head out of a hole (in the garden). HAHA, I typed "getting me to get out of a whole" -- Gaia-Power, no other explanation. Ole Uncle Ez left something out of the equation, what I'll call now, "numenapoesis" - the numen-poetic, that Fourth, ahem, "E-State" that completes the circle from the present menage a trois (mange de trough? "sp?") which always seems to be the wedge to war. "Numen: 1. In ancient Roman religion, a *local* divinity or presiding spirit. 2. An indwelling force or quality that animates or guides: the numen of his career."

Or, La Duende. De La Otra. The Muse. The Great Whatever. I'm a poet. I don't insist. What do I know? I'm a bloody Heathen. And I resist.

"Poetry is the Soul inaugurating a form." ~ Gaston Bachelard

"Muse and Drudge" On, Y'all

(Harryette's definition of the poetic craft)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Michael & Kasey:

I forgot to say that Harryette is an old friend. We were housemates in Santa Cruz in the early '80s while I was working on my doctorate in History of Consciousness and she was in Literature. I knew her as a poet, although we were both too busy for poetry. She had just published Tree Tall Woman -- as I recall, it had a few Grandma poems. (One of the conditions of these class, race and gender distinctions is that it robs us of our change, we are either infantilized, sexualized, or ignored -- and guess which mode I prefer -- we continue to be judged on our juvenilia and earliest work. We lose the context of our traces.) I don't remember talking about this or poetry at all much. Racism, yes. Class and gender issues, you bet. (We lived in the Provost's home, in a house everyone referred to as "the radical women of color house" but to us, we were "The Sisters of the Yam" - yam culture being what defined and bonded us through our differences.) We talked a lot about music -- or, I did, rural black women's music being my passion; we both love Sarah Vaughn and Billie. Mostly, and most importantly, it was basking in the freedom to do and be whatever we wanted as an artist, and to dwell in the luxury of being able to (finally! ¡al fin!) transverse and converse more than the usual 45 degrees with someone. Someone with a mind like Harryette's, which is also, always charmingly, a fertile field cleared of the typical ego rubble.

I have long admired Harryette as a poet and thinker. I love Sleeping With the Dictionary and think S*PERM*k*t (or however that's laid out) is one of the literary events of the late 20th Century.

(You'd have to know me to know that I just did an imitation of Ron and am smiling mischievously.)

I haven't had the time to research any of the sources of that N=Wench poem and probably won't, as that doesn't interest me much (I won't with the long 86 poem series -- too scared of the subject matter.) But I knew as soon as I saw it that it may actually be one of her lines from Sleeping With the Dictionary. I read it like that, too, right away. That's partly why I really like the poem. I love those nickered nieces niggling for nickle (I added a k to "nickered" as one of the minimal edits, just for the sake of post/modern readability) and the whacked wenches wending. I'm pretty sure the niggling line is hers. But the census language is like that. And rural language, very poetic. Researching an unrelated topic, while doing a genealogical search and coming up empty for so long, in a fit of pique I typed in "Nigger Savage Wench" and BINGO, there was my subject listed as one of "3 pickininnies" found in the house in 1900 -- so I knew what I'd find by adding the word, census. Language, yes. Can it ever be defused from the charge of history and event? Can it be recharged, its value added to like a BART card in the machinery of critical enterprise at the end of the ride should the poem be lacking?

I don't know. What do I know? I'm just a poet (poetry, distinguished in the institutions as "creative writing" as opposed to "literature" which is prose or fiction) and all I know is you never know, ya know? And that's all I know: poetry.

In the least, we have the right to remain interesting.

Thanks, Michael, for long supporting good poets like Harryette. And, Nate Mackey. Talk about "Neglectorinos" - always a source of frustration to me when he, and Bob Kaufman, are always left out of the discourse.

The characterization -- generalization -- of figures in the l=a=n=g=u=a=g=e school, among other pomos (ain't that a tribe?) is, sadly, true, in my 30 years experience, most of that being on the West Coast. With the exception of a few: Howe, Hejinian (excuse the spelling, it's late and this is too long already), and Ron who I think is excellent as a poet, I've often said, for going on 3 decades now, longer than most of you have been alive, that the real art of these writers is the essay, and the poem as artifact dissolves away in the body politic like stitches which have served the wound. And the discourse is always at such a level that it is alienating to those cultures of repression -- those of us who were conquered by the "mongrel" book in one hand and a sword in the other.

Sorry Michael. I agree with others. The piece doesn't work - more essay than poem? I found it offensive, however mildly. But most importantly, not scrubbed enough (Intent? Voice? Who's on First?" Yes, Why? As such, it's a failure. But as a not very quiet poet of the SOQ drawer, Philip Levine, once wrote: Failure is integral to the process of poetry. It's okay. I do know and admire your other work, especially your actos, your deeds. I find a lot of the poems posted on Leevi's anthology really interesting; I can relax around the language -- take my sense=shoes off and sit a spell, listening to the music or just the twittering of the passing birds. But it's a bit like being confronted with DuChamp's toilet again: they don't make them like they used to or maybe this one's none too clean. Is it art? How Art Thou?

But I wouldn't want to offend you, or have you misunderstand, and it just takes so long to go on and on like this, but this is how it is, for someone once as old as you and facing the real possibility of "involuntary" sterilization for being a hippie which is, ironically, already a cultural appropriation of the Amer-Indian culture facing extinction. My nation having been legally "terminated"/ extinct until "rediscovered" around 1976 -- oops, they left some of us alive to breed. The sterilization "I" faced as a teen and young woman had I been out of work or school was an act of the word manifest into matter -- a real matter of someone's blade on me because of blood type math and language - with no hyphens or equal signs intended or extended. And what matter the taxidermy: "Niggler", "Sa(l)vage", "Wench -- a peasant child used for sex ... and all the words for "Mongrel Magee" and the "Mongoloid Races" in that unwritten dictionary of power and language -- and who gets to use them. Or, who's on first?

So I'm finding this and these discussion threads really interesting. Particularly since, for me, this helps me frame responses to whatever strummed the ugly chords of The Return of the Repressed over on Ron's blog after his review/s of Barbara Reyes. There's so much I want to respond to, finally! But I think it comes out in these new "poems." Like Flarf, life is just a series of cut-ups and freedom defined by whomever's hoarding the magazines.

The question remains: If freedom's just another word, than is "good enough" good enough for "me and" "Micky" or "Mongrel Magee?"

Thank you all, ones on other blogs as well, for this space to enter into this arena. For so many years it's been like being invited to get off the bench and join the boy's basketball team, but never getting the ball for being born too short for the action.

Posted by Lorna Dee Cervantes at June 2, 2006 01:45 AM

"The First Pantoum" & "The Last Pantoum" of Long Flarf Book, A Movement in 86 Experiments In Form

"Whacking Magee 1912 American Society for Euthanasia"




1905 1906 1907 1908 1909 1910 1911
268 Magee 268 Lab 268 irreversible fairy-tale
112 Eucharist 1905 1906 1907 1908 1909 1910 1911 1912 1913
112 fairground 112 Extract 112 euthanasia 112

268 Magee 268 Lab 268 irreversible fairy-tale
Whitlock whacking whack weeps Weatherill
112 fairground 112 Extract 112 euthanasia 112
1905 1906 1907 1908 1909 1910 1911 1912 1913

Whitlock whacking whack weeps Weatherill
Zero 1912 0.0000222 sparked 1912 0.0000222 119
1905 1906 1907 1908 1909 1910 1911 1912 1913
0.0000019 euthanasia 93 0.0000019 brow

Zero 1912 0.0000222 sparked 1912 0.0000222 119
268 Lab 268 irreversible fairy-tale
0.0000019 euthanasia 93 0.0000019 brow
Whalley. wftu wfw311 wg wgn wha whack whacked whacker whacking

268 Lab 268 irreversible fairy-tale
Wg wgn wha whack whacked whacker whacking
Whalley. wftu wfw311 wg wgn wha whack whacked whacker whacking
1912 Manuscript on the Special Theory of Relativity

Wg wgn wha whack whacked whacker whacking
Whacker whacking 1643-1715 1644 1644-1911 1644-1912 1645
1912 Manuscript on the Special Theory of Relativity
1910 1911 1912 1913 1914 1915 1916 1917 1918. whales

Whacker whacking 1643-1715 1644 1644-1911 1644-1912 1645
Control by American Cancer Society 2609
1910 1911 1912 1913 1914 1915 1916 1917 1918. whales
The United States · Politics and Society

Control by American Cancer Society 2609
0.0000011 magee 54 0.0000011 stripper 54 268 modesty
The United States · Politics and Society
1912 Manuscript on the Special Theory

0.0000011 magee 54 0.0000011 stripper 54 268 modesty
Magee 54 0.0000011 stripper 54 268 modesty
1912 Manuscript on the Special Theory
Euthanasia 93 0.0000019 brow 93 demeaning 54 0.0000011 lorna 54

Magee 54 0.0000011 stripper 54 268 modesty
268 manufactures 268 Magee 268 Lab 268 irreversible
Euthanasia 93 0.0000019 brow 93 demeaning 54 0.0000011 lorna 54
Magee 54 0.0000011 stripper 54 268 modesty

268 manufactures 268 Magee 268 Lab 268 irreversible
112 Eucharist 1905 1906 1907 1908 1909
Magee 54 0.0000011 stripper 54 268 modesty
Euthanasia 93 0.0000019 brow 93 demeaning 54 0.0000011 lorna

112 Eucharist 1905 1906 1907 1908
112 Eucharist 1905 1906 1907 1908 1909 1910 1911 1912 1913
Euthanasia 93 0.0000019 brow 93 demeaning 54 0.0000011 lorna
1905 1906 1907 1908 1909 1910 1911 1912




Compiled 5/31/2006  4:07:09 PM GMT

More poetry in English/Finnish:

www.leevilehto.net
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"My First Sestina" posted below is not actually that, but the last in a (long!) series of googled poems tracing the same thread -- the attempt to get a logical sestina out of this, the poem I would have preferred to write which had this title:

"Wending Wenches O'er Nazi Remains, Gerry Kikes Whacking Magee, Magoo, McGraw, McDonald's 1912 Society for the Euthanasia of A Strange Professione"

but that search yielded nothing in any form. So I chose to change it and got the poem above which was altered in one way only, an "112" that preceded the dates was eliminated and in two cases I filled in the line with the proceeding number -- including the last line which then changed it to end on "1912."

HOW DID THAT SEARCH STRING GET MY NAME!!!??? Some poor Welsh Wench alas and alack I would guess.

I didn't like where that was going, so tried another Pantoum -- that form for the twisted braid of fact.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Chinaman Magee Eugenic Euthanasia In America"



1. Evans: 1 +chimney +chimpanzee +chin +china +Chinaman
6 underwood 20 wynberg Chinagraph
Eugenicists china shop chinadit chinalike chinaman
1, Chinamen: 1. chinashop: 1, chinaware: 1.

6 underwood 20 wynberg Chinagraph
26 exacerbation 26 Eversley 26 Eusebio 26 Eugenics 26 eugene
1, Chinamen: 1. chinashop: 1, chinaware: 1.
Eugenically eugenicist eugenics. eudiometrical

26 exacerbation 26 Eversley 26 Eusebio 26 Eugenics 26 eugene
eugenias eugenic eugenical eugenically eugenicist
Eugenically eugenicist eugenics. eudiometrical
41 constrain 6 demoting 6 untypically 5 buccaneering 1 chinaman

eugenias eugenic eugenical eugenically eugenicist
Chinas chinatown chinaware chinacrine chinagraph chinalike
41 constrain 6 demoting 6 untypically 5 buccaneering 1 chinaman
Displayed. If you like, you can . 1 sixtus 1 shadrack

Chinas chinatown chinaware chinacrine chinagraph chinalike
Eugenic eugenically eugenicist eugenics. eudiometrical chine
Displayed. If you like, you can . 1 sixtus 1 shadrack
Chinamen chinampas eugen eugena eugene eugenes eugenia

Eugenic eugenically eugenicist eugenics. eudiometrical chine
China43 chinaberry chinadotcom chinam
Chinamen chinampas eugen eugena eugene eugenes eugenia
8 extinguished 44 pragmatism 41 constrain 6 demoting 6 untypically

China43 chinaberry chinadotcom chinam
Program Revisits Eugenics Issue', CRACK received
8 extinguished 44 pragmatism 41 constrain 6 demoting 6 untypically
Very similar to the 30 already displayed. If you like,

Program Revisits Eugenics Issue', CRACK received
39 Chinaman 39 chiller 26
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26 Eversley 26 Eusebio 26 Eugenics 26 eugene

39 Chinaman 39 chiller 26
Chinacrine chinagraph chinalike chinaman chinamania chinamaniac
26 Eversley 26 Eusebio 26 Eugenics 26 eugene
eugene eugenesis eugeni eugenia eugenia

Chinacrine chinagraph chinalike chinaman chinamania chinamaniac
Eugenic eugenic-crazed eugenically In order to show you the most
eugene eugenesis eugeni eugenia eugenia
Results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the

Eugenic eugenic-crazed eugenically In order to show you the most
1 lellouche 1 eugenic 1 obstructs 1 bernardaud
Results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the
Agony ALEXANDER alpha AMERICA anchor answers

1 lellouche 1 eugenic 1 obstructs 1 bernardaud
Eugenicists china shop chinadit chinalike chinaman
Agony ALEXANDER alpha AMERICA anchor answers
1. Evans: 1 +chimney +chimpanzee +chin +china +Chinaman



Compiled 5/31/2006  4:21:00 PM GMT
and left raw and unedited

More poetry in English/Finnish:
www.leevilehto.net
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This poem makes perfect sense to me, in a real scary way -- which is my original point: this is not a discussion about the way one person stands and then stands for the whole, but how some people are marked for life -- and death; Filipina women, for example. Or like me, a "Nigger Savage Wench" as the 1900 Louisiana census describes people (I suspect one of my relatives was "passing" as "Mexican"). Language is always already personal and private/ social and communal; i.e., embedded in it's own history. Let's see how this gibberish deconstructs by tracing the creation of 86 arbitrary emotionally uninvested flarf poems. I thought. So I tried another, "III. Pantoum"


"Magee Eugenic Euthanasia In America"




21500 vuletic 21501 objections 21502 euthanasia
Eugenia eugeniae eugenical eugenics eugenie
Place at the Magee-Womens Research Institute, But at what point was
1987, Oxford, University Press, 352 [?]

Eugenia eugeniae eugenical eugenics eugenie
-XLS Microsoft Excel - 217, Medicine,
1987, Oxford, University Press, 352 [?]
View titles listed by Author - In order

-XLS Microsoft Excel - 217, Medicine,
EUTHANASIA MOVEMENT. Title: IN OUR OWN IMAGE: EUGENICS
View titles listed by Author - In order
Eugenicists eugenics euterpean

EUTHANASIA MOVEMENT. Title: IN OUR OWN IMAGE: EUGENICS
Listed by Author - In order to show
Eugenicists eugenics euterpean
40751 essentials 40752 sebastian 40753 eugene eugenesis

Listed by Author - In order to show
EUSEBIO EUTHANASIA EUTHANIZE EV -
40751 essentials 40752 sebastian 40753 eugene eugenesis
One or more of: eugenics, abortion, embryo research, euthanasia.

EUSEBIO EUTHANASIA EUTHANIZE EV -
In America, a gathering that organized
One or more of: eugenics, abortion, embryo research, euthanasia.
Stephen Magee, working at the University

In America, a gathering that organized
Primarily remembered today as a proponent of eugenics,
Stephen Magee, working at the University
Magdau Magdeburg Magee Magel Magelhanz Magellan Magen

Primarily remembered today as a proponent of eugenics,
26 Eversley 26 Eusebio 26 Eugenics 26
Magdau Magdeburg Magee Magel Magelhanz Magellan Magen
Eugenicists 268 modesty 268 mechanic 268 manufactures

26 Eversley 26 Eusebio 26 Eugenics 26
Eugenesis eugeni eugenia Eugenia Red
Eugenicists 268 modesty 268 mechanic 268 manufactures
If you like, you can. 268 modestly 268 mechanic

Eugenesis eugeni eugenia Eugenia Red
Magenta Eugene Eugenia eugenic eugenically.
If you like, you can . 268 modestly 268 mechanic
1. Magennis: 3, MAGENTA: 1. Maggot: 2, maggot: 1 Although

Magenta Eugene Eugenia eugenic eugenically
Eugenic eugenical eugenically eugenicist eugenicists
1. Magennis: 3, MAGENTA: 1. Maggot: 2, maggot: 1 Although
Eugenics: race, queer anatomy, and the science of

Eugenic eugenical eugenically eugenicist eugenicists
Place at the Magee-Womens Research Institute, But at what point are
Eugenics: race, queer anatomy, and the science of
21500 vuletic 21501 objections 21502 euthanasia.




Compiled 5/31/2006  4:24:55 PM GMT
minimally edited: couple punctuation, couple capitals (Eugene & Eugenia which become characters), couple of els to make "modesty" into "modestly."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This, too makes perfect sense to me. And much closer to my total point. I felt satisfied at this point as my whole goal was to end on the word "Euthanasia" as it's also "Youth In Asia" to my poet's ear. I thought that was "cool". So I go on to a villanelle -- and on -- and "write" about 30 of them (who's counting at that point?) It's much harder to make "sense" out of gibberish (mixing "high" and "low" language, for example) then "gibberish" (fine poetry) out of sense, like "scientific" language. So I refined my search strings in this manner.

Here's "The Last Pantoum" (note time differences -- I worked all day on these. I'm not a counter but I think there are about 86 of them, an ink cartridge worth. If not, we'll see. I like that number, like getting "86ed" out of a place. Enit.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Euthanasia, Anthropometry and the 'American Eugenics Society'"



I. Pantoum 27

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Compiled 5/31/2006  8:27:32 PM GMT
minimal editing of punctuation and syntax, added elipses
(breakup of word "justification" must be from the original source)



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Compiled 5/31/2006  8:35:56 PM GMT
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Compiled 5/31/2006  8:42:37 PM GMT
minimal editing of punctuation



More poetry in English/Finnish:
www.leevilehto.net

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Sigh. Time to go pull weeds. I little hard rain had to fall.

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btw - this is all my commentary on the current flarf discussion, as a fellow flarfist, how ever much ignored