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Guy stuff.

An arm with a tattoo: "I was made for the library, not the classroom."

Authors-on-your-shelf meme (Meme: copy somebody else's list, delete the authors that aren't on your shelf, and add some authors you have - keeping the number at ten.) Dawn Saylor's List: Neil Gaiman Michael Chabon Jack McCarthy Douglas Adams Philip K. Dick Sandra Cisneros Lee Francis Erica Jong Jhumpa Lahiri Jonathon Franzen My List, in no particular order: Lawrence Block Carl Hiaasen Matt Ruff Ed Greenwood Jessica Rydill Howard Zinn Gary Jennings Eduardo Galeano Willie Perdomo Patricia Smith Not a single bit of overlap! Unless you count comic books, in which case I can claim Gaiman via 1602. And I think…

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An arm with a tattoo: "I was made for the library, not the classroom."

Site Updates

Oh, yeah! I've tweaked loudpoet.com somewhat over the past couple of weeks, among other things, improving navigation between it and this journal - check it out over on the right. I'm still too lazy to figure out how to post this thing directly into my web site and kind of like the blogspot address. I've also added some new content to the words section, primarily essays, including my review of It's A Wonderful Life that originally appeared in my zine, zuzu's petals. In short stories, a life in progress is the first chapter of the never-completed novelization of the ill-fated…

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An arm with a tattoo: "I was made for the library, not the classroom."

Nothing representing Latinos

Tonight is Acentos and the cluttered attic that is my brain has been toying with an idea that Rich Villar mentioned last month, a couple of weeks after their show with Louis Reyes Rivera.

When I heard they had a disappointing turnout for it – including my stupid hungover ass among the missing! – I was extremely surprised. Not even the scenesters made the short hike to the Bronx for what was, by all accounts, an amazing experience. At the following Acentos, Rich and I talked about it and some interesting ideas he was considering.

In a seemingly unrelated moment, while preparing for the Oneonta show last week, I was putting together a list of poetry resources for the audience and was dismayed to realize that I had nothing representing Latinos! Spent a while on Google looking for an equivalent to the Asian American Writer’s Workshop or Cave Canem and came up empty.

Nada!

All of this got me thinking about the significant gap that exists between the generation of poets that founded the Nuyorican Poets Café back in the ’70s and my own generation of relatively unpolished but well-intentioned newcomers, echoing the concerns Rich had raised a few weeks earlier.

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An arm with a tattoo: "I was made for the library, not the classroom."

Just wanted to elaborate on a little something I touched on in the previous entry which was initially sparked by a discussion on Phil West's LiveJournal earlier this week: the question of emotion vs. polish or, a bit more esoterically, authentic vs. reflexive. In the simpler of the two debates, emotion vs. polish, I typically lean towards preferring emotion. Polish - especially taken in the context of whom Phil was having the initial discussion with - is often used as a euphemism for "better," with the inherent implication that emotional work is less-polished and, as a result not as good.…

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An arm with a tattoo: "I was made for the library, not the classroom."

Like slipping the medicine in with the ice cream

Oneonta turned out to be a lot of fun. It was weird in the beginning as I realized about 20 minutes before the show started that it was my first solo college appearance and I was all alone! Other than Robb Thibault, who was busy getting things organized, I had no one there with me. The nerves were a’jangling!

They had a great turnout for their first show of the year – 180 people, the most ever! (Coincidentally, it was their 13th show overall!) After a brief open mic, I went up for a 30-minute set, dropping Reality, Manifesto, The Long Walk Home, Prodigal Son, The View From Airplanes and Other Leaps of Faith, Mozer, Betha and I, and Breathless. After the slam, Robb brought me back for one more piece so I went with the energy and did 33-1/3 Revolutions Per Minute (Post 9/11 Remix).

While the whole night went well, it was that last piece that got the best response, driving home a point I’d come to accept long ago. People appreciate the well-written narrative stuff but they love the high-energy, easy-to-grasp, pop culture stuff the most. Even when it’s antagonistic and self-critical, like 33-1/3.

The trick is to be able to give them both, kind of like slipping the medicine in with the ice cream.

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An arm with a tattoo: "I was made for the library, not the classroom."

Today’s going to be a good one.

Mr. Lawnge's remix of Queen's Flash Gordon Theme is playing on my Launch station as I start writing this. :-) A busy week ahead as I'm taking two days off work to head up to SUNY-Oneonta for a feature on Wednesday night. Robb Thibault - Fargo, 1998 - runs the Student Union and invited me to open their slam season. Have a full 30-40 minutes so I'm looking forward to stretching my legs and doing some pieces I haven't done in awhile. Getting paid nicely, too, which is always a good thing! Hung out with Phil West on Friday night,…

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An arm with a tattoo: "I was made for the library, not the classroom."

Keep Your Head Up

On my generation’s equivalent of Pearl Harbor Day, another tragedy weighs equally heavy in my thoughts. It’s been 7 years since Tupac Amaru Shakur’s murder and, sadly, not much seems to have changed.

Not in hip-hop, or the world in general, for that matter.

We’re no more or less safe today than we were on February 26, 1993 or April 19, 1995 or September 8, 1996 or March 9, 1997 or September 11, 2001.

Hopefully, we’re a little more aware of our place in the world and that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction and that every cause has an effect and that there is rarely such thing as truly innocent bystanders. Our lives today are the result of our [in]decisions yesterday and the day before that, etc, etc, ad naseum.

None of us are innocent bystanders. At best, we might claim feeling helpless and be honest about that feeling being rooted in complacency.

Anyway, I’m feeling a little melancholy and disconnected today and I dug up something I originally wrote for my zine, zuzu’s petals, back in the fall of 1996.

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