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

In the end, Breath, Eyes, Memory turns out to be one of those disappointing books that is much less than the sum of its parts. I suspect much of the praise it received stemmed more from American fascination with youth and "exotic" cultures than from its modest artistic merits. Danticat is talented, without a doubt, but this book is a short story clumsily stretched into novel-length, barely, full of archetypes and allegories but not nearly enough character development. In the end, you don't really know or care about anybody or anything; what should be an intense and emotionally harrowing story…

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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."

It's rant time. The whole home ownership aspect of the "American Dream" escapes me. A couple of years ago, four or five months after Isaac was born, the combination of frustration over being unable to find a decent apartment to rent and the lure of owning our own place, led us to look into buying a condo. Salomé had not returned to work yet so we applied for a mortgage based only on my income and were surprised by how much they felt we could afford. In the end, the whole process nearly drove me crazy, literally, as the road…

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

William Burroughs The hard man of hip! You're controversial and intent upon revolution! What classically cool poet or writer are you? brought to you by Quizilla My inner child is sixteen years old! Life's not fair! It's never been fair, but while adults might just accept that, I know something's gotta change. And it's gonna change, just as soon as I become an adult and get some power of my own. How Old is Your Inner Child? brought to you by Quizilla

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

Wednesday is new comic book day!

So I've gotten into yet another flame war with Danny Solis on the poetry_slam list. Why can't I just leave that shit alone? The whole PSI thing, I mean. Solis is this big-ass, dreadlocked Mexican poet, currently out of Albuquerque, NM. If you saw SlamNation, he's on the Austin team, in that fun little group piece they do. Not someone you want to piss off, especially if he's been drinking. The irony is, as much as I've virtually fought with him over the years, I think he's a pretty good guy. He's a very good poet with a strong sense…

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Guy LeCharles Gonzalez Slam Poetry

The Revolution Will Be

NOTE: This article was originally published in POETRY IN AMERICA, Poets & Writers Magazine Special Issue, April 1999, and republished in The Spoken Word Revolution, Redux (Sourcebooks MediaFusion, 2007). It was posted to my old GeoCities site in 1999 and was recovered from the Wayback Machine on 10/29/21. Links to Amazon were replaced, everything else is as originally published. the Academics have much to fear and they will not die without a dirty fight. -Charles Bukowski Faced with the surging popularity of spoken-word and the poetry slam, The Academy of American Poets, long known for its gala reading series, was forced…

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