Bury Me in the Leaning Rest C-130 rollin’ down the strip Airborne Daddy gonna take a little trip Mission Top Secret Destination Unknown He don’t know if he’s ever coming home… An old Army buddy emailed me out of the blue a while back. Found me on the Internet amongst too many "friends" I barely knew and wouldn't take a bullet for. Fills me in on the guys we used to run with, some in, some out, some completely off the grid. He puts me in touch with one whose name rings a bell --out now, married with kids-- and…
Review by: Lori Freshwater on Oct. 24, 2009 : (no rating) Guy LeCharles Gonzalez takes the gloves right off in this wonderful collection of poetry. We know immediately that this is going to be poetry that lives up to its promise, it is going to be poetry that speaks truth. We know that because the poet tells us in “Crazy White Devil” that Evel Knievel was a better man than Elvis. “I was never inspired/to shake my hips to stolen glory/but I sped down glass-filled/urban ski slopes with abandon, /jumping curbs and milk crate ramps…” Okay, I’m an Elvis fan…
Arguably my "biggest" publishing credit is co-authoring Burning Down the House: Selected Poems from the Nuyorican Poets Cafe's National Poetry Slam Champions (Soft Skull Press, 2000), and while I am both proud of and eternally grateful for its publication, its existence has more to do with timing and opportunism than the quality of the work therein. Besides my own attempts at zines and chapbooks, it was my first real introduction to the world of publishing, and it left a permanent mark that partly explains my cynical passion and/or pragmatic idealism for the publishing industry.
I kept notebooks as a little girl, and I always knew I had books in me – books other people would want to publish and read. I still have one of my handmade books, bound with purple yarn, the lavender construction paper cover sealed in clear shelf paper. The title in purple marker reads “Differences”. It’s the earliest collection of my poems that I still have.
Since then, I’ve published poems, essays, and articles in noted journals and anthologies in the U.S. and other countries; written for magazines about hip hop and literature; and blogged about whatever mattered to me. I toured across the country and trekked to London and Cuba where I led and took workshops and performed my work. I shared poems on Chicago radio stations that I listened to as a high school student in Kankakee, IL, and eventually appeared on television doing the thing I loved most—sharing my poems.
These were all things that no one expected from people where I grew up. Kankakee is a small town, just south of Chicago, predominantly Black and hit very hard when the last factory downsized and eventually closed while I was still in high school. At one point, our town was voted the worst place to live in America, and the economy still has never really recovered. Before that, my friends and I talked about writing, making music, starting businesses, and going to college as our escape into adulthood and away from Kankakee. We talked about all these big dreams.
The thing is, no one ever told you how to get past the dreaming and get to the doing.
I had the pleasure of attending the first Writer's Digest Conference last weekend and had a blast. Great presenters; great insights; a fun time at the least pretentious poetry slam I've ever been part of that didn't involve teenagers. Work's been crazy the past couple of weeks with some exciting transition happening, but I do intend to do a proper #wdc09 post over on loudpoet.com when I get the time. (ha!) Last night, though, inspired by one of Jane Friedman's presentations, I decided to finally test out Smashwords and uploaded a short echapbook of newish and old poems called Crazy White Devil,…
Eleven years ago next month, in Austin, TX, I took one of the most life-changing thrill rides ever when I attended my first National Poetry Slam, as a member of the 1998 team representing the Nuyorican Poets Café that would go on to become their first (and still only) team to win the Championship. The victory itself was amazing, but what really struck me and lasted much, much longer was the diverse community of poets in attendance, and their passion for the event that brought them together every Summer.
The competition was fierce, and there were some who took it way too seriously (myself included!), but late at night, after all of the bouts were done and people gathered in groups of old and new friends to talk, drink and trade poems, the true spirit of the slam always shone through: “It’s not about the points, it’s about the poetry.”
I came back from that first NPS inspired and on a mission, and in September of 1998 added a regular slam series to my fledgling reading series, a little bit louder, and the rest is history.
"I have just read the immortal poems of the ages and come away dull. I don't know who's at fault; maybe it's the weather, but I sense a lot of pretense and poesy footwork: I am writing a poem, they seem to say, look at me! Poetry must be forgotten; we must get down to raw paint, splatter." Charles Bukowski Confession: I loathe most formal poetry. Sestinas, sonnets, terza rimas, oh my! While I appreciate the exercise of writing in a particular form, the end result is usually a self-indulgent bit of forgettable wordplay rarely worth reading, never mind hearing…
