spent the day going all over the city to get my poetry fix on with a visit to Pepatian’s show down by 23rd and the east river. it felt good to be by the salt air. yes, i know it’s the east river but i’m a city boy so that will have to do.
then i trekked up to the Poetas Con Café show in spanish harlem. now here is some shit- local artist james de la vega was protesting the event with picket signs and a bull horn. i need to do some more research to see if his claims are valid but i do know for a fact that the group he’s heckling was one of the groups that stood by him when he almost got locked up. (a little bit back, de la vega tagged up some private property – without permission – and the law came looking for him and his revolutionary self felt that his presence was better suited to fresh air rather than behind bars. maybe he shoulda thought about that before actually breaking the law. not sayin’/jus sayin’)
next- the harlem book fair. a lot of books very little literature. i also got to check out a panel discussion of guerrilla marketing your self published work. it was pretty informative for a minute till one self published mogul showed up with a poster for his ten novels (and twenty more in his computer just waiting to be unleashed) and turned the panel discussion into a ME.moi.YO.me fest. i guess thats why he was on the panel but that shit was way too much for me especially since i got a negative vibe from him even before he opened his mouth. on the flip side, a sister by the name of yasmin shiraz was hella cool through out and was moderating the panel well for half a second. props to ron kavanaugh of the bronx museum and mosiac books for telling me about the panel. i also bought a shirt from mosaic that gets right to the heart of the matter: READ MORE. werd.
off to see roger’s show at the bowery. the show was tight but this being my third time seeing it put me in “what is different form this one than the last one†mode. lesson learned tonight- dont ever (and i mean EVER) tell the audience that they have a license to heckle cuz it will bite you in the ass.
keeping me company on today’s journey were LUCIFER: DEVIL IN THE GATEWAY (which was all kinds of good and has me rushing to get the next couple of volumes) and Octavio Paz’s ‘Labyrinth of Solitude’ which is breaking down the psyche of mexico but is also laying out my whole soul at the same time.
love ya like makers mark loves shot glasses