Author Archives: Oscar Bermeo

Looking back on NaPoWriMo 1


Heaven Below Wordle
Originally uploaded by geminipoet

A few unexpected things happened during National Poetry Writing Month:
• I finished a chapbook that was in production for about 18 months.
• I started a new chapbook of poems completely different from the voice I’ve been using for my Anywhere Avenue poems.
• I failed in writing a new set of remix poem to accompany my Anywhere Avenue poems.

Heaven Below
This chapbook started out in the summer of 2007 as Anywhere Avenue II and it was just going to be a continuation of the poems from the first chap. The big wrench in my plans was writing “Psalm for Anywhere Avenue,” a poem that (duh!) should be in the first chapbook but was written a few weeks after I finished the original chap. My first thought was to just strike one poem out of the original chap and replace it with “Psalm.” Good plan except I had a whole ‘nother group of poems come out of my IWL, VONA and Kearny Street poetry workshops, enough poems that I would have to do a major revise of the first chap by eliminating all the poems I wasn’t happy with and changing the complete order of the book. I almost went through with this plan cuz a chapbook contest I had my eye on was coming up and I figured my best shot at winning this contest was to just send out all the best poems I had at the moment, wrap em up in the best order possible, and send it off.

Good plan (the sequel) was thwarted when I decided that as flawed as Anywhere Avenue might be it was still the best work that I had when I put the chap together and it wouldn’t be the move to just keep moving poems around to make room for the world’s best chapbook. This might be the first time I really started thinking about manuscript and that there was no reason why my MS poems couldn’t be all about Anywhere Ave but also come from different corners of Anywhere Ave as well.

Good plan (the return) got knocked out the box with the arrival of NaPoWriMo 2008. For whatever reason I thought it would be a good idea to attack NaPoWriMo with a plan and the plan was to write poems around one theme: Palimpsest. This time, the plan worked and by the time NaPoWriMo was over I had almost all the poems I needed for a new chapbook all that was missing was a few pages which got done in the summer with “Fire Escape.” Now I had a brand new chapbook still connected to my MS project but without double dipping into any of my previous poems.

Now here I was with these orphaned poems who were getting edited and revised as part of the MS but didn’t have a chapbook home and who I had no idea how to connect together. When in doubt, retrace your steps, and so I went back to the work of Jack Agüeros and re-read Sonnets from the Puerto Rican and was struck with one poem in particular–Sonnet for Heaven Below. This poem of subway magic with angels living underground in the City helped me find a new start point for my orphaned poems and off I went to make a magic #4 train line where the Pope, Pedro Pietri and Ronald Reagan all get to share space with a Nathaniel Mackey inspired “We” of Anywhere Avenue.

For whatever reason, I always thought that this group of poems was a little shy of the 16 pages I needed for a chap but once I stepped it into gear I realized I had 20+ pages. So I had enough poems, already had secured the cover art back in ’07 and now only needed one more thing to make it complete, a “Heaven Below” poem.

This poem was living in my head for about six months, just a constant refrain of what I know from City and what I really know about City, comparing and contrasting the good and bad of urban livin that finally came out on at the start of NaPoWriMo.

Three weeks later, book is all done and ready to be shared with the world. In the “Not So Good Plan” Dept, doing this while writing NaPoWriMo poems, submitting to two national poetry workshops and day-to-day livin was not the smartest move and probable accounted to why my original plan for NaPoWriMo ’09 went very much to the curb. Luckily, it was a real good curb pretty much as far from Anywhere Ave as my imagination could take me.

Update on the 2009 Chicano/Latino Literary Prize and my reaction

From the official web site:

Our 35th Chicano/Latino Literary Prize Contest has been cancel for this year.

We will keep you updated for the up coming year. We thank you for all your support.

I’m not surprised to find this out as the website has had no information for the last few weeks and the e-mail contact and telephone numbers listed have been down as well.

This was one of the contests I was looking forward to entering this year and (cue the cry of the optimist) felt I had some chance of doing well in. This isn’t a boast or brag, just an honest assessment of where I feel I’m at in my progress right now. I don’t enter every contest that comes down the pipe hoping that “Yes, this is the one!” but pick and choose where I’m sending out my stuff. The upside is I am not throwing away all my extra money on the Poetic Industrial Complex’s version of “la bolita.” The downside is every rejection letter I get hurts, big time. One I got last summer put me into a funk for at least a couple of months.

But that’s the game of endorsed publication, you gotta be in it to win it and you can never take it personal. Two lessons I learned when I was poetry slamming but it was cool back then cuz I never had my heart invested in becoming the next poster child for slam/poetry jams/spoken word/performance poetry. My heart is all about getting a book out there through a quality press that will work with me to produce the finest piece of book art possible and include me in a lineage of artists whose work has inspired me.

All that said, I know the decision to cancel this year’s Literary Prize can not have been an easy choice (especially with the current fiscal state of California and its impact on the UC budgets) and I hope the rich tradition of this very necessary institution can continue on for next year and beyond.

The New Knack That’s Comin’ From Way Way Back

Imagine if all sports news conferences were like this: LeBron James reciting “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” Mark Sanchez reading “So Mexicans are Taking Jobs from Americans,” Tiger Woods dropping “The Tragic Mullato is Neither,” Barry Bonds going off with “The Pure Products of America Go Crazy.”

Of course, we did have Muhammad Ali being, well, Muhammad Ali back in the day but more sports figures are more interested in either canned catch-all phrases (We’re going to give 100%), overwrought hype (I’m giving them 1000% of me!) or just some straight up nonsense (I’m expecting my teammates to bring 50&, our coach to do the same, and I’ll take care of the rest.).

Looks like for now, I’ll have to settle for my own version of fantasy poet sports and keep listening to this reimagined Blake looking to charge up England for this Saturday’s football game.

Props to Author Scoop for first pointing me to this video.

Little Stones at My Window


Windows on Istanbul
Originally uploaded by robokow

Confession: I have an intense dislike for window poems. Most of the ones I’ve come across use the window as a lens to the view the rest of the world, a world the writer strives to make as alien as possible from his place of writing. The ones I really hate use the window to separate the writer from the outside world and limit the possibility of the writers’ work to only the things seen from the window. Any possibility that poetry can exist past the window ceases to exist as the poet shrinks away from engaging with a world that he can’t control.

This poem by the recently departed Mario Bendetti goes with a far better approach to writing from the window. Bendetti’s speaker realizes that his world is limited and the outside world is full of so much possibility and joy that to stay locked up would limit his own growth and possibility. I like this window poem, one where the writer can leave the tragic behind and go outside of his secure writing space and take a chance in the unknown.

Little Stones at My Window
by Mario Benedetti
Translated by Charles Hatfield

for roberto and adelaida

Once in a while
joy throws little stones at my window
it wants to let me know that it’s waiting for me
but today I’m calm
I’d almost say even-tempered
I’m going to keep anxiety locked up
and then lie flat on my back
which is an elegant and comfortable position
for receiving and believing news

who knows where I’ll be next
or when my story will be taken into account
who knows what advice I still might come up with
and what easy way out I’ll take not to follow it

don’t worry, I won’t gamble with an eviction
I won’t tattoo remembering with forgetting
there are many things left to say and suppress
and many grapes left to fill our mouths

don’t worry, I’m convinced
joy doesn’t need to throw any more little stones
I’m coming
I’m coming.

A Place of Many Places: The NY Times Looks at Poetic New Jersey


Welcome Sign
Originally uploaded by tom_hoboken

A quick Flickr search for Union City, NJ, pics has me finding more pictures of the Manhattan skyline than of Union City itself. This isn’t unique to Union City, a lot of communities in the Garden State are defined by their access to PATH, the Bridge, and the City (aka New York, NY) then they are by their own merits. The same thing happens out here as I look for pictures of Oaktown and find a lot of pics of what San Francisco (also known out here as the City) looks like from the East Bay.

So why is New Hersee, as the ole skool Latinos call it, in my head this morning? It’s all thanks to a nice article in the New York Times highlighting W.S. Merwin, the 4th poet from N.J. to win the Pulitzer in the last ten years.

The article postulates that population density may be behind Jersey’s poetics. I’d agree and also add that living in the shadow of a larger metropolis–the city behind The City–calls for literature that brings attention away from the center and to the margins. This isn’t a diss on the center because so much poetry can come from viewing the center, seeing the fog roll in on the SF piers or watching the Empire State Building light up in a new color formation, and giving the folks who are so caught up in living in the center a chance to appreciate what they may be taking for granted.

In my own poetics, I wasn’t able to write any Bronx poems while living in the Bx. The first few came when I was a resident of Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, and the majority have come from my home in Oakland. So I appreciate distance when it comes to writing of place.

Distance from the center plus a critical mass of communities, it feels like New Jersey does have the right formula for poetics.

Infinite Poetry, From a Finite Number
By KEVIN COYNE
Published: May 15, 2009

It’s not much of a yard by the standards of most of America — just a postage stamp of grass behind the house at the corner of Fourth Street and New York Avenue, fenced by chain link and shaded by an unruly maple, here in this densest of cities in this densest of states. But like many things in New Jersey, it turns out to be larger than it looks at first glance.

The eminent poet W. S. Merwin lived at this corner until he was 9, a block away from the Presbyterian church his father pastored. Several years ago, long after he had won his first Pulitzer, his boyhood city honored him with a street sign here: “W. S. Merwin Way,” it reads. Last month, Mr. Merwin won a second Pulitzer prize for poetry — the fourth New Jersey poet to win in the last 10 years, a streak that is unmatched of late by any other state, and one that raises the question of whether it is more than just a happy coincidence.

Full article here.

Props to Author Scoop for pointing me this way.