Mayor Gavin Newsom today introduced Diane di Prima as the City’s 5th Poet Laureate. Poet, prose writer, playwright and teacher, di Prima is the author of 44 books of poetry and prose.
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“Diane di Prima is a feminist writer, poet, teacher, and one of the few female Beat writers to attain prominence,†said Mayor Newsom.
“Her writing reflects the political and social upheavals of the 1960’s and 1970’s, as well as her personal life, interest in alchemy, and Eastern philosophies.
As one of the strongest literary voices of her generation, her work continues to inspire, and we are honored to name her the San Francisco Poet Laureate.â€
Full article here.
Author Archives: Oscar Bermeo
Many Styles, Many Styles
I once joked to Barb that the only reason I would join Twitter was to drop updates like this:
-Please cut the long intro and get to the poem. Ooops, bad poem. Go back to the intro.
-Yo dawgs, 1983 called and it wants the poem you stole back.
-This person has used the same quote for the intro, epigraph, title AND first line of the poem. Shoot me now.
So the questions remains. Will I actually do it? To find out, follow me @obermeo.
Elizabeth Alexander reads "Praise Song for the Day"
This was only one poem from a reading that was dense, articulate and moving. At her first Bay area reading, Elizabeth Alexander came through with various selections from her previous books, a new poem, and the inaugural poem. Her commentary on the poem and the fact that she continues reading it is a great example to all poets: “It is one poem among many. Somewhere in the middle.”
So much of the negative commentary around the Inaugural Poem was about how Alexander didn’t deliver a reading that blew away everyone, a poem that should have stood out among all her work, a performance that would steal the show. This might work for poets who think every reading is their last one, that no one will ever hear their work again, that *this* has to be the poem that will last forever. I’ve met poets like this, most of them only do a few poems they have carefully crafted, endlessly revised, and have performed so often they could do it in their sleep. I know, I was a poet like this. Always relying on a few poems to wow the listener. Hell, for a good long time, I only had one poem to show the audience that Damn it, I am a real poet.
I wish I had heard the advice of Elizabeth Alexander earlier and realized that one poem can make me a poet but only for that moment. If I wanted to be a poet for the ages or even an occasion poet, I would have to keep writing and reciting more poems, work one and then move to the other. It’s a strong lesson to learn and even tougher to follow because the rush of nailing a performance poem–articulating every line break, feeling the turn of the poem move through your body, making eye contact with every one in the room, seeing and feeling their reaction to the poem–it rocks. But to go on to the next moment, where an even better poem might be waiting, that’s the real good news. The kind of good news that could get you to a stage where the whole world is listening, so you can deliver the best poem you have for that day, and then move on.
Around the Way: MartÃn Espada
• Rich Villar recounts MartÃn Espada’s visit to the Acentos Writers Workshop over at Letras Latina.
On the walls hung 112 photos of headstones from St. Raymond’s Cemetery in the Bronx. MartÃn’s workshop revolved around Edgar Lee Masters’ SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY, a book of persona poems in the voices of the dead. Masters took the names from the headstones of Spoon River Cemetery. The Acentos workshop was about to do the same for St. Raymond’s.
Espada started with a half-hour lecture on the life of Edgar Lee Masters, along with a reading of poems from the book itself. Some of the poems were in conversation with other poems. Most of them were highly speculative about the dead person’s occupation, demeanor, relations, and relationships to the other dead people. So, taking from these cues, and keeping in mind things like birth dates and death dates, names, proximity to other headstones, and a large dose of speculation, 78 workshoppers (Attrition! Where is thy blush?) were sent wandering around the room in search of personae to write about, and through.
Complete report here.
• Espada is also quoted over at The Nation regarding baseball, steroids and how the players are held to blame for the greed of the owners and the demands of the fans.
As baseball fan and poet Martin Espada told me, “Baseball is the Main Street of sports. (Think Cooperstown.) It’s full of history and nostalgia, and paved with the bricks of hypocrisy. Now it’s the rhetoric of the ‘drug war,’ handed down from the Nixon White House forty years ago to MLB and ESPN today.”
He is absolutely correct. We are supposed to tsk-tsk at players who are supposed to “just say no” to their addictions to fitness and monster stats, when their success at the park is our addiction as well. We also have yet to truly take owners to task for their addictions to public money and send them to detox.
Complete article here.
• Jean Feraca interviews Espada at Here On Earth: Radio Without Borders. (RealPlayer required)
Espada: “What I consider despicable is silence.”
Viewing: Star Trek
We just got back from seeing Star Trek on IMAX and I can happily say: J.J. Abrams gets it. And by “it” I mean that audiences are always looking for that new myth, the story of heroes and villians that makes us want to jump out over seats, spill our popcorn and yell “Yeah!” Star Trek is that movie.
As a die-hard fan, I’ll say I walked into this with great hopes for a good movie that stayed true to the vision of the first. As a fan of good story lines in sci-fi, I was ready to settle with, just make it a good long episode in the vein of ST:TOS (told ya I was a fan). Ok, I lied, I would’ve preferred leave good enough alone, don’t go back to the endlessly rehashed Kirk-Spock friendship and focus on either a DS9 movie (Cuz you know Ronald D. Moore has some free time on his hands now) or go with Peter David’s The New Frontier. Abrams proved me wrong by finding a new wrinkle in the Kirk-Spock bromance and fleshing out all the other characters on the bridge (and even some redshirts) with good backstories and contributions to the story that go beyond just showing up. Again, he’s given a new mythology to latch on to.
*Here Be Spoilers*
One thing I hate about time-travel stories, they never have any lasting consequences. Folks go back, forward, sideways in time and nothing changes. Not in this movie. Abrams starts off the film with a major temporal distortion of epic proportions that affects the entire history of the NCC-1701 and her crew. For reals.
A complete reset of the legendary five year mission with distinct alteration to give us a fresh story but with enough familiarity to let us know that this is the Star Trek lore we love.
The best example is Karl Urban portrayal of Dr Bones McCoy, equal parts homage to DeForest Kelley and equal parts foil to Kirk and Spock. Zoe Saldana’s Uhura brings the hotness to the bridge but in a new package filled with personal agency, professional drive and compassion for her man. Again, everybody in the original crew gets to contribute to the story in their own way.
The most important thing Abrams understands about Star Trek: It’s all about Spock. Yes, Kirk is great and leads THE most charmed life in the Federation but the character that’s fueled the engine for most of the franchise if Spock. Zachary Quinto portrayal of the child of Vulcan logic and human emotions shows both without resorting to being mechanical or having to cry so we know he feels something. We know he feels emotion cuz he’s always suppressing it and it comes out in the story.
With a new universe to play with and what will probably be one of this summer’s highest grossing films, what will Abrams do next?
My guess the next Star Trek will have the Enterprise crew meet up with the SS Botany Bay and a brand new Khan Noonien Singh played by (drumroll) Benicio del Toro.
