Author Archives: Oscar Bermeo

Writers Remembered 2009 at the SFPL’s Koret Auditorium

What a great reading this last Saturday as the Friends of the San Francisco Public Library presented “Writers Remembered 2009.” This tribute to writers who passed away the previous year is in its 7th year and seems to be one of those reading that is sincere, well organized, star studded, moving, and (sadly) not well known. Host Gerry Nicosia started the proceedings by noting that while the San Francisco Chronicle was kind enough to send a reporter to cover the event, it did not give any mention of the event before hand.

The shame is that this is the kind of event that with some good print & online advertisement, a glitzy venue, bad dress code, focus on high profile authors, and exuberant ticket price would probably sell out. Funny how things tend to work out like that.

The good news is that “Writers Remembered” is a community event that seeks to serve the community and remains committed to delivering an event that honored all kinds of writers (household names, community stalwarts, fringe anti-culturists, and the just emerging) that highlighted possible in the San Francisco Public Library’s easily accessible, free, acoustically wonderful and very packed Koret Auditorium.

When we arrived for the event, Barb mentioned that it felt “like church” with the mood shifting from serious to somber, from remembrance to tragedy, from humor to introspection. Yeah, we were at a literary wake but that wake where the dead are honored and spoken of as if still in the room- with no one getting too carried away with their tributes. No need to create monuments when the works of these writers remain for us.

I’ll leave the last word to Daniel Handler who noted, when remembering his friend Ellen Miller, that maybe in writing there is only one kind of story: “Someone lost something.”


• Gerry Nicosia’s Introduction (Parts 1 and 2)
• Naomi Quiñonez pays tribute to Alfred Arteaga (Parts 1 and 2)
• Al Young pays tribute to Reginald Lockett (Parts 1 and 2)
• Alejandro Murguia pays tribute to Raulsalinas (Parts 1 and 2)
• Peter Plate pays tribute to James Crumley
• A. D. Winans pays tribute to Dave Church
• Carl Macki pays tribute to Father Albert Huerta
• Gerald Nicosia pays tribute to Studs Terkel (Parts 1 and 2)
• Deema Shehabi pays tribute to Mahmoud Darwish
• Daniel Handler (Lemony Snicket) pays tribute to Ellen Miller
• Tom Barbash pays tribute to Sheila Schwartz
• Agneta Falk pays tribute to Tony Vaughan
• Jack Hirschman pays tribute to Tony Vaughan
• Oscar Villalon pays tribute to Oakley Hall
• Barbara Berman pays tribute to Hayden Carruth
• Jason Roberts pays tribute to David Foster Wallace

Rest In Power: Brenda Moossy

Ozark Poet Brenda Moossy passed away yesterday at her home in Fayetteville. Her loss is deeply felt in the Slam Community since Brenda was a very active part of the National Poetry Slam scene as a competitor, Treasurer for PSI, Inc., part of the Slam America bus tour and contributor to many Slam anthologies including Spoken Word Revolution. She was respected for her detail to craft and energy on the mic, Roger Bonair-Agard has told me that Brenda was the only poet he knew that had successfully slammed on the national level with a sestina.

I met Brenda in 2002 at two louderARTS readings. The first was for one of the very first times I was curating at Bar13. I was already stressed out about the curating since we were adding a lot of new elements to the night including musical accompaniment, collaborations and rearranged the setup of the room, but then, at the last minute, our feature canceled on us and we had to scramble to get someone new to cover. The night turned out fine and the new feature did great but the most calming presence in the room was Brenda Moossy. A fan of the louderARTS Collective, as it was known back then, Brenda was happy to be at Bar13 and offered to help out in any way possible. She took a spot right in the front row and was an attentive listener to every open micer, nodding her heads to strong lines, smiling when a strong image or unexpected turn developed on the stage, and then wildly clapping for every poet. I think the only reason we didn’t ask her to feature that night was because she was set to feature at our Brooklyn reading in a few nights.

She brought her same enthusiastic energy to Morgie’s Cafe, the home of louderARTS South, both as a listener and the feature. On the mic she was happy to share her experiences from the Ozarks and let us know how different things in New York might be but that the feeling of poetry was just as strong in both places and wherever there was a good venue that she could share her words, she was always at home.

I’m sorry that our paths never crossed again since that spirit of community and wonder (so often taken for granted) is something that I need to always be reminded of.

More Brenda Moossy
• Poet’s Bio
• Publications
• Brenda Moosy reads “Anaconda” (MP3)

Books I Read in January


january book1
Originally uploaded
by songbirdmama

Wow, I don’t think I have ever read this much hard fiction since high school but it’s a good break outside of the poetry box with the dual high points of Junot Díaz’s eclectic lingua franca of the New Hersee/Dominicano experience and Djuna Barnes’ solid everywoman prose essay style of 1911-1930 New York City.

For the near future, I need to add some grammar/essay writing books into my diet so I can get some more basics down and then start writing/submitting a couple of poetry reviews. Though I’m not sure that what I want to do is an actual poetry book review style review, I would love to find that in-between road of reviewing that would get a person who liked reading Oscar Wao to get to reading some Smoking Lovely. Ya know? Cuz some of the poetry reviews I’m reading seem more interested in talking to people who already have the book in hand as opposed to getting the poetry into new hands. But that’s a rant for another day.

“The real Bronx has nothing to do with facts, as the real Greenwich Village has nothing to do with facts, as no real good woman has anything to do with facts.”
— Djuna Barnes from New York: Prose Essays

• Working in the Dark: Reflections of a Poet of the Barrio by Jimmy Santiago Baca
• City Eclogue by Ed Roberson
• Selected Poems by Gwendolyn Brooks
• DC: The New Frontier, Vol. 2 by Darwyn Cooke
• The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz
• Swamp Thing Vol. 2: Love and Death by Alan Moore, Stephen Bissette, John Totleben, and Shawn McManus
• May Day Speech by Jean Genet
• Slapboxing with Jesus by Victor D. LaValle
• Facts for Visitors: Poems by Srikanth Reddy
• Dark City by Charles Bernstein
• The True Story of the Three Little Pigs by Jon Scieszka and Lane Smith
• New York: Prose Essays by Djuna Barnes

I Speak of the City: Eduardo Galeano


Montevideo, 2006
Originally uploaded by isabelir

[Currently watching the Eduardo Galeano reading from the Lannan Literary video series. Galeano is bouncing back and forth between English and Spanish readings which is even cooler when he decides to read the story of Tracy Hill from Connecticut in Spanish because in Galeano’s world La Hill’s story can happen anywhere or in any language.

Galeano has a wonderful reading style—expressive, detailed, no nonsense, ironic and so very focused. He’s also can be dryly hysterical like when he dedicates “Window on a Successful Man” to the World Bank in a personal letter but wonders why the World Bank hasn’t written back.

Another one of Galeano’s poems has me thinking about the murder of Oscar Grant and how this is not an isolated incident. This happens all over the world, regardless of government, in the country, definitely in the City, and in every language and most times without the benefit of a reliable witness but always a reporter (or chismoso) who is willing to paint an easy portrait of the street kid, jibaro, homleless, fulano, homeboy, cualquier, clocker, gangbanger, illegal, mojado, junkie, tecato. You know, a nobody. The nobody who, Galeano reminds us, is far from nothing.]

The Nobodies

Fleas dream of buying themselves a dog, and nobodies dream
of escaping poverty: that one magical day good luck will
suddenly rain down on them- will rain down in buckets. But
good luck doesn’t even fall in a fine drizzle, no matter
how hard the nobodies summon it, even if their left hand is
tickling, or if they begin the new day with their right foot, or
start the new year with a change of brooms.
The nobodies: nobody’s children, owners of nothing. The
nobodies: the no ones, the nobodied, running like rabbits,
dying through life, screwed every which way.
Who don’t speak languages, but dialects.
Who don’t have religions, but superstitions.
Who don’t create art, but handicrafts.
Who don’t have culture, but folklore.
Who are not human beings, but human resources.
Who do not have names, but numbers.
Who do not appear in the history of the world, but in the
police blotter of the local paper.
The nobodies, who are not worth the bullet that kills them.

© Eduardo Galeano

Literary Presidency

• The Chicago Tribune asks: “What does ‘literary president’ mean, exactly?”
• Stanley Fish of the New York Times examines Barack Obama’s Prose Style.
• Kwame Dawes composes his own Inaugural Poem: “New Day.”
• Chi-Town’s Kevin Coval also has his own Inauguration Day verse: “The Chance to Change.”
• Scott Woods (President of Poetry Slam, Inc.) elaborates on why he feels the Inaugural Poem didn’t work at Poetry is Doomed.
• Choriamb rounds up other Inaugural Poems and Commentary.
• Rachel Zucker and Arielle Greenberg’ 100 Poems for 100 Days will post a new poem by a contemporary American poet—a poem written for and during the first 100 days of this new administration. (Check Patricia Smith’s Day #7 poem.)