Alfred’s website is such an amazing archive. So many poems, so many images; so much to read, learn, and process through.
“The Present” by Alfred Arteaga
“Eine Frau” Reading by Alfred Arteaga and Maja Neff
Author Archives: Oscar Bermeo
Rest in Power: Alfred Arteaga
I didn’t know you very well, Alfred, but you were generous in your spirit and with your words. You once asked me, “How’s work?” I said, “You know, same ole 9 to 5.” You said, “No, not that. Your real work. How’s the writing?’
I will say that the work is going well but I wish I could hear more of your work. Instead, I will go back to what you have left for us. Thanks for this.
Palabra.
From Espistles 1-6 (courtesy of alfredarteaga.com)
April 26, 2005
Dear Alfred,
While wondering how to begin this project, I came to the conclusion that I should discuss the issue of most relevance to my writing, which is myself. Poetry is often an act of narcissism. Sometimes, when I’m feeling especially self involved, I imagine myself in a house full of mirrors, each one depicting the different ways in which I view myself. My poetry is a way to both keep myself from being trapped in an endless montage of self reflection, as well as to project those images in a cohesive shape to others, in some ways, as a form of self validation. Don’t misunderstand me; I write for myself, I have to in order to get words on the page. However, in the back of my mind, I must also consider what other people will think.
…
Herein lies my insecurity; should I be able to write happy poems or is poetry simply better or more interesting when there is an element of some more dangerous or subversive emotion? Perhaps when in that numbing haze of being in love or lust, I shut off some part of my intelligence. It could be the part that is a bit darker, more thoughtful and rebellious. Maybe what makes me happy is a bit commonplace, kisses, sunny days, etc, but what makes me sad or angry is more unique and therefore more interesting a source to write from.
…
Hajera§
So to answer your question, let me pose another. How could you not find poems of pain and loss more efficacious than those of romance and love? You prize the endeavor of poetry but lack faith in its efficacy. You write poems that reach out to the reader but do extol the triumph of love. You are more interested and find more art in disharmony than in harmony. Love poems must strike you as naive and somewhat facile. But because you espouse ambiguity, unfinished meaning, and the breaking of expected order, my answer cannot be that simple. Take the image of the stone at your poem’s end. I cannot know without doubt whether it is of a ring or to be thrown.Alfred
X-Post: Barack by the books
From Salon.com
If Obama is elected, he’ll be one of the most literary presidents in recent memory. Although his boyhood and youth in Hawaii and Indonesia were not especially bookish, Obama the reader blossomed as an undergraduate at Occidental College in California and, especially, during the two monkish years he spent finishing up his degree at Columbia University in New York. “I had tons of books,” he told his biographer, David Mendell (“Obama: From Promise to Power”), about this time in his life. “I read everything. I think that was the period when I grew as much as I have ever grown intellectually. But it was a very internal growth.” Even after he left New York to work as a community organizer in Chicago, Mendell reports, Obama lived so much like a retiring writer — spending many hours holed up in a spartan apartment with volumes of “philosophy and literature” — that some of his colleagues assumed he was gathering material for a novel.
Goodreads Review: Solitudes Crowded With Loneliness
Solitudes Crowded With Loneliness by Bob Kaufman
Rating: 4 of 5 stars
Jazz poetry at its finest and I can feel where some other Beats licked their riffs off of.
In the “Poems” section, the music is all in the lines and the language so Kaufman doesn’t have to throw his lines all over the page to affect musicality, he just lets them roll on their own beat and effect their own drones and tones.
“Second April” switches off into stanza sections set in newspaper style justified blocks of prose-imagery that chronicles the speaker’s stint in rehab. The account is chilling but never falls into self-pity (from the speaker or from the reader) thanks to its anchored speech.
“Abomunist Manfifesto” is a straight trip. Invented and re-imagined history with the just-concocted language directly aimed at the current political system is the height of poetic satire that modern experimental/performance/academic/slam poets are still aspiring to reach.
This feels like the kind of poetry collection I am going to have to revisit more than once.
Goodreads Review: Incognegro
Incognegro by Mat Johnson
Rating: 3 of 5 stars
Mat Johnson writes a fantastic murder mystery set in a small town, complete with the outsider trying to reach the truth despite the local powers-that-be. But add that our outsider is Zane Pinchback–a Southern Black journalist based in Harlem, light-skinned enough to pass for white, that infiltrates and reports back on lynchings–and the small town is pre-Civil Rights era Mississippi, and you have the makings of a serial that cuts to the heart of White and Black racism.
Warren Pleece’s art sharply complements Johnson’s writing with his ink rich, precise black and whites that focus on the emotion of the characters facials and body dynamics.
I hope we see this creative team and Zane Pinchback in more Vertigo offerings.