The last five days have been a whirlwind of reading, interviews and workshop which means I am quite the happy jibaro right about now.
Willie’s class is balancing between what (if any) responsibility a poet of color has and the bringing out the music in our language. My workshop group is a seriously talented group and we are all vibin together nicely.
Ok, gotta go and catch up on my reading but more for sure later.
Got to hear Lyn Hejinian and Cathy Park Hong read yesterday at Poetry Flash up in Berkeley. Lyn read all new work that included excerpts of a project she just finished and a group of elegies that revolved around non-sequiturs. All of her work revolved around a wonderful intersection of common vernacular mixed with a specific poetic vision and my joy, as a listener, was trying to find a clear line between the two and being constantly confounded in the way she eased and out between them. A great reading fueled by the momentum of language and craft and a minimum of theatrics which isn’t to say that the poems weren’t rich with persona just that she let the poems do all the talking. Another high point was when Lyn looked over a poem, check the clocked for time and then opted for a different poem, leaving me wondering why she didn’t read it… a sure sign that I was hooked on her reading.
While Lyn’s work seemed firmly rooted in daily language Cathy’s new book Dance Dance Revolution takes the English we know and throws it into a pressure cooker to produce a startling preview of a future dialect that may or may not be connected to the language spoken in the United States. As Cathy was describing this patois we were about to hear I felt sure that I was going to understand very little of the dialogue but I did have a trust in the writer that the situations and emotional resonance would come through clearly. I was very happy to find that I could keep up with the whole narrative as well as the setting in what appeared to be a taxing physical reading of the work.
I am mos def lookin forward to reading more from both these poets.
Oscar Bermeo is the son and the heir of a shyness that is criminally vulgar. He is the son and heir of nothing in particular.
Oscar’s work can be found in the journals You shut your mouth, How can you say, I go about things the wrong way, I am Human and I need to be loved just like everybody else does.
He has been a featured reader at a club where, if you’d like to go, you could meet somebody who really loves you. You can go, and stand on your own, and you can leave on your own, and go home, and you can cry, and you may want to die.
Oscar wants to know when you say it’s gonna happen now, well, when exactly do you mean? He has already waited too long and all his hope is gone.
Inspired by Lee Herrick’s new bio
Play In The Margins Press presents
Story Circle
official book launch for Raphael Cohen’s Scrutinizing Lines
a poetry in the round reading and performance
featuring special guest poets, including
Oscar Bermeo
Kusum Crimmel
Ariel Luckey
Aimee Suzara
Thursday, June 28, 2007
La Peña Cultural Center
3105 Shattuck Ave
Berkeley, California
Doors at 7
Show at 8
$10 (no one turned away for lack of funds)
first 25 guests receive a complimentary copy of Scrutinizing Lines
Raphael Cohen is a writer and performer currently living in Oakland, California. Committed to utilizing the word as a vehicle for personal and social transformation, Raphael’s poetry and prose critically examine the multifaceted nature of oppression, explore and expose the hidden costs of privilege, and vibrantly inspire efforts toward self-actualization. Through his art, he hopes to propose liberating alternatives to the often incapacitating impact of dominant narratives on our psyches and spirits. A storyteller at heart, Raphael has shared his work in New York, Montreal, Toronto, and throughout the Bay area. He’s just released his first full-length collection of poetry, Scrutinizing Lines, and with it, has founded Play In The Margins press, an independent publishing project and event production company dedicated to promoting the work of local writers and performers intent on social change.
Come on out and help celebrate the release of Scrutinizing Lines
a lyrical exploration of …
race and class politics in the u.s.
jewish identity, history, and resistance to oppression
the pursuit of lasting love
Scrutinizing Lines is currently available at the following independent book and arts establishments …
Walden Pond Books (Oakland)
Rock Paper Scissors Collective (Oakland)
Book Zoo (Oakland)
Modern Times Books (San Francisco)
Dog Eared Books (San Francisco)
Pegasus Books (Berkeley)
Blue Stockings Bookstore (New York)
St. Mark’s Bookshop (New York)
Bowery Poetry Club (New York)
But come to the show, and pick up a copy that includes a freshly printed audio CD to accompany the text (currently unavailable at the aforementioned bookstores).
Strike 1- Dropped from the movement workshop.
Strike 2- Did not get some scholarship money that I could have used.
Strike 3- Rejection letter from an anthology of political poetry.
That’s the bad news. The good news is that I submitted poems to a contest over the weekend thus satisfying my monthly quota for submissions.
Still waiting on word from one more poetry prize and also putting together a combined 20 pages of poetry/essay for Kearny Street Workshop and Achiote Press. Both of which have me mildly stressed cuz I am trying to break out of my bad procrastination habits.
Back to the three rejections, I am not really stressing any of them but am a bit curious as to what the anthology of political poetry will look like since I was fairly confident the work I sent in was making a political statement without it standing on a chair with a megaphone crying “I am a political poem.â€
Of course the political statement made in the poems regards the Bronx of the 70s which means it may not be considered current but then again I think my work is speaking more about urban neighborhoods and that is gonna stay relevant for quite a bit of time.
This is the one frustrating aspect of submission- not knowing why the work didn’t quite do the job. At least in live poetry you can feel when you lost your audience and (if your aim is not to lose them) you can adjust your set halfway through. Then again, you can also just start relying on personality and humor to get an audience back and who wants to do that all the time?
