Ghost in the Machine

The reading at the Mission Cultural Center was amazing! It’s been more than a year since I have had more than 10 minutes to do mah thing and I made sure to take advantage of the longer feature time.

SET LIST

In the “Put Up O Shut Up” Dept: Recent posts regarding form have definitely inspired me to embrace the décima and sonnet even though I didn’t follow the correct rhyme scheme for Décima del Pobre Niño so have since renamed it Canto pare el Niño Pobre. On the flip side, Sonnet for the #4 Line is in pentameter and does follow a very classic formula. Many thanks again to Jack Agüeros’s Sonnets from the Puerto Rican for helping me to understand and engage the sonnet in a more personal way.

In the “New Shit!” Dept: I wrote both the sonnet and the décima only a few hours before the feature. A fact I didn’t share at the reading cuz I was short on time and while it is cool to bring the new hotness announcing it can sometimes be a crutch and, besides, to this audience just about everything I read was New Shit.

In the “Subtle Segue Way” Dept: Speaking of audience, I have been thinking a bit about just how much I have audience in my head when I write.

Straight up– Yes, I do think about audience when I write because one of my poetic concerns is bringing poetry to as many different communities as possible. However, I do NOT write thinking that I want to please any specific community since I know that will trigger a very harsh inner editor that will not allow me to write anything that challenges me or my “audience.”

The in-between is this apparition of an audience whose faces I can sort of make out but can’t quite make out. This “audience” shifts as I write line to line and also morphs from reading to reading allowing me to always try to come up with New Shit while still working out the kinks from old pieces.

Am I thinking about this way too much? Maybe. I have heard of poets who claim to write with no audience in mind and if that is what works for them then more power to em but I gotta work with what drives me so there’s that.

Mad love to all the poetas of the evening (a true highlight was the work, and conviction, of Yosimar Reyes) and Paul Flores for bringing us all together.

Review: Sonnets from the Puerto Rican by Jack Agüeros

These sonnets walk with a quiet dignity that command respect as opposed to begging for it. They also are unafraid to call blood blood or fucked up shit fucked up shit. These poems speak of experience and don’t have the time to gawk at the everyday but instead the poet rushes home to celebrate it. From the first section, Landscapes, we get Agüeros’ crown of sonnets honoring the memory of the Happy Land massacre where the poet morphs from chronicler to mourner to pointed political critic via subtle shifts in tone.

Agüeros treats the sonnet like a virtuoso constantly playing with its possibilities and structure (Check out his “Sonnet with Twice the Lines”) while always honoring its history — the introduction pays homage to Shakespeare, Browning, cummings, Milay and “Ozymandias” — proving that the sonnet (and all formal poetic structures, in my opinion) is as relevant today as ever.

His middle section entitled Love… shows us a broken hearted speaker recalling over and over again the missed (squandered?) opportunities for happiness in his life. A lesser poet might be afraid to keep the microscope on such an obvious subject but it’s Agüeros’ insistence in highlighting the life and missteps of the every(wo)man that keeps this collection from being anything but mundane and elevates the day-to-day urban immigrant experience into reflections worthy of the sonnet tradition.

Sonnet Substantially like the Words of Fulano Rodriguez One Position Ahead of Me on the Unemployment Line

It happens to me all the time/business
Goes up and down but I’m the yo-yo spun
Into the high speed trick called sleeping
Such as I am fast standing in this line now.

Maybe I am also a top, they too sleep
While standing, tightly twirling in place.
I wish I could step out and listen for
The sort of music that I must make.

But this is where the state celebrates its sport.
From cushioned chairs the agents turn your ample
Time against you through a box of lines.
Your string is both your leash and lash.

The faster you spin, the stiller you look.
There’s something to learn in that, but what?

from Sonnets from the Puerto Rican by Jack Agüeros

My Country in an Ancient Map

MY COUNTRY IN AN ANCIENT MAP
by Eugenio Montejo

Egenio Montejo was born in Caracas, Venezuela, in 1938. He is the author of numerous books of poetry: Elegos (1967), Muerte y memoria (1972), Algunas palabras (1976), Terredad (1979), Trópico absoluto (1982), Alfabeto del mundo (1986), Adios al siglo XX (1992), El azul de la tierra (1997), Partitura de la cigarra (1999) and Tiempo Transfigurado (2001). He has also published two collections of essays: La ventana oblicua and El taller blanco. In 1998 Eugenio Montejo received Venezuela’s National Prize for Literature.

sometimes it snows in april


calavera tattoo
Originally uploaded by quemarropa.

jus for the record, i am not a fan of any “month.” not latino awareness month, not hispanic heritage month (yeah, we get TWO months and i still cant figure out that one) and not national poetry month.

not-so-smooth-segue-way: c dale is collectin votes about poetry month on his blog. i am sure you can guess how i voted but its only cuz i’m one of those obtuse fuckers who think that every month should be poetry month.

not-so-smooth-segue-way-2: brian highlights the Cinquain

i will follow suit and leave you some info on the Décima

Although evidence shows that the ten-line stanza decima existed in medieval Spain and northern Africa, Vincente Martinez de Espinel, a Spanish poet, novelist, and musician, has received credit for the decima that is performed today. The form is nicknamed “the little sonnet” and “the espinel” to recognize the interpretative pause that the poet added.

The decima is the most complex form of popular poetry and is most effective when written in Spanish, where specific rules apply to vowels and accented words. The Puerto Rican Cuatro Project has an excellent web page where a decima is written, clearly highlighting and counting syllables, marking line rhyme in the margin of the text, and explaining accents. The focal point is an online video of Ramito (1915-1900) performing “Up There in the Heights,” a decima about two trees that come together to make a cuarto (a stringed instrument used to accompany the singer). See resources at the end of this lesson plan for the web address.

The decima must follow this rhyme pattern: A/B/B/A (pause) A/C/C/D/D/C and consists of ten lines of 8 syllables–it is here that the form becomes complex:

* When a line or verse ends in with a word with an emphasized syllable, this counts as an extra syllable.
* When a verse or line ends with a word with its emphasized syllable being the antepenultimate one, one syllable is subtracted from the count for the line.
* When a word ends with a vowel and is followed by a word beginning with a vowel, in the Spanish language these flow together, so it counts as only one syllable.
* When a strong vowel (a, o, e) is combined in a word with a weak vowel (i or u) and the emphasis is on the weak vowel, an accent is placed over the weak vowel and it is counted as a separate syllable.

Definition and structure breakdown found here
Ejemplos de Décima se encuentra aquí