a lil over a week of being married and i can tell you that my life has never been fuller, healthier and happier. werd.

put up some 8 foot tall curtains yesterday. picture my just-right-height-wise-by-ecuadorian-standards up on a hella long ladder with my power drill. yeah, i know, its a sight to behold.

you read right: i have a power drill. it does not define me.

i also have a tool box. it does define me.

add minestrone soup to my culinary repertoire. coming soon: pumpkin pie!

outside the home: i just dropped a 1,500 word short story for my creative non-fiction class. it gets workshopped tonight. a lil nervous going into this since i dont know how this group will attack the work. the facilitator has already taken grammar off of the discussion board which is a good thing even though this bad boy should be grammatically sound. (thanks to wonderful computah technology, of course.)

time to worry over. the story has a pretty sound base and goes through some nice curves while never forgetting its base premise. think of it like fancy stitching over a solid inseam line. still a lil worried but thats what happens when ya experiment.

speaking of experiment, i have come to the recent conclusion that ALL poetry is just an experiment. is this old territory that has been covered endlessly before? not by me, and its my blog ya know.

i’m thinking that the narrative is the norm, the main unit of speech. by speech i mean “telling a story.” poetry, by virtue of messing with that unit – in its desire to break the narrative down to stanza, line and sound breaks – goes against that natural manner of storytelling in an attempt (read: experiment) to differentiate itself (reinvent?).

all this to say that i am starting to find the term “experimental poetry” quite oxymoronic. if you aren’t trying to tell *the story* in a new way, why bother with poetry?

mini-rant done. time to hop on the bus and enjoy my time at work.

a quick rundown

– new poems coming out of me. a hard birth but its happening. the midwife is definitely an impending deadline.

– i have an idea for my creative non-fiction class which will revolve around the bronx and the directions that algarin left in the poem i posted last week.

– regarding the poem i posted last week: i disagree with algarin’s first point. i am torn as to whether or not poetry should or should not change in an increasing electronic world. to ignore the demands of our mass-media driven society is folly. analog is out, digital is in. the solution is somewhere in the middle, sites like fishouse prove that solid literary work doesnt have to be bland to the ears. def poetry proves that poetry can be packaged for mass consumption. now where does today’s working poet fit in there? i am not going to talk of differing camps and rigid lines, that goes against everything in me. what has to happen is a hybrid and i think the poets who can take advantage of all the tech available to them now have the best chance to be archived on their own terms and i cant think of any artist who wouldnt want that. more latah foh sure.

– still on algarin. i do dig a lot of what he says in the poem and mad respect to all poets who are willing to put down an ars poetica. i dont believe in camps but i do believe in strong individuals who dont sway in the wind with their opinions.

– about ready to drop a rant and a half cuz this aint doing it for me. some of it involves new york and some of it involves poetics but its all revolves around community. and not community as a rah-rah kumbaya rally call but what community really is: messy, difficult, rewarding, musical, healing and struggle. if you think you can have community without making choices then you are just conforming and i’ll stop there cuz i got other shot on my mind.

– song of the moment: Scissor Sisters’s “I don’t feel like dancing”
its all about the purple jump suit, foolios! that and the cheesy laser sound effects!

– add home made pizzas to my growing culinary repertoire.

– i just had lunch with my parents and the rest of my family will be here in a few hours. life is hella good.

– this blog is on lock down for the next few days and you all know why…

Where once you couldn’t get me into a classroom; now, you can’t get me out of one.

Last night I started taking a six-week creative non-fiction workshop since I am not already busy enough with work and wedding preparation. The writing was different and very taxing. We kept shifting sensory gears but stayed on the same topic, which in this case turned out to be an emergency room that I visited way too often as a kid.

If the point of the exercise is to keep pen to paper, then I succeeded on that level, and, for the first time I can recall, I was able to write about my childhood without using $5 words and overwrought descriptions. If I can keep that up with other aspects of my writing; I’ll be pretty happy.

Assignments for the week revolve around creating a story concerning where I currently live and a story from a resident (real or fictional). The story I posted last week would probably get me halfway there but I’m not sure I want to go that route just yet but it feels good to have the option.

This means I’m going to put a stop to some of my reading and get back to some writing. Yeah, yeah, I know that’s an old tune but I have a couple of for real deadlines looming so there you go with that.

By the way, I’m getting married in about 93 hours. You know I am ultra excited when I start breaking it down to smaller units!

Love ya like Papyrus loves cutting down trees!

Nuyorican Angel of Wordsmithing
(Note for a Poet)

I. Nuyorican Aesthetics:

It is a moral imperative to give poetry to the people. It is a media twenty-first century picturetel event when a young poet can read on Unplugged, transferring via MTV the heat of passion. Electronic verse has changed the craft of writing poetry. We can interact live with Tokyo, London and Rome simultaneously; once the poet reaches millions, he/she learns how a verse can heal human pain.

II. Illness, Inspiration and Metaphor:

a. Use the first person instead of the third if it isn’t pathos.
b. Imagining Pain and Pleasure
          i) without becoming maudlin or melodramatic;
          ii) without eliciting pity from the reader; and
          iii) provoke a feeling of interaction between the person who is ill or enraptured (the metaphor-maker) and the reader’s imagination.

III. Cultural Worker: A Humble Servant

IV. Poet’s Burial:

a. Instruction’s for ceremony should be written as a poem.
b. The community walks in a processional honoring its bard.

V. Meditation:

a. Concentration:                          Empty the mind totally.
b. Analytical Concentration:           Put one objective in mind.
                                                   Keep all other concerns out.

© Miguel Algarín
from Love Is Hard Work: Memorias de Loisaida/Poems

in line with last week’s bus stop recap, i had quite the interesting dialogue with a self admitted “homophobic, racist formerly homeless ex-convict of jewish ancestry” over coffee and chai at the local global capitalist café.

this was a bit more of a question and answer session as the gentleman was responding to some of my uninvited sarcasm. among the topics we discussed was his view of asian men, the japanese in particular; thought on religion and subservience; the hypocrisy of discussing socialism while consuming starbucks goods; mentorship and its value in a market driven economy; empathy, or the lack thereof, towards this country’s homeless and incarcerated; the glorification of the exploits of our current service men and the difference between living in an honest and/or truthful country. the last subject set the tone for most of our talk as we kept getting back to the fact that many of these concepts are simply abstracts. yeah, i know, anything can be an abstract and what really counts in the story is the concrete so here is the most concrete thing that went down.

a lil of both, i dont know but i know i didnt do any wrong. before you asked me if i did wrong and i said ‘no’
yeah, well, i was just being kind. what i really wanted to ask you was this: did you willfully break the law? were you in prison because of your own actions or through negative circumstances?
well, yeah… why were you being kind?
its your story and you’re sharing it. it feels rude to just come out and ask ya that.
thanks.
no worries.
yeah, uhhm, i’ll say that it was a little of both. i know what i did was wrong but i was still forced. does that make sense?
of course, its your story.

a lil more happened before and after but a lot of it is a blur at this point. i think i may have been able to talk to the man for quite a few hours but my coffee was done and i had to meet my wife and thats how i roll when it comes to my priorities. ‘sides, i’m a story teller and its only a matter of time before the next person comes up and shares their truth.