Category Archives: Uncategorized

good discourse is still going on amongst my new york people as they rush to get their NYFA apps out on time. i wish them all love & short lines at the post office.

here in the bay, i met up with some peeps from the kearney street workshop to help with edits and tryin to produce new work. currently, i am at a stall. like a bird falling from the cornice of a building, wings out, knowing theres an air current and waiting for it to meet up with me. ok, not a bird, just a plain ole pigeon but ya get the deal. that little attempt at being poetic is just to say that i need to light a serious flame under me and make the work happen.

but all was not lost as i read some dope poetry that just gave me a glimpse of a scene between real people and let me overhear some dialogue that was all kinds of real. that and i may have formed a new collectiev: Mimes Who Refuse To Be Silent. we are taking the title of Mime back from the pretenders or sumthin.

and, just like that, you have experienced your jackass moment of the day.

spent a good time today trading emails with the louderARTISTS and friends. the posse has come back from the dodge poetry festival with quite a mix of stories. the exchanges were a mix of poetic discourse, cantankerous jackassery and plain ole love.

the consensus seems to be that mark doty is the troof (yeah, thats how you spell it) and that people who go over time are NOT

and the poet Ko Un is the hotness, with or without an interpreter

love ya like if i hiked through the woods in fifty degree weather to hear ya poems

One day
I thought it was a visitor.

One day
I thought it was the master.

Over the years
I dreamed of the smoke
Coming from the chimneys

I still do not know who the poem is.

© Ko Un

just breezed through ishmael reed’s very excellent Blues City: A Walk in Oakland reed focuses quite a bit on jerry brown’s term as oakland mayor and his proposal to bring 10,000 new residents to oaktown and its effect on the current population. part political attack / part walking memoir / part historical journey, blues city was a great stroll through the history of oaktown which, to me, seems like the place people come to (re)invent themselves. yeah, i’m down with that.

on the aborted reading side is Arthur Rimbaud: Complete Works by paul schmidt. i am interested in rimbaud because
a) hes french (always looking for alternatives to english-american & british poetry)
b) hes a prodigy
c) he has a few poems that directly examine the concept of city
sadly, his poetry is hella dense for me and i havent been able to make it all the way to when he actually starts writing about city so i may just jump straight there.

also looking forward to finishing pat rosal’s My American Kundiman (we were able to score a super advanced copy in exchange for good stories and scotch. well, not really, but thats how i’ll tell the story) and Puerta del Sol by francisco aragón

now, just out of curiosity (and to see who is still checkin out ye olde blog): what is everybody else reading?

last time, when our boy decided to blog about his continuing adventures, he decided to drop a random quote he found in martín espada’s excellent book of essays “Zapata’s Disciple”

since then i have quite the good times at home and at work. home is now a much larger space than i have ever been used to. and with great space, comes great responsibility and a fly ass tool box! for reals, y’all, i have never used a power drill so much in my life but i still refuse to allow it to define me… yeah right! i would be dead in the water without me trusty black & decker. i have also stayed busy in the kitchen and even dabbling in a lil gardening. all this has kept me damn happy and busy.

meanwhile, at the nine-to-five, i have adjusted to my surroundings in record time and a frequent comment is “you only been here for two months??” yeah, it feels like i have always been at this space which has quite its own history and i am happy to be a part of the new history that is generating from this space. to stay true to the spirit of the blog, i am NOT going to be bitchin when work is rough or dropping chinche when people piss me off or any of that other trivial shit that do make its way into some blogs but, i hope, this blog stays clear of. to echo the sentiment of the last paragraph, i am both challenged and content at my new desk.

wedding plans are in the fullest of effect with most of the details falling together lovingly in place. this too is keeping me busy and happy. wedding cake tasting (equals) yum!

all this leaves little room for the poem and my place in poem. privately, i have been talking a lot about theory, poetics and community but all theory and no practice makes oscar nuthing more than just another commentator. i recently dropped some poems on an open mic in SF during anthem salgado’s excellent set. this is the first time i have been in front of a mic in months and, seriously, i sucked. my voice cracked like three times, my delivery was slow paced and the emotion felt forced. maybe this has something to do with the (over)exuberant energy on the open mic, or, most likely, just with the fact that i am not as comfortable on the mic as i used to be. this, into and unto itself, is not a bad thing.

one of the great liberations of leaving new york was the fact that i could discard the OB persona and focus on just being oscar. the freedom of being able to share poems without any reputation preceding them was the biggest factor that sent me out to find the open mic and landed me in the community i called home for almost five years. the five year anniversary of being on the mic has come and gone sans fanfare which is all kinds of cool but i am still stuck in a place where i need outside stimulus to keep the writing going something i didnt need five years ago. well, maybe thats where i have to get back to. today sounds like a good day to start.

the artist formerly knows as ob.

We are what we do, especially what we do to change what we are… A literature born in the process of crisis and change, and deeply immersed in the risks and events of its time, can indeed help to create the symbols of the new reality, and perhaps—if talent and courage are not lacking—throw light on the signs along the road… To claim that literature on its own is going to change reality would be an act of madness or arrogance. It seems to me no less foolish to deny that it can aid in making this change.
• Eduardo Galeano