a bit of interference
flowing past the checkpoint
makes the image accurate
Jen Hofer, from one
a bit of interference
flowing past the checkpoint
makes the image accurate
Jen Hofer, from one
a bit of interference
flowing past the checkpoint
makes the image accurate
Jen Hofer, from one
A visual poem for the Indigenous People's Day.
+
=
A corduroy road. And a whole new way of seeing through language.
Mujeres y niños de las colonias El Pípila, Cumbres y Terrazas irrumpieron en el patio central de Gobierno del Estado en una manifestación en la que exigieron despensas, becas escolares y bajo cobro de pavimentación y agua. Foto: Laura Durán, Texto: Frontera.info
(Marx sigue vivo en las colonias populares de Tijuana, supongo. Cuando veo imágenes así, me doy cuenta de lo poco que entiendo de la ciudad donde vivo. ¿Quiénes serán estas mujeres y estos niños que irrumpen el la plaza central? Y de repente me acuerdo de Google y busco y encuentro: aquí, aquí. Ya no hay misterios. ¿O sí?)
Been thinking a lot about private and public, about what we show and what we do not show, about how we navigate spaces, especially interspaces. Also been enjoying reading The Guilt Project by Vanessa Place, a meditation on the existing state of law on rape and sexual offenses in the U.S. Halfway through now and the book is a fascinating look at the system through her perspective as a appellate defense lawyer for sexual offenders. I was stopped in my tracks tonight by this paragraph:
As a people, we still shudder at the sight of our neighbor's smoke, and can't abide his smell. We like bigger houses on bigger lots, blocking off many square feet of air to no purpose but buffer. We throw our arms open to the world and keep out hearts and minds strictly to ourselves. We don't much like the idea of anyone knowing who we are, not exactly, which is part of the reason we eschew the public intellectual, or any spokesperson beyond the Hollywood or Washington celebrity, because we understand they are neither entirely real now representative. Even the promise of salvation and life everlasting is a private promise, for we are a private people.
The kind of national "we" she uses is a little irksome upon second reading and yet I am still struck by Place's ability to generalize in ways that feel helpful and productive. Not only does her analysis ring intensely true, it's also written with such wit and skill. Check it out.
The Love Song of Luis, El Chistoso
From the mind of Javier O. Huerta.
Yet most, lots, who have the title writer or poet seem no more haunted by daemons than a geologist. They make such good choices in careers, mates, clever plots and touching images, that even their parents sound just right.
- Dagoberto Gilb writing about Ai. More here at Cimarron Review.
- Dagoberto Gilb writing about Ai. More here at Cimarron Review.
“Poetry cannot change society,” Adonis said. “Poetry can only change the notion of relationships between things. Culture cannot change without a change in institutions.” But to the criticism that poetry was an insufficiently popular form he replied: “Poetry that reaches all the people is essentially superficial. Real poetry requires effort because it requires the reader to become, like the poet, a creator. Reading is not reception.” He smiled and added, “I suggest you change your relationship to poetry and art in general.”- Adonis in the NY Times: here.
Vanity Fair takes a quick look at Marisol Valles García, the new 20-year-old police chief of a town near Ciudad Juárez and manages to connect her recent appointment to The Black Minutes:Martin Solares's The Black Minutes, published in Spanish in 2006 and released in an English translation earlier this year, paints a deliciously hellish portrait of what it’s like to be an honest cop in a backwater Mexican town where corruption is tantamount to oxygen: if you don’t partake, you die. In this fictional universe, at least, the police are laughably understaffed and underequipped—not unlike the force now run by Marisol Valles Garcia, who, according to the Post, “is overseeing just 13 agents—nine of them women—who have a single working patrol car, three automatic rifles and a pistol at their disposal.” How is an outfit like that supposed to take on a cartel financed by billions of dollars a year in illicit drug proceeds? The answer may be that it isn’t.
Check out the entire strange post about a "sexy Mexican police chief" here.
72 Migrants
Recomiendo que veas los textos en el sitio de los 72 migrantes. El sitio es un altar virtual en homenaje a los migrantes muertos.
Se informó oficialmente que los 72 cuerpos encontrados el 23 de agosto de este año en el ejido El Huizachal, Tamaulipas, eran de migrantes provenientes de Centroamérica y Sudamérica. Se presume que los asesinos son integrantes de uno de los tantos grupos de criminales que hoy trafican con droga y con seres humanos en este país.
~~~
I recommend you look at these texts on a site set up as an altar for the 72 migrants. This site is a virtual altar in honor of the deceased migrants.
Officially 72 bodies were found on August 23rd of this year in the ejido of El Huizachal, Tamaulipas, Mexico. These individuals were migrants from Central and South America. It is thought that their killers were members of one of the many criminal groups trafficking drugs and human beings in the country.
Some Paraphrased Thoughts of Jen Hofer I Noted Tonight
There is no writing outside of constraint.
A colophon is the part of the zine/book/chapbook where you write the process of the production of the object.
Makes me think of Mallarmé and the Coup de dés. All writing is one book and each of us adds a few lines.
Live film narration called Benshi is a genre.
Konrad Steiner calls it talking back to the talkies.
I write like a translator.
I'm going to choose to use the most politically charged lanuage and make something that makes possibility out of impossibility.
I want to bump against the language I hate.
Poems are notes we take to ourselves.
Re-presentation is always original.
It's useful to inhabit many vocabularies. We can inhabit someone else's words.
Makes me think of Mallarmé and the Coup de dés. All writing is one book and each of us adds a few lines.
Live film narration called Benshi is a genre.
Konrad Steiner calls it talking back to the talkies.
I write like a translator.
I'm going to choose to use the most politically charged lanuage and make something that makes possibility out of impossibility.
I want to bump against the language I hate.
Poems are notes we take to ourselves.
Re-presentation is always original.
It's useful to inhabit many vocabularies. We can inhabit someone else's words.
Check out the reanimationlibrary.org.
Buy your own copy of a literary journal in a matchbook: Matchbook. Volume Two features Matvei Yankelevich, Hoa Ngyuen and more.
A Partial Reading List:
Your Country is Great by Ara Shirinyan
A Partial Reading List:
Your Country is Great by Ara Shirinyan
There were other issues as well. Our Latin American students are quite comfortable with thinking of themselves as intellectuals. Our U.S. students tend to think of themselves as writers but are ambivalent about claiming the term “intellectual.” They are caught up in the anti-intellectual discourse of the United States, just as Latin American students are caught up in the privileging of intellectual and writing identities.
- More from Benjamin Alire Saenz's awesome blog here.
- More from Benjamin Alire Saenz's awesome blog here.
Bye
al blog Anita Wadwha
al blog Abraham Palafox
al blog Noé Morales
al antiguo blog de Pepe Vázquez
al blog de pp xkyo
a Seamouse Ink
y de los que siguen publicando en sus blogs, la mayoría pusieron sus últimos posts hace muchos meses, como en julio o marzo o más atrás. Creo que esto de los blogs ya no pega como antes, ya no es lo tan moderno tan cutting-edge, tan avant-guard. Pues obvio, verdad? Pero bueno es interesante que este post me haya salido en español. Pues porque mi gusto de blogear en público (y no en privado escondido del mundo) nació en México.
Y por alguna razón rara ahora cuando veo el año 2010 pienso que es un año ya del pasado. Como que ya se me hace que 2010 ya quedó en el pasado.
al blog Anita Wadwha
al blog Abraham Palafox
al blog Noé Morales
al antiguo blog de Pepe Vázquez
al blog de pp xkyo
a Seamouse Ink
y de los que siguen publicando en sus blogs, la mayoría pusieron sus últimos posts hace muchos meses, como en julio o marzo o más atrás. Creo que esto de los blogs ya no pega como antes, ya no es lo tan moderno tan cutting-edge, tan avant-guard. Pues obvio, verdad? Pero bueno es interesante que este post me haya salido en español. Pues porque mi gusto de blogear en público (y no en privado escondido del mundo) nació en México.
Y por alguna razón rara ahora cuando veo el año 2010 pienso que es un año ya del pasado. Como que ya se me hace que 2010 ya quedó en el pasado.
I will tell you a sad story: White people are moving away
From this city that has claimed my heart. They are running away
From my people. They are running away from all that keeps
Us poor. I want them to stay and fight. I want them
To stay and live with my people. We have chased them
Away. I want them to love the people who make the food
They love. We have chased them away—are you happy? Are you
Happy? And there are people waiting in line, spending
Their fortunes just for a chance to enter, waiting, just blocks
Away from where I sit, waiting to come over, waiting in Juárez
Just to cross the river, from China and India and all the nations
Of Africa and Central America and Asia. No poet, no engineer, no
Politician, no philosopher no artist, no novelist has ever
Dreamed a solution. I am tired of living in exile. I am tired
Of chasing others off the land.
- Benjamin Alire Saenz, more here.
From this city that has claimed my heart. They are running away
From my people. They are running away from all that keeps
Us poor. I want them to stay and fight. I want them
To stay and live with my people. We have chased them
Away. I want them to love the people who make the food
They love. We have chased them away—are you happy? Are you
Happy? And there are people waiting in line, spending
Their fortunes just for a chance to enter, waiting, just blocks
Away from where I sit, waiting to come over, waiting in Juárez
Just to cross the river, from China and India and all the nations
Of Africa and Central America and Asia. No poet, no engineer, no
Politician, no philosopher no artist, no novelist has ever
Dreamed a solution. I am tired of living in exile. I am tired
Of chasing others off the land.
- Benjamin Alire Saenz, more here.
What did your wife say when you told her you were going to attempt to smuggle your nephew into the country? She got very angry. What did she say? She said that is your problem. Is that all she said, she just got angry and said it’s your problem? She got angry and then she stopped talking. How do you and your wife feel now about what happened? She is under a lot of pressure and I am completely at fault. If you are given another chance to keep your permanent residency, what would you do if another family member came begging you to help them cross? I would reject them. I would push them to one side.
(The rest of today's post was also suppressed.)
(The rest of today's post was also suppressed.)
Why would you have been afraid to mention your sexuality and health status first on the application and then in the interview with your brother-in-law and yet today you have stated all of these facts before the immigration judge and the family members present? I do not know.
(The rest of today's post was suppressed.)
(The rest of today's post was suppressed.)
Two snippets of conversation from a café in La Jolla:
1) I just remembered I voted for Reagan. (The woman is texting someone.) Oh, how do you spell Reagan?
2) Can’t talk now. My guru’s online.
A title:
Only Our Eyes To Cry With
A conclusion:
Sanity is parceled out to the victorious.
1) I just remembered I voted for Reagan. (The woman is texting someone.) Oh, how do you spell Reagan?
2) Can’t talk now. My guru’s online.
A title:
Only Our Eyes To Cry With
A conclusion:
Sanity is parceled out to the victorious.
Now I am quietly waiting for
the catastrophe of my personality
to seem beautiful again,
and interesting, and modern.
(Thanks Mr. O'Hara.)
the catastrophe of my personality
to seem beautiful again,
and interesting, and modern.
(Thanks Mr. O'Hara.)
El tema de hoy será el problema de
los sustantivos que terminan en a
pero que son masculinos. Hay ciertas cosas
impredecibles del idioma y uno tiene que
estar al tanto. El mapa existe en las raíces
de las palabras. Veamos las raíces griegas,
o sea los origines griegos: el poema será
una especie de perdida. Unas erotemas:
¿el paradigma se rompe cada cuanto?
¿Avisa antes? Hay una gema pequeña
en medio del bosque. Otras anatemas
pueden ser de los dos géneros. Recién
aprendí que una cometa no es un cometa.
Si pongo aquí una coma, no caigo en un coma.
Por eso en mis poemas, evito el español,
lengua traicionera siempre te acecha.
los sustantivos que terminan en a
pero que son masculinos. Hay ciertas cosas
impredecibles del idioma y uno tiene que
estar al tanto. El mapa existe en las raíces
de las palabras. Veamos las raíces griegas,
o sea los origines griegos: el poema será
una especie de perdida. Unas erotemas:
¿el paradigma se rompe cada cuanto?
¿Avisa antes? Hay una gema pequeña
en medio del bosque. Otras anatemas
pueden ser de los dos géneros. Recién
aprendí que una cometa no es un cometa.
Si pongo aquí una coma, no caigo en un coma.
Por eso en mis poemas, evito el español,
lengua traicionera siempre te acecha.