5/31/2008
I keep an inventory
Of wonders and of uncommercial goods.
--Wendell Berry
Readers and Writers
Of wonders and of uncommercial goods.
--Wendell Berry
5/29/2008
We work this thing together, you and I. I can feel you when you read me. Do you know the Leonard Cohen line, "I can feel you, fell you when you breathe?" Well, it's not that creepy, but it's pretty intense. Cinderella is sometimes alarmed that I am so immediately friendly with strangers at readings. It's my job, of course. I live, travel, trust among complete strangers. For a person who was equally shy and insane with explosive highjinks, it's strange at best to be cornered in rooms all the time with a few hundred people I don't know. But I meet good readers. (There are good readers like there are good writers, and those readers know that reading is a collaborative thing--it's a full-contact sport--and it's up to them to join me in creating the trance, dream, scene, fable.) When I meet you, I know you because I have felt you. It only takes a few moments to sense each other.
Of course, I am naive. In over my head. And many sneaky and strange things happen because I believe. Perhaps this is why our Indigenous friends told Cinderella her totem animal was a she-bear. Oh yeah, she'll rip bad guys to pieces.
Writing and reading are dangerous. I think all holy pursuits are like this. Why, you could burst into flame or fly into the sky.
But still, and ever, you must trust. "Simply trust," the master Kobayashi Issa said, "as this cherry blossom flowers, fades, then falls." I want to fling myself into bloom and let the wind take me back when my poem is complete. (Of course, with good readers, the poem will never be complete, even when I'm buried. My headstone, I promise, will say "Talk to Me, I'm Listening." I'll have a bench there for you. Come find me. But the work will go on writing itself forever, because good readers will rewrite it as they read it. Like I do with Kobayashi Issa!)
Here's a beautiful William Stafford poem about writing--for all you fellow travelers out there.
#
You and Art
Your exact errors make a music
that nobody hears.
Your straying feet find the great dance,
walking alone.
And you live on a world where stumbling
always leads home.
Year after year fits over your face--
when there was youth, your talent
was youth;
later, you find your way by touch
where moss redeems the stone;
And you discover where music begins
before it makes any sound,
far in the mountains where canyons go
still as the always-falling, ever-new flakes of snow.
(To be found in Stafford's amazing writing-book, You Must Revise Your Life.)
#
Did you heard what he said? Did you read well? Can you feel him? ...stumbling always leads home.... Yes? Your exact errors make a music.... Yes!
Surrender, surrender, but don't give yourself away.
Yrs 4ever, L
"It Writes Me"
Of course, I am naive. In over my head. And many sneaky and strange things happen because I believe. Perhaps this is why our Indigenous friends told Cinderella her totem animal was a she-bear. Oh yeah, she'll rip bad guys to pieces.
Writing and reading are dangerous. I think all holy pursuits are like this. Why, you could burst into flame or fly into the sky.
But still, and ever, you must trust. "Simply trust," the master Kobayashi Issa said, "as this cherry blossom flowers, fades, then falls." I want to fling myself into bloom and let the wind take me back when my poem is complete. (Of course, with good readers, the poem will never be complete, even when I'm buried. My headstone, I promise, will say "Talk to Me, I'm Listening." I'll have a bench there for you. Come find me. But the work will go on writing itself forever, because good readers will rewrite it as they read it. Like I do with Kobayashi Issa!)
Here's a beautiful William Stafford poem about writing--for all you fellow travelers out there.
#
You and Art
Your exact errors make a music
that nobody hears.
Your straying feet find the great dance,
walking alone.
And you live on a world where stumbling
always leads home.
Year after year fits over your face--
when there was youth, your talent
was youth;
later, you find your way by touch
where moss redeems the stone;
And you discover where music begins
before it makes any sound,
far in the mountains where canyons go
still as the always-falling, ever-new flakes of snow.
(To be found in Stafford's amazing writing-book, You Must Revise Your Life.)
#
Did you heard what he said? Did you read well? Can you feel him? ...stumbling always leads home.... Yes? Your exact errors make a music.... Yes!
Surrender, surrender, but don't give yourself away.
Yrs 4ever, L
5/28/2008
A brief writing note. I had mentioned in a recent posting that I don't write--writing writes me. Kind of a cryptic shamanic thing to proclaim. But for my many writers and students who check in on the blog, I thought I could say a bit more about this process.
Can you learn to write from Cheap Trick? Years ago, the song "Surrender" fascinated me. Not just because it was a crankin' rock song, nor because Bun E. Carlos was the coolest drummer in the world. I didn't know it yet, but "Mommy's all right, Daddy's all right, they just seem a little weird. Surrender, surrender, but don't give yourself away...." was a key to wisdom! Yeah, man; no wonder Cheap Trick played at Budokan: they were masters of enlightenment.
Surrender. But don't give yourself away.
Later, when I really discovered haiku poets after years of reading haiku and liking it--I was in my darkest hours in that Arizona desert, starving and beset upon by demons and unclean spirits (you thinkI'm kidding) and trying to survive the blast-furnace of Teresita and medicine and curanderas and despair--I of course found Issa. Issa is the suffering poet for when you are suffering. Stop reading if you've heard this before, and many readers have heard this from me before: Issa's great rule of life and writing was SIMPLY TRUST.
Trust!
Surrender...
William Stafford likens writing to swimming. Everyone knows, he says, that something as weak and clear as water can't hold up a human being. You can't walk on water. Yet, when you relax and surrender (trust) the water, you start to float. And though you cannot grab a handhold and force your way along water like you would a cliff or a mountain, you can cup your hands in its evanescence and move yourself along. And watchers on the shore can't believe what you're accomplishing. Especially if they can't swim. I might add that if there is a current, the water carries you if you just let it. And writing has a current.
Writing (water) carries me. When I write, of course, but also when I do not write. Tom McGuane points out that we are all made of 2/3 river water. Well, we are also made up of writing. (Story, if you will; dream, song, thought, aphorism, verse, bullshit, prayer, yarn, explanation, exultation, whispers, rogasmic cries, laments, jokes, memoirs....)
I write it--otherwise it cannot exist. It writes me--otherwise I can't get anywhere. In other words, as I revise my writing, I revise myself. As I revise my words, I revise my vision. As I revise my books, I revise my way of being. Or--I am beginning to believe--I allow them to revise me. I am surrendering. I trust. It is a trance state, a dream state, a state of grace. And it's also play-time: wrestling, running, eating chocolate, jumping up and down on the bed.
William Stafford says:
"It tells you:
all you do is tell about it."
The hard part for me is to get to that place where I can simply trust--surrender. It is sometimes hard to enter that space. But once there, I crank like a hurricane.
It's no cheap trick.
L
I'm Not Doing Immigration Monday Anymore
Can you learn to write from Cheap Trick? Years ago, the song "Surrender" fascinated me. Not just because it was a crankin' rock song, nor because Bun E. Carlos was the coolest drummer in the world. I didn't know it yet, but "Mommy's all right, Daddy's all right, they just seem a little weird. Surrender, surrender, but don't give yourself away...." was a key to wisdom! Yeah, man; no wonder Cheap Trick played at Budokan: they were masters of enlightenment.
Surrender. But don't give yourself away.
Later, when I really discovered haiku poets after years of reading haiku and liking it--I was in my darkest hours in that Arizona desert, starving and beset upon by demons and unclean spirits (you thinkI'm kidding) and trying to survive the blast-furnace of Teresita and medicine and curanderas and despair--I of course found Issa. Issa is the suffering poet for when you are suffering. Stop reading if you've heard this before, and many readers have heard this from me before: Issa's great rule of life and writing was SIMPLY TRUST.
Trust!
Surrender...
William Stafford likens writing to swimming. Everyone knows, he says, that something as weak and clear as water can't hold up a human being. You can't walk on water. Yet, when you relax and surrender (trust) the water, you start to float. And though you cannot grab a handhold and force your way along water like you would a cliff or a mountain, you can cup your hands in its evanescence and move yourself along. And watchers on the shore can't believe what you're accomplishing. Especially if they can't swim. I might add that if there is a current, the water carries you if you just let it. And writing has a current.
Writing (water) carries me. When I write, of course, but also when I do not write. Tom McGuane points out that we are all made of 2/3 river water. Well, we are also made up of writing. (Story, if you will; dream, song, thought, aphorism, verse, bullshit, prayer, yarn, explanation, exultation, whispers, rogasmic cries, laments, jokes, memoirs....)
I write it--otherwise it cannot exist. It writes me--otherwise I can't get anywhere. In other words, as I revise my writing, I revise myself. As I revise my words, I revise my vision. As I revise my books, I revise my way of being. Or--I am beginning to believe--I allow them to revise me. I am surrendering. I trust. It is a trance state, a dream state, a state of grace. And it's also play-time: wrestling, running, eating chocolate, jumping up and down on the bed.
William Stafford says:
"It tells you:
all you do is tell about it."
The hard part for me is to get to that place where I can simply trust--surrender. It is sometimes hard to enter that space. But once there, I crank like a hurricane.
It's no cheap trick.
L
5/26/2008
However, these three stories reveal interesting trends that suggest vast, complex issues at play right now and in our futures.
What, TV Personalities Fuel Racial Tension and Immigrant Violence? No Way!
www.alternet.org/mediaculture/86302
South Africa's Anti-Immigrant Blood-Bath Could Be What the Above Article is Trying to Avert?
www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D90SL23G0&show_article=1
As If Juarez Couldn't Get Much Bloodier, Now the Killers Are Posting Cyber Threats. It's a High Tech World. Reach Out and Touch Someone.
www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=080526165703g0bks6dj&show_article=1
Water Flowing Underground
What, TV Personalities Fuel Racial Tension and Immigrant Violence? No Way!
www.alternet.org/mediaculture/86302
South Africa's Anti-Immigrant Blood-Bath Could Be What the Above Article is Trying to Avert?
www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D90SL23G0&show_article=1
As If Juarez Couldn't Get Much Bloodier, Now the Killers Are Posting Cyber Threats. It's a High Tech World. Reach Out and Touch Someone.
www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=080526165703g0bks6dj&show_article=1
5/24/2008
Didn't Talking Heads say that? And "There is water under the ocean"? Same as it ever was, same as it ever was....
Forgive me for being a writing teacher for a minute. I can't resist telling you this small tale. You see, when you accept the writing-way (wen-fu, if you have looked at these postings for a year or so), then writing is the way the world relates to you. Not: the way you relate to the world. The other way around. The world knows who you are and what you are and it is always trying to open a door to the spirit between the two of you. Oh! The nouveau-atheist movement would slap me silly for such talk. Come to think of it, so would my Baptist missionary pals. But it's true. Ask any medicine woman.
This is a story about a plumber. What does a plumber have to do with spirits and poetry? Plumbers make sure the crap flows out of the house and not into the basement. Where is God in that?
Ahem.
In the world of wen-fu (literally, if you haven't caught a lot of these postings--and why should you--there are way too many--could be translated as writing-kung-fu--you can find the tenets of this Way in LuChi's ancient Chinese book...but I digress), the world speaks to me in image, metaphor, simile, suprise endings, haiku, narrative voices. No kidding. People have said very kind things to me lately about my writing, but the writing writes me. That's what happens. Zen archery? I don't know. Is there such a thing as Zen typing? For a follower of Christ? With heathen interests. And goth/pagan urges? jeez. Thank goodness for writing's ecumenical spirit.
Writing: not a religion, but a Way.
So our basement flooded on Mother's Day. Big-time. We were up to our ankles in water for hours. The plumber came and it cost a fortune (emergency call on a holiday--$950 right off the bat). The sump pump was wasted, as you have read elsewhere. But also revealed was that the former owner had slyly and against code run an auxiliary line from the sump to the sewer to shunt water that way along with the external pipe. All that line vanished as the plumber cut pipes and positioned a new sump in the pit and ran new lines outside. It sucked the basement dry.
Days of shop-vac and fans and stench.
Now, here's the interesting part for me. And if you have taken writing workshops with me, or gone to writers' retreats like Fishtrap, you know I always say the real power, the real stuff of a piece of writing is not on the surface. It's in the basement. Students have herad this over and over. I am my own cliche. In the basement, y'all. Down with the water heaters and the furnace and the old moldy boxes of magazineas and Stephen King books. Down with the sump-pump: that's where the real soul and troubling haunting secret power of the story or poem or song or essay lies. It can be a demon, or it can be a friendly ghost.
Now, the ol' sump pump would not stop pumping. Water gushed out beside our house. I dug trenches to run this effluent down to the street. I thought: Dang, that basement must really be soaked. And more water. And more. The whole side yard turned to a swamp. The sidewalk flooded and never drained. I called the plumbers back and they sent another guy to work it and raise the pump a few inches and it cost me a couple of hundred more.
Still flooding.
Our first plumber, my hero, came back and put in an underground pipe to shunt the water away from the house. Mo' money! But the flood did not abate.
The basement might have been housing a demon after all.
In utter hopelessness--the neighbors had started to complain about my destruction of all that is lawn-holy--I called my original plumber hero on his cell phone. He said he'd come on his own time, but not to tell anybody. So I'm not naming names.
It's Saturday morning. He came. He cut pipe again, and raised the pump again. And he made an amazing dicovery.
Water flowing underground.
Our house is built upon an artesian spring. That's right--there is an endless supply of sweet underground spring water bouncing off the bottom of our basement slab. He joked that Cinderella and I could tap it and sell bottles of Cinderella's Pure Spring Water and get rich. Or we could put a drinking fountain into our own basement and get endless gallons of free pure spring water. Possibly forever.
Grace and miracles in the basement. Clear cool water flowing in the shadows. A plumber opening the door to joy and revelations. The demon becomes and angel in one minute.
It's holy! It's wen-fu! Writing didn't make it happen, but writing opens my eyes to what magic rushes under my own feet when I don't even know it. I'm just far along enough in my training to see it immediately. When I get my black-belt, I will be as one with the wen.
Psst! I got cold pure water. It's free.
Come here with me--let's drink.
Same as it ever was,
L
P.S.
Forgive me for being a writing teacher for a minute. I can't resist telling you this small tale. You see, when you accept the writing-way (wen-fu, if you have looked at these postings for a year or so), then writing is the way the world relates to you. Not: the way you relate to the world. The other way around. The world knows who you are and what you are and it is always trying to open a door to the spirit between the two of you. Oh! The nouveau-atheist movement would slap me silly for such talk. Come to think of it, so would my Baptist missionary pals. But it's true. Ask any medicine woman.
This is a story about a plumber. What does a plumber have to do with spirits and poetry? Plumbers make sure the crap flows out of the house and not into the basement. Where is God in that?
Ahem.
In the world of wen-fu (literally, if you haven't caught a lot of these postings--and why should you--there are way too many--could be translated as writing-kung-fu--you can find the tenets of this Way in LuChi's ancient Chinese book...but I digress), the world speaks to me in image, metaphor, simile, suprise endings, haiku, narrative voices. No kidding. People have said very kind things to me lately about my writing, but the writing writes me. That's what happens. Zen archery? I don't know. Is there such a thing as Zen typing? For a follower of Christ? With heathen interests. And goth/pagan urges? jeez. Thank goodness for writing's ecumenical spirit.
Writing: not a religion, but a Way.
So our basement flooded on Mother's Day. Big-time. We were up to our ankles in water for hours. The plumber came and it cost a fortune (emergency call on a holiday--$950 right off the bat). The sump pump was wasted, as you have read elsewhere. But also revealed was that the former owner had slyly and against code run an auxiliary line from the sump to the sewer to shunt water that way along with the external pipe. All that line vanished as the plumber cut pipes and positioned a new sump in the pit and ran new lines outside. It sucked the basement dry.
Days of shop-vac and fans and stench.
Now, here's the interesting part for me. And if you have taken writing workshops with me, or gone to writers' retreats like Fishtrap, you know I always say the real power, the real stuff of a piece of writing is not on the surface. It's in the basement. Students have herad this over and over. I am my own cliche. In the basement, y'all. Down with the water heaters and the furnace and the old moldy boxes of magazineas and Stephen King books. Down with the sump-pump: that's where the real soul and troubling haunting secret power of the story or poem or song or essay lies. It can be a demon, or it can be a friendly ghost.
Now, the ol' sump pump would not stop pumping. Water gushed out beside our house. I dug trenches to run this effluent down to the street. I thought: Dang, that basement must really be soaked. And more water. And more. The whole side yard turned to a swamp. The sidewalk flooded and never drained. I called the plumbers back and they sent another guy to work it and raise the pump a few inches and it cost me a couple of hundred more.
Still flooding.
Our first plumber, my hero, came back and put in an underground pipe to shunt the water away from the house. Mo' money! But the flood did not abate.
The basement might have been housing a demon after all.
In utter hopelessness--the neighbors had started to complain about my destruction of all that is lawn-holy--I called my original plumber hero on his cell phone. He said he'd come on his own time, but not to tell anybody. So I'm not naming names.
It's Saturday morning. He came. He cut pipe again, and raised the pump again. And he made an amazing dicovery.
Water flowing underground.
Our house is built upon an artesian spring. That's right--there is an endless supply of sweet underground spring water bouncing off the bottom of our basement slab. He joked that Cinderella and I could tap it and sell bottles of Cinderella's Pure Spring Water and get rich. Or we could put a drinking fountain into our own basement and get endless gallons of free pure spring water. Possibly forever.
Grace and miracles in the basement. Clear cool water flowing in the shadows. A plumber opening the door to joy and revelations. The demon becomes and angel in one minute.
It's holy! It's wen-fu! Writing didn't make it happen, but writing opens my eyes to what magic rushes under my own feet when I don't even know it. I'm just far along enough in my training to see it immediately. When I get my black-belt, I will be as one with the wen.
Psst! I got cold pure water. It's free.
Come here with me--let's drink.
Same as it ever was,
L
5/23/2008
Making my dawn Dad rounds today. Cahyo's eating her cereal and getting ready for the last days of school. Megan's already gone. Eric will sleep for another six hours!
But, apropos of the posting yesterday about the writing life, I just wanted to add this note. I went to an educators' convention last night at Chicago's National Museum of Mexican Art. I signed autographs, with no break, from 7:00 to 9:30. Wore out three assistants. Signed 500 books.
Two and half hours of autographs!
One Christmas, when I was dying in San Diego--of boredom, poverty, despair, worry and doubt, my mom had hit rock bottom. I had come back from living in Hollywood, and I was working in Mexico with the poor. Living where I dropped--my mom's house, my brother's back room, friends' apartments.
Christmas Day.
My half-siblings had invited us to Christmas dinner. My mom thought she'd been delivered and didn't have to buy food for the day--a real blessing. Then the sibs didn't show up to get us when they said they would. We waited two hours, worrying as I have always done. I had no money to save my mom--and how could I get her a Christmas meal on Christmas morning?
When I called them to ask them what was happening, they told me they were too busy to drive up to my house to pick us up. I could hear the family partying in the background. My family.
One of the missionary gang from Pastor Von's church--Jeff Huckabone--stopped by to wish us a Merry Christmas. He was upset, so he and I drove to 7-11 and found a can of ham for my mom.
I was living a Christmas not unlike those of the poor I worked with in Tijuana.
God is hard-core: I never figured out how evangelists got private jets and mansions.
That year, friends, my mom gave a present. It's all she had. A small sheet of stamps so that I could submit one more story or poem to try to get published.
If you had traveled back in time to that young man's Christmas Day and told him he'd have a house, kids, happy marriage, books galore, money, not one but three vehicles, and would sign books for two and a half hours straight, he would have fallen to his knees and wept.
Get to work.
L
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Keep Writing
But, apropos of the posting yesterday about the writing life, I just wanted to add this note. I went to an educators' convention last night at Chicago's National Museum of Mexican Art. I signed autographs, with no break, from 7:00 to 9:30. Wore out three assistants. Signed 500 books.
Two and half hours of autographs!
One Christmas, when I was dying in San Diego--of boredom, poverty, despair, worry and doubt, my mom had hit rock bottom. I had come back from living in Hollywood, and I was working in Mexico with the poor. Living where I dropped--my mom's house, my brother's back room, friends' apartments.
Christmas Day.
My half-siblings had invited us to Christmas dinner. My mom thought she'd been delivered and didn't have to buy food for the day--a real blessing. Then the sibs didn't show up to get us when they said they would. We waited two hours, worrying as I have always done. I had no money to save my mom--and how could I get her a Christmas meal on Christmas morning?
When I called them to ask them what was happening, they told me they were too busy to drive up to my house to pick us up. I could hear the family partying in the background. My family.
One of the missionary gang from Pastor Von's church--Jeff Huckabone--stopped by to wish us a Merry Christmas. He was upset, so he and I drove to 7-11 and found a can of ham for my mom.
I was living a Christmas not unlike those of the poor I worked with in Tijuana.
God is hard-core: I never figured out how evangelists got private jets and mansions.
That year, friends, my mom gave a present. It's all she had. A small sheet of stamps so that I could submit one more story or poem to try to get published.
If you had traveled back in time to that young man's Christmas Day and told him he'd have a house, kids, happy marriage, books galore, money, not one but three vehicles, and would sign books for two and a half hours straight, he would have fallen to his knees and wept.
Get to work.
L
5/22/2008
I'm lying. I never, once, learned how to stop worrying.
However, fans always ask me how I made it. Hmm. I don't believe I've made it, see--though I couldn't tell you what having made it means. Rich? Signing autographs? Or maybe happiness? What is it?
What I have always done is managed to continue writing. Faith may by shaken. It's not just the earth that has fault-lines. But sooner or later, if you want to survive, you are given enough grace to shed the desperation. And then you see it's all a silly game, the "making it" career path. Really. Believe me. Nobody was as desperate as I was.
I lived in abject grubby poverty, man! I lived with my mom! No stove, no oven, no heater, no plumbing in the kitchen! I was like some strange backwoods madman with 150 cats locked in his trailer. Well, maybe not so much.
But I was desperate to have publishing success not only to save myself, but to save my mother, and to save the orphans and garbage-pickers I was working with in Tijuana. Sure, I wanted to be famous. Why lie?
But here's a small story for you, just to let you know that it's what is in you, not what is in the world, that matters.
I had escape San Diego's doom and poverty to Harvard. 1982. I was amazed to meet a Chicano poet there of some repute. I helped him start a lit j0urnal. Already, I was making it more than I ever imagined I would--teaching writing at Harvard? Editing a lit mag? Shazam! And because of that lit mag, I met all these interesting people--I met Martin Espada and Jimmy Santiago Baca, I met Sandra Cisneros, I met Ernesto Cardenal, I met Ricardo Sanchez and all kinds of other poets and writers.
Turns out, the typesetter of the jrnl was a Boston area political poet. He had this book of poems, very slim, and he was a member of a well-known small press and NYC lit mag. I had done the artwork for the cover of our own mag's first issue. So, I guess, he saw me as an artist. It never, apparently, occurred to him that I wrote or could write--that art was a distant secnod and a hobby, not a calling.
Anyway, he asked me to illustrate his little book, and his fancy small press would publish it. So I did. And they did. And the book sank into obscurity like all middlin' small press political poetry chapbooks tend to do. But people were very kind about my surreal artwork.
OK. Now. I had been working on a semi-epic long poems for years--since I was nineteen. It was inspired by so many things--Whitman, of course. But also Ferlinghetti. Later, Antler's Factory. And movies: The Wild Bunch. It grew and mutated, it was called, at that time, "Mexico." As it followed me through the years, from San Diego to Mazatlan to Boston, it consumed everything in its path--my dad's death, my own bouts of para-typhoid, Under the Volcano, Octavio Paz, rock and roll--it was just this odd beast.
So I sent it to the New York lit jrnl/small press! Why not! It was my life's work! Of course, I couldn't send it all, so I cut it down and retitled it, "Ghost Sickness."
Well, they rejected it. No big deal. But the poet whose book I had illustrated sent this amazingly condescending letter that now, years later, gives me big chuckles. But in it, he asks if I have ever heard of these nice things called poetry workshops. I could also get some poetry text books and see what poems are all about. Maybe take a few night classes to get acquainted with poetry.
As is often the case, the joke's on the writer, and the writer has to maintain an smile.
I put that long poem away, feeling mighty friggin' bad about the whole thing. It sat in the carboard box of doom from 1984 till around 1994 or 1995, when a friend of mine in Boulder started yet another lit mag and asked to see some fresh work. Now, granted, I had published Across the Wire. And I was in the rpocess of winning the Western States Book Award for Poetry for my first book of poems, The fever of Being. So, I guess, people were paying closer attention.
I was curious what they'd think about poor ol' "Ghost Sickness." So I gave it to my pal Naomi. And she published parts of it in the jrnl. And Adrienne Rich saw it and took the entire thing, with edits replaced, and published the whole doggoned thing.
Where?
In The Best American Poetry 1996!
Yes, indeed. The same exact text that was so unready in 1984 was among the best in America in 1996. Untouched. Unedited.
Now, did the editors of that first mag pick up the book and say, "Wow--this guy needs to try this neat-o thing they call a poetry workshop"?
Did any of those eds get their work in The Best American Poetry?
I'm tellin' ya, friends, all you can do is go to work, pack a good lunch, and bang away. Judges are all around you. Most of them suck blood. You have to put on your band-aids and walk on. If it's good, it will find its way into the world.
Ha ha! Hahahahaha. How can you take it seriously?
Now get to work, you--
L
Immigration Monday (Slight Return)
However, fans always ask me how I made it. Hmm. I don't believe I've made it, see--though I couldn't tell you what having made it means. Rich? Signing autographs? Or maybe happiness? What is it?
What I have always done is managed to continue writing. Faith may by shaken. It's not just the earth that has fault-lines. But sooner or later, if you want to survive, you are given enough grace to shed the desperation. And then you see it's all a silly game, the "making it" career path. Really. Believe me. Nobody was as desperate as I was.
I lived in abject grubby poverty, man! I lived with my mom! No stove, no oven, no heater, no plumbing in the kitchen! I was like some strange backwoods madman with 150 cats locked in his trailer. Well, maybe not so much.
But I was desperate to have publishing success not only to save myself, but to save my mother, and to save the orphans and garbage-pickers I was working with in Tijuana. Sure, I wanted to be famous. Why lie?
But here's a small story for you, just to let you know that it's what is in you, not what is in the world, that matters.
I had escape San Diego's doom and poverty to Harvard. 1982. I was amazed to meet a Chicano poet there of some repute. I helped him start a lit j0urnal. Already, I was making it more than I ever imagined I would--teaching writing at Harvard? Editing a lit mag? Shazam! And because of that lit mag, I met all these interesting people--I met Martin Espada and Jimmy Santiago Baca, I met Sandra Cisneros, I met Ernesto Cardenal, I met Ricardo Sanchez and all kinds of other poets and writers.
Turns out, the typesetter of the jrnl was a Boston area political poet. He had this book of poems, very slim, and he was a member of a well-known small press and NYC lit mag. I had done the artwork for the cover of our own mag's first issue. So, I guess, he saw me as an artist. It never, apparently, occurred to him that I wrote or could write--that art was a distant secnod and a hobby, not a calling.
Anyway, he asked me to illustrate his little book, and his fancy small press would publish it. So I did. And they did. And the book sank into obscurity like all middlin' small press political poetry chapbooks tend to do. But people were very kind about my surreal artwork.
OK. Now. I had been working on a semi-epic long poems for years--since I was nineteen. It was inspired by so many things--Whitman, of course. But also Ferlinghetti. Later, Antler's Factory. And movies: The Wild Bunch. It grew and mutated, it was called, at that time, "Mexico." As it followed me through the years, from San Diego to Mazatlan to Boston, it consumed everything in its path--my dad's death, my own bouts of para-typhoid, Under the Volcano, Octavio Paz, rock and roll--it was just this odd beast.
So I sent it to the New York lit jrnl/small press! Why not! It was my life's work! Of course, I couldn't send it all, so I cut it down and retitled it, "Ghost Sickness."
Well, they rejected it. No big deal. But the poet whose book I had illustrated sent this amazingly condescending letter that now, years later, gives me big chuckles. But in it, he asks if I have ever heard of these nice things called poetry workshops. I could also get some poetry text books and see what poems are all about. Maybe take a few night classes to get acquainted with poetry.
As is often the case, the joke's on the writer, and the writer has to maintain an smile.
I put that long poem away, feeling mighty friggin' bad about the whole thing. It sat in the carboard box of doom from 1984 till around 1994 or 1995, when a friend of mine in Boulder started yet another lit mag and asked to see some fresh work. Now, granted, I had published Across the Wire. And I was in the rpocess of winning the Western States Book Award for Poetry for my first book of poems, The fever of Being. So, I guess, people were paying closer attention.
I was curious what they'd think about poor ol' "Ghost Sickness." So I gave it to my pal Naomi. And she published parts of it in the jrnl. And Adrienne Rich saw it and took the entire thing, with edits replaced, and published the whole doggoned thing.
Where?
In The Best American Poetry 1996!
Yes, indeed. The same exact text that was so unready in 1984 was among the best in America in 1996. Untouched. Unedited.
Now, did the editors of that first mag pick up the book and say, "Wow--this guy needs to try this neat-o thing they call a poetry workshop"?
Did any of those eds get their work in The Best American Poetry?
I'm tellin' ya, friends, all you can do is go to work, pack a good lunch, and bang away. Judges are all around you. Most of them suck blood. You have to put on your band-aids and walk on. If it's good, it will find its way into the world.
Ha ha! Hahahahaha. How can you take it seriously?
Now get to work, you--
L
5/19/2008
I could not resist a couple of interesting stories.
Good Fences Make Good Neighbors
Texas Mayors Sue to Stop Fence
www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/16/america/NA-GEN-US-Border-Fence.php
Arizona Lawsuit Over Border Fence Construction Waiver
www.azstarnet.com/sn/hourlyupdate/209442.php
A Cut Above--San Diego Adds Razor Wire
www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-border_bdmay18,0,2373426.story
Conspiracy Theories--Paranoia Is The Right Philosophy
Hurricans As Immigration Filters
www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/headline/metro/5784300.html
This Ain't Summer Camp--Concentrate!
www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-detention18-2008may18,0,2430780.story
It's Not Just the American Border
The 400 (Italy)
www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSL1593449920080515
Tibet (Thanks, Clarke and Grace)
www.tibetaid.org
"Sorry to take up all of your sweet time,
Give it right back to you one of these days.
If I don't see you no more in this world,
I'll see you in the next one, and don't be late."
--Jimi Hendrix.
Communication Breakdown
Good Fences Make Good Neighbors
Texas Mayors Sue to Stop Fence
www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/16/america/NA-GEN-US-Border-Fence.php
Arizona Lawsuit Over Border Fence Construction Waiver
www.azstarnet.com/sn/hourlyupdate/209442.php
A Cut Above--San Diego Adds Razor Wire
www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-border_bdmay18,0,2373426.story
Conspiracy Theories--Paranoia Is The Right Philosophy
Hurricans As Immigration Filters
www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/headline/metro/5784300.html
This Ain't Summer Camp--Concentrate!
www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-detention18-2008may18,0,2430780.story
It's Not Just the American Border
The 400 (Italy)
www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSL1593449920080515
Tibet (Thanks, Clarke and Grace)
www.tibetaid.org
"Sorry to take up all of your sweet time,
Give it right back to you one of these days.
If I don't see you no more in this world,
I'll see you in the next one, and don't be late."
--Jimi Hendrix.
5/16/2008
What does it mean? Words fly around me like bees. Messages rattle in the weeds. Words are living things, funky little buggers, precocious and flirtatious and some of them have stingers. I feel like a bee-keeper, like Tomas Urrea of Albuquerque whom you might have met in one of the "Wastelander's Notebooks" sections of this blog. Mostly, I enjoy their honey. Sometimes I get zapped. Is it the same for you?
I finished Into the Beautiful North. Sent the revisions to my editor in NYC yesterday and today. Nowadays we do it all electronically. No more stamps for me. But, you know, I have to let Cinderella do that bee-keeping because I don't know how to smoke down the hive and get out the panels.
Some things fly at me that are weird. Not as weird as the whistling maniac in the elevator I told you about. But weird like, I get fan mail here at my house, but my number and address are unlitsted. So how are you guys finding me? How paranoid should I be that high school kids can track me down? It's a compliment, right? Good thing we keep our trash cans inside the garage!
Or the email I got last week from somebody in Baja asking me if I knew anybody who did windows. WTF, as Eric would say. I think I should follow this line--if I could turn my books into employment opportunities for undocumented workers and the poor in Tijuana, I'd get some kind of UN award.
One of the healers who helped teach me stuff for Hummingbird's Daughter has cancer. WTF again.
Some are bumble bees, some are honey bees, and some are killer bees. Last week, a historical writer and researcher wrote to me to tell me that my work about Teresita was "disappointing" and revealed nothing new. Today, I got word from the Apache medicine man who was the model for Manuelito in the novel that the book is a ritual of initiation, and each section is carefully designed to reveal deeper and deeper medicine-truths to readers. Which do you listen to? Well, my training in self-doubt and self-loathing dictates that my writing is, in fact, disappointing. My research sucks. But then, there's that little taste of Chiricahua Apache honey. There's the realization that I was intending to write THAT book, the book "Manny" is talking about. Not the erudite historical tome. The book that wants to enter dreams.
So many bees flying around, you get confused.
If Buechner is right, that life itself is grace, then I accept words--even stinging little bastards--as grace. What's the option? Silence.
By the way, I traded some funny e-mails with Sheriff Ogden in Yuma today. And I started writing Hummingbird II. Are you ready? It's a love story.
XXX, L
God Talk Writers' Meditation
I finished Into the Beautiful North. Sent the revisions to my editor in NYC yesterday and today. Nowadays we do it all electronically. No more stamps for me. But, you know, I have to let Cinderella do that bee-keeping because I don't know how to smoke down the hive and get out the panels.
Some things fly at me that are weird. Not as weird as the whistling maniac in the elevator I told you about. But weird like, I get fan mail here at my house, but my number and address are unlitsted. So how are you guys finding me? How paranoid should I be that high school kids can track me down? It's a compliment, right? Good thing we keep our trash cans inside the garage!
Or the email I got last week from somebody in Baja asking me if I knew anybody who did windows. WTF, as Eric would say. I think I should follow this line--if I could turn my books into employment opportunities for undocumented workers and the poor in Tijuana, I'd get some kind of UN award.
One of the healers who helped teach me stuff for Hummingbird's Daughter has cancer. WTF again.
Some are bumble bees, some are honey bees, and some are killer bees. Last week, a historical writer and researcher wrote to me to tell me that my work about Teresita was "disappointing" and revealed nothing new. Today, I got word from the Apache medicine man who was the model for Manuelito in the novel that the book is a ritual of initiation, and each section is carefully designed to reveal deeper and deeper medicine-truths to readers. Which do you listen to? Well, my training in self-doubt and self-loathing dictates that my writing is, in fact, disappointing. My research sucks. But then, there's that little taste of Chiricahua Apache honey. There's the realization that I was intending to write THAT book, the book "Manny" is talking about. Not the erudite historical tome. The book that wants to enter dreams.
So many bees flying around, you get confused.
If Buechner is right, that life itself is grace, then I accept words--even stinging little bastards--as grace. What's the option? Silence.
By the way, I traded some funny e-mails with Sheriff Ogden in Yuma today. And I started writing Hummingbird II. Are you ready? It's a love story.
XXX, L
5/14/2008
If you don't like this sort of thing--run away! Theology with no apologies. But I believe what he says.
Frederick Buechner:
"I discovered that if you really keep your eye peeled to it and your ears open, if you really pay attention to it, even such a limited and limiting life as the one I was living...opened up onto extraordinary vistas. Taking your children to school and kissing your wife goodbye. Eating lunch with a friend. Trying to do a decent day's work. Hearing the rain patter against the window. There is no event so commonplace but that God is present within it, always hiddenly, always leaving you room to recognize him or not to recognize him, but all the more fascinatingly because of that, all the more compellingly and hauntingly...If I were called upon to state in a few words the essence of everything I was trying to say both as a novelist and as a preacher, it would be something like this: Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery it is. In the boredom and pain of it no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it because in the last analysis all moments are key moments and life itself is grace."
Stupid Happy Mother's Day Catastrophe
Frederick Buechner:
"I discovered that if you really keep your eye peeled to it and your ears open, if you really pay attention to it, even such a limited and limiting life as the one I was living...opened up onto extraordinary vistas. Taking your children to school and kissing your wife goodbye. Eating lunch with a friend. Trying to do a decent day's work. Hearing the rain patter against the window. There is no event so commonplace but that God is present within it, always hiddenly, always leaving you room to recognize him or not to recognize him, but all the more fascinatingly because of that, all the more compellingly and hauntingly...If I were called upon to state in a few words the essence of everything I was trying to say both as a novelist and as a preacher, it would be something like this: Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery it is. In the boredom and pain of it no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it because in the last analysis all moments are key moments and life itself is grace."
5/11/2008
Here's one for immigrant haters! Rain all night We got up and had a calm happy Sunday/Mother's Day morning. Cinderella made about 500 banana bread loaves which I'm not supposed to eat. She went upstairs for a nap.And Eric moseyed down tothe bsaement to drum. "Dude," he called. "Basement's flooded." I yelled, in irritated dad mode, "What do you mean, FLOODED?" He said: "Like, flooded. Completely flooded." I dashed down there and the basement was flooded. Hours of swamping and moving water to the drain hole. Everything soaked and wrecked. Poor Cindy out of her nap and into the water. When we walked, there were actually waves. Called the plumber: billion dollar repair job. Now, dig this: I am having two bathrooms put it. And I'm sending C to Seattle to see her mom and take her to Alaska. Uh, and I am going to try to dive across country this summer paying--oh--$11.98 per gallon. Sump pump's dead, and the back-up's dead. Why? because the lawn guys--damned Mexicans!-- moved the sump-pump discharge pipe out of the way and didn't put it back, and the pump has been pumping water back into itself till it blew up! Call the Minutemen! And call Jerry Lewsi, because I'm going to need a telethon. Oh, well, what's money for? And, you know, it isn't a tornado or a cyclone. And Eric and I had a swell time bonding underwater.
Good advice now that Spring is here
5/10/2008
For all these years
you've protected
the seed.
It's time to become
the flower.
--Stephen C. Paul
From the new poetry manuscript....
you've protected
the seed.
It's time to become
the flower.
--Stephen C. Paul
5/07/2008
Help Me
100 bad jobs
before you publish a poem.
Another lunch break, another
greasy paper bag with another
bologna and cheese sandwich.
Invisible to women,
not enough money in my pocket
to get robbed.
Public toilet
on an otherwise
heartless California day.
An empty wheelchair
in the middle of the room.
A voice:
"Hey guy?"
"Yes?"
He was in the stall,
pants around his ankles
in a cloud of stink.
"Help me?"
"What do you need?"
"I can't
get my pants
back up."
"That's--"
I said.
I bent to him
pulled up his under
pants, pulled up
his corduroys,
pulled up
his zipper, closed
the button, worked
the belt buckle.
"At least you didn't
have to wipe me,
guy."
I waltzed him
to his chair, got him
folded into the seat.
"Whoo," he said.
"Whoo," I said.
"My lunch," he said. "Could you
get my lunch?"
It was beside the tolet. Brown
paper bag. Mom
had put a banana in there.
I felt his life in my hand--his mornings, his
birthday, Christmas, bed-time.
"Man," he said. "Thank you.
And have a good day."
I broke into the sun, walking,
walking, back down the sidewalk,
back to work,
forever.
Immigration Monday: I Told You So Edition
100 bad jobs
before you publish a poem.
Another lunch break, another
greasy paper bag with another
bologna and cheese sandwich.
Invisible to women,
not enough money in my pocket
to get robbed.
Public toilet
on an otherwise
heartless California day.
An empty wheelchair
in the middle of the room.
A voice:
"Hey guy?"
"Yes?"
He was in the stall,
pants around his ankles
in a cloud of stink.
"Help me?"
"What do you need?"
"I can't
get my pants
back up."
"That's--"
I said.
I bent to him
pulled up his under
pants, pulled up
his corduroys,
pulled up
his zipper, closed
the button, worked
the belt buckle.
"At least you didn't
have to wipe me,
guy."
I waltzed him
to his chair, got him
folded into the seat.
"Whoo," he said.
"Whoo," I said.
"My lunch," he said. "Could you
get my lunch?"
It was beside the tolet. Brown
paper bag. Mom
had put a banana in there.
I felt his life in my hand--his mornings, his
birthday, Christmas, bed-time.
"Man," he said. "Thank you.
And have a good day."
I broke into the sun, walking,
walking, back down the sidewalk,
back to work,
forever.
5/05/2008
WWJD? Who Would Jesus Deport?
CINCO DE MAYO, 2008
I told you I'd be back occasionally with some kind of Immigration Monday/Monthly entries. Mostly, I have been watching from my highly armed and fortified bunker. Fielding assaults from the angry freaks.
It has been a great relief to me to note that all the major immigration trends over the last six months--things you see in the papers (again, look at page 6 for the real, hidden immigration news)--things like remittance money shutting down, things like drug violence escalating, things like immigration vanishing from the presidential debate, things like anti-immigrant candidates disappearing from the ticket, things like the number of border crossers dropping precipitously while the death rate remains too high, things like the phenom of "auto-deportation" as people start to go home, things like the Homeland Security domination of the border leading to many new USBP agents and passports at border crossings, things like crop harvesting and domestic and food prep problems as workers fail to appear, things like local and state anti-illegal-immigrant laws growing more harsh, things like towns and states that chase the undocumented out facing financial woes immediately thereafter--all were predicted right here on our li'l ol' blog.
I don't know much. I'm not a trained expert. But I meet hundreds and hundreds of people. Many of them are experts. More expert than I am. And I try to listen.
Have I been 100% right? Probably not. But they have.
You probably saw the awesomely hideous story this week in the papers about the young (Latina) woman who gave emergency birth to her baby and then "jogged" to the hospital with the umbilical still attached to her nether parts. I was thinking, because I am apparently a red-diaper-doper-hate-America-commie-baby, "Wow, that is one strong woman. That is something a pioneer woman would do." Until we looked at the comments people posted on the on the AOL news site responding to her. Readers of this blog will recognize the tone right away. It's always easy when you're anonymous or writing under a pseudonym (you know, Odin's Wrath, or Thors-hammer). But the comments had such eternal gems as "wetback welfare" or "another Mexican roach falls out of the oven." Hey, I think I met that guy recently.
God loves us all, even that baby. But Thor and Odin don't. I'm adding a horned hemlet to my bunker arsenal.
#
So, dig it, baby:
today's Chicago Tribune, that bastion of weak-sister liberalism, had a front-page story about immigration. Excuse me while I polish my nails on my shirt. Nobody likes a wise-ass, as anonymous emailers tell me when I write an op-ed they hate. So forgive me a small burst of pride when I see this story and see that I was wrong, after all: oh, the trends I told you were coming were correct, but the numbers were far greater than I had even hoped.
Headline: BORDER RUNNERS TURN TO PACIFIC: As Wall Rises on Land, Illicit Traffic Hits the Sea.
Oddly, people are boating around San Diego and landing on the beaches of Del Mar. Shades of Haiti and Cuba. As you all know, I don't put faith in the boondoggle that is the border fence. I attribute what I'm going to say to many factors that are on display on the old I.M. blogs.
I had noted that USBP guys were telling me the numbers crossing the AZ border were down 16%.
Here are the figures from the Trib.
San Diego: up 7.3%.
El Centro: down 9.1%.
Yuma: down 68%.
Tucson: down 3.5%.
El Paso: down 38.3%.
Marfa: down 26.4%.
Del Rio: down 46.2%.
Laredo: down 24.2%.
Rio Grande Valley: down 33.6%.
(Chicago Tribune, May 5, 2008. By-line: Micahel Martinez. Pages 1-21.)
I said it on tour, and I'll say it here: the paradigm is shifting. Watch it change. Watch politicians try to take credit for it. Watch Mexican pols strike heinous poses around it.
#
Finally, I want to again recommend the new McSweeney's immigration book, Underground America. My amigo Peter Orner edited it. Dave Eggers and his band of maniacs made a beautiful book out of it. And, yes, yours truly wrote the intro. But that is the least part of the book, which is fascinating and eye-opening and, I think, without precedent in the popular publishing world.
Remember: for on-going immigration amazement, go to Bender's Immigration Bulletin.
Re-Define the line. Think for yourself. Get informed, whether you're "for" or "against" the orphan, widow, halt, lame, hungry, refugee.
Me? I'm out of here. Back to poetry.
Luis "Flaming Sword of Wotan the Wroth" Urrea, Visigoth
Just A Thought
CINCO DE MAYO, 2008
I told you I'd be back occasionally with some kind of Immigration Monday/Monthly entries. Mostly, I have been watching from my highly armed and fortified bunker. Fielding assaults from the angry freaks.
It has been a great relief to me to note that all the major immigration trends over the last six months--things you see in the papers (again, look at page 6 for the real, hidden immigration news)--things like remittance money shutting down, things like drug violence escalating, things like immigration vanishing from the presidential debate, things like anti-immigrant candidates disappearing from the ticket, things like the number of border crossers dropping precipitously while the death rate remains too high, things like the phenom of "auto-deportation" as people start to go home, things like the Homeland Security domination of the border leading to many new USBP agents and passports at border crossings, things like crop harvesting and domestic and food prep problems as workers fail to appear, things like local and state anti-illegal-immigrant laws growing more harsh, things like towns and states that chase the undocumented out facing financial woes immediately thereafter--all were predicted right here on our li'l ol' blog.
I don't know much. I'm not a trained expert. But I meet hundreds and hundreds of people. Many of them are experts. More expert than I am. And I try to listen.
Have I been 100% right? Probably not. But they have.
You probably saw the awesomely hideous story this week in the papers about the young (Latina) woman who gave emergency birth to her baby and then "jogged" to the hospital with the umbilical still attached to her nether parts. I was thinking, because I am apparently a red-diaper-doper-hate-America-commie-baby, "Wow, that is one strong woman. That is something a pioneer woman would do." Until we looked at the comments people posted on the on the AOL news site responding to her. Readers of this blog will recognize the tone right away. It's always easy when you're anonymous or writing under a pseudonym (you know, Odin's Wrath, or Thors-hammer). But the comments had such eternal gems as "wetback welfare" or "another Mexican roach falls out of the oven." Hey, I think I met that guy recently.
God loves us all, even that baby. But Thor and Odin don't. I'm adding a horned hemlet to my bunker arsenal.
#
So, dig it, baby:
today's Chicago Tribune, that bastion of weak-sister liberalism, had a front-page story about immigration. Excuse me while I polish my nails on my shirt. Nobody likes a wise-ass, as anonymous emailers tell me when I write an op-ed they hate. So forgive me a small burst of pride when I see this story and see that I was wrong, after all: oh, the trends I told you were coming were correct, but the numbers were far greater than I had even hoped.
Headline: BORDER RUNNERS TURN TO PACIFIC: As Wall Rises on Land, Illicit Traffic Hits the Sea.
Oddly, people are boating around San Diego and landing on the beaches of Del Mar. Shades of Haiti and Cuba. As you all know, I don't put faith in the boondoggle that is the border fence. I attribute what I'm going to say to many factors that are on display on the old I.M. blogs.
I had noted that USBP guys were telling me the numbers crossing the AZ border were down 16%.
Here are the figures from the Trib.
San Diego: up 7.3%.
El Centro: down 9.1%.
Yuma: down 68%.
Tucson: down 3.5%.
El Paso: down 38.3%.
Marfa: down 26.4%.
Del Rio: down 46.2%.
Laredo: down 24.2%.
Rio Grande Valley: down 33.6%.
(Chicago Tribune, May 5, 2008. By-line: Micahel Martinez. Pages 1-21.)
I said it on tour, and I'll say it here: the paradigm is shifting. Watch it change. Watch politicians try to take credit for it. Watch Mexican pols strike heinous poses around it.
#
Finally, I want to again recommend the new McSweeney's immigration book, Underground America. My amigo Peter Orner edited it. Dave Eggers and his band of maniacs made a beautiful book out of it. And, yes, yours truly wrote the intro. But that is the least part of the book, which is fascinating and eye-opening and, I think, without precedent in the popular publishing world.
Remember: for on-going immigration amazement, go to Bender's Immigration Bulletin.
Re-Define the line. Think for yourself. Get informed, whether you're "for" or "against" the orphan, widow, halt, lame, hungry, refugee.
Me? I'm out of here. Back to poetry.
Luis "Flaming Sword of Wotan the Wroth" Urrea, Visigoth
5/02/2008
I am circling around God, around the ancient tower,
and I have been circling for a thousand years.
And I still don't know if I am a falcon
or a storm, or a great song.
--Rilke
and I have been circling for a thousand years.
And I still don't know if I am a falcon
or a storm, or a great song.
--Rilke
Subscribe to Posts [Atom]