Despite a stubbornly recurring sore throat, I made the journey down to Redondo Beach yesterday to read a few poems at the invitation of the Redondo Beach Power of Art Festival. It was a pleasure to join the lineup with such a diverse group of locals: Jared Johnson played Eastern melodies on his specially-tuned guitar, then read a few linguistically dense, abstract poems; Professor Anthony Lee read brave pieces about the human experience; Chicano poet Marcelino Miyares recited rhymed and unrhymed poems with a Christian influence; Charles Indika Perera read a variety of poems in his sonorous Sri Lankan accent; Brenda Petrakos performed pieces at the front of the stage combining poetry, song, and dramatic monologue; Barbara Rabinowitz read work ranging from haiku to mini-epics lamenting the environmental crisis in the Gulf of Mexico; and Hannibal Tabu recited poems about the shared plight of Mexican- and African-Americans, a love poem, and a poem about comic books. Continue Reading “Redondo Beach Power of Art Festival Reading” »
It was an honor to read poetry at the Carnegie Art Museum in Oxnard last night with Jamey Hecht. Jackson Wheeler has been running the Arcade Poetry Series for over twenty years, and Andrew Carnegie’s neoclassical bequest has played home to the series for the past decade. It is a charming venue, and Jackson is a gracious host.
Jamey read from his new collection, Limousine Midnight Blue, with the boldness and intensity of a talented stage actor, bringing to life his treatise on the Kennedy assassination and its harrowing repercussions. He also read from his translations of Sophocles, including passages from “Oedipus Rex” that brought this old classics warhorse vividly into the present, stamping and snorting.
Another treat was the opportunity to finally meet Glenna Luschei. Also, Fiona and Cameron from Lettre Sauvage showed up with their beautiful letterpress works. Their book-arts chapbooks, broadsides, and other printed paper craft can only be fully appreciated in person. Kudos to them for re-imagining the place of the printed book in the digital age.
And thanks most especially to Jackson, for his effusive generosity of spirit, which makes this series a local treasure.
This is an open note of thanks to Paul Fericano. I had a great time reading at the Broken Word series at Farmer and the Cook last night, and listening to Danielle Camacho, P.Lyn Middleton, Quin Mallory, Paul Fericano, Crystal Salas, Steve Sprinkel, and Johnny Fonteyn weave words into the warm summer night. Afterward, I got to talking with Paul, and he showed me one of the gorgeous, limited-edition offset-print broadsides he creates. On remarking how much I liked it, he gave it to me. And then another. In fact, a whole set.
Strangely enough, this is not the first time I have gone to a poetry reading and come home with a gift. It seems to me that the best kinds of writing communities have, at their heart, a spirit of generosity. This was certainly my experience in the MFA program, where my advisers gave so much more than what was asked of them by the university. And so, with so much talk about “greatness” in poetry, I would like to propose a new definition–that poets not be measured so much by what the Paris Review says about their twelfth collection–but by how poetry inspires them to keep giving back. The product of great poets is great poems. But, so often in my experience, the by-product is generosity.
Sugar Mule #32 just went live online, bearing three of my poems. As fate would have it, I plan to read two of these three poems tonight at The Artists’ Union Gallery in Ventura. The reading begins at 7:30PM. Bring a poem or two for the open mic.
And for those of you who can’t make it, for whatever reason–enjoy the poems!
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I spent a rich and meaningful afternoon reading poems with fellow 
