Twenty-five Cent Stories

Today Tupelo Press announced their 2010 Dorset Prize winner and I am happy to see that the ever-unstoppable Rusty Morrison and her manuscript, After Urgency, are named. Rusty Morrison and I competed for the Northern California Book Award in Poetry last year (I stood no chance!) and shared the stage at WordTemple later on. But really, I am more happy to see that my old cohort at Arizona State University Todd Fredson received an honorable mention for his manuscript, The Crucifex-Blocks. What joy to end the month!

Raj writes:

Hi everyone,

Well, thanks to all of you reaching out to your various contacts and forwarding me some great ideas.  We pursued all paths.  Some of you had contacts to some very high level people at Delta who made a couple of phone calls.  Next thing you know, a local Delta rep was driving to the airport with food and some digital photos to scour the airport and look for Sophia.  The short end of it is that she was found, taken care of, and will be on a flight soon to see her daughter.  Sparing you the details, she had some very interesting experiences as I understand.

I don’t know Sophia myself and I have not met most of the people on this email who directly responded to me.  I am also not terribly good with words.  But I can say that it is amazing what you all pulled off – its really nice to know that good things like this can happen for strangers helping other strangers.

And, of course, I am indebted to all of you so if you need my help in any way, whether now or 10 years from now, just let me know.

Sincerely,

Raj 

 …then later

Dear, generous people! 

Thanks to all sorts of help and different kinds of support and networking from each of you, Sophia Atila Kafu was located tonight at the Amsterdam airport — first by extraordinary Jacqueline Wittebrood and the late-night, Kiswahili-speaking posse she organized to drive out to the airport, talk their way past security and search the masses face-by-face, and then joined within minutes by George from Delta (the man who single-handedly restored our faith that airline personnel are, in fact, good in a crisis) who was mobilized both through Kristen’s connections at the airline and via Shonali to Raj to Ranjan.

Sophia has been put in touch with her daughter Agnes, given tea with lots of sugar, given Euros by Jacqueline, and given a promise by George that she’ll now receive personalized care and help tomorrow with rerouting to her final destination whenever the airports reopen. She’s asleep in a chair, smiling. 

It has been a frightening ordeal for Sophia and Agnes, but their relief isn’t half as deep as their gratitude, and neither of those is a match for their complete awe at your outpouring of concern and kindness. Agnes is aware of all the hours Chris and Stephen have spent on the phone, of all the good ideas that others suggested, of every piece of news or insider airport info shared and Tweet exchanged, of the reassurances offered and final exam graciously postponed, of every phone call made and email sent on her behalf to find her mother …  she told me that the experience has given her a stunning new perspective on humankind, that she’s humbled by the generosity of so many strangers who immediately behaved like close friends, and she only wishes that she and her mum could meet you all.  The youngest of Sophia’s 12 children, Agnes is the first to attend university. She’ll receive her BS from St. Francis Xavier University on May 2nd, and with the help of all of you, Agnes and I can now stop worrying that a very proud Sophia might not make it to Halifax to see her daughter graduate. Thank you all so very much!   Paula     

Please help my friend Rajesh Gupta find his missing relative in Amsterdam. Leave me a comment if you know anyone who can help.

 Here’s Raj message date Friday, April 16

I have a bit of an emergency request and was wondering if you could tap into the Soros network for this.

We’re trying very hard to find someone — anyone — who’s among the 2000 air travelers stranded inside the Amsterdam airport, and would be willing to accept a cell phone call, locate a missing person in the airport, and get a message to her.   

Sophia Atila Kafu, 65+, from rural western Kenya , speaks no English and has been stranded at Schipol Airport in Amsterdam now for over a day and a half. She has never traveled by air, speaks Kiswahili  only, does not have a cell phone that works outside of Kenya , has very little cash and no credit card.  She made the brave decision to travel alone to attend her daugher Agnes’s university graduation in Halifax, Nova Scotia, equipped only with letters written in English that say things such as, “I am lost and don’t speak English. Please direct me to flight XXX…” and “In case of emergency, please call my daughter’s cell phone #: +1 902 971 xxxx“. We haven’t been able to reach her, and don’t know whether she is aware of the volcano and what’s going on. She had 16 euros with her when she landed, and had a layover of 11 hours BEFORE her flight from Amsterdam to Toronto was cancelled, so she is probably out of money. She has never operated a pay phone. 

She has now been tentatively rebooked, on KLM/Delta Flight 671 to Montreal at 2:45 pm tomorrow (provided the European airports reopen), but we have no way of getting the information about her new flight to her.   Delta, KLM, airport personnel, airport police, Kenayan embassy will not help locate her.

So if you know of any one stuck in Schiphol and can get a hold of them and they would be willing to do a bit of an insane task…please let me know.  I think specifically about the Soros fellows for this request because I am imagine all of know directly or indirectly of someone making that first scary airline flight into a completely unknown part of the world…

Hugs to all of you,

Raj

I will be reading at The Bistro in Hayward, CA in conjunction with the Arroyo Literary Review, which will be launching their spring 2010 issue. Arroyo comes out of Cal State Eastbay and is edited by Zac Walsh.

The Bistro

1001 B Street

Hayward, CA 94541

Date: Thursday, April 1, 2010 

Start time: 6:00 PM

 Furthermore, I have published three poems in The Arava Review, a web-journal based out of Israel. Click on my individual poems to get the full-spread.

While I’m at it, since I can’t get into Poetry Daily, I could at least vicariously. Eduardo C. Corral has published two wonderful poems in Witness, one of which was selected for inclusion in Poetry Daily–”To a Jornalero Cleaning Out My Neighbor’s Garage.” It’s not just that Eduardo has dedicated that poem to me that I’m posting this, it’s that it’s a damn fine poem, as are all his poem. I hope you will enjoy it as much as I have.

I have an obvious affinity to Swan Scythe Press, being that they published my second chapbook, “Aluminum Times,” nearly 10 years ago. When I won their chapbook contest in 2001, I didn’t expect my book to come out in such high quality. When I think chapbook, like most people, I think of a publication with low publication costs. Not that that’s a bad thing. A low-cost, low-print run is what gives a chapbook its underground feel. Although I had just started as a writer at the time, I hadn’t seen chapbooks like Swan Scythe’s. They had a glossy color cover and professionally designed interiors. I’m open to anyone arguing against this point, but I feel that Swan Scythe Press set the standard for chapbooks to look more and more professional. Their trailblazing, mixed with the newly emerging access to desktop publishing programs, gave way for many small small presses to put out gorgeously designed chapbooks. I didn’t expect for Swan Scythe to quickly build it’s reputation as fast as it did. The very fact that it had the great poet Sandra McPherson as its editor publishing out of UC Davis gave the press an even higher profile and ethos. Swan Scythe published quality work from diverse poets who’ve gone on to publish, to acclaim, their first books with small presses: Maria Melendez, A. Loudermilk, Karen An-hwei Lee, and Emmy Perez.

I’m not a Swan Scythe Press historian, but I believe SSP started around the year 2000 and ran to about 2003 or 2004, publishing about some 20 odd books. Sandy McPherson then took a few hits around that time that led the press to go defunct for a few years. The biggest his was the death of her husband, poet Walter Pavlich. Within a year or two, in the midst of grieving her loss, Sandy put out the Walter Pavlich Memorial anthology, How To Be This Poems, an anthology of poems about masculinity. Shortly thereafter though, there were changes in the curriculum at UC Davis that took away college credit from internships like the ones SSP relied on to operate. The final blow was when Sandy’s webmaster for the SSP site could no longer maintain it. The SSP website was the last symbol for a working press.

 Swan Scythe Press was all but defunct. In about 2005, Sandy sent out an e-mail inquiring if there might be anyone interested in buying the press, which entailed buying the name and the remaining stock of chapbooks. For a few years now, SSP’s coveted chapbook contest had ceased (there were no interns to read the manuscripts) as well any publications outside the very few “Editor’s choices.” Something happened that Sandy decided to retract her press from the market. It was my understanding that she had found someone to continue maintaining the SSP website, which of course was the life-blood for sales.

But then curiously, in the summer of 2009, I received emails from a third party stating that they were going to buy the remaining stock of SSP chapbooks and if we, the authors, were interested in buying our books at a discount. I had already bought out my print run years back, therefore their solicitation did not affect me. These third parties gave no indication as to what their plans were–were they just booksellers with the ability to move these books and finally lay the press to rest? Was I seeing the deathblow happening? In an alternate universe, had these events–tragic and otherwise–not happened to Sandy McPherson, Swan Scythe Press would have been a flagship in the chapbook publication circle.

Then in early January of this year, I receive an email from Jame DenBoer, a poet and, who I believe to be a bookseller, working out of Sacramento. In his email, he inquires if there are any Swan Scythe Press authors nearby willing to come read at the Sacrament Library in honor of Sandy McPherson. In the event he is also to talk about what he’s going to do with Swan Scythe Press in the future. It seems like Swan Scythe Press has a new editor and most likely a new direction. So this time it is not a phoenix, but a swan that rises from the ashes. I’ll let the press realease below fill you in on the rest:

Swan Scythe Press Celebration 

Planned for March 3, 2010

Sacramento CA, Feb. 1, 2010 — A special event is planned for March 3, 2010, from 6 pm-7:30 pm, at the Central Library, 828 I Street, in the Sacramento Room, celebrating the first decade of Swan Scythe Press, which has published 26 poetry chapbooks from 2000-2009.

Founding Editor Sandra McPherson has passed along direction of the Press to local poet James DenBoer, who will continue the highly-regarded publication of Swan Scythe books.  McPherson and DenBoer are both widely-published poets, and have received grants, fellowships and awards for their work.

The event, called “Celebrating the First Decade, Launching the Next” will be hosted by Sacramento Poet Laureate Bob Stanley, and will include short talks by Sandra McPherson on her initial vision for the Press, and on its history during the first decade.

James DenBoer will outline some of his plans for the future of the Press, which will include the continuation of the annual Swan Scythe Press Chapbook contest (now open to submissions until the deadline of June 1, 2010), publication of another chapbook that will be given the Walter Pavlich Memorial Poetry Award, establishment of the Leah Zeff Memorial Poetry Award, and the inauguration of two new series of small books, the first for poetry translated from Spanish or from indigenous languages from Mexico and Central and South America; the second of books written by North American First Nations (Native American) poets.

Both McPherson and DenBoer will be reading from their own work, as will a number of previously-published Swan Scythe authors.  In-print Swan Scythe books and others will be on sale.  Patrick Grizzell and Steve Bird will provide blues music, and refreshments will be served.  The event is sponsored by the Sacramento Poetry Center and the Sacramento Metropolitan Arts Commission.  The public is invited to attend.

Two or three years ago, the poet Pablo Miguel Martinez of San Antonio, told me of a vision he had to gather Latino poets in retreat-style workshop geared toward and about Latino poetics, an area that he and others felt misunderstood. I am amazed and applaud the group for how swiftly and grand they pulled together their vision.

Dear Latina and Latino poets, We are inviting applications for the Inaugural CantoMundo Master Poetry Workshop, the only national, poetry-centered workshop/retreat specifically for Latina/o poets.Inspired by the culturally-rooted visions of Cave Canem and Kundiman, CantoMundo seeks to create a space where Latina/o poets can:

CantoMundo MissionThrough workshops, symposia, and public readings, CantoMundo provides a space for the creation, documentation, and critical analysis of Latina/o poetry.

Description of the purpose of CantoMundoThe Inaugural CantoMundo Master Poetry Workshop is a three-day retreat that will develop, sustain, and support a diverse community of Latina/o poets.This year, CantoMundo will convene July 8-11, 2010, at the National Hispanic Cultural Center in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Submission GuidelinesApplicants are encouraged to submit an application to participate in the Master Poet Craft Workshop as well as a separate proposal to present a craft lecture, if desired.

Master Poet Craft WorkshopsIf you are interested in applying to participate in the Master Poet craft workshops, please submit the following:1. Cover letter

(One page, single-spaced, 8½ x 11-sized paper, with 1-inch margins, 12- point Times New Roman font) - Include a. Contact Informationi. Name

Criteria for Craft Workshop SelectionThe criteria are:a. a significant record of publishing in poetry (book-length manuscript, chapbook, major journals, etc.) and/or broad and accomplished experience in the performance of original poetry. Self-published work is excluded.

Lecture PresentationIf you are interested in presenting a lecture on or about Latina/o poetry or a poet’s work, please submit the following:1. Cover letter

(One page, single-spaced, 8½ x 11-sized paper, with 1-inch margins, 12- point Times New Roman font)- Include a. Contact Informationi. Name

2. Abstract for lecture (One page, single-spaced, 8½ x 11-sized paper, with 1-inch margins, 12-point Times New Roman font) Page 3 Founding Committee Norma Cantú Pablo Miguel Martínez Celeste Guzman Mendoza Deborah Paredez Carmen Tafolla Criteria for Lecture Selection

The criteria are:1. coherence, clarity, salience, and originality of lecture topic;

Formatting Directions for ApplicationsWordDocs onlyLetter-sized paper (8½ x 11), with 1-inch margins

Email the application packet(Cover Letter and Writing Sample and/or Abstract)

ay_sisi@hotmail.comPlease put CANTOMUNDO APPLICATION in the heading or mail your packet

All applications must be received by 5 p.m. CST, Friday, March 19, 2010. Page 4 Founding Committee Norma Cantú Pablo Miguel Martínez Celeste Guzman Mendoza Deborah Paredez Carmen Tafolla Email applications are preferred.Participants will be notified no later than April 30, 2010 (via phone or email).If you have any questions, please write:Celeste Guzman Mendoza

CantoMundo is committed to including a collective of diverse poetic voices and styles, as well as representation from all Latina/o backgrounds.Costs

Tuition for three-day retreat: $100Each participant is responsible for her/his own per diem, travel and hotel costs.

Tentative ScheduleDates: July 8-11, 2010Place: National Hispanic Cultural Center, Albuquerque, New Mexico

February fifth–that is today–is Jose Olivares’s–that is my grandpa–deathday. He died twelve years ago. I knew him as abuelito, my mother’s father, the old man with slow steps. It’s still hard for me to imagine him as anything other than that. Not as the young bracero, later the patron, or as my mother remembers him, the stern father who made his teenage children be in bed by 8:00 PM and who kicked her out of the house when she married my father. The old man I came to know spolied us with toys and candy (by fifth grade I had my first cavity). For us, Abuelito made the twenty minute drive to Limon’s Market, where we were allowed to ransack the candy ailes, order up sheets of carne seca, choose a comic book, and splurge on a medium Blueberry-flavored Slush Puppie, while Abuelito chatted with the grocer’s owner, Limon. Before so, however, we had to have our haircut done next door at Pete’s Barbershop.

Pete’s Barbershop came complete with a twirling candy-striped barber pole. Pete himself was snow-haired and the tallest Mexican I ever knew then, although I was pretty short myself, about four feet tall. Pete–wait, why am I calling him by his name? Abuelito had us call him Maestro. Pete was the Mens’ Cut Maestro of Thermal, California. What could you get at Pete’s other than a haircut? How about a tub of blue men’s hair gel. A ninety-nine cent palm brush cholos used to slick back their hair. You can watch a Spanish black & white film on the thirteen-inch TV. Or perhaps the film was in color and my memories are in black and white? Or maybe the film was in color but the TV was black & white. Either way, as his grandsons one by one had their hair cut, Abuelito chatted Maestro’s ear off. About what? Who knows? Even that young I knew Gramps didn’t have much a life. When we were done, and the youngest of us–done crying, El Maestro handed us a stick of Wrigley’s spearmint gum for our courage.  

Around the corner from Pete’s was a Tru-Value Hardware. Abuelito chatted with the manager, a man whose name on the shirt patch I’ve forgotten but who always had a golf pencil wedged between his temple and ear. That man escorted Abuelito out to the lumber yard as I stayed behind in the store, slurping on my slushing, and observing the bins of nuts, bolts, screws, and other odd things that I told myself that one day I would assemble machines with these parts. Abuelito came back with planks of 2×4s for which use, I don’t know.

When we became adolescents, my brother Albert and I, I guess I can admit, took an innocent advantage of his generosity. Candy alone could not satiate us. We asked him to buy us a Game Boy, an expensive Nintendo guide book for games, and of course, Nintendo game cartridges. We had him once buy us a game called T&C Surf Designs: Wood, Water, and Rage, based on the 1980s surf apparrel, Town and Country Surf Design, that featured a cartoon cast of characters that included Joe Cool, Kool Kat, Tiki Man, and Thrilla Gorilla. Abuelito made the 30 minute trek to Indio to buy us this. Feeling guilty that we might send Abuelito right back to Thermal after buying us a forty-dollar game, we invited him in to watch us play. It was a pretty stupid game, I think years later: choose a character–a tiki man, a gorilla in swim trunks, and simply surf as long as you can before a wave wipes you out. Grandpanovich sat on the edge of the bed, rubbing his stubble and watching silently. What was he thinking? I wish I had asked then. Was thinking about what he had to do once he got back to Thermal? Perhaps the first time he had ever been to the ocean? Or maybe just, in terms of a surfing gorilla, What the fuck?

Abuelito died of old age in his late eighties. Before that, he suffered from dementia and Alzheimer’s. He no longer knew us or remembered us and met us for the first time every Sunday for many Sundays. We no longer knew him either. Like Borges’ Funes the Memorious, I remember that I had remembered then of the talk my mother had with Albert and me about our grandfather not having much longer. The talk upset us. But Gramps persisted, for years, even though his mind didn’t. February fifth also coincides with a college friend’s birthday. And that February fifth of 1998, we went out to celebrate. And despite the fact that he treated us for a free meal and we had gone to watch Scorsese’s Kundun, I was washed with sadness all evening. I arrived to my dorm room with thirteen messages left on my answering machine. The first twelve asked me to call home. The thirteenth told me grandpa died. Since then I’ve been afraid of multiple messages.

Since the twelve years of my abuelito’s death, T&C Surf Design has gone defunct, Game Boy is still around in an unrecognizable form. Both the man with the golf pencil wedged between his ear and El Maestro were whittle down by cancer and gone. Limon’s Food Market, along with Pete’s Barbershop burned down. It all returns to earth as ashes, doesn’t it?

Abuelito. Grandpa. Gramps. Grampanovich. We had many names for the one man we can not forget.

 x

While visiting my wife’s family in south Texas in December of 2009, I had the pleasure of meeting one of the “cousin-in-laws,” Mauricio Palos (on the left in photograph). Mauricio, currently living in Mexico City, is a photojournalist under the employment of Getty Images. His last project took him across the immigration routes in Central America, photographing the immigrant experience as they lived it, and often times putting his own life in danger riding the trains (think Sin Nombre) or witnessing police raids on smugglers. Mauricio’s interest is in the effects that violence and poverty has on Latin American citizens that are often the reasons for their exodus. Whereas the United States sees its newcomers as criminals, Mauricio’s photographs captures their humanity, humility, and their victimization of circumstance. His photographs are varied: A queue of travelers wade the waist-deep waters of a river.  An amputee whose legs were severed after falling into the rail track (we even get a glimpse of a wooden crate filled with artificial limbs, like a charity box filled with shoes–if you find one that fits, take ‘em). The lifeless bodies of railway and cartel victims. Mauricio is an accomplished and recognized fotographer, winning several state arts grants in Mexico. Later this year his photographs will be published in book form.

First, if I weren’t a poet, I would have no idea how many thousands (?) of poetry titles are published (And they say no one reads poetry or that it’s dead). That said, there is no way I have read them all and there are still some piled up in my bookcase still waiting to be read. I offer here, however, a few titles that were my favorite over the past ten years that bring joy every time I return to them.

Work Done Right by David Dominguez (University of Arizona, 2002)

The Smallest Muscle in the Human Body by Alberto Rios (Copper Canyon, 2002)

House Waiting for Music by David Hernandez (Tupelo, 2003)

Here, Bullet by Brian Turner (Alice James, 2004)

Bent to the Earth by Blas Manuel de Luna (Carnegie-Mellon, 2005)

Always Danger by David Hernandez (University of Southern Illinois, 2006)

Modern History: Prose Poems 1978-2008 by Christopher Buckley (Tupelo, 2008)

I look forward for all the magnificent titles forthcoming in 2010 and the next ten years. Here’s to new poets making their debuts, debut poets getting out their sophmore efforts, and everyone else adding a title to their bibliography. Happy new year and decade.

It’s been a few weeks since my reading at the National Museum of American History. I was treated very well by Magdalena Mieri and her folks at the Smithsonian. Such nice people!

Here’s me at the mic reading. I must say, I didn’t expect to be so mentally exhausting to read so many times in so few days. But by the fourth reading, I had it down.

My gracious host Francisco Aragon, Naomi Ayala (great reader!), and myself

I found it interesting that this date palm knife was displayed in the museum, what more, it’s from Indio, CA.