Poem: Carmen Giménez Smith

Carmen Giménez Smith

One of my first posts this month featured a poem by Valerie Martínez, and in introducing that poem, I shared links to Carmen Giménez Smith' s (1971-) Harriet blog post, "Latino Art and Ekphrasis," which she posted back in 2013 in conjunction with a project organized by poet Francisco Aragón, also featured this month on J's Theater, entitled PINTURA: PALABRA, a project in ekphrasis." To summarize, the multi-year project brought together some of the leading Latinx poets writing today, to view artworks at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and participate in workshops in ekphrasis around the US.

In her post, Carmen noted that she had already been exploring an engagement with artists and art work in her poetry, citing the late Cuban-American artist Ana Mendieta (1948-1985), whose presence appears several times in Carmen's highly acclaimed fourth collection, Milk and Filth (Camino del Sol/University of Arizona Press, 2013), which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. I thought about selecting one of these poems or excerpting them, but then figured it might be illuminating to see what she had created as part of her participation in PINTURA: PALABRA.

The poem below is one she wrote in response to Asco collective member and photographer Harry Gamboa Jr.'s photograph, "Decoy Gang War Victim." As you can see, Carmen dives deep into the scene the photograph portrays, into the mise en scène the image presents and conveys to the viewer. It is a scene of violence, but also a performance; it is a spectacle, in more ways than one, but serving the purposes of art, in part "to overturn the city," requiring that one "must / surrender body/belongings to the one explosive / spectacle of truth, making it ongoing," much as the static photograph conversely does through the open-endedness of its image. Asco, it turns out, sought to explore the socioeconomic conditions and challenges in which its members, Chicano artists, and those around them, were living and working during the 1970s and 1980s.

Photography, like all visual art, often poses a basic question to the viewer: what is going on? What story or stories does the image tell? What do the flares, a "departure" that "[pink] both ends of  him" really signify? What is the relationship between the truth of the image--this "decoy," and the truth of the world, the society, the neighborhood in which this photo was shot, where this scene might occur in real life (IRL)? Carmen raises all these questions with a lyric verve that zips through the stanza, requiring the reader (or listener) to double back at times so as not to lose the thread. As with all of her poems, the verbal play is impressive, the references and allusions demonstrating not just her wit, but also bringing a great deal into the poem in a way that only poetry can.

I noted in Rita Dove's poem, as with others, how one dictum was to "pay attention," and here Carmen makes it explicit at the end of line 11. Not just poetry, but so much art of all genres and kinds, as we've seen, especially when at its best, takes this as one of its guiding principles. Pay attention. You never know what you might learn, about the artwork, the world around you, and yourself.

DECOY GANG WAR VICTIM

For Harry Gamboa,   Jr.


Just a tick ago, the actor was a Roman candle
shot to the sky, smudged by rain’s helter-
skelter. His motivation was: he’s a stooge
on L.A.’s sodden turnpike, so we have “to make” art. Got
to rezone and react. The world the bare wall to
his bullet. Got to rile up the populace, to fortify
the arsenal. Once in a while, repopulate and penetrate,
paint a list of incitement onto the walls.
An elder told him that to overturn the city, one must
surrender body/belongings to the one explosive
spectacle of truth, making it ongoing. Pay attention.
To overturn the city, not just the scraps but fervor itself.
Not just the wan broadcast of indignation but
IRL incursions into the workhouses and
poorhouses to inflame the thousand points of  light.
A lean surge, departure pinks both ends of  him.
He’s the nth layer folded into the stand’s nerve.

You can read the rest of the PINTURA : PALABRA portfolio in the March 2016 issue of Poetry. All images in this portfolio are courtesy of and with permission from the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

And the image:



Asco, "Decoy Gang War Victim" (photographer: Harry Gamboa, Jr.), museum purchase through the Luisita L. and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment © 1974, Harry Gamboa, Jr.

Source: Poetry (March 2016)

Poem: Valerie Martínez

Valerie Martínez

In 2013, poet Carmen Giménez Smith posted a note on Harriet about a Smithsonian American Art Museum exhibit entitled "Our America: The Latino Presence in American Art," which was linked to "PINTURA: PALABRA, a project in ekphrasis," which she noted was "a national, multi-year initiative...bringing Latino writers to the exhibition." The initiative included workshops, conversations, and a great deal of poetry, by all involved. The project was the brainchild of poet Francisco Aragón, who had previously organized a program entitled "Poetas y Pinturas: Artists Conversing in Verse," which essentially reversed the relationship by inviting Latino visual artists to create new works based on the work of Latino poets. Taken together, as Carmen points out, the larger goal was and remains to enrich the discourse and conversations between Latino artists and poets.

Carmen had previously written beautiful poems speaking to and about the work of the late Cuban-American artist Ana Mendieta (1948-1985), but expressed enthusiasm about a more focused exploration of ekphrasis, and the discussions that would arise among and between the participating poets and the works of art they would be viewing. (I hope to post one of Carmen's poems later this month.) In March 2016, Poetry eventually published a portfolio of some of the poetry that resulted from "PINTURA: PALABRA, a project in ekphrasis," and you can find some of the participating poets and their poems on Poetry's online site. Also considering ordering the print version and perusing it at the library. Since the poets' aesthetics differed, as did they artworks they were engaging with, you will encounter in the Poetry portfolio a rich and illuminating array of approaches to writing to and with art. One poem that struck me was Valerie Martínez's "Granite Weaving," which takes a sculpture by the late Jesús Moroles (1950-2015) as its subject, and manages both to give a sense of its solid and fixed materiality, and of the poem's and poetic speaker's dynamic dialogue with it.

Valerie Martínez is a native of Santa Fe, New Mexico, and the author of five books of poetry and two chapbooks, including the book-length poem Each and Her (Camino del Sol/University of Arizona Press, 2010), a powerful meditation on the more than 400 women and girls murdered in and around Ciudad Juárez in Mexico in the early 2000s. Each and Her received the Arizona Book Award and was a finalist for numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the PEN Open Book Award, and the William Carlos Williams Award. She has edited three anthologies, including one focusing on Native American women writers, Reinventing the Enemy's Language--Contemporary Writing by Native Women of North America (1997). Martínez also is a translator; her translations of Uruguayan author Delmira Agustini (1886-1914) appeared as the collection A Flock of Scarlet Doves in 2005. She currently serves as Executive Director of Littleglobe, Inc., a nonprofit artists' collaborative that works in local communities, and was the Poet Laureate of Santa Fe from 2008 to 2010.

GRANITE WEAVING

by Valerie Martínez

To climb, in this instance, upon a horizon

Shadow-shadow. Lip-to-lip rock.

Ziggurat. Ah, from the base to the top.

Sideways. Upwards. Again, in succession.

Sprung and sprung

Frozen idiom.

Barre. Pietrasanta. Mouth and mouth.

Sung. Granite. Stitching

The way fabric gathers — pinch, scrunch.

Not in dreams alone. Not the knot.

Step, step, step, step, step. 35 up.

As if into clouds

Ur, Aqar Quf, Chogha Zanbil, Tikal.

Kin.

Plank upon plank upon plank upon

Little Blocks: ahem. don’t you forget us.


a, of, or, but, if, la, and


Close and closer to flattened.

Rock, Water, Bone: Noisy Pilgrim.

And Jesús Moroles' art work:

Granite Weaving, 1988, by Jesús Moroles,
gift of Frank K. Ribelin. Smithsonian
American Art Museum.

You can read the rest of the PINTURA : PALABRA portfolio in the March 2016 issue of Poetry. All images in this portfolio are courtesy of and with permission from the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Granite Weaving by Jesús Moroles, gift of Frank K. Ribelin. Source: Poetry (March 2016)

Reading @ Naropa + &Now Festival

Percival Everett & Lynne Tillman

Every summer for the past decade a writer I know has headed to Boulder, Colorado for the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics/Naropa University summer sessions, either as a student or to teach, and almost to a person, they have raved about the experience. In part has the enthusiasm seems to derive from the people gathered there for the summer sessions, in part it appears to come from the university's ethos and atmosphere, and in part it arises from the immediately evident charm of the beautiful city of Boulder (and for those who do get an opportunity get out and about, nearby Denver and the surrounding region).
I'd never been to Boulder or Naropa, however, so it was a pleasant surprise to be invited to participate in their What Where series, reading alongside poets Carmen Giménez Smith and Laura Mullen. I was particularly concerned about whether the reading, and the &Now Festival taking place later in the week, were going to occur at all because of the terrible flooding that caused extensive damage in and around Boulder, but I was told that despite a few showers Naropa had made it through mostly unscathed, as did the University of Colorado, where the Festival was being held, and all of the hotels where attendees would be staying, so the trip as of the weekend before remained on.

Carmen Giménez Smith reading at Naropa

A clip from Laura Mullen's hilarious, scabrous film

The Naropa reading was on Tuesday evening, so I flew out that morning from Newark, and, after a bit of finagling with Delta Airlines, which had rescheduled me without notice for a flight that would have gotten me in too late, I reached Denver via a connecting flight from Detroit with about a hour and a half to spare. No problem, right? I decided to take the Super Shuttle from the Denver Airport, since it promised to drop me off right at the inn where I was staying. It did (and I do recommend Super Shuttle if you have lots of time to spare), but I was the last one to reach my destination; we took detours through other surrounding cities and suburbs (Erie, Louisville, Lafayette, etc.), such that I had to ask the driver, my voice rattling like a guira, will you be able to get me to where I'm going by 7 pm? I think he pulled into the inn's driveway right at 7, and I quickly checked in, readied myself for the reading, and walked over to Naropa, which wasn't far away. But--and this is key for anyone who has not spent time in that part of the world--I immediately began to feel as if my entire body was composed of lead, and was sinking into the earth, because I am one of those people who suffers from altitude disorders, at least on land. (Planes are not a problem.) So I had to collect myself before the reading, a slip of bark from Allen Ginsberg's favorite tree helping (thank you, Bhanu Kapil), and even while I was on stage I could feel the exhaustion kicking in, but I made it through and felt much better by the time the reception afterward started. Carmen and Laura both gave superb readings, and it was a tremendous honor to read with both of them after having read their work for years. It was also great to meet the Naropa faculty, including Michelle Naka Pierce, who extended the invitation, and many thanks to the wonderful Arielle Goldberg, who was the point person coordinating the visit.

Fortunately I had a day to rest up and acclimate (it took two) before the &Now Festival began, on the campus of the University of Colorado. I had also heard about amazing prior versions of this conference, but seeing it up close, it felt like what the Associated Writing Programs conference would be if it were not so 1) institutionalized; 2) focused on mainstream writing and comprehensive; and 3) utterly interwoven with academe. I say this while noting that yes, &Now took place at a major public university and most of its participants are part of academe, but I got the feeling less of being of the university system than in it. Some of the writers I met made it quite clear they were not teaching and, at least for the time being, were not planning to. In any case, the focus was on writing, literature, creative work, play. It was refreshing to see a range of approaches to panel presentations and performances, which included but were not limited to--on my panel alone, organized and led by Tisa Bryant--improvisatory rapping and dancing (Ronaldo V. Wilson); a talk smartly invoking astronomy and physics (Lillian Bertram); a pre-recorded audio track, with more verbal play than a shelf of hiphop CDs (Doug Kearney); and a heartfelt, thoughtful discussion about teaching (Ruth Ellen Kocher). And we were one of the first panels of the conference, and the one that addressed the intersections of The Dark Room Collective, Cave Canem and The Black Took Collective (all connected by a colorful human Venn diagram). 

There was a poets' theater/experimental play staged by 1913 Press that was quite provocative and inspiriting. There was another panel that included a fiction writer's on-the-spot transformation into a scarf-wearing medium; a Brazilian Yoruba-inspired Tarot reading; a conceptual art performance; a sharp paper bringing together magic and feminism; and a discussion of how creating an art book provided a means through writer's block. And on it continued, culminating, at least for me, since I had to return on Saturday (though the conference continued through that day), with a reading and Q&A involving two writers I have long revered, Percival Everett and Lynne Tillman. This kind of conference practice creates an environment in which the focus is on experiment, conversation, exchange. This is not to say that people were not struggling with all the usual anxieties that (American) academe and the (American) literary world induce, chief among them the issues of (any) jobs, publications, departments, tenure and promotions, and so forth. This is also not to say that the bugaboos of racism, sexism and misogyny, homophobia, classism, and so on also did not rear their heads, and in fact, at one reading, a poet (whom I know and did speak to about this right after the event finished) managed to combine the first two issues in spectacularly problematic fashion (you know how it is when someone is digging a hole and can't seem to stop himself). But there was much more going on, and even the people laying down rough patches appeared willing to discuss what they had done. That was a very positive aspect of the conference.

Ruth Kocher, Lillian Bertram, Tisa Bryant, yours truly
(photo © Latasha N. Nevada Diggs)

In general, the atmosphere felt far less like the usual conferences I go to, such as the Modern Language Association, the more-relaxed recently attended American Literature Association or MESEA (Society for for Multi-Ethnic Studies: Europe & the Americas) conferences, or the jam-packed AWP, all of which of course have their (important) value. Instead, &Now was much more like the sorts of community-based conferences I used to attend in my 20s, considerably more free-flowing and open and about literature itself, as opposed to the politics and power-plays of academe, bureaucracy, star systems, fame, money, and all the other things that are key elements our post-industrial, neoliberalist, horribly unequal capitalist, corporatized society. Or maybe those conferences--I'm thinking of the Celebration of Black Writing in Philadelphia, where I met the writers Kevin Powell and Major Jackson years ago and learned, sitting in the audience, that Nelson Mandela had been released from jail; or OutWrite, in Boston, which included and involved a large number of people not at anyone's university, not taking classes, but nevertheless writing, on panels and in conversations--were like the usual ones I attend, and I was too green and inattentive to notice.

At any rate, I had a great time, and by Friday morning, I was sufficiently grounded enough to walk to and from the campus from downtown Boulder twice (that day I registered 6.2 miles of walking on my phone pedometer), without falling out. I also walked around the downtown area of Boulder itself a bit, and as I note above, I was concerned about the city's physical state given the saddening post-flood images, but it appeared as though the CU campus and the downtown area, with the exception of a few spots, had not suffered extensive damage, though there were a number of repair crews dotting the landscape, and most of the locals I spoke with at both Naropa and the &Now Festival had also escaped the worst of the storm, though I believe I heard that the co-organizers of the Festival did lose quite a bit in the storm.  The highlight of the Friday panels had an incredibly problematic title--"Colored Bitches in a White Boy's World"--and featured writers Carmen, Lilly Hoang, Jackie Wong, and Sandy Florian. While I was unable to catch the actual discussion (though I heard quite a bit about it), I did make it to their Q&A, where the exchanges were insightful, respectful, and, I think and hope, productive and generative for many people in the room. (That title, though!) In between the panels and readings, there was enjoyable meeting, listening, talking, sharing, thinking, amidst equally enjoyable bibulousness, which included a secret/semi-hidden bar, a longstanding dive, a colleague's lovely home, and a restaurant with a piano player (not a player piano) who was trying his best to deafen everyone present.

Many thanks to the organizers and all the participants. The next &Now Festival will take place in 2015, on the campus of California Institute of the Arts, in Valencia, California, north of Los Angeles. I hope to be there. Here are some photos from the event. If I can post one of the videos I'll do that too! Enjoy.

Ruth Ellen Kocher, poet and CU professor

Lillian Bertram, at the What the Dark Cave Took panel

Ronaldo V. Wilson

Ben Dollar and Sandra Dollar, at the 1913 Press play-performance

The cast of Victory overthe Sun

Ronaldo V. Wilson and Sandra Dollar dancing

Ronaldo and Sandra dancing

Lee Ann Brown, the "sun," rising again

More photos after the jump: