Barack Obama and Wealth

Much has been written and screamed about lately about Barack Obama and 'socialism'. The fact that Mr Obama wants to spread around the wealth of our society is viewed as a Marxist evil while greed and the concentration of wealth are viewed as "American" and "free". Keeping ones money is a mantra for the Republican candidate. Most of the self professed Republicans are "christians". What that means we do not really know? But we know what Jesus had to say about what he demands from his followers on this score. Does what Jesus demanded jive with what McCain is proposing?

Matthew 25, 31-46 New Jerusalem Bible

31 'When the Son of man comes in his glory, escorted by all the angels, then he will take his seat on his throne of glory.
32 All nations will be assembled before him and he will separate people one from another as the shepherd separates sheep from goats.
33 He will place the sheep on his right hand and the goats on his left.
34 Then the King will say to those on his right hand, "Come, you whom my Father has blessed, take as your heritage the kingdom prepared for you since the foundation of the world.
35 For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you made me welcome,
36 lacking clothes and you clothed me, sick and you visited me, in prison and you came to see me."
37 Then the upright will say to him in reply, "Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink?
38 When did we see you a stranger and make you welcome, lacking clothes and clothe you?
39 When did we find you sick or in prison and go to see you?"
40 And the King will answer, "In truth I tell you, in so far as you did this to one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did it to me."
41 Then he will say to those on his left hand, "Go away from me, with your curse upon you, to the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.
42 For I was hungry and you never gave me food, I was thirsty and you never gave me anything to drink,
43 I was a stranger and you never made me welcome, lacking clothes and you never clothed me, sick and in prison and you never visited me."
44 Then it will be their turn to ask, "Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty, a stranger or lacking clothes, sick or in prison, and did not come to your help?"
45 Then he will answer, "In truth I tell you, in so far as you neglected to do this to one of the least of these, you neglected to do it to me."
46 And they will go away to eternal punishment, and the upright to eternal life.'

Does it sound like Jesus would vote for John McCain and the monied class? Or Barack Obama? What would Jesus do? It seems to me that this answer is clear. The world Christian is used by scoundrels throughout history. But in fact the "christians" who have run the Republican party are truly Goats to use Matthew's words.

Experience Brazilian Poetry in Chicago Audio

http://www.chicagopublicradio.org/Content.aspx?audioID=29342

Everyone please access the on line audio from the Experience Brazilian Literature in Chicago event held last month here in Chicago

Ignorance and this Week's History

I got some great feedback about my Ignorance post of a few days ago from Guillermo Parra, Johannes Gorensson and Patrick Durgin. All three of these poet/editors are part of the global choir they are leaders. They are all examples of the exception to the rule poets who are well read and global in their mindsets.

It would have been great to get feedback from members of the "Poetic Class" who continue to live in their cheerleaderlike micro world. But those poets are too busy telling each other how great they are.... But those poets will continue the great poetic roundtable of self strokes.

MarkNowak's XCP

Mark Nowak Facebooked me today. I have always been a huge Mark Nowak fan his poetry is great- in the way Nelson Algren or Walt Whitman are great he is an innovator and a person of the people. I wish there were more Mark Nowak's and less "Poetic Class" Cheerleaders around.

His magazine XCP is great it is one that I would love to get some poetry in someday. Here is another poet who does not spend allot of his time looking at his own navel.

We are in a week of history. It looks good for the election maybe, just maybe Barack Obama can pull this one out? I will add this to my prayers and good thoughts.

Peter Cole's Book

I just finished Peter Cole's Things on Which I've Stumbled. It is interesting because this book has all the pretentions of a New Directions Poetry book. His book of translations of Poetry from Islamic Spain came out to great acclaim although I found some of the translations lacking that wa a great book. His poetry is Medieval and Experimental at the same time but not pretentious like some poets of this ilk.

Camus Notebooks

I am glad I bought the book it goes well with Camus' Notebooks 1951-1959 that I just finishes that was just satiating in its richness. Is there anything better than Camus? I can't think of anything better.

Stanford Literature Podcasts

I downloaded from itunes the Stanford University podcasts. What a pleasure. I worked out the other day to Marjorie Perloff talking about Ezra Pound is there anything more relaxing? Everyone should go get these podcasts they are free and great.

So lets see how the week completes itself. Maybe this Severian moment in America's decline will be ended? Or do we continue to decline? Is Obama our Vespasian or our Diocletian? Time will tell?

Those Who are Not Ignorant

I wrote a post last week about the ignorance of world-poetry by most American poets. I have often complained about presses and poets that are so myopic that they choose to publish and read only narrow poetry by their friends.

For every Ugly Duckling Presse or Circumference magazine that chooses to highlight the broad world there is a Flood Editions or Denver Quarterly that chooses to highlight a narrow parochialism.


Having said this there are poets and presses that need to be highlighted.

• Patrick Durgin's Kenning Editions for example has done a yeoman's job of highlighting innovative and global writing and their new book by Laura Solorzano translated by Jen Hofer is a must read.
• Aufgabe Magazine and Litmus press published by E Tracy Grinnell annually does more for global literature than most University Presses. the latest Aufgabe on Italian poetry edited by jennifer scappettone is the best anthology of contemporary Italian verse currently in print.
• Mandorla edited by Kristen Dykstra does more for Latin American writing than most presses. Mandorla has brought some of Cuba's most important poets to American audiences for the first time.
• Ugly Duckling Presse from New York does a great job of highlighting Eastern European and othe global writing.
• The website Action Yes edited by Johannes Gorensson is prob. the best website for translations and global literature.
• The Brazilian magazine Sibilia edited by Regis Bonvicino is a great vehicle for American, Brazilian and European literature.

It is important to note that all of these efforts are independent non-profits. They need donations and support. So the next time someone asks you for money for a good cause- give to poetry and support these presses.

The Destruction of Books

"Our History is revealed by what we destroy as much as by what we preserve" this is how Fernando Baez's A Universal History of the Destruction of Books: From Ancient Sumer to Modern Iraq.

Of late amid all the economic angst and fear I have found solace in something old and tried- serendipity.

In the age of Amazon.com and online shopping I still find my best books by the serendipity of shopping in a great bookstore.

In Chicago we are blessed to have what I think is the greatest bookstore in the United States, the Seminary Co-op. (http://semcoop.booksense.com/). Sem Coop is one of those places where one can find books by everyone from Origen and Horace to Mark Tardi and Peter Gizzi it is in short a great place.

One of my favorite spots is the 'front table' in which Jack Cella the magnificent General Manager places the 'most important' and 'most interesting' books for his bibliographically famished customers. On that table I found two books that satisfy and challenge a poet and a reader to be more.

The first book I found was Alberto Manguel's The Library at Night from the Yale University Press. The book is organized by chapters The Library as... the chapters are really interesting and in this book one description that really held me in thrall was his description of the library in the Theresinstadt Ghetto. If their exists a more moving story than the one Manguel shares with us about Jacob Edelstein's last moments on Earth I have not read it anywhere.

Manguel's book talks about many other things including the National Library of Argentina of Jorge Luis Borges. Manguel is an Argentine and this sensibility fills the book. If you love your library this is your book it takes one away from the banal to a time when time slowed and libraries determined cultural currency. Thomas Merton once said that when he passed a Church he felt like it was a reactor of holiness pulsing and filling the world with grace. I think Manguel's book says the same thing about Libraries and how they fill our world with grace as well.

The second book I found on the table later in the month was Fernando Baez's A Universal History of the Destruction of Books. Baez is the director of Venezuela's National library and his book is chronicle of great crime. He starts with Sumer and ends with Iraq in fact going around the world to chronicle the history of the destruction of books. The book starts talking about the great literate societies that sit at the base of our world. Sumer,China, Israel, Egypt and Greece.

For any lover of Books to hear the stories of the destruction of the libraries of the Hittites, Alexandria and the Egypt makes one wince.

Once we leave the ancient world we move into the middle ages. The time of Lindisfarne, Constantinople and Baghdad. In fact the book also talks about how the children of Lindisfarne (Catholics) Constantinople (Orthodox) and Baghdad (Muslim) proceeded to go out to the world and destroy libraries of Pagans, Native Americans, and Hindus. The saving and destroying of books leads us to pain and anguish about all that has been lost.

What is truly great about Baez's book is that it has short information packed chapters that bring you back to libraries. You want to sit with Rumi or Averroes or Aidan of Lindisfarne and watch them create and save books. Yet this book is about their destruction and the slow pain of this book leads us up to our present day and to the greatest evils of Communism, Fascism and Materialism.

Every child in the West has been brought up with the cliche of books being burned by Nazis. Even Indiana Jones movies have had this image. But the real import of the destruction of books by Nazis and Communists and others is that the openness of ideas which filled the world. It has been said that the Jews and the Germans were two peoples who believed that 'good culture' was important. The death of European Jewish culture and the destruction of Jewish libraries in Poland is one of the greatest crimes of human history. It presaged the destruction of 6 million people.

Baez's book ends with the destruction of libraries in Iraq. Finally he lists the greatest book crimes The Nazi Bibliocaust of 1933-45, Savonarola's Destruction in Florence in 1498, Huang's destruction of Chinese books in 213 BC, Mongol Destruction of the Baghdad library in 1258, the destruction of the library of Alexandria in 48 BC, the destruction of the Cordoba library in 980 the destruction of the Bosnia Library in 1992, and finally the destruction of the Mayan writings in 1562 and the burning of the Library of Congress in 1814.

This book makes one wince at the loss but it also makes real what matters. Ideas and the people who create them is what matters and this book talks about that reality. "Where they have burned books they will eventually burn people" Heine's great quote is writ large in this little book that anyone who loves books should run out at buy... now.

Fear Factor

Over the past two weeks the world has changed. Like August 1914, September and October 2008 will be remembered as the time that the old order passed away. Before September
assumptions bourne out by 60 years of post-war thought were in place.

America & Europe and the system set up after World War 2 functioned. People who had saved and invested for the past 30 years and are now retired were secure and their were problems but they could be over come.

It appears that that world is gone.

I am 41 and for most of my life I have worked in Business Publishing and events. I look around having survived the .com boom, housing boom and various recessions and I cannot find the intestinal fortitude to know what to do?

My parent's are losing their retirement savings.
My company is constricting.
My neighborhood is full of foreclosed houses.

The fact is that America is in decline and the whole thing appears to be unraveling. Because of greed and financial mismanagement and deregulation the world that was constructed in the West is coming apart. As we look at the new powers in the world, China, India and Brazil we realize that much of the liberal openness of Europe and America is now ignored or distained.
We are in the new world and fear reigns.

I watched a You Tube of a Mc Cain rally where the people beyed at the candidates spewing hatred the way Germans did in the late 1920's . This type of world in the 1930's led Germany to Hitler and America to Franklin Roosevelt. I wonder what choice we will make now? Do we still have a Roosevelt in us?

That Ignorance is Restraining

That Ignorance is Restraining

“Americans are too sensitive to trends in their own mass culture"Of course there is powerful literature in all big cultures "The US is too isolated, too insular. They don't translate enough and don't really participate in the big dialogue of literature. That ignorance is restraining."

With this quote Horace Engdahl the permanent secretary of the Nobel Prize for Literature dismissed American literature and the possibility of an American winning that prize. This quote caused much uproar and indignation among the American literati. How dare a Swede criticize America’s literary relevance and importance?

Imagine anyone suggesting that our writers are not worthy of the Nobel Prize?

I think that this quote caused such an uproar because in short it is true. I do not often interact personally with fiction writers but I do interact with Poets many of whom are ‘important’ in American literary parlance. I think that the structure of our literary culture in America leads to this Restraining Ignorance. While this I do not know if this is true for Fiction writers it is often true for American Poets.

Many American poets are trained in “creative writing” which means that their education is in how to write rather than in what to read. The result of this training is that their literary knowledge of poetry and prose in English, much less in other languages is very thin indeed.

Also, because most of the people who can afford to take two or three years to ‘study’ creative writing are from a particular social class and because graduate study is often a luxury whole parts of American society that might be more open to the world are excluded. When it comes to international writing very few American poets have any interest in global writing or poetry.

Most American poets know nothing of poetry outside of their particular small insular community and this is reflected in their work. Many American poets dwell in the poetry subculture which is concerned with poets, writing for other poets getting published by small presses run by poets, and getting reviewed by other poets. There is not much room in this subculture for the larger world.

In the United States, the world’s largest book buying market, the number of presses and magazines that give space to global writing and poetry are so small that I can list many of them here; Aufgabe Magazine and Litmus Press, Mandorla, Burning Deck, Ugly Duckling Presse, Circumference, Dalkey Archive Press, Action Books, occasionally the Chicago Review, occasionally the University of Texas Press and occasionally the University of California Press. The combination of the insular hothouse of American poetry and the lack of translations is slowly suffocating poetry in America into some sort of replay loop .

The fact is that most American poets do not have any interest in global writing or poetry as evidenced recently by a group of events that I organized here in Chicago recently. I guest edited a Brazilian section for the New York magazine Aufgabe which does a fabulous job of highlighting a global poetry scene in each issue. I was honored to translate and guest- edit an issue on Brazil in 2007.

The Brazilian consulate general and Litmus Press which publishes Aufgabe magazine invited four very well known Brazilian poets to read in Chicago. The four poets who read, Paulo Henriques Britto, Virna Teixeira Sergio Medeiros and Maria Esther Maciel are well known globally and inside Brazil. We organized three events in this city over four days. We advertised and publicized the events widely in Time Out, on all the poetry list sites, Facebook and via email lists. I figured with over 50 poets who have published books in the past five years here in Chicago they would jump at the chance of seeing four well known poets from one the world’s most important poetry communities.

The first event was organized at Northwestern. Professor Reginald Gibbons did a great job on that campus and we had a great turnout of people interested in global poetry. The event itself was a success The fact is however that no one from the local Chicago poetry community chose to attend that event in Evanston. The students at Northwestern were great and Dr Gibbons was great and the poets were honored to spend time with them.

The Second Event was at the University of Illinois at Chicago and it was also well attended by non poets. Some local Chicago poets of note did attend, Garin Cycholl organized the reading and Christina Pugh who is with the Poetry Foundation and poets brought her class, Francesco Levato and Chris Glomski also attended the event. This reading had a good crowd and I was very thankful to UIC for hosting it.

The final event we produced at the Harold Washington Library Center was on a Saturday Afternoon. It was also well attended with many people from the local Brazilian community but the number of Chicago poets who attended was small, Patrick Durgin William Allegrezza, Melissa Severin, Kerri Sonnenberg and a few others attended.

By my count about 10 Chicago poets of note chose to attend the readings over the four Brazilian poetry events. In fact of the approximately 100 people who attended these three readings only 10 were local poets of note. I think the local reaction attests well to the insularity of so many. This level of interest is indicative of the state of poetry and poets- to say nothing of literature in a major city in the United States.

Many American poets exist within a poetic hothouse. They live insular lives in which they get published by friends they knew at grad school. Their work is often reviewed by ‘critics’ with whom they are friends. The result of this is a poetic culture of insularity that approaches a clique. There are very few American poets who choose to dialogue globally.

You can count on two hands the number of poets in the United States who care about global literature and translation. Poets/Writers like Charles Bernstein, Jennifer Scappettone. Tracy Grinnell, Sawako Nakayasu, Jen Hofer, Patrick Durgin, Douglas Messerli, Pierre Joris, Kristen Dykstra and others are rare exceptions to a hard rule of ignorance of the wider world. Most poets in the United States would rather exist within their poetic hothouse. If you want to see this culture in action come to Chicago in February for AWP where itwill be in full flower.

To expect insularity from Americans is understandable we are an insular people. Iff you wonder however why an American poet will not be the winner of the Nobel Prize this year don’t blame the poor Swedish bureaucrat who spoke the truth- blame the poetic culture in the USA which is often insular and ignorant of the outside world.

Baseball-Poetry & Brazilians

October is normally for me a calm month. But with all the anguish of the economy and being forced to listen to Sarah Palin's screeching voice this October will be different.

BRAZILIAN POETRY PALOOZA

Last week we hosted four Brazilian poets, Paulo Henriques Britto, Maria Esther Maciel, Sergio Medieros and Virna Teixiera.

These events were sheer pleasure. Northwestern hosted them for a reading and Professor Reginald Gibbons was a real gentle man in doing so. The poets then read at the UIC Humanities Institute and were hosted by Garin Cycholl and finally there was a great Saturday Reading at the Harold Washington Library.

The best thing about these readings was the attendance by a more general public. Unlike most poetry events in Chicago the local 'community' of poets did not dominate the attendance. Often, Chicago Poetry events are dominated by the same faces but at these events most of them were not in attendance but other people came and listened to poetry from another world and I hope that their efforts lead to more dialogue.

BASEBALL IS BETTER THAN POLITICS

Barack Obama (SOX FAN) is going to win the presidency and Joe Biden is going to clean the floor with Sarah Palin and the economy will be ok so lets worry about what really matters; for the first time since 1906 both Chicago teams are in the playoffs. There is a chance for an L World Series here which would end up crazy but also great... imagine beating those Cubs-- in the World Series it would be something....

CUBS HATRED ON HOLD

I am putting my Cubs hatred on hold for this month since I need to give the good energy to them in place of my friend Mark Tardi who is rooting from Lodz. I hope they win so that we can replay 1906 this year and beat them hard. But the entire city of Chicago is thinking about baseball and just maybe we can get the Chicago trifecta- Sox-Cubs World Series- Obama as president,

Imagine?

GO GO SOX

The White Sox won the Central Division last night in a great game. Did you see that throw from Ken Griffey? That put out? The fact that we beat the Twins. This will not be a calm October.
Maybe this will be a good one?

Go Sox, Go Barack--- lets win!

EXPERIENCE BRAZILIAN LITERATURE IN CHICAGO

EXPERIENCE
BRAZILIAN LITERATURE
IN CHICAGO

Brazilian Authors Reading
From Aufgabe 6

Maria Esther Maciel • Paulo Henriques Britto
Sergio Medeiros • Virna Teixiera

Spons ore d By: Litmus Press • Northwestern University
The Consulate General of Brazil • Chicago Poetry Project


Thursday, September 25th
5:00 pm
Northwestern University
Kresge 2-301, 2nd Floor
(west end of building)
Spanish & Portuguese seminar
room, Evanston, IL
org/pages/brazilfest08.html
or email Raymond.bianchi@gmail.com

Saturday, September 27th
3:00 pm
Chicago Author’s Room
Harold Washington Library Center
400 S. State St. 7th floor
Chicago, IL
For More Details: litmuspress.
Friday, September 26th

1:00 pm
Humanities Institute at
University of Illinois Chicago
(bottom floor of Stevenson Hall)

Farewell to My Friend Mark Tardi

I became friend with Mark Tardi in 2003 when I moved back to Chicago-we were introduced by another friend Kerri Sonnenberg. I will always be grateful to Kerri for knowing Mark.

Mark leaves today for Lodz, Poland to do a Fulbright and I will miss his insights very much.

Many poets are unable to downshift and be real human beings. Many poets are unable to be regular people and enjoy life at many levels. Mark, while an intellectual of the first order is also good for a great baseball talk or just a hang out Mark will be missed.

Mark's poetry is important but he has never been self-important which is refreshing in a poet. How many times have you had to sit through the self importance of a poet and his/her vision? So as Mark leaves Chicago we lose another poet in our midst.

Lodz's gain is Chicago's loss.

Chicago Curses and Barack Obama

A month ago it appeared that Chicago was ascendant.

Finally after so many years of sunbelt dominance our Chicago with all its good and bad was moving to center stage. It was not New York that produced a moving trans formative presidential candidate- and two great Baseball teams it was our Chicago.

But to paraphrase Nelson Algren our city's broken nose does not please plastic and strip mall America. They hate us. A month ago it appeared that the Cubs and the White Sox (Barack Obama's own) would both make the playoffs. Maybe we would have a Crosstown World Series and a President from our town- this would surely lead to Chicago getting the 2012 Olympics.

Chicago would be center stage.

It appears however that all these plans are being destroyed by multiple curses. The Cubs are collapsing they have lost so many games that even the mellow Lou Pinella is frustrated- the White Sox are filling up with injuries and slowly falling and our favorite son, Barack Obama is being eviscerated by a moose killing woman who cannot even pronounce Iraq (It is e rack not I Rack) correctly.

Our City has been slandered. Bill O'Reilly of the vast Right Wing Conspiracy continues to say that Chicago is "radical" and "crazy left" as if the Haymarket Rioters run our town and Richard J Daley never existed. Now the curses the billy goat for the Cubs Shoeless Joe Jackson for the White Sox are returning- and overflowing the Barack Obama campaign. Our curses will result in four more years of pain and decline and having to listen to Sarah Palin's annoying accent.

I know that it is silly to believe in curses. But how is it possible that the party that caused so much pain and incompetence (Iraq, Katrina, 6.1% unemployment, the Mortgage mess) is going to win the election? How is that an annoying Hockey mom can be allowed the absorb all the racist attitudes of Americans and make hating Barack Obama (Community Organizer and Radical Chicago Dweller) ok and lead to his defeat? How is it possible that both the Cubs and my White Sox wont make the playoffs?

It must be a curse- or a nightmare.....

Why they Hate Community Organizing.

John McCain stumbled through a speech last night arguing for change? But the Republicans have been running Washington since 1994?

The line of attack in the GOP convention that troubled me the most was their derision of community organizing. I write this as a person who is a few years younger than Barack Obama.

When I was in my mid twenties I worked as a Lay Missioner for the Franciscans in Bolivia and it is the seminal event of my life. I learned amazing things and it made my life better. I got to serve people and learn about another place and it gave me empathy and changed my world-view.

Yet at the convention Rudy Giuliani and Sarah Palin felt it neccessary to deride Barack Obama's time, three years, of service. John McCain's very real service to country is laudable Obama's service to the poor in Chicago is laughable to Palin and Giuliani.

• Are we to dismiss the work of Peace Corp and Americorp volunteers?
• Are we to dismiss people who work with the poor or the homeless?
• Is being a volunteer or community organizer less than say being a lawyer or politician in a small town?

The reason they hate 'community organizing' is because they do not like what happens when it succeeds. If you look at the greatest community organizers in our nation's history they are all hated by people of Palen/Giuliani ilk. In our own Chicago you had people like Jane Addams whose organizing work challenged the exploitation of immigrants. In California Cesar Chavez challenged the exploitation of farm workers. In New York Dorothy Day challenged the materialism of our nation and housed the homeless and clothed the naked. Most spectacularly Martin Luther King changed a nation- organizing people against evil. These people changed society in ways that the people on the floor of the GOP convention resent and they made that very clear this week.

These are all people hated by the Bush-McCain-Palin party because they lift the curtain on who they really care about- the powerful and the in power. The most important thing about the GOP week is not that he nominated a woman or that Mc Cain is a hero- the most important thing is that the Republicans do not believe that people- ordinary people have a right to change the world- that is best left to 'heros' like Giuliani & Palin

A Note from Obama's "Cosmopolitan" Home

So now we know.

• Being the mayor of a small town is more impressive than giving three years of your life as a virtual volunteer when you could be making millions. Being a state senator for 10 years is worth less than being governor for 1.5 years and a BA from Idaho is worth less than a JD from Harvard.
• Now we know that as Rudy Giuliani put it Barack Obama is a "Cosmopolitan" which was word used by the Nazis to describe Jews in the 1930's. I guess his New York values dont fit this world do they?
• The desire of the American people to not be bankrupted by insurance company's profits with some sort of universal healthcare is Socialism.
• The war in Iraq is about 'victory' . Not waste and corruption.
• The Democrats chose not to demonize Muslims by not using the term "Radical Islamic Extremism" but did speak about terrorism- this makes them weak losers.
• We also know that all the terrible things perpetrated by the Bush administration over the past 8 years do not matter because the real reformers are Sarah Palin and John McCain both of whom have been in power for the past 8 years with George W Bush.

Are they kidding?

Are people so narrowminded that they believe that the enemy is 'Big Government'. After Katrina, the Iraq war, Mortgage Crisis, and spiraling healthcare costs the problem is 'big government'?

If small town values mean that we choose to be ignorant of the facts then I hope the "Cosmopolitans" win because we cannot take anymore of this lunacy.

Is the answer to the challenge of China to teach Creationism in our schools? Or to demonize old gay couples that want to go the hospital or buy homes?

The Republicans demonize government so they can steal more from it for their corporate friends just look at the Iraq war, Katrina and the Mortgage Crisis... the American people suffered and the Republican's friends got rich-- who are the reformers?

Just Think About Today

Hatred and Discrimination has always been a part of the American Experience. Bigotry against Catholics, Irish, Italians, Hispanics, Women, Gays, Jews and many others is a large part of our heritage.

No bigotry however is deeper than the trials of African Americans, just say the names- Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Booker T Washington, Joe Louis, Jackie Robinson, Marian Anderson, Jesse Owens, Langston Hughes, Martin Luther King. Think of their struggles think of the fire hoses, the lynchings, the middle passage... and then think about today.

A black man is the Democratic Nominee...

On this day the anniversary of the I Have a Dream Speech a Black man will be the nominee of the Democratic party. This black man's name was put in nomination by the son of Richard J Daley and he was hailed by the party of Jefferson and Jackson. We all sit in a new world a world were being American includes everyone.

Just let all of this sink in- and don't let those who would diminish it say anything...

Gen X Rising

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0808/12763.html

In a post on the Politico it is argued that Barack Obama is the first GenX presidential candidate. Those of us who fit into that generation do not receive the press of our Baby Boomer parents. We have lived of course within the Baby Boomer Psychodrama for our entire lives. It was our role to be the Children who watched the the 1970's from our cribs and playgrounds. It has been our role to dwell with the shadow of 'their' great history and slide along quietly while watching our younger Millennial brothers and sisters take over the world we are the ultimate sandwich generation born during a terrible war and formed during the narcissism of the Baby Boomers perpetual youth.

This is true in Poetry as well as we well know. The fact that we still hark back to debates and arguments between Language poets and the fact that many of the arbiters of poetic taste are boomers lets those of us who are GenX know where we fit into the culture.

Barack Obama embodies our generation. A child of divorce, abandonment and parental narcissism he rose above all that to become confident and to give back in a quiet way. It was in many ways harder to make a difference in the 1970's and 1980's and Barack did that. But in the end those of us born between 1961 and 1980 have a champion and a candidate.

It is fitting that the two baby boomer presidents- Bush and Clinton spent years arguing about their generations' issues. It is now our time- and we have our candidate.

Why are Democrats Such Wimps?

Why are Democrats such wimps?
Why is is that Democrats cannot hit back hard and make the Republicans feel it?

As we speak the Republicans are tearing Barack Obama apart and the perceptions are being placed in people's minds and the Democrats are not fighting back.

I have to say that as a person who began his political life on the Right but whose opinions have changed over time the one thing that I miss about the Republicans is their taste for the jugular.
Forget about feelings or respect the Republicans care about winning and by any means neccessary- maybe the Democrats should learn this lesson?

It has been at least 40 years since the Democrats have punched back against the Republicans in an effective way. (Lyndon Johnson, JFK, before him Harry Truman and FDR). The Democrats have allowed themselves to be marginalized because they have not fought for legitimate issues. When John McCain attacks Barack Obama's moderate stand on taxes as 'tax and spend' why can't the Democrats punch back hard really addressing the issue that the Republicans and their big business friends have been making war on the Middle Class for the past 40 years and this has to change if we are to survive as a nation?

I find it so refreshing to watch a Michael Moore movie because he at least punches back and says the truth about Trade, Racism, Healthcare, War and Guns. Why is it that the Democrats cannot punch back hard and also take the character issues to them? John McCain is a war hero but he is also a product of the Republican lie machine.

This new book about Obama is being edited by Mary Matalin- James Carville's wife. Why are not Democrats protesting in front of their house in New Orleans? Why is Carville allowed to collect the money from the book's sales (Since he is married to Matalin) and why isnt Matalin expected to respond to the lies she edited? Republicans would do this to a Democratic editor. because the Democrats do not have a taste for blood.

John McCain, has a very mixed record on morality and I think his family's morals are more UnAmerican than anything Michelle or Barack Obama has done or said.

• He cheated on his first wife while she was in the hospital- divorcing her for his current wife.
• His current wife Cindy is the daughter of one of the richest men in America but she could not see fit to give any money to her 1/2 sister- who recieved a paltry $10,000 from her father's estate while she recieved millions. Then she proceeded to tell people she is an only child.
• John McCain has repeatedly voted against benefits for our veterans he is part of the cause of what happened at Walter Reed Army Hospital.

John McCain, has a very mixed record on the economy.

• He has supported right to work laws which have resulted in the destruction of our industrial wagebase making cities throughout the nation Ghosttowns. Why is this not an issue?
• He also has supported unsustainable water programs that have caused sprawl development in the Southwest that will in the end need to be bailed out by the Federal Government.
• He first opposed and now supports the Bush tax cuts why is this not an issue?
• He favors taxing health benefits that people now recieve at work. Imagine the cost of this program to the average worker?
• He favors retaining the Bush tax cuts so that we can never pay off the huge debt we have incurred about the Iraq war.
• He wants to throw all American workers into the private healthcare market- thus taking away healthcare for anyone who is sick or has a pre-existing condition.

John McCain's record on the War is Clear

• He wants to defeat evil- everywhere which means more wars not less.
• The surge has been effective- but it is not permanent how do we deal with the fact that Iran is now more powerful because of Mc Cain's positions?
• He first opposed and then supported Torture.

I think that Barack Obama- my candidate-- needs to spend the week with Keith Olbermann of MSNBC. He needs to hit Obama the way Olbermann hits back and he needs to do it squarely in McCain's jaw- and show people the truth.

If he does this 2008 should be a landslide for change and an end to Wimp Democrats. Oh if it was just possible to hear Karl Rove squeal??

August

This is the worst time of the year to be an American. Knowing what I know- that all Italians are at the beach or in the mountains and that they have 30 days of time off it is a sad time to be American with our frenetic lives.

The truth is that our standard of living in the USA is so twisted by our lack of time. It makes us fatter, more stressed and weaker but at least we have the pennant races...

Why Chinese Oppression Matters

http://www.penpoemrelay.org/chinese-writers-in-prison

WANG Xiaoning
Sentence: 10 years in prison plus 2 years deprivation of political rights
Internet writer and dissident, arrested on September 1, 2002 and charged with subversion for articles published online between 2000 and 2002. Wang was sentenced to ten years in prison and two years’ deprivation of political rights on July 25, 2003 after Yahoo! supplied his user information to Chinese authorities. He is currently being held in Beijing No. 2 Prison and has reportedly been tortured.

This is the bio from the Pen Site of just one prisoner of honesty in China. As the Olympics begin today I am thinking only about my friend Mr Shen who is in prison for simply praying an unauthorized rosary in China. As we begin the games it is important to realize that in China poets and writers are doing what we are supposed to do- being prophetic.

Italian Poetry "joyous puzzlement"

http://www.litmuspress.org/pages/aufgabe7.html

I am not unbiased about Aufgabe Magazine- as a way of disclaimer I was the guest editor on Aufgabe 6 and I edited the Brazil Section so I am invested in the journal. If this level of intimacy bothers you click out and don't read my comments.

Aufgabe is a magazine that has noble pretensions. Apart from Circumference and Mandorla few magazines in the United States have any interest in the world of poetry or prose outside of our shores- Aufgabe is a breath of fresh global air.

Aufgabe 7 Featuring a section on Emerging Italian writing is the best issue yet produced. I am going to concentrate in this blogpost on the Italian section mostly because I find it so interesting. The section is edited by Jennifer Scappettone, a professor at our own University of Chicago and a fine poet in her own right. While Jen's poetry can be interesting her work here in Aufgabe is really unique and important.

In her opening essay she uses the term "Joyous Puzzlement" but it is clear in her essay that that puzzlement has led to recognition of a poetry that is at best unknown in the United States. Scappettone has created for contemporary experimental Italian poetry a context that perhaps will lead to presses translating these fine works and exposing them to the poetic class in this country and also among the English Speaking peoples. Perhaps one of the things to come out of Scappettone's work will be a renewed dialogue among the poets of the Italian diaspora in the Americas- of which Scappettone and myself are a part- and Italian innovative poets whose work does not get the pages it should in its home country?

Scappettone's editorial choices are really interesting- she has older poets like Andrea Zanzotto who represents a profound localism and the use of dialects and also Amelia Rosselli, who ranks with the greatest poets of the 20th century in any language. Scappettone also includes postmodernists like Gherardo Bortolotti and Marco Giovenale whose work would be winning prizes and plaudits if it were published in the United States for its exciting innovation.

The issue as a whole gives the reader a taste of what is going on in Italy and for those of us who read Italian it is a pleasure to see the beautiful language played out in its original and in its English translation on the page. Most American poets know nothing about Italian or any other global poetics I hope that I can shame them into buying this magazine expanding their minds a bit?

The Poetry section of Aufgabe 7 is reliably interesting.

There are new poems by Sarah Mangold and Jennifer Chapis along with two poems by the late kari edwards which makes one want to morn more for her loss. There is real depth in this section and it is a good introduction what is happening poetically in allot of place. The review section has some interesting stuff include a review of Kenning Editions publication of Hannah Weiner's open house which Patrick Durgin edited. If you don't have this Weiner book then shame on you. There is also an essay by Danish poet Pia Tafdrup on the Medellin poetry conference that is illuminating.

More often than not poets in the USA do not read enough- if you need a book for the beach this summer or to read on the train- Aufgabe 7 gives you the reason to stop watching baseball for a little while and read something filled with joyous puzzlement.

Immediate Empire an Intimate Collaboration

I got an email from Catherine Daly of I.E. Press, my publisher, that the new book that I authored with Waltraud Haas is coming out. This is very exciting but the process of creating this book was interesting and at time very tough in an intimate way.

Most poets are lone wolves. They create alone and they process alone and they work alone. Immediate Empire is a collaboration. Waltraud Haas is my wife and life partner but we have not collaborated before artistically except on book covers so working on this together was an experience because Waltraud is also a solitary in her art so where the nexus occured makes the book all that more intimate and for me as a poet interesting.

I wrote Immediate Empire from 2003-2005 and it is based around some themes. One of those is Leni Reifenstahl and Fascist collaboration. I have always found Fascist/Nazi intellectuals fascinating. Heidegger, Celine, Marinetti, Pound, Nolde and Reifenstahl were artists of the highest order and unlike most of their friends and colleagues they chose to believe in Fascism or Nazism. What possessed these keen intellects to believe these evils? Normally intellectuals who believe in Marxism get a free pass (Which is Unfortunate since Marxism is simply a different form of Totalitarianism and is equally murderous) but those who believed in Fascism become pariahs. I am fascinated however in the parallels to Fascism and Nazism that exist today in our world and how ready we are to believe the big lie.

Immediate Empire in its poetry is about this- but the visual art is something else. Waltraud chose to create a series of paintings called Origens. These are not synthetic works like my poems but organic works. The paintings come from Traudi's sense of art as sucher rather than razorblade. It was quite a challenge to fuse these two things into one and I proud we could do it in many ways it is a homage to our whole relationship over the past 12 years.

Traudi's paintings are really something and we are hoping to find a gallery here in Chicago to be able to bring Immediate Empire alive with poetry and art in one spot.

1998-2008 Ten Years Back in the USA

2008 marks ten years since I returned to the USA from living overseas. The anniversary of my return was in March but I have just been thinking about that time in my life now for some reason?

In 1990 I graduated from college and I floundered around a little and then decided to become a Lay Missionary with the Franciscan Mission Service in 1993. "missionary" is a charged word so I usually use volunteer which is really what I did. I worked in the men's prison of San Sebastian in Cochabamba and in every book of poetry I write that place is part of the story. The prison is still there the same I guess and it was formative for me. Men and their families living in wooden boxes in the worst conditions- but overcoming that to have some hope.

Bolivia is a great place. For a morning person like me Bolivia is the best the people get up early and go to bed early and the days are filled with activity and action. I learned to be poet in Bolivia working with the inmates for whom poetry was really important quotes from Vallejo and Neruda came off their lips like sports scores. I could see how poetry could transform a place and it has stayed with me. My entire life now hinges on Bolivia- before Bolivia I was one person and after I changed into the person I am now. After three years in Bolivia I went to Brazil to work- not as a volunteer but as as a business person.

Brazil is everything Bolivia is not. Bolivia is austerely beautiful and conservative, Brazil is sumptuous and outrageous, Bolivia is Indigenous, Brazil is Polyglot. But I fell in love with Brazil and of course I met Traudi there. I spent most of the time from 1994 when I arrived in Bolivia and 2003 working or living with Latin America. I have travelled or lived in over 22 nations and the truth is I feel more at home there than here. After I left Brazil in 1998 I continued to work with South America and to translate poetry and to engage with that world.

So now in 2008 ten years removed from my return in an election year I wonder about the reality of our lives? The truth is that I have allot less when I lived in Bolivia and Brazil and I was happier. Simplicity does often breed contentment and that was true for me. Waltraud my wife an I have committed to return to Brazil to live and when that days comes it will be returning home for me- as much as my return to the US in 1998 was a return home then...

calm before the storm

The Internet and the Blogs are filled with tumult and terror over the state 0f the world's economy. These fears do not bother many poets because they dont work in the economy but this terror is real. The truth is however that it has been many years since Americans have had to worry about the state of the economy but like a house that has been eaten by termites America is weaker and we are wondering.

One of my friends who also happens to be a poet Mark Tardi is leaving Chicago to work in Lodz, Poland for a year as a Fulbright Scholar. In Chicago we become immune to thinking of Poland as a foreign land since there are so many Poles here but Lodz has a history worth repeating. It was a great center of Yiddish learning and during World War 2 it was home to the Lodz Ghetto one of the worst Ghettoes in the Nazi system. Today Lodz is a cultural capital in the new Poland.

I think that this is what makes Chicago different than New York. In New York the predominant groups are Jews, Italians & Puerto Ricans. These are all outward looking groups with a history of commerce and expansiveness. In Chicago the predominant groups are Poles/Slavs, Irish, Germans, Blacks and Mexicans. What all the Chicago groups have in common is hard work and strong spirituality. It makes the two cities feel different. Chicago is a stay at home city, New York is a go out city. Chicago is a city of Home owners, New York a city of renters.

This also applies to our Presidential Election. Barack Obama is a Chicagoan. He chose to live here and Chicago for all its culture and dynamism is a really big small town this informs allot of what he believes in. John McCain is a hero but he is not REALLY from Arizona like Barry Goldwater was he is from the Navy.

Kay Ryan is Poet Laureate

Kay Ryan is the new Poet Laureate of the United States. To listen to the few critics left in poetry she is an innovator but can any poet who is a follower of Ted Kooser be an innovator? I realize that the post of Poet Laureate does not mean much but when you think about the many poets in the United States of her age that could be chosen as Poet Laureate you wonder if the goal of the Library of Congress's goal is to put us all asleep.

Is Obama a Soft Liberal? or is he Ronald Reagan on the Left?

http://michellemalkin.com/2008/07/16/educating-the-ignorant-kumbaya-

Unlike many on the Left I like to read Right Wing Blogposts- just so I can get mad at them. Michelle Malkin is one of my favorites because she is so ridiculous. She is a Philippine-American, whose parents are immigrants. Yet she had argued that the interning of Japanese Americans was justified during World War 2 and she has also argued for deportations of millions of illegals. I am just glad Michelle's parents got in before their daughter discovered native ism .

Right Wing pundits almost always avail themselves of all liberal society she went to Oberlin College- and married outside her Religion but her Right wing bonafides are perfect.. She makes money feeding the Right Wing hate machine and making those less 'educated' than her feel better about their odd ideas.

The latest diatribe from Ms. Malkin is posted above. She asserts that Barack Obama is some sort of Lefty Social Worker and that he believes that if we just talk to Osama Bin Laden or if the 'terrorists' can just come to America all would be well. She asserts that Obama is a Kumbaya singing dope who is wandering down the garden path and will be taken advantage of by the big bad terrorists.

The truth is that the dope is Mr Toughness in the White House who has kept us 'safe' for the past 7 years.

• The worst Terror attacks occurred when Mr Toughness- George W Bush was President. These terror attacks continued in Spain and Bali all under the watchful eye of W. No Democrat or Leftist allowed these attacks to happen W did. If George Bush and Condoleeza Rice had just taken the Intelligence seriouslyit might not have happened.
• When the attacks occurred the entire world was on our side. We had a moment when we could have rolled back the appeal of Militant Islamic Fundamentalism. But our government under Mr Toughness chose instead of trying to gather the nations together to oppose the real threat of Islamic Terrorism chose instead to Invade Iraq. Saddam Hussein was a bad man, but he was no worse than Robert Mugabe or Sudan's president Umar Hassan Ahmad al-BASHIR but we did not invade those nations. We chose to invade an Arab country, occupy that country, and then proceeded to run the most bumbling occupation of that country. This caused our reputation in the world to drop to new lows and to give Islamic Terrorists their best recruiting tool.
• Along with the above failures, George W Bush continued to support his oil friends and oil magnates around the world. W did not prepare us for terrorist attacks by removing their funding source, which is predominantly Western capital buying oil. That money is used to finance terrorism. He in fact continued to support regimes that support terrorism like Saudi Arabia and that use our money to finance their groups. W's level of incompetence led us to the mess we are in now.
• Finally, most in the Republicans power structure are not concerned with American interests. They are concerned with the interests of multi-national corporations. Tom Friedman in his book The World is Flat talks about the two classes of people one of those being the globalized class and the other those left behind. The Right in the USA is the Trojan horse for the globalized class. They use 'moral' issues and patriotism to create a great diversion for the middle class in America- so while we are worrying about the Flag or Gay Marriage- they are taking care of their friends and continuing to destroy American freedoms and American jobs. This great game of evasion and delusion is central to their project.

Barack Obama scares the Right in so many ways. Barack Obama is the Left's version of Ronald Reagan. Before 1980 no one would have ever thought that we would "de regulate" our economy it was too radical. We have now reaped what was sewn then with the Airline industry for example. Before 1980 Religion was a private matter in the USA and no one would have believed that one's 'relationship' with Jesus would be a campaign issue. The agenda of the Right was made palatable by Ronald Reagan.

The Right knows that Barack Obama can do this for Progressive Issues. A person with Obama's skills just might win the war of ideas with militant Islam and change the global debate. A person with Obama's skills just might convince Americans that we can solve social problems together as a people and deliver health care security to everyone thus taking away a major issue from the Right? A person like Obama just might be able to assert that we have more in common than we have that separates us and that the old wedge issues don't work anymore?

So it is not about Kumbaya-it is about Ronald Reagan and the fact that the Democrats in 2008 have found their Reagan the realignment has begun.

Obama? ignorant and soft? Or the True Realist?

http://michellemalkin.com/2008/07/16/educating-the-ignorant-kumbaya-candidate/

Stopping you in your Tracks

One of the most valid critiques of Language Poetry and much of Post-Language poetry is that it is about nothing. Or more directly it is about a crazy Marxist theory that has become uninteresting, didactic and authoritarian.

While I do not concur with this critique always- I often find myself wanting more meat and less foam in my poetry and so much of the Avant Garde is foam. It is nice sometimes to see that a poetry has more to it then just irony and theory.

I wrote on this blog that the greatest poets of my generation are women. But this might also be said for the generation right before mine. Poets like Alice Notley and Barbara Guest are certainly as great as their male contemporaries and someone who I think ranks with the most important poets of current times is Harryette Mullen.

I have read poems here and there before but I bought Recyclopedia which is a collection of three books, Trimmings, S*Perm**K*T and Muse and Drudge and brought it with me on a recent retreat to New Mexico. I brought allot of poetry with me- Dante in Italian, St John of the Cross, Julianna Spahr, Jennifer Moxley, Simone Muench and some others but Mullen's book rose to the top like a Gnocchi in boiling water just asking to be read.

"two shapely legs stretch then run. Sheer magic, a box div
ided. One saw a woman cut in half, waving incredible feet"

P 10 Trimmings

lines like this just wait in the woods for you and then jump you leaving you injured and bleeding in the same way that one feels when they have been violated. The lines are lyrical but they are also innovative. There is something there but there is also-- not.

slandered and absurdly slurred
wife divorced has-been
last man on earth hauls ass to the ash can
his penis flightier than his word

come on! Could you emasculate and then challenge in any other way than poetry? The work is so clean and so challenging. Mullen does not wait for you to figure it out-- she draws you in slowly and then puts the ice pick right into your forehead.

I began to bring this book with me to prayers with the monks and after the psalms and the magnificats I read them- aloud in the monastery's chapel and they melded well with David and John' Gospel because they are also truth not facts.

What is Wrong With AWP??

AWP the annual meeting of poets, writers and the writing programs seems to be off the rails in their panel decision making.

AWP benefits from the explosion of Creative Writing Programs. It is a good place to meet and network and occasionally to see friends. One of the areas that many attendees cannot understand is how they decide on panels?

Next year's AWP is here in Chicago and I was on two panel proposals. The first was co-sponsored by the Poetry Center of Chicago's director Francesco Levato and included John Tipton (Chicago Poetry Project), Paul Hoover (Long time Famous Chicago poet), Larry Sawyer, (Animates the Myopic Series, & Simone Muench a very well known Chicago area poet. I am frankly flumuxed at why this panel was rejected? AWP is happening in Chicago and this panel on Chicago poetry seemed perfect for the event.

What is wrong with AWP??

The second panel proposal I was on included poets Eileen Tabios, Sheila Murphy and Catherine Daly and it was focused on Poets and work. Our goal with this panel was to talk about what it means to be a poet and not to be an academic but rather to be working in other fields but still engaged with poetry. Again, I am flumuxed at this panel's rejection. Most MFA students will never get jobs in Academia so why not examine the world as it is??

I have to say that the rejection of these panels and the Chicago poets who were involved with them does not send a message of inclusion. I have to say that there are allot of Chicago poets who are dismayed at the rejection of the Chicago: The Intersection of Innovation panel that Francesco Levato proposed. It makes me wonder why they are coming to Chicago?

Another beef I have with AWP is there complete lack of outreach to the Chicago literary community. Who is on the organizing committee? I don't know one poet in Chicago who is involved in the planning and I know allot of Chicago poets. I know at least 25 or 30 Chicago area poets who would be good contacts for them. I for one work in Event Management and would be willing to help free of charge to help them with their efforts.

I also think that AWP'sof exclusion of poets and writers who are not academics is narrow minded. Most MFA graduates will work outside academia. I think that what is called for is an organization that is focused on poets and writers and not writing programs. Most writing programs are cash cows for Universities but they need to realize that writing is bigger than what they are doing.

I would be interested inhearing from people whose panels were accepted. I have been told about many other panels that have real merit that were also rejected.

Who makes these decisions?

Who is a man behind the curtain?

Chicago Anguish-Chicago Baseball

Forget about poetry and politics. Forget about other things it is mid July and Chicago matters in Baseball.

To be a Chicago baseball fan is to share a collective anguish.

Cubs fans are rich and tragic. They are kind of like a beautiful young woman who get cancer at 25 and dies unfulfilled.

Sox fans are less rich and more angry. They are kind of like a fine cabinetmaker who had had a hand chopped off and wonders what might have been?

Only once have our two tragedies met in the World Series, 1906 102 years ago. That is so long ago that Los Angeles had only 67,000 residents and Model T cars were the latest technology to be developed.

Having said all of this it is July 7th and our two anguished teams are in first place. Each day all of us- fans of the north and south open our papers and see that we are still on top.

Chicago our great city is the best in many things. You can keep New York or Los Angeles-- if you dont know the corner of Clark and Addison or 35th and Shields you do not know what anguish feels like. New Yorkers swagger, Los Angelinos coif Chicagoans are filled with dread that we are not good enough because of our two baseball tragedies.

Boston, New York--- maybe only Brooklynites could understand the way we both feel.
and we hate each other also by the way. The hatred between Cubs and Sox fans is old and deep but like an abusive couple we understand each other and when it is cold and dark in February we react the same way- yearning for sun and baseball.

We are the teams of Ron Santo and Minnie Minoso of Ernie Banks and Luke Appling.

We are the city of mud and muck and home made mountains of architecture. But we are still in first place. Could it be? Could we play each other in October. I have been graced with a World Series in my lifetime for my team in 2005. But it would be something to play THEM in a World Series. To have the whole thing to ourselves-- Cubs-Sox World Series, President Obama......

Nelson Algren is slapping Richard Daley somewhere and Ida B Wells is giving Marshall Field what for....

Could the Tragic Cubs win?
Will they Beat us?

Anguish will not allow such speculation.

Independence Day

The Fourth of July has always been a strange day for me. I have had some major things happen to me on that day.

In 1994 I was living in Cochabamba and July 4th was the first day I began work in the Prison of San Sebastian. This was a transformative place for me in life and it was my own declaration of independence.

But by the far the best 4ths I have ever had were spent in Pinzolo-val Genova the hometown of my Grandfather celebrating with the Grinders.
When Michelle Obama talks about being able to take care of a family on a working class income she is talking about a certain kind of person- someone like my Grandfather Rinaldo Vanzo.

He immigrated to New York in 1920 and worked on Houston Street as a Grinder- that is he sharpened knives. Most of the Molete in the USA came from one place, val Rendena in Trento. This valley was famous for two things Knife Grinders and Catholic Missionaries.

In the town of Pinzolo the entire tourist infrastructure was built by returning Molete who made their money in Detroit or New York or Chicago and today companies like Cozzini in Chicago are traded on the New York Stock Exchange. Pinzolo today has a monument to the grinders who returned to Italy after years away and introduced so much to that region of Italy. They also gave so much to their adopted nations.

These grinders went to the US, Australia, South America and Canada and they would return to Italy and gather on July 4th to eat Polenta of course. They all were from the same towns but they spoke english with accents from Boston, New York, Chicago, New Orleans and Australia.
As a child I was amazed by these men (they were all men). I was amazed by their optimism and their solidness. There was nothing weak or flaccid about them. For me they will always be America.

My grandfather spoke Italian, German, Yiddish and Hungarian and his clients were European, Asian and African American. the grinders did not care as long as they could sharpen your knives, and supply you with cutting tools. They also grew to understand that every person's culture was special and had value. I grew up eating Jewish Deli and Tub Butter, Hungarian pancakes and the best fried Chicken all gifts from my Grandfather's clients. All were treated with respect and were valued by him.

When my grandfather died in 1980 he was a wealthy man- not just in money but in friends and family. The attendees of his funeral were a United Nations of restaurant owners and people whose faces were as different as the colors of the world. He is buried in North Arlington, New Jersey his coffin faces New York and he has a great view of the city he loved and where he made his fortune.

His story is lost in today's America because there were no wedge issues for him. He did not hate anyone and he only wanted to partake in what everyone else was doing. He was without bigotries or elitism. When Michelle Obama talks about the solidness of her father I think of my grandfather Rinaldo Vanzo for whom I am named and look for the America where someone like him can be more while taking everyone with him. That is why we need a change in America- so the next wave of Rinaldo Vanzo's can build their lives and enjoy what America really is about.

Comfortable Poetics

Early this year I went to a play by Carla Harryman at the U of Chicago. The event was like most other poetic events- lots of piercings, tweed, and odd handbags and glasses.

I went with Garin Cycholl who is a fine poet and someone who writes and risks. One of the things I love about Garin's work- and our press Cracked Slab Books is doing his newest book Rafetown Georgics-is that the work is both opaque and subject driven. It has history and is concerned about big things.

The Harryman play itself was interesting except that one of the 'actors' gave his lines to an audience member to read creating a kind of farce that destroyed the tension of the play. The lack of seriousness on the part of this 'actor' has caused me to think for a long time about seriousness and comfort and our poetry. I kept thinking "how dare this child desecrate what is happening here" yet this is part now of our poetic landscape.

There are many great poets writing today who write innovative things and do it well. Having said that the depth of their risk and the degree of their comfort makes the work less compelling. I see it here in Chicago allot. You have poets who are living the poetic lifestyle and writing good work. But something is not right and then you find out- oh they have a trust fund or some other thing removes the real risk. Their writing of poetry is a fashion and later in life they will move onto something else they are not that invested in the work.

I think that there has been a profound division in poetry between risk and comfort. I think that this began in the 1960's and 1970's as a reaction to the Beats and other poets who took politics and injustice as themes. There has been allot of talk here in Chicago recently about Language Poetry because a few Chicagoans ventured to Maine to a conference on the 1970's. I have always thought that Language Poetry while aesthetically very interesting is a poetry of comfort. I mean by this that it is a kind of inside joke that subverts via language but in the end is so opaque that college professors and cognoscenti are the only ones engaged with its nuance.

This is not to dismiss innovative modes of poetry, collage and parataxis are really important to me as a poet- but I have always wondered if Language was a reaction to the 1960's when everything was political?

Pound wanted to write history. Duncan wrote a kind of poetic theology. I always wondered what was the 'big' thing that Language and by inference the entire Post Language poetic landscape wants to write?

Is it irony? Is that the big thing?

I know many readers of this blog have sat through sheer opaqueness in a poetry reading. Once I sat through an entire poem using Marxism and Buddhism as its base using innovative modes. After a while the poem became so much of an inside baseball exercise that I did not know what to make of it? I read it and read it again. and again... nothing. Just artifice and inside jokes and little snickers- on the whole not satisfying it was kind of like he wrote the poem for his friends and the rest of us were just out of luck.

Does anyone else wonder if all this poetry is just opaque to protect the poet from having to deal with society? I am often drawn back to Akhmatova's life thinking about what a poet is supposed to be. There is an image of Akhmatova writing to Stalin to achieve the release of her husband and son. Stalin- this is Stalin- is moved and releases them for a time. The power of who Akhmatova was for that society moved him to act. I also think about Celan and his work and its quiet- turbulent challenge to the world around him. The fact that Celan of all poets of the past century tore open the carcass of the world and laid bare the entrails.

I know that it is passe to want poetry to be heroic or have a big project. But, there is still something compelling about big ideas and big artistic desires. There is a reason that when I drive to work each day and pass Frank Lloyd Wright's home that the street is a better place for having that building rather than say a Popeye's Chicken or a gas station.