When Dr. Andy Jones asked me to read a poem toward the end of our conversation for his radio show this past Wednesday afternoon, I had not yet picked one out of my book from the What Book Collective. By chance, the book opened to “Portrait in McVicker’s Garden”; afterwards, I realized that I would enjoy linking up my reading on Thursday with my conversation with Andy by starting the public reading with that poem. The set-list fell together quite easily then, since I knew that the obvious segue was to read a poem that inspired one of my wife’s paintings, “In the Ocean of Nothingness.” (Question of the day: Whereas everyone knows the term for a poem that is based on a piece of visual art, what is the word for visual art based on a poem?) The third poem I chose was also a logical choice: one that I had written two days earlier called “Poem for a Painter,” which is an ekphrastic poem about a painting for which I gave Linda the suggestion of embedding it in a grid.

The rest of the set list:
“Art of Poetry”
“Vallejo”
“The Restoration”
“How to Play Ping-Pong with a Mirror”
“Pancho’s Tacos”
“Milk”
“How to Quit Writing Poetry”
“Big Band, Slow Dance”
“A Vision”
“Why the Heart Never Develops Cancer”

What would have been one of a half-dozen other alternative sets, you might ask?

“Death’s Real Job”
“Eye Chart for an Orbiting Space Station”
“Cro-Magnon”
“Dream Drain”
“Manifesto 1984
“Terrorism: the View from Century City”
“The Ghoul Convention:
“Rules for Building a Labyrinth”
“Real Days Off”
“Renaming the Bridge”
“Underaged”
“Wrinkles”
“Tomato Skins”
“The Bulldozer”
“The Timing Chains”
“The Scanvengers of Paradox”
“Bittersweet Kaleidoscope”
“The Trolley Problem”
“The Headwaters of Nirvana”

Someday I’d like to do a reading that featured only poems written between 1970 and 1977. Each of the above lists includes one or two poems from that period. Are there enough poems from my earliest years that could hold their own as equivalents of my more recent work? While I have enough work from my long poem in progress, “REMIGES,” to enable me to give two completely separate readings just from that portion of my total writing, it’s the question of the earliest writing that I want to test out at some point in the next two years.

****************

Launched in 2011, the Poetry Night Reading Series in Davis is held on the first and third Thursday of every month at the John Natsoulas Gallery (521 First Street, Davis CA). Recent readers have included Richard Loranger, DR Wagner, Dave Boles, and California Poet Laureate Lee Herrick. The series is hosted by Dr. Andy Jones, the poet laureate emeritus of Davis.

Other past readers include the late Francisco X. Alarcón, Joshua Clover, Sandra Gilbert, Brad Henderson, Pamela Houston, Clarence Major, Sandra McPherson, and Alan Williamson, as well as many regional and traveling poets, including Molly Peacock, Jane Hirshfield, Dana Gioia, and James Ragan.

Future readers will include Joe Wenderoth, Kim Stanley Robinson, and Julia Connor,

November 17, 2023

Virtual readings via Zoom will no doubt continue to enhance a dialogue between contemporary poets and their audiences for the rest of the decade; but poetry readings with “live” audiences in which listeners are physically sharing the same room at a specific geographical conjunction not dependent on IP are once again the dominant form of poetry presentations. In the past four months, for instance, I’ve been part of a half-dozen live poetry events. The first was organized by Lynne Thompson, and was called “A Day of Poetry in L.A.” at the Downtown Public Library. That was followed by a pair of readings at Page Against the Machine, the first of which celebrated the BEAT NOT BEAT anthology, and the second was a reading with Long Beach legend Fred Voss.
Then, sandwiched in between a reading a the Sacramento Poetry Center in mid-October and this past Thursday night’s reading at the John Natsoulas Gallery in David, California, I read with Michael C. Ford at Dizzy on Vinyl records store on East Seventh Street in Long Beach. In contrast, I’ve only been part of one Zoom event, which was a celebration of the poetry of Harry E Northup broadcast by Beyond Baroque.

Regardless of this swing back to in-person events, the internet is allowing cultural workers to complement the live events with recorded materials that are easily accessible. The organizer and host of the reading in Davis, Professor Andy Jones, interviewed me the afternoon before, and has posted the interview as a podcast.

You can find it at:

https://www.buzzsprout.com/1912726/13982763

Thank you, Andy, for a chance to share my work with your audience.

Paul Vangelisti recently gave a reading at Beyond Baroque, along with Vincent Katz, under the title of “Urbanity’s Hounds.” You can find this reading on-line at the following link:

Before you watch it, however, I would urge you to read the just published interview with Paul which was conducted by David Garyan in Italya year ago.

https://interlitq.org/blog/2023/11/13/interlitqs-californian-poets-interview-series-paul-vangelisti-poet-translator-editor-and-journalist-interviewed-by-david-garyan/

I’ve read Paul’s work for over 50 years, and have heard him speak about his early years as a poet and translator many times, but never have I encountered a conversation that so candidly enfolds a poet’s personal recollections with an examination of the poetics of translation. One new thing I learned from this interview is how Paul uses Italian to help reorient himself when the initial version in English reaches a point of perplexed indecision.

While I myself never attempted to become a published translator, I have spent time translating work from the French by several writers, the first of whom was Jules Laforgue. Would I have even thought about becoming a poet if I hadn’t assiduously worked on a poem by LaForgue in the Fall, 1966? All of the poets I’ve helped in my life have no idea how much they owe to my French teacher that semester, who left me enchanted with the capacity of languages to intertwine.

Wednesday, November 8, 2023

Beyond Baroque, back in the glory days of small press print culture, used to mail out a calendar that one could tape to one’s kitchen wall or refrigerator door. I haven’t received one in the mail for quite a few years, which only serves to remind me of how much older I am than Beyond Baroque. If I had been born in 1968, the year of BB’s founding by George Drury Smith, I would be 55; but I first showed up at its workshop in the Fall of 1971, as the recently appointed poetry editor of BACHY magazine, so you can figure out from there what a tortuous path it’s been.

What is especially impressive about its current programming is how it is keeping in touch with its progenitors. This coming Friday, the reading series will feature Exene Cervenka and Jack Skelley, both of whom had poems in my anthology, POETRY LOVES POETRY. Exene’s journey as a poet is one of the extraordinary parts of Beyond Baroque’s history and I wish I could be there in person to hear her read along with Jack, who at one point also formed a band called PLANET OF TOYS with Beyond Baroque poet BOB FLANAGAN. Exene, of course, was co-founder of the band, X, with John Doe, whose memoir UNDER THE BIG BLACK SUN provides a poignant recollection of a decade that was more both more hopeful and more daunting than many care to acknowledge.

Kim Rosenfeld also started at the Beyond Baroque workshop. My recollection is that she was only 15 years old when she first dropped in and caught everyone off-guard with poems so full of grace and simmering poise that one suspected she had been assigned a muse three times her age. She moved to to New York City, where she has equally impressed her audiences.

Here are the details:
MAXIMUM RETURN: Exene Cervenka, Kim Rosenfeld, Jack Skelley
Friday, November 10, 8:00 PM PST
In person at Beyond Baroque and Live on YouTube

The following weekend is a celebration of poetry that deserves a larger paradigm than “festival.” One would be justified in trying to figure out a way to camp out in the nearby parking lots so that one could stay there round the clock!

I’ll be coming back from giving a reading in Davis, California when this gets underway, so I’m not sure how much of it I will be able to attend, but I hope to see you there for part of it.

Onward!

SoCal Poetry Festival
November 17-19, 2023
In person at Beyond Baroque and Live on YouTube

The festival opens with Terrance Hayes, Mimi Tempestt, Luis J. Rodriguez, Sesshu Foster, Pam Ward, and Laurel Ann Bogen reading as Beyond Baroque celebrates Wanda Coleman by renaming its theater in her honor. Festival highlights include the debut of original commissioned work by former U.S. Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera, Safia Elhillo, and Marcelo Hernandez Castillo, plus readings by Sally Wen Mao, féi hernandez, Dana Gioia, Truong Tran, J. Jennifer Espinoza, Muriel Leung, Katie Ford, Taz Ahmed, and many more.

Other programs include a panel on experimental poetics featuring Michael Davidson, Will Alexander, Diane Ward, and others; a bilingual conversation moderated by Sonia Guiñasca, featuring poets included in Donde Somos Humanos/Somewhere We Are Human Authentic Voices on Migration, Survival, and New Beginnings; and a reading of Iranian poetry in translation curated by PEN America and featuring Frieda Afary, Sheida Mohamadi, Majid Naficy, and other poets involved in the Woman Life Freedom Movement. Literary showcases have been curated by Graywolf Press, Lambda Literary, Huizache, Air/Light, Tuesday Night Project, World Stage Press, and Inlandia Institute. Amanda Ackerman leads a workshop on plant poetics, while Mimi Tempestt, William Archila, and Marcelo Hernandez Castillo offer generative workshops.

FICTION WORKSHOP (MONDAY NIGHT, FREE)

Raquel Baker earned a PhD in English Literary Studies from the University of Iowa, specializing in Postcolonial Studies and 20th- and 21st-century African literatures in English, and an MFA in Creative Writing from Mills College. Baker is currently an Assistant Professor of Postcolonial and Transnational Literatures at California State University Channel Islands, teaching courses on creative writing and contemporary African literatures. She has published poetry in Africology and The Arrow; fiction in Enculturation, The Daily Palette, The Womanist, and Crux; and nonfiction in Little Village.

POETRY WORKSHOP
The West Coast’s longest-running free poetry workshop welcomes new and seasoned poets to share new work and provide feedback. Please be prepared to share one poem. This Zoom workshop is currently facilitated by James Fujinami Moore. Please sign up for each workshop session at least 24 hours in advance of the meeting, and you will be contacted with instructions on how to join the meeting.

James Fujinami Moore’s debut poetry collection is indecent hours (Four Way Books, 2022), winner of the GLCA New Writers Award in Poetry and finalist for the Golden Poppy’s Martin Cruz Smith Award & the Lambda Literary Award in Bisexual Poetry. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Asimov’s Science Fiction, Barrow Street’s 4×2, The Brooklyn Rail, Guesthouse, Jet Fuel Review, The Margins, the Pacifica Literary Review, and Prelude. He has received fellowships from Poets House, Bread Loaf, and the Frost Place, and received his MFA from Hunter College in 2016. He lives in Los Angeles.

Sunday, November 5, 2023

I had to get my driver’s license renewed recently; apparently, because I was turning 76 years old, the bureaucracy of the State of California believed that my knowledge of the driving laws needed to be tested. With Steve Lopez’s column about the process in mind, I studied the handbook thoroughly, only to end up taking the DMV’s eLearning course test instead and working my way through it with only one wrong answer.

After my new license arrived yesterday, I immediately checked the expiration date: my current trajectory has me still teaching at CSU Long Beach in 2028, so it looks like Professor Mohr’s knowledge of speed limits will once again be subjected to the scrutiny of the DMV on-line testing system in the not too distant future. By then, I hope to be teaching only in the spring semester, so I should have plenty of time to review the handbook and get prepared for the zig-zag of trick questions.

In the meantime, I wonder if there’s any chance that my next new license might not feature an image that should be accompanied by a trigger warning. It’s not a new image. I just checked my old license and the iconic gold prospector image associated with California is featured on that one, too.

Say, what?

I know that people are tired of “political correctness,” but I am going to speak up anyway. What does the recitation of “land acknowledgements” mean if the State of California can brazenly subject its residents to a reminder of a period in which the indigenous people of California were murdered and robbed of their land? How does the State of California have the nerve to subject the handful of descendants of that genocide to carrying around a legal document that valorizes that iniquity?

This is an outrage. Now I realize that other, infinitely more egregious outrages are being committed right now, and that the invasion of Ukraine has caused enough sorrow there to need a thousand years to subside; and that the invasion of Gaza by Israel, as retaliation for the mass slaughter of women and children in early October, will only perpetuate the cycle of vindictive justice. Deliberating killing non-combatants, which Israel knows full well it is doing, is a war crime no different from what Hamas has done. A cease-fire is long overdue, as are the murder trials of extremist settlers who believe that they can murder Arabs in cold blood with impunity. The unlikelihood of anyone, whether they be Hamas leadership and its rank and file executioners or the marauding network of those in Israel who believe in perpetual expansion, being brought to judicial reckoning is almost certainly 100 percent. The non-existence of any succor in this situation is almost more than I can allow myself to acknowledge in any degree. The punitive rage of both sides seems more interested in targeting those who want the shared consciousness of all human beings to be the first priority, and I can only hope that my profile is low enough not to warrant some variant of a fatwa or imposition of a demand to resign my job.

With that said, let us consider how the image of the prospector on the California driver’s license shows the sifting pan in his hands to be tilted directly alongside the image of the driver’s head. This image is in the “background” of the license, but it suggests exactly what is happening with AI. Our minds are being mined for knowledge, and the gold of social control is being stored in the vaults of a coded cloud. If this is not yet officially delineated by the legal allies of Silicon Valley in the California state legislature, then it is only a matter of time before it comes to pass. The image on the driver’s license is merely a proleptic meme.

TWO POETS – BILL MOHR will have the honor of reading
with MICHAEL C. FORD
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 2023
7:30 p.m.
Dizzy on Vinyl Records
3004 East Seventh Street
(between Redondo and Temple Avenue)
Long Beach, CA 90804
MICHAEL C. FORD — The legendary poet of the Spoken Word Movement
(LANGUAGE COMMANDO — Grammy nominated recording; EMERGENCY EXITS: Pulitzer nomination; LOOK EACH OTHER IN THE EARS)
Accompanied by live music
FREE (along with refreshments!)

Monday, October 23, 2023

Here are some of the people and subjects I have written about in this blog during the past few years, wit a few occasional contributions by guest writers. Reviewing this list takes my mind briefly off the fact that the Department of Motor Vehicles has outdone itself again in providing mediocre service to those whose taxes support its ineptitude. This time, a “major hardware catastrophe” has led to a complete and total shutdown of 100 offices across the state, including the one in Long Beach, where I have now twice gone to get my license renewed. No one at the DMV, of course, will accept any responsibility for this disaster, nor will anyone associated with this collapse pay any penalty to compensate those who face more than just “inconvenience,” but actual loss of money and professional reputation.

Hold-Outs: The Los Angeles Poetry Renaissance, 1948-1992 by Bill Mohr (University of Iowa Press, 2011)

Doug Knott — Poet, Actor, Producer — R.I.P.
Amy Uyematsu (1947-2023)
Sesshu Foster on Amy Uyematsu
Chatterton’s Bookstore: The Legendary Forerunner to Skylight Books
Papa Bach Bookstore – Los Angeles AND Jackson Hole, Wyoming
“Spin, Spider, Spin” – Patty Zeitlin’s Songs for Children
Brian Jones and the Fiftieth Anniversary of “The Last Time”
“He, Leo: The Life and Poetry of Lew Welch” by Ewan Clark
Murray Mednick’s THE COYOTE CYCLE — The Documentary Film
Paul Vangelisti Reviews “OUTLAW THEATRE”
Tim Reynolds, Poet and Translator (1936 – 2022)
Linda Albertano (1952-2022) and Jean-Luc Godard
Anacapa Review’s Third Issue
“The John Ford Chapel” — a poem by Harry Northup
The Garden City Horse Sculpture
Barbara Maloutas (1945-2023)
Homage to Tina Turner (1939-2023) (by David E. James)
Mark Weiss: “A Suite of Dances” (forthcoming from Shearsman)
Songwriter Poets in Search of Vinyl Classics
Kate Braverman (1949-2019): Poet and Novelist
Laurence Goldstein — Poet, Scholar, Professor, Editor (1943-2023)
Harry Northup’s POETRY HOUR (MPTF): LINKS TO SELECTED SHOWS
“A Day of Poetry at the Downtown Los Angeles Public Library”
“Why go on without such a family”: Poets Reading at Page Against the Machine
Audri Phillips and the “Ladies of Courage” Project in West Hollywood
“The Social Imaginary” and A.I. (aka “Airbrushed Intelligence”)
Tom Verlaine (1949-2023); Patrick McKinnon (1957-2021)
Poetry Project 2023 New Year’s Day Reading: Complete Schedule
“BEAT, NOT BEAT” Reading at Page Against the Machine Bookstore
“The Moon and the Night and the Men” — John Berryman
The Collected Poems of Eugene Ruggles
John Harris, In Memoriam
Epigrams: Post-Modern and Regressive
Beyond Baroque’s Tribute to Poet-Actor Harry Northup, 9/16/23; 2 pm (PST)
John Macrae III, NYC Publisher (1931-2023)
Bob Flanagan – On the 20th anniversary of his death
A tribute to Jay Hopler by one of his many readers (Alison Turner)
48 Hours: Northup, Voss, and Mohr
PINBALL WIZARD — a novella by Michael Meloan
“I Wanna Be Loved By You: Poems on Marilyn Monroe” (including “Labials” by Bill Mohr)
PLEASED TO MEET YOU, BEASTMASTER 666: Jack Skelley’s Hybrid Undercurrents of Sunset Blvd.
The “Beat, Not Beat” Anthology Reading at Beyond Baroque, May 20
BACKSTORY: “12 Angry Men” at the Victory Theater (featuring Bill Mohr’s monologue “Whose Gun”)
Five Poems by Mark Salerno
“Team Bukowski”: 1993 / 2022
Two Video Links: Oriana Ivy and Holly Prado
Clayton Eshleman — Poet; Editor; Translator (1935 – 2021)
Cornelia Street Cafe and Jackie Sheeler (1957-2018)
John Harris, In Memoriam
Peter Schjeldahl: Poet and Art Critic (1942-2022)
Jim Krusoe: a review of HOTEL DE DREAM
Happy 50th Anniversary, Chatterton’s and Skylight Bookstores
Pumping Thoughts during a Turn-Around Trip to San Diego
Mike Sonksen and Mike Davis
At 75, Backing Up a Quarter-Century
The UC Collision Course with Grad Students
TONIGHT: “Coalescence” Poetry Reading in Long Beach
From Columbine to Buffalo: How can we not live in fear …. and regret?
New National Poet Laureate — and the Overlooked….
“La mirada aguda y generosa”: Pruebas Ocultas (Hidden Proofs) by Bill Mohr
Poetry Project 2023 New Year’s Day Reading: Complete Schedule
Cecilia Woloch reports on the Ukraine from Poland
“Shadow Ball: New and Selected Poems” by Charles Harper Webb
Part Five of the Interlitq Anthology of California Poets
Peter Robinson and the “Inspector Banks” Novels
Happy Birthday, Ron Padgett!
Either/Or Bookstore and “Barbarian Days”
Five Editors Reading their Poetry at Papa Bach (1974)
Ennio Morricone and Steve Erickson’s “AMERICAN STUTTER”
Gerald Locklin (1941-2021)
“Metaphors Be with You” — Peter Shneidre’s Illuminati Press
Gail Wronsky: Interview in POETRY FLASH
Tim Reynolds, Paul Blackburn and the Archive for New Poetry
Lewis Warsh (1944-2020): “Leaning against a door frame”Greg Kosmicki: “Whenever I Peel an Orange”
Domenic Cretara — Masterful Artist and Extraordinary Teacher — R.I.P.

Friday, October 20, 2023

Linda Fry’s Art Studio
613 Molino Avenue
Long Beach, CA 90814

(Hye-Sook Park, an artist Linda has known for almost 40 years, visited Linda’s studio yesterday, October 21st.)

Linda’s new studio on Molino Avenue (between Sixth and Seventh Street) in Long Beach will have her work on display this weekend (Oct. 21-22) as part of Long Beach’s annual Open Studio tour, from 1 pm-5 p.m. At the end of this past April, we moved out of Loft Studio in San Pedro, where we had worked since January, 2019. The first year was really wonderful. The studio space was engorged with light and we felt like we had found a community of artists who were more than worth the trek through a bridge construction project that never seemed to end.

Just as a very fine ensemble of paintings had been wonderful hung on the main gallery walls, however, the pandemic blew a whistle just as the opening reception was about to take place: no one ever saw it except the artists, and even we only got a brief glance at it. The next year and a half was in survival mode, especially since I had to teach on-line. One saving grade, in addition to brief, furtive visits, was that eventually we began to meet Alexis and Jim Fancher for dinner at our studio. We’d eat take-out food from Senfuko and laugh and talk about films and poetry.

Jana Vandenberg, who lives across the street from us, volunteered last winter to convert her garage into a studio space for Linda. With the advice of Cody Lusby, Jana did a fabulous job of transforming an aged garage into an all-out working space; this month marks the beginning of Linda’s formal residency. Please come out and celebrate with us. If you need directions, I’m at William.BillMohr@gmail.com.

Thursday, October 19

Yesterday’s mail contained the latest issue of BLUE COLLAR REVIEW. In addition to the print version, PARTISAN PRESS also has a website that features a half-dozen or so of representative poems in the issue. I am very pleased to be featured once again on-line in this issue along with a poet I recently read with at PAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE in Long Beach.I have read with Fred many times, including the University of Redlands in 1993 and the Long Beach Museum of Art in the late 1990s, as well as events organized by Suzanne Lummis for her Los Angeles Poetry Festival.

Here’s the link:

https://www.angelfire.com/va/bcr/

I wish that the California Faculty Association had as much gumption as the editors of BLUE COLLAR REVIEW.

October 9, 2023

Writers, actresses, actors, nurses, and auto workers have all either been on strike or are still on strike in 2023. It may not be long before faculty at the California State University join their demands for an equitable care of the nation’s wealth. Negotiations between the California Faculty Association (CFA) and the Chancellor’s Office revealed an enormous discrepancy: the CO insisted that faculty take a pay cut. Technically, it wasn’t a reduction in salary. after all, the CO offered a generous “raise” of five percent. The problem, of course, is that inflation has been a double-digit number. Mediation failed and now the CFA is waiting for the fact-finder’s recommendations, which are not likely to favor the CO, especially since the CSU is sitting on a “rainy day fund” of EIGHT BILLION DOLLARS. Unlike previous sets of negotiations, the CFA has decided not to wait until after the fact-finder’s report to hold a referendum on taking a job action, up to and including a strike.

This is hardly the first time that such a vote will have taken place. In 2012, for instance, the CFA called for a vote, and by chance — on the very day that Ron Silliman was visiting the campus to give a reading — I walked to the polling booth and cast my vote just as a reporter and photographer for the college’s newspaper were taking the pulse of the turnout. Without any hesitation whatsoever, I thrust my ballot into the air. If you can’t see that it’s marked “yes,” I assure you that it was.

Over ten years later, inflation has eaten into my earnings, much as it has other workers. Despite receiving glowing reviews of my work on campus and two promotions, my base salary is only ten percent more than it was 18 years ago, once inflation is accounted for. That amounts to a little over a half-percent “raise” per year since 2006. Given the massive difference between then cost of trying to buy a house in Long Beach between 2006 and 2023, I hardly feel as if the “deep appreciation” of the CSU Chancellor’s Office for the hard work of faculty is anything more than lip service.

In the past, the CO has always waited until the last moment to change its mind and improve its offer enough to win the CFA’s approval. My guess is that this time the CO will force the CFA to go on strike in order to maintain our equity in this system. The CO will want to make it look like the CFA selfishly put the economic stability of its membership over the educational needs of students. However, while the students will miss a few classes, demonstrating that workers have the power to change the conditions of their employment is one of the most important lessons we can pass on to them, regardless of their major.

Update on October 22nd: I heard the past week that a tentative agreement has been reached. If so, and the CFA has accepted the five percent pay raise offered by the Chancellor’s Office, I can only say that the CFA would demonstrate how it is one of the weakest unions in the nation. Everyone else is going out on strike and winning far larger increases. It is inexcusable for the CFA to agree to what amounts to a pay cut.