In the early 1980s, when I was teaching in the California Poets-in-the-Schools program, I was always on the outlook for poems that I could use to inspire my students with. One of my favorites was Al Young’s “Oranges.” Gary Soto’s poem with the same title is probably better known, but Young’s poem has always remained one of my secret favorites of all time. I know most people don’t think of me as shy, but I was too shy to ask him to read that poem when he gave a reading at Beyond Baroque several years ago. I hope there is a recording somewhere of him reading that poem.
Unfortunately, I can’t find a link to the text of the poem, so you’ll have to dig it up for yourself in THE BLUES DON’T CHANGE (1982).
There is solace to be found in his words, but even more solace to be found in the restoration those words carve out. Thank you, Al.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/al-young
“He’s probably one of the most underrated writers in the country. He lived on the West Coast. The people who receive a lot of publicity live in the New York-Washington, D.C. shuttle area. It’s difficult for a writer like Al to achieve prominence with critics who see Northern California as a stepchild of Manhattan.” – Ishmael Reed
On the Likelihood of Violent Protest
Should Derek Chauvin Not Have Been Found Guilty
What use our sighs?
His knee the noose
From which our eyes
Cannot pull loose.
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One should note that I am not advocating violent protest as a countermeasure, should Chauvin have been found innocent. I am merely predicting what would have been the likely outcome, and why that reaction would have occurred.
The accelerated verdict in the trial of Derek Chauvin caught me completely by surprise. I was not anticipating the jury being able to reach a decision until Thursday morning, or perhaps even Friday afternoon. The speed of their deliberations is an indication, however, of how convincing the evidence was of Floyd’s impetuous execution under the guise of police authority.
The more tantalizing question at this point is how long Chauvin’s sentence will be, and what is the likelihood that he will be out of prison before 2040? The penalty phase of his trial will begin in eight weeks, and the most important thing to keep in mind is not how long he will serve, but how much can we change the current prodigious racism in our country by the time he gets out of prison?
All of us who are white need to look in the mirror of our complicity with Floyd’s murder. For too long we have tolerated a system in which some police officers act with self-entitled impunity because they feel shielded by police immunity. This cannot be permitted to continue without a challenge. I have serious doubts that such a challenge will be undertaken, for how can it start until we who look like Derek Chauvin begin to acknowledge the ways in which we ourselves resemble Derek Chauvin in more than just skin color.
I feel sorry for Derek Chauvin. Really, Bill? Yes, I do. All too many white people, including myself, are willing to demonize him. Are we ourselves not guilty of micro-aggressions that differ little in scope and intent from the flickering taunts of hierarchical privilege that have echoed in Chauvin’s mind for many years? How different were his life-long ideological reflexes from our own impositions of generalized images onto individual people of color? The system we claim to be revulsed by has survived, in fact, because I am more like Chauvin than I would care to admit. At some point, I must call myself to account for my own instances of shame in that regard. I was born in the segregated South. I was raised in the segregated South. The virus of racism took hold early.
So, yes, I feel sorry for him, that the disease ravaged his soul so thoroughly.and perniciously. Is he a scapegoat? Let’s not get carried away. He is a rogue police officer, guilty of a hideous crime, and he deserves a very substantial penalty; but until we who are white begin to penalize ourselves for the ways in which our own behavior and thoughts sustain the system that facilitated his crimes, then we deserve a degree of shame equal to his guilt.
— Written in less than hour — and unrevised.
7:00 p.m. – 8 p.m.
Slightly revised the nextmroning,, 5:30 a.m. – 5:38 a.m.
“We don’t celebrate a man going to jail. We rather George be alive.” — Rev. Al Sharpton
“True justice requires that we come to terms with the fact that Black Americans are treated differently, every day. … And it requires us to do the sometimes thankless, often difficult, but always necessary work of making the America we know more like the America we believe in.”
— Barack Obama
LINK TO “The Conversation”:
https://theconversation.com/why-this-trial-was-different-experts-react-to-guilty-verdict-for-derek-chauvin-159420?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Daily%20newsletter%2042121&utm_content=Daily%20newsletter%2042121+CID_bc00bea0fadd5238200be43c1538c898&utm_source=campaign_monitor_us&utm_term=Why%20this%20trial%20was%20different%20Experts%20react%20to%20guilty%20verdict%20for%20Derek%20Chauvin
*. *. *. *. *. *
“People don’t change. They only stand more revealed.” — Charles Olson
https://www.yahoo.com/news/no-sympathy-chauvin-those-had-100138723.html
“Chauvin was the subject of at least 17 complaints during his career, according to police records.”
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I will turn 74 years old in about six months, and it’s hard not to reflect back and wonder how else I could have lived my life. Is there some way I might have seen myself fitting in when I was a young adult, and therefore made a better life for myself? Not likely. I am not a likable person, something made brutally clear to me throughout the first 18 years of my life, and subtly reinforced in repeated ways in the next five decades. If I sought refuge in communities of poets when I was young, it was only because fifty years ago those communities were the only ones willing to tolerate my existence. Even then, I worked at the peripheries, sustaining myself as a member of those communities in large part because I only intermittently flinched at doing a lot of work on behalf of others. A few people might have the illusion that I have been more than an exceptionally minor figure in the West Coast Poetry Renaissance. Get real. Try to find a book of my poems, published in the past 30 years, in a public library; and if you are the proprietor of a domestic library, and have a “recent” volume of my poems, count yourself an oddity. You are one of less than 100 people in this entire country.
This is not to say that I have wasted my life. Poetry still gives me immense pleasure, and teaching others to write and read poetry is gratifying work. I am still amazed, in fact, that after turning 50 years old I somehow ended up writing a book about West Coast poets that eventually led to remunerative work. I am earning enough, in fact, that I am now starting to slowly pay off the student loans I took out in order to write that book. With luck, I will die debt-free. Since my spouse doesn’t work and I have her loans to pay off, too, this will be a long haul. In the meantime, at least I have a job — albeit a demanding one — that enables me to rent a decent place to live and to buy nourishing food. Access to medical care, of course, is another matter. As the pandemic made abundantly clear, I am eminently disposable from the point of view of the system. Given a choice between me and a younger person, the policy is well in place, nor will it be amended in the future. It’s hard to keep working, knowing that one’s life is worth only a perfunctory effort.
Well, there is work to be done today, so I had best get to it.
Tuesday, April 20, 2021
A few people who read the blog post two days ago wrote me and appear to have misunderstood what I meant by “I am not a likable person.” I am most certainly aware that there are several dozen people in Southern California who appreciate my efforts on both a literary and personal level. I only regret that I could not have accomplished more on their behalf.
My gauge for my own self-appreciation, however, involves far different factors than being of use to others. People who are likable are not physically accosted day after day when they are growing up. I am hardly the only person who has suffered at the hands of predatory schoolchildren. There are tens of thousands of us, and no one really gives a shit that the impact of that experience is a permanent deformation of one’s personality. Fortunately, many of those who have had that experience are still able to act — to pretend — that we are capable of making some contribution to some particular community.
But we never forget that most of the people we deal with on a day-to-day basis are the same ones at whose hands we suffered, or who stood by and watched and said nothing.
I may act as if that is not the case, but one learns early if one is likable, and nothing that happens subsequently can ever heal that paralyzing wound of other’s judgment. If you have been convinced that I feel otherwise, it pleases me to know that I am a good enough actor to deceive you.
DAWN RICHARD — Beyond Baroque — Harry Northup — Brian Getnick — Linda J. Albertano — Alexis Rhone Fancher –
LINKS TO THE BEYOND BAROQUE / L.A. TIMES FESTIVAL OF BOOKS POETRY VIDEOS as well as
THREE LOS ANGELES POETS (Linda J. Albertano; Alexis Rhone Fancher; Harry E. Northup)
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Beyond Baroque is helping to sponsor the Poetry Stage at the L.A. Times Festival of Books this year. Here is the link to a splendid line-up of poetry presentations, featuring Victoria Chang, Allison E. Joseph, Martha Ronk, Gail Wronsky, Sesshu Foster, Martin Espada, Yusef Komunyakaa, Ellen Bass, William Archila, and many more!!
LOS ANGELES TIMES FESTIVAL OF BOOKS AND BOOK AWARDS — VICTORIA CHANGE — “OBIT”
This year’s stage features videos from the above mentioned poets, as well as Cortney Lamar Charleston, Anthony Cody, Megan Dorame, Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, Jasmine Mans, Jenise Miller, Yesika Salgado, and Michael Wasson.
It should also be noted that the L.A. Times Book Prize winners were just announced.
Poetry: Victoria Chang, “Obit,” Copper Canyon Press
Fiction: David Diop and Anna Moschovakis (translator), “At Night All Blood Is Black: A Novel,” Farrar, Straus and Giroux
OTHER FINALISTS FOR THE POETRY AWARD:
Borderland Apocryphaby Anthony Cody
Postcolonial Love Poem by Natalie Diaz
The Age of Phillis by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers
Love Child’s Hotbed of Occasional Poetry: Poems and Artifacts by Nikky Finney
The National Book Award finalists for poetry were:
Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, A Treatise on Stars. (New Directions)
Tommye Blount, Fantasia for the Man in Blue. (Four Way Books)
Don Mee Choi, DMZ Colony (Wave Books)
Anthony Cody, Borderland Apocrypha (Omnidawn Publishing)
Natalie Diaz, Postcolonial Love Poem (Graywolf Press)
My own five nominations would have included (in alphabetical order):
WANDA COLEMAN — Wicked Enchantment: Selected Poems (Godine)
JUAN FELIPE HERRERA — Every Day We Get More Illegal (City Lights)
BETH RUSCIO — Speaking Parts (Brick Road)
ASIYA WADUD — No Knowledge Is Complete Until It Passes Through My Body (Nightboat Books)
PAUL VANGELISTI — Motive and Opportunity (Shearsman)
The sad part is that I doubt that a single one of the judges for the LA Times Awards read all five of the books I just listed. Herrera’s and Coleman’s and Vangelisit’s books are five books that every poet in this country needs to take into account not just this year, but during the rest of this decade.
(The odds were against Coleman being nominated and winning for her “Selected Poems.” In the entire history of the LA Times Book Awards, only four poets have ever won for a volume of “Selected Poems” and three of the four were very establishment figures: Maxine Kumin; Richard Howard; and X.J. Kennedy.)
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MUSIC: Dawn Richard — Singer/Songwriter
Dawn Richard’s “Die Without You” is one of the best songs I’ve heard in a long time. It’s not, of course, because it’s true. There is no one is “a lifeline” for me, just as there is no one who would die if I were to stop living tomorrow. The only thing that would change if I were to die tomorrow would be a brief period in which work I was expected to get done would temporarily have to be done by someone else. After that, the erasure that is largely well underway would continue its meandering dismemberment.
Richard’s song, though, has a depth of “What if?” to it that one can inhabit the space of “otherwise,” a life in which the imagined extremity of “Die Without You” is felt in one’s heart and soul, and for the duration of the song enables one to feel the grace notes of its effusive solace.
Alexis Rhone Fancher – “Three Poems” (“Don’t Wash”; “BOY TOY (Learning to Share) Sister Poem #7”; “Cousin Elaine from Chixao and I Are Naked”)
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RECOMMENDED FILMS:
“East Side Sushi” — I would love to have a conversation with poets such as Marisela Norte, Sesshu Foster, Brian Kim Stefans, and Steve Abee about this film. Although it won several awards, it doesn’t seem to be as widely known as it deserves to be. Anthony Lucero wrote, directed, and edited the film. He also picked an exceptionally fine cast.
“The Mustang” — This depiction of prison life finds its “objective correlative” in a program in which mustang horses are broken by prisoners to serve in the nation’s border patrol forces. Once again, the acting stirs our empathy in unexpected ways.
SPOTLIGHT ON HARRY NORTHUP:
“Podcasting Them Softly”: “Podcast: Actors Spotlight with Harry Northup,” by Frank Mengarelli. Also, with Raymond Benson. (1:25:17).
The “accidental” execution of Daunte Wright publicly magnified yet once again the culture of police work in the United States. If an opportunity to use force that far exceeds any necessity to do so presents itself to a police officer, then police immediately will resort to a default position in which excessive force becomes an automatic response.
Daunte Wright appears to have resisted arrest. Obviously, not a smart move on his part, even if he had simply been allowed to drive off unimpeded. Eventually, things would have sorted out, and not in his favor. However, what would have been the outcome if he had simply been allowed to drive off, with officers taking down notes regarding the encounter?
Would Wright have driven off and then done something that would have harmed another person? Not likely. It is true that he was accused of being part of a home invasion robbery in 2019, but what evidence is there that he was a present or near future danger to the community?
None whatsoever. Yeah, he was driving a car with expired license tags and an air-freshener hanging from his rear-view mirror. Remind me to start shaking in my boots.
“So you’re saying, Bill, that someone should just be allowed to flout the authority of the police?”
I am not saying that. I am saying that we need a system in which situations such as this are subject to a process involving mediated negotiation. I am talking about a social structure that will cost a considerable amount of money, time, and patience, although quite frankly it would be much less than the amount of money that will be paid out to settle the wrongful death suit filed on behalf of Daunte Wright’s two-year-old son.
To take another person’s live when that person is not posing a threat to your life or someone else’s life is a matter of criminal behavior. Resisting arrest is a crime. It is not a crime that entitles a police officer to be judge, jury, and executioner. Until police officers and the culture they uphold realize that they will be tried, convicted and serve prison terms for killing someone in this manner, then there can be little doubt that there will be yet another such incident before this year is out, and yet another, and yet another, and yet another.
I gather from recent polls that the outrage about George Floyd’s death is subsiding in white communities. Perhaps people feel that the trial of Chauvin suffices to address this matter. The problem, however, is one of psychological taxation. Many people are upset that Trump, for instance, has paid so little income tax. What many of them don’t realize is that people of color in the United States pay an enormous psychological tax just to live their daily lives. How else to describe what it must be like to be a U.S. Army lieutenant and to be pulled over for the “crime” of driving your newly purchased car?
I wish I could devote myself entire to writing about poetry. What would it mean, though, if I were to remain silent instead of continuing to speak out and demand major reallocations of our social wealth on behalf of all the residents in our country, including those who seek refuge here as a result of decades of mayhem caused by this nation’s foreign policy. The links between domestic policy and foreign policy deserve our scrutiny, but that is a matter for another post.
In the meantime, for those of you who dropped in on my blog and want commentary on poetry, I would direct you to my review of WICKED ENCHANTMENT by Wanda Coleman, which appeared almost a year ago in my blog (April 28, 2020).
Earth Day is coming up but the idea occurred closer to Opening Day of this year’s baseball season and I would rather have the idea in circulation as soon as possible, since it’s likely to take several years to bring it about. As everyone knows, or should know, airplane travel is extraordinarily damaging to the environment. The carbon footprint is more like a stampede of jackboots.
Obviously, no matter how much lingering guilt we may feel about this erosion of the planet’s capacity to sustain itself, the entertainment lifestyle of the U.S. economic engine is not going to change that much, no matter how many electric cars get driven. Other changes are needed, too, and each of us should be trying to think of ways to reduce the impact of our national amusements on the environment.
I was looking at the schedules of various Major League Baseball teams the other morning and noticed that the San Diego Padres had a rough April in store. They will play a day game in Pittsburgh and then fly six hours to San Diego to play their arch rivals, the L.A. Dodgers, the next evening. Health and performance issues aside, could we stop for a second and ask ourselves if this expenditure of our natural resources can really be justified?
If the goal is to reduce our dependency on fossil fuel, then we must reduce that which requires its use.
THEREFORE, be it resolved that MLB split into two leagues, a National League consisting of teams east of the Mississippi, and an American League of teams west of the Mississippi. During the regular season, teams will only play other teams in their half of the American professional leagues.
I will leave it to someone with more time than I have right now to do the math, but I bet this realignment would reduce the carbon footprint of professional baseball by at least 25 percent, especially if high-speed rail encouraged a return to teams moving between cities on railroads.
By the year 2030, there is no reason not for MLB not to have had the courage to do the right thing as an example of the MINIMUM changes that are immediately needed to regain some equilibrium in the climate crisis.
NATIONAL LEAGUE
New York Yankees
New York Mets
Philadelphia Phillies
Boston Red Sox
Toronto Blue Jays
Chicago Cubs
Pittsburgh Pirates
St. Louis Cardinals
Milwaukee Brewers
Cincinnati Reds
Washington Nationals
Baltimore Orioles
Miami Marlins
Tampa Bay Rays
Atlanta (Rovers?)
American League
Kansas City Royals
Houston Astros
Texas Rangers
Arizona Diamondbacks
Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim
San Diego Padres
Los Angeles Dodgers
San Francisco Giants
Oakland As
Seattle Mariners
Colorado Rockies
Minnesota Twins
Detroit Tigers
Chicago White Sox
Cleveland (Catamounts?)
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I detest the new rule about extra innings in MLB games. If you haven’t heard, it goes like this: in the top half of the tenth inning, a runner is placed at second base with no outs. The result is obscenely predictable: the winning run can score without a single hitter reaching base safely. If the score is still tied after nine and a half innings, the home team can win with a sacrifice bunt and a fielder’s choice ground ball that never leaves the infield.
Is this some perverse kind of nostalgia for dead ball era offense?
“Did the fans vote for this?” Paul Vangelisti asked me the other day.
I don’t think so.
Since those who own the game believe they have the right to change the rules, I certainly have at least an equal right to propose more interesting variants of the rules.
Thought Experiment:
If you are (out of some unforgivable affront to Baseball Tradition and the Individual Talent) going to change the rules about extra innings, at least make it require some choices on the part of managers that will make for an interesting conversation after the game.
The tenth inning should be played like any other inning. It should remain the purest continuation of “extra innings.”
The eleventh inning, should it be required, gives the manager of each team a choice: play it “normally” (hitter at the plate, no runners on base, no outs) OR start with a runner on first base and one out.
The twelfth inning, should it be required, gives each team the same choice: play it “normal” OR with runners on first and second base, but with TWO outs.
The 13th inning, and every subsequent inning, should they be required, gives each team the same choice: play it “normally” or with the bases loaded, and TWO outs.
The idea of the increments is to provide the defense with the maximum possibilities for force-outs. I believe the goal is to eliminate games that last past 15 innings. My proposal would accomplish that goal and provide far more drama and debate as to the wisdom of each manager’s choice.
Permalink|Comments Off on Ecological Extra Innings: Part One
Supposedly, the past week has been “spring break.” I get emails with requests from students that start, “I hope you’re enjoying your spring break.” I usually reserve that sentence for the end of my response. In all fairness, most of my students are not exactly lounging around. Many of them work at least 20 hours a week while also taking classes.
I’ve spent more time in the evening “at” Beyond Baroque than usual. On Wednesday evening Brendan Constantine led a workshop meant to spin the thread of 30 days into the web of 30 poems. He gave us several prompts, which I will not comment on, let alone post. “You can share these prompts with friends you trust, but please don’t put one of them on a FB post.” Since I have always regarded FB and “friends you trust” as an almost antithetical Venn diagram, Brendan needn’t worry about me to betray his prompts. Hmmm, perhaps that is what is needed in the world of prompts: a suggestion that addresses the pleasures and perils of betrayal.
The other evening at BB was on Thursday, April 1st, opening day of the MLB baseball season, in which the travesty of the extra innings rule (“a runner starts on second base, with no outs”) was on full display in Milwaukee. Sigh. Talk about betrayal of a tradition. The American ideal of meritocracy, which slowly crystalized over a century and a half into an imaginary utopia disguised as a bucolic pastime, is quickly turning into a dystopia of expedient entertainment.
Poetry has never been a social meritocracy, and never will be. Nevertheless, such friends as I have are often poets or friends of poets. Two of them, Paul Vangelisti and Dennis Phillips, read “together” “at” Beyond Baroque on April 1st. Here is a link to a video of that event:
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“Poetry is the language for which we have no language.” — Ralph Angel
Two weeks ago, Beyond Baroque sponsored a memorial tribute to the late Ralph Angel, a poet who may have resided in Southern California most of his adult life but whose poems reveled in embracing all the myriad ways that language can encounter the world and reveal the disguises of its underpinnings. The memorial was led by Ralph’s widow, Mary Angel, who told those in attendance that Beyond Baroque was the site of their first unofficial date. Mary has passed along the link to the memorial so that those who missed it can share in this celebration of Ralph Angel’s poetry.
I myself particularly recall a brief conversation I had with Ralph near the poetry section of Dutton’s Bookstore on San Vicente Boulevard. He had given a reading and I had purchased one of his books. I miss that bookstore, where I had the pleasure of hearing many writers over the years. But in the little time left to me, I will wince at not having Ralph as a poet to grow old alongside of.
About Bill Mohr