Saturday, February 22, 2025

Last night, at the Sardine in San Pedro, a band called TRUPA TRUPA played an hour-long set of their songs that had every bit as much vivacious embodiment as any band has ever brought to a stage that is only 20 inches off the club’s floor. The Sardine is two large rooms in a corner storefront at 11th and Pacific, in San Pedro; the front is a bar and a record store, which I perused the bins of during various stretches of the opening act, a duo called Soft Palms. Almost all the vinyl albums were distributed by RECESS RECORDS, whose founder is one of the co-owners of Sardine.

Thanks to the encouragement of Cecilia Woloch, Linda and I ended up being part of a crowd of three dozen people who had the good fortune to be at one of second stop of Trupa Trupa’s national tour; the band is playing in seven cities in 11 days, and those who live anywhere in the vicinity of Western Avenue and Santa Monica Blvd. in East Hollywood can catch them tonight (Saturday, the 22nd) at Gold Diggers.

Feb. 19 — San Francisco, CA @ Kilowatt
Feb. 21 — San Pedro, CA @ The Sardine
Feb. 22 — Los Angeles, CA @ Gold Diggers
Feb. 25 — Chicago, IL @ Empty Bottle
Feb. 27 — Washington, D.C. @ Quarry House
Feb. 28 — Philadelphia, PA @ Silk City
March 1 — New York, NY @ Bowery Electric

Trupa Trupa is as distinct and rambunctious as one could hope for as a counter-balance antidote to the self-serving mendacity that is spreading like a corrosive virus in global politics right now. When I checked out their influences, it didn’t surprise me to see the Beatles listed, especially given that the band’s driving force, a poet named Grzegorz Kwiatkowski, sang a snippet of George Harrison’s “Blue Jay Way” (“Don’t be long, don’t belong” is how it ends up sounding in Harrison’s vocal, carried over into last night’s performance). The music has a gliding rumble, however, that owes more of its staccato punctuation to the kinds of bands that played in San Pedro during the glory days of Mike Watt, D. Boome and the Minutemen. Trupa Trumpa spins its melodies in relentless undulations of recoiling to-and-fro jump-start melodies, all underpinned by some of the most intelligent drum-work I’ve heard coming from the rear stage in a long time.

The is political art of a very high order. Although their music has attained international recognition, including praise from Henry Rollins at KCRW, Trupa Trupa is unlikely to ever win the attention of those who nominate records for Grammys. No surprise there. But if you wish to strike a blow against the kind of cultural appropriation that is taking place with the appointment of the new Board of Trustees of the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., however, the best way to do so is to buy Trupa Trupa’s new record and listen to their song, “Mourners.”

“What we carry with us, as people from the city of Gdańsk, is hope. Here, we believe in hope, in solidarity, in democracy, in the idea that even the greatest evil can be defeated. We know that it can be overcome — and not through violence, but through peaceful means.”
— Grzegorz Kwiatkowski

GLITTERBEAT RECORDS

Trupa Trupa – Mourners

Trupa Trupa

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trupa_Trupa

About us

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/trupa-trupa-new-song-tour-dates-trump-1235244949/

***
Sample record bin at the Sardine

Thursday, February 6, 2025

Several days ago, I posted a couple dozen poetry reading flyers and I noticed that two of the poets I read with frequently were Harry Northup and Fred Voss. This morning I had cataract surgery on my left eye, and no sooner had Linda brought me home than she came up to me with a Facebook post from Joan Jobe Smith announcing that Fred Voss, Joan’s loving and devoted poet-husband, died two weeks ago.

Fred was a remarkable, steadfast poet. He was a “plein air” poet in that his poems directly came from the environment in which he labored to make a living. Pilip Levine wrote a poem entitled “What Work Is,” and it was not his only portrait of what it means to labor for a living. Fred Voss, though, made his employment not just the subject of his poems but the central meditation of a life also devoted to poetry.

While working full-time as a machinist for 45 years, Fred had eight collections of poetry, including several published by BLOODAXE BOOKS, one of Grear Britain’s leading literary publishing outfits.HAMMERS AND HEARTS OF THE GODS was selected as a book of the year (2009) by the Morning Star (London). He won the Joe Hill Labor Poetry Award in 2010.

I first read with Fred at the University of Redlands in the spring of 1993, at a labor conference. My most recent reading with him was at Page Against the Machine bookstore in Long Beach. I remember an even more recent reading where he was the featured reader; what a pleasure it was to hear the audience laugh repeatedly in response to the dry wit of his poems. I am pleased to recall that I was te one wo told Fred about BLUE COLLAR REVIEW, which is published by Partisan Press in Norfolk, Virginia. Both Fred and I has poems published in that magazine, which has remained defiant in its critique of class matters, no matter which political party assumes power.

Having Fred and Joan as poet-neighbors in Long Beach has helped sustain me for the past 18 years. Suddenly, I find myself far less tethered to the city than I ever thought I would feel.

BloodAxe Books is spot on in saying that the American literary establishment never honored him as a poet the way it should have. Such is not the case in Long Beach and not in Los Angeles, either. Here, he will remain a much admired comrade. I recommend BEAT NOT BEAT, an anthology edited by Rich Ferguson, S.A. Griffin, Alexis Rhone Fancher, and Kim Shuck, and published by Eric Morago’s MOONTIDE PRESS, as the most easily available book that will give a reader an immediate context for reading Fred’s work. He also appeared in two anthologies edited by Suzanne Lummis as well as Tia CHucha’s COILED SERPENT.

https://www.bloodaxebooks.com/news?articleid=1491

(Long Bewach Museum of Art)

(to be continued….)

Over the past half-century, I’ve given readings both as a solo featured poet as well as being paired with some of my favorite poets. The upcoming reading at the Ruskin involves several poets whose work I have long admired, and it’s an honor to read with them on the occasion of celebrating this anthology.

FROM VENICE TO VENICE

FROM VENICE TO VENICE

January 30, 2025

One coincidence that has not nearly been noted enough is that Sylvia Plath died the same day that the Beatles recorded the bulk of their first album. When I mention this to students, as I did this very morning in a lecture on Plath, I point out that had Plath not died that day, she most likely would have been headlining the bill at the poetry festival at Royal Albert Hall a couple of years later. Having gotten home and heard the news reports of the death of Marianne Faithful, I am moved to pay her tribute by saying that Faithful was a kind of “Lady Lazarus” herself, an artist who took great risks. In particular, I am thinking of her album “Broken English” and the exquisite, haunting title track.

It’s a grim day, though, on an even larger scale for the sport of figure skating. This is the second time in my life I have heard of a group loss in this sport. In fact, the plane crash that killed so many members of the U.S. skating team on February 14, 1961 may have been the first time I was really made aware of the risk involved in aviation. I was 13 years old when I heard that 18 skaters and six coaches, as well as team officials and family members, had been killed in a crash near the Brussels, Belgium airport. Just two weeks earlier, the U.S. Figure Skating Championships had been held in Colorado Springs, an event broadcast on national television.

Not a grim day. A harrowing day, especially when one pauses and ponders the fact that one out of every 50 people who were alive in Gaza sixteen months ago has been killed by this point. I doubt that even one of the 18,000 children killed would have grown up to be a figure skater, but can we not imagine how much pleasure many of them would have gotten out of playing soccer with each other. Now that’s a field of dreams obliterated beyond the recuperative possibility of any redemption. I suppose W.H. Auden was right: “Those to whom evil is done./ do evil in return.” Indeed, a harrowing day.

Will it be any different in 2030? 2036? 2040? 2050?

How can it be different when the government of Saudi Arabia executes a legal American resident and dismembers him because it objects to his criticism? And one can hardly forget the Charlie Hebdo murders.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Hebdo_shooting

Or the breaking news of the murder of a man in Sweden who protested the abuse of Christians in countries dominated by the Islamic religion.

Or the repeated attacks on Salman Rushdie!

Or the recent terrorist attack in New Orleans, done in the name of ISIS.

Not to mention what is happening in Sudan…..

Surely my warm meal and my warm bed are illusions, to be enjoyed for their very frailty.

Linda and I are not the couple perched on a cantilevered peninsula of ground that is being slowly devoured by te oscillation of tides. However, we did enjoy talking several walks with our generous hosts, Nicole and Erik, who provided us a room to stay in in their house and many scrumptious vegetarian meals.

On the final full day there, we went to a site with 88 Shino Buddhist shrines as well a play staged by the local theater group, and then we had a dinner across the street at Kathy and Patrick’s house. Katy’s sister had died about eight years ago, and when Linda and I last visited Kauai, I wrote a poem that Kathy framed a handwritten copy of and put on a wall in her home. I he’d heard she has done this, but it was gratifying to see it actually given a place of honor in her home.

Thank you to all wo made our trip so memeoble, including Helen, wo made beautiful leis for us once again.

The poets who appear in these three group shots all contributed poems to my anthology: “POETRY LOVES POETRY” (Momentum Press, 1985). Five of them also were featured poets in my anthology, “THE STREETS INSIDE: Ten Los Angeles Poets” (Momentum Press, 1978), which Robert Kirsch praised in the Los Angeles Times as indicating a “golden age” in Los Angeles poetry. These three group photographs respectively appeared in articles, during the 1980s, in the L.A. Herald-Examiner; the Los Angeles READER; and the L.A. Times.

In alphabetical order:
Kate Braverman
Wanda Coleman
Dennis Cooper
Bob Flanagan
Eloise Klein Healy
Leland Hickman
Jim Krusoe
Bill Mohr
Holly Prado
Paul Vangelisti

Half of these 10 poets are dead. A 40th anniversary reunion reading won’t be the same without them.
(Moving clockwise from Cooper (seated); Vangelisti, Prado, Mohr, Hickman)

(Moving clockwise from Cooper (seated); Vangelisti, Prado, Mohr, Hickman)

(from left to right: Kurosue, Flanagan; Mohr)

(left to right: Braverman, early, Prado, Mohr, Coleman)

Wednesday, January 22, 2025

As Trump promised to do during his campaign for reelection, he immediately issued pardons and commutations for the vigilantes who assaulted the Capitol building on January 6, 2021. This is not the first time that a President has extended massive clemency to a group of Americans who violated the law. Let us remember that Jimmy Carter granted legall forgiveness to those who resisted the draft and moved to Canada. Sons wo wished to visit their parents and siblings could now return without fear of arrest.

The difference between these two groups is almost too obvious to deserve mentioning, but since few people, including President Trump, seem to notice it, let’s not let it go unsaid: one group attempts to violently overthrow the government of the United States. Another group realized that the government of the United States was far too powerful to be deterred from exacerbating, on an incredibly massive scale, a civil war in Vietnam. Rather than participate in that war, they moved to Canada. They disowned the government that they had been raised to respect, cherish, and honor because that government was asking them to cooperate with and participate in a dishonoroble war. Of course, one could ask if any war can be honorable, or if the case is that those who are soldiers devote themselves to a paradox that has no resolution. How, in fact, does one determine what is needed to maintain the legitimate security of one’s neighbors, friends, and family, as multipled on a national scale?

President Carter served in the U.S. Navy in order to defend this country from unprovoked attack. President Trump, as far as I can tell, dodged the draft and did not in any meaningful way take part in protests against the war. Trump’s only concern in the 1960s seems to ave been how to avoid doing anything that might require him to be accountable for his complicity with the government’s predations in Vietnam. Trump wants to rewrite history; but the arc of history is like that of moral law: it bends toward those who justify the risks they took to balance the demands of duty, honor, and country.

*******

https://www.yahoo.com/news/dc-judges-slam-trump-pardons-201300038.html

DC judges slam Trump pardons as ‘revisionist myth,’ ‘will not change the truth’ of Jan. 6

Seventy-two years ago, General Dwight Eisenhower was inaugurated as President of the United States in what would prove to be the first of two terms. Robert Lowell, who had gone to prison rather than serve in the military during World War II, wrote a poem commemorating that occasion. The following article has a link to the poem, but the poem is not as accessible via a browser search as one would hope.

Here are te final five lines:

Ice, ice. Our wheels no longer move.
Look, the fixed stars, all just alike
as lack-land atoms, split apart,
and the Republic summons Ike,
the mausoleum in her heart.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2017/mar/01/robert-lowell-at-100-poetry-centenary

https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/poetry-for-presidents

https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/50/article/377466