Introducing a few new books for your late summer reading, including the latest from one of La Bloga's faves, Martin Límon, and bilingual science mysteries just in time for back-to-school. Also, in case you might want to catch me reading from my newest book, here's a list of upcoming events, celebrations, and literary happenings.  Hope to see you at one.
 
Manuel Ramos



Ping Pong Heart
Martin Límon
Soho - June

[from the publisher]
South Korea, 1974. US Army CID Sergeants George Sueño and Ernie Bascom are assigned an underwhelming case of petty theft: Major Frederick M. Schulz has accused Miss Jo Kyong-ja, an Itaewon bar girl, of stealing twenty-five thousand won from him — a sum equaling less than fifty US dollars. After two very divergent accounts of what happened, Miss Jo is attacked, and Schulz is found hacked to death only days later. Did tensions simply escalate to the point of murder?

Looking into other motives for Schulz’s death, George and Ernie discover that the major was investigating the 501st Military Intelligence Battalion: the Army’s counterintelligence arm, solely dedicated to tracking North Korean spies. The division is rife with suspects, but it’s dangerous to speak out against them in a period of Cold War finger-pointing. As George and Ernie go head-to-head with the battalion’s powerful, intimidating commander, Lance Blood, they learn that messing with the 501st can have very personal consequences.
 
 Martin Limón retired from military service after twenty years in the US Army, including ten years in Korea. He is the author of nine previous books in the Sergeant George Sueño series: Jade Lady Burning, Slicky Boys, Buddha’s Money, The Door to Bitterness, The Wandering Ghost, GI Bones, Mr. Kill, The Joy Brigade, and Nightmare Range. He lives in Seattle.



Gabrielle Lucille Fuentes
Touchstone - September

[from the publisher]
“A searing, beautifully written novel that captures the exhilaration and dangers of 1970s post-Franco Spain. Mosca, a bitterly jaded young woman, goes on a harrowing search for her missing brother—and the history that destroyed their lives. Violent, heartbreaking, unforgettable, The Sleeping World is a stunning debut” (Cristina García, author of Dreaming in Cuban).

Spain, 1977. Military rule is over. Bootleg punk music oozes out of illegal basement bars, uprisings spread across towns, fascists fight anarchists for political control, and students perform protest art in the city center, rioting against the old government, the undecided new order, against the universities, against themselves…

Mosca is an intelligent, disillusioned university student, whose younger brother is among the “disappeared,” taken by the police two years ago, now presumed dead. Spurred by the turmoil around them, Mosca and her friends commit an act that carries their rebellion too far and sends them spiraling out of their provincial hometown. But the further they go, the more Mosca believes her brother is alive and the more she is willing to do to find him.

The Sleeping World is a beautiful, daring novel about youth, freedom, and doing whatever it takes to keep a family together, in a nation whose dead walk the streets and whose wars never end.


One Minute Mysteries: More Short Mysteries You Solve With Science!Misterios de un minuto: ¡Más misterios cortos que resuelves con ciencias!
Eric Yoder and Natalie Yoder
Science, Naturally - August

[from the publisher]
Become a science sleuth with the bilingual edition of our award-winning book, One Minute Mysteries: Short Mysteries You Solve With Science! Each one-page mystery is featured in both English and Spanish.
 
Mysteries in earth, space, life, physical, chemical and general science are included. Now you can solve science brainteasers in two languages!

Conviértase en un genio de la ciencia con está edición bilingüe de nuestro premiado libro, Misterios de Un Minuto: ¡Más misterios cortos que resuelves con ciencia! Cada misterio de una página es disponible en inglés y español.

Incluidos están misterios sobre la tierra, el espacio, la vida, la física, la química y las ciencias naturales. ¡Ahora usted podrá resolver estos rompecabezas en dos idiomas!

These mysteries have a clever twist—you have to be a super sleuth, tapping into your science wisdom and critical thinking skills to solve them. Each story takes just one minute to read and challenges your knowledge in a variety of science disciplines. These brainteasers keep you engaged and eager to learn more. Written by the same father-daughter team that brought you the award-winning 65 Short Mysteries You Solve With Math!, this entertaining and educational book is great for kids, grown-ups, educators, and anyone who loves good mysteries, good science, or both!

Estos misterios contienen un giro impredecible, debes ser un súper detective, utilizando tus conocimientos científicos y pensamiento crítico para resolverlos. Cada historia se lee en solo un minuto y te desafía sobre una variedad de disciplinas científicas. Estos enigmas te mantendrán cautivado y ansioso de aprender más. Escritos por el mismo equipo de padre e hija que les presento el premiado libro de los ¡Misterios cortos que resuelves con matemática! Este entretenido y educativo libro es ideal para niños, adultos, educadores, o cualquier persona que disfrute de buenos misterios, buena ciencia, o ambos.

_______________________________________________________________________________

Interview with Rudolfo Anaya: The Old Man’s Love Story and The Sorrows of Young Alfonso.
Michael Sedano, with Jesus Salvador Treviño


Jesús Treviño and I arrived at Rudolfo Anaya’s house mid-afternoon and spent several delightful hours videotaping while we chatted about Rudy’s four most recent publications, Poems From the Rio Grande, Randy Lopez Goes Home, The Old Man’s Love Story, and The Sorrows of Young Alfonso. In the current edition of Latinopia, Trevino presents the first video of our conversations. Click to navigate to Latinopia.

The following transcribes the latter part of conversation. Here, the questions, •mvs for Michael Sedano, •jst for Jesús Salvador Treviño, transition from discussing The Old Man’s Love Story into The Sorrows of Young Alfonso. Click here for Manuel Ramos’ La Bloga review of The Old Man’s Love Story, and here for Michael Sedano’s La Bloga review of The Old Man's Love Story, and here for Sedano's review of Randy Lopez Goes Home. Click here for Sedano’s review of The Sorrows of Young Alfonso.

We had been discussing the connectedness between the three novels, the poetry, and how themes,  images, and ideas recur and parallel one another in Anaya’s career and especially these most recent publications. As the Latinopia video illustrates, Anaya reflects on the soul, creativity, and his body of work.

•mvs: The themes are coming back, like you say, it’s a cycle. As a preamble, a couple questions on The Old Man’s Love Story. Some people say writing is a form of therapy. Was The Old Man’s Love Story a therapy for you?

•RA: Was The Old Man’s Love Story therapeutic for me? Absolutely. The Old Man’s Love Story is about grief, and my wife had just died, I was going through grief. A woman came here, you know they have grief counselors. She gave me pamphlets, that didn’t do it for me. Some people said get into a group that is talking about grief. I thought, no my grief is too personal. I don’t want to talk about it, to other people. And so I started writing, using the tool I have used all my life, writing. What I know best was the way to express my grief, was to write about it, was to write these passages that the old man goes through. Yeah, that’s therapy.

•mvs:The old man wondered before his wife died, what she saw. He’s in a part where he’s talking about soul and how imagination is pure, like the soul is pure. Have you found out what the old man’s wife was seeing before she died, was it soul?

•RA: We’ve been discussing the idea of soul, the idea of essence. And I have written many places, “The creative imagination is the soul.” My and yours and everybody’s imagination that creates is soul. Soul creates. And on a personal level, in The Old Man’s Love Story, I would say that my wife was a very creative person. She was very intelligent very loving. She was into reading esoteric stuff that was very interesting, building up her soul. That’s what we all do, we build soul. We build soul. Like a brick at a time. Absolutely, she was building, she still is.

•mvs: The soul is eternal. In the hollyhock garden the old man spoke with her soul in the hollyhock garden. He was looking for it. Can one produce that communion by looking for it, or does it simply appear because it appears?

•RA: For me the communion with my wife is always there. It’s not that I ask for it, it’s just there. The scene in the garden, the hollyhock garden, I can take you to the back yard where I have a little ramada with grape vines and a nice swing. And I’m sitting there, and my wife appeared. And she started walking down. In June I have beautiful hollyhocks out there, beautiful; the whole garden is full of color. And she started walking down the hollyhock path and that's when she turned and told me she was going. So she knew all along. We know all along. It’s not a secret. Some of us don’t pay attention to our soul, to our creative imagination.

What did Wordsworth say, “this world is too much with us, late and soon getting and spending, little we know that is ours.” Getting and spending, and not paying attention to that which is ours, the soul. And it’s always there. It’s like I am sharing something with you very personal. That my wife is always with me. She is in this room, she’s in the photographs, she’s in the chair that she loved to sit in to read. On and on, it doesn’t go away.

And it gets better when I’m gone and I go to her. Then we’re gonna take a trip. The first trip we’re gonna do is take us to Mazatlán. We loved the beach in Mazatlán. We loved the people. We had such good time. We already made a deal, the moment I’m gone like that, vamonos, we’re gonna fly to Mazatlán.


•mvs: It’ll be a good trip.
•RA: Oh man, la playa de Mazatlán, the gente. Beautiful.


•mvs: Let me segue into The Sorrows of Young Alfonso in the point of the soul, and seeing, speaking, communing with the soul. You raise the point about the quantum physics that when you look at something you change it. How does that theory affect your perception, or your interaction with the soul, what are you seeing?

•RA: It’s just a theory. It’s very true whatever this idea if we look at an object we change it. And it must change us, too. It’s a reciprocal, it works both ways. The quantum mechanics idea is not very far-fetched from my definition of soul. Everything I look at is changing, nothing is standing still. If there’s a particle in the universe you cannot know its position and its speed at the same time. It’s impossible. It’s moving too fast so you measure the speed then you lose sight of where it is. But the soul can do this. The soul can change and be changed for its own good, you know. So we become better persons. So we’re more alive when we see a tree, the sky, the clouds are building. The cloud people are coming today, by the way. I hope it rains. Every day I sit out in my portal and when the clouds start building over the mountain I tell my housekeeper "Nora the cloud people are coming."

I’m changing the way I look at things, it’s nature. Nature is in the garden. It’s not just up in the mountain in the wild rivers. It’s all around us in the little casita even if you have only one bush. Or if you only plant one tomato plant. It’s the natural world, it’s all around us. We’re in it. We’re part of it. You see how we change it? If you’re in it you’re changing it, it’s changing you. I grow every time I can be more responsive. There are times when we’re not too responsive to this thing that we’re in, that we call nature. We’re lazy, or we’re too busy, we don’t have time. We’ve got to get and spend, most of the world is out there getting and spending. But if you stop, the natural world is all around, it’s changing and it’s changing you.

•mvs: You mention “bilocation” two or three times. Where does the theory of bilocation fit in that?

•RA: A very famous figure, como se llamaba, María de Agreda, she was from Spain? She was a nun. And they say that she could bring herself to New Mexico, to Texas, to this area. And people have talked about is it possible that your body can go somewhere else? Yes. We dream. We dream, everytime you dream you go somewhere else. So whether you believe this idea of this nun whether she came here or not. They say she’s still in her coffin, she hasn’t decomposed. She’s still dreaming.
Que no?

•mvs: A poco.
•RA: Algo asi, that’s what I think.


•mvs: So your out of body experience, and our deaths, are they bilocational, are they dreams, are they our soul temporarily separating and coming back?

•RA: My out of body experience I describe during the swimming accident when I was paralyzed in the water and I was going to drown and I saw my soul rise is real to me. It’s real. When I look back on it and I think about it often because the image is so clear in my mind what happened that afternoon. It’s part of something I had to go through in order to be here.

•mvs: When you’re out there, do you have a shape? Everything is external to the perception; there’s no you there. Do we use literature to fix the location of that idea of that pure imagination?

•RA: I think you’ve answered your question, que no?

•mvs: I’ll take that as an answer.

•RA: The thing is we tend to separate body from soul too much. This is my body and this is my soul over here. When this body dies my soul goes off somewhere. Or if I have an out of body my soul is lifting somewhere and it comes back. You need body for soul to grow and you need soul for body to grow. The question is, are they that separated? Like I say, when I had that experience it’s one of the most real things that’s ever happened to me. So it’s a difficult question to answer but it’s an interesting question that we should go around and think about all the time. Because we do write about it. I wrote about it in, The Sorrows of Young Alfonso.

•mvs: A technical question about The Sorrows of Young Alfonso. You mentioned you’d come full circle now in The Sorrows of Young Alfonso. The characters, incidents, the images, the places many of them are not repetitions but new explorations.

•RA: They’re from Bless Me, Ultima.

•mvs: There’s Randy in there. What motivated you to write The Sorrows of Young Alfonso?

•RA: Agapita said the world is full of sorrow, so I had to start writing. What did she mean? And then Alfonso—my middle name is Alfonso by the way. So I am in many ways the character in the book and I have as every person in the world, I have experienced sorrow. And so maybe that’s what led me to write. What are the sorrows that I have gone through and how have they built me, how have they made me? And so I started writing.

Of course you know the title comes from Goethe. He wrote The Sorrows of Young Werther. I borrowed his title. My wife and I were in Heidelberg once, very much Goethe country. Hearing about him, and I had read The Sorrows a long time ago when I was a student. I also borrowed the idea of the letter writing. And of course it’s not at all like Goethe’s book, it’s not a romance or letters to the woman he loves or anything like that, it’s an exploration of sorrow. And some of them are very personal, that I write about, are autobiographical.


•mvs: So Rudolfo Anaya is Alfonso?

•RA: Rodolfo Anaya is Antonio, a Chicano in China, Sonny Baca, Alfonso.

•jst: I read it as Rudy looking back with love and compassion to his childhood, to the young Rudy. A kind of love treatment of you dealing with yourself as a young man.

•RA: The Sorrows of Young Alfonso is me looking back at my life, just like I did in Bless Me, Ultima. Young Antonio lives in this small town of the llano and now I have young Alfonso living in this small town of the llano. And describing town characters bigger than life. I tried that in Bless Me, Ultima. I often said one reason I wrote Bless Me, Ultima is the people around me were so beautiful. They shouldn’t pass away forever, I could capture them in a book. The Sorrows of Young Alfonso is very much like that.

I was delivered at home by a couple of older women who lived in the village. And so I have Agapita. I make those women bigger than life by giving Agapita this character and this role in the story. It is she who begins to teach Alfonso about a little bit about life, a little bit about the llano, nature, the animals, the respect he owes them. And then it moves on to realistic scenes. Alfonso getting thrown by the train is me at that diving accident, except that I chose not to go to the diving accident, I chose to have it in the village.

And if you look at the village where I was born the geography’s there. You can go today. The railroad tracks are still around. It’s deserted now but the houses are there, there are two or three families living there. I chose to go that route, that made a different way by which my main character gets hurt, and therefore he has to go through life hurt.

Is that me? Yes, it’s like I said a while ago, I am the main character of every book I’ve ever written. Part of me.

The characters take on their own life, of course. And to repeat, I always thought when I wrote Bless Me, Ultima that the people were beautiful. Poor people, small town, rancheros, sheep herders, no education. Some of them were drunks, they were beautiful. Like Narciso. Narciso is the town drunk and yet when Antonio sees him he is a god, he’s big. He comes walking across the llano like Walt Whitman does later in a poem, “Walt Whitman Strides Across the Llano of New Mexico.” Who is that? It’s Narciso. And he was a real person, and they were beautiful. And perhaps I’ve gone back, in The Sorrows of Young Alfonso to make sure they don’t disappear. Go back and describe the village and the llano and nature and the stories that Agapita makes up, how she teaches him the zodiac how she teaches him about the animals of the llano, what to believe in.

And that’s what I did with Ultima in Bless Me, Ultima. This woman who was a healer who helped the people, is the same as Agapita. It’s almost the same person in time and memory traveled from when I wrote Bless Me, Ultima in the 60s, to recently when I wrote The Sorrows of Young Alfonso. And during that time I have developed other main characters that have come to me; usually the character comes to me and says to me "write my story". That’s the way it goes.

Does that happen in a poem? In my fiction I’m dealing with characters. A poem can be about a tree or a river. Those are characters, too. But mine are human characters and they appear and they say "write my story" and that’s where it takes off.


I guess that’s where Agapita appeared. How many years later, over 40 years since I wrote Bless Me, Ultima. And she appears again because they’re strong people. The curanderas were the healers, they helped the people. We had no doctors. They had to take care of the village, of the ranchers, of women giving birth. I honor them. Somewhere I call them the first spiritual feminists. The first spiritual feminists. Because they were spiritual, that’s what they dealt in. They were women who were strong. Did their thing. They learned curanderismo, and practiced it and weren’t afraid. When they were called witches, they weren’t afraid. They were going to go into the soul, they were going to heal the soul. And then some people would say "look what she did, she’s a witch". She has to be strong, the curandera has to be strong, and in that sense they were the first spiritual feminists.

Randy Lopez Goes Home was the beginning of how to deal with my wife’s eventual death. I had finished the novel and my wife was ill but she read it. She really liked it, "you’ve got something there" she said. So it was a preparation for both of us. Me writing it, she reading it. As I talk what story is all about, we share.

After she dies, the difference there is, I’m dealing with my grief. It’s the second step of where did she go? Where does soul go? Como dice la cancion, a donde van los muertos, where do we go? So we’re back to what I said earlier, in terms of a world view. What do I believe. I’m very eclectic. My altar has my mother’s statue of la Virgin de Guadalupe, all my photographs, a bottle of booze. Then I have this idea of the consciousness of the universe, that I am a part of that. I think the old man comes to the conclusion that his wife is there, is waiting for him. In a slightly different time space than he is living in, because he’s still here. And between here, and there, is a very small space.
•mvs: Last questions. Looking at nostalgia, memory, sorrow, as different varieties of the same thing, and looking at The Sorrows of Young Alfonso, as a book that had to be finished because the publisher demanded it to be finished--because it’s not done yet. What do you want readers to say when they close the book? "Hot damn, that was a good book!"

•RA: Absolutely, that’s what every writer wants.

•mvs: Any take away message that the reader should stop and contemplate when they finish The Sorrows of Young Alfonso?

•RA: I have to say that about every book. Yes, some of my books, especially Bless Me, Ultima have been more popular, it’s still in print after over 40 years. But every book was important at its time. It had a certain reason for being written. By the time I get to The Sorrows of Young Alfonso, I think I’ve hit a really good height in terms of the character, the story, the way I told it, how it unravels and how it ends. I feel really good about it. I want it to do well. But as I say, I feel that way about every book.

You’ve gone through this journey. I’ve become that person in the novel that I’m writing. Can’t be separated. I am full of joy or I am suffering, as my characters are. By the time I get to the end of a novel it’s, "shwe man, where have I been?" Where have I been, I’ve been lost in that book I’ve written. I must be humble but I really think when I finish a book, I say, "wow that’s great." Because I invested a lot of me in it. You invest your most important part, your creative imagination in creating a story. You’ve got to be pleased at the end.

•jst: How would you like to be remembered, in our community but also obviously the world community because you’re now a world-class writer and you’re recognized not just by Latinos but by writers across the United States and the world? How do you think you will be remembered?

•RA: Up there in the clouds traveling with my wife back to Mazatlán, I hope people say that I did some kind deeds.

Michael Sedano, Rudolfo Anaya, Jesús Treviño, Oso

Mid-Day Floricanto
Michael Sedano

The invitations arrive with frustrating regularity. A fabulous lineup of poets reading at fabled venues. Wondrous foto opportunities, poets I've not heard, or not often enough. Then I confirm the time: 8 p.m. Ten p.m. Driving at night, staying up late. Drat, two activities I cannot or prefer not to do.

Gerda Govine hosts "Poetry Within Reach"

That's why I was jumping with excitement when the invitation arrived to a mid-day poetry reading at the Pasadena Senior Center. Poetry Within Reach readings, hosted by poet Gerda Govine, take place on Wednesday afternoons. A perfect hour for retired tipas tipos like my wife and me.

Marcia Arrieta and Teresa Mei Chuc are on the bill on Wednesday, August 3. It's my first visit to the Pasadena Senior Center.

Marcia Arrieta reads in English and Spanish

Teresa Mei Chuc reads in English code-switching to Vietnamese on occasion

I have had the opportunity in the past to hear Teresa Mei Chuc read one or two poems at Avenue 50 Studio in nearby Highland Park. Today's Poetry Within Reach event is my first opportunity to enjoy a full program.

She is a wow.

Reading from several publications, Chuc's work haunts her listener with matter-of-fact readings remembering bodies pushed into the sea as survivors float on, poems drenched in agent orange producing misshapen embryos. There are lyrical pieces on roses, grandmother, children, and relationships.

I buy her collection, Red Thread Poems from Fithian Press, to add to my library.

Two programs remain in Poetry Within Reach reading series. Details at their Facebook page:

August 10, 2016 12-1 PM at Pasadena Senior Center
Hazel Harrison Clayton
Victor Vazquez

August 17, 2016 12-1 PM at Pasadena Senior Center
Dr. Mel Donalson
Carla Sameth

Poetry Within Reach is a project of the Border Council of Arts and Culture/Consejo Fronterizo de Arte y Cultura (COFAC) funded by the City of Pasadena Arts and Cultural Affairs Division in collaboration with Side Street Projects.


National Writers Union Activating in Los Angeles



There is a personal payoff for my attending the recent meeting of the Los Angeles chapter of the National Writers Union. The hosts are Terry Reyes and David Trujillo. Terry and David were students with me when I was a Speech Professor at Cal State LA, ya hace años. And we were members of the fabled Teatro A La Brava, Terry an actor, David a writer, I the Director.

Those were the days, gente.

Left, David Trujillo, Ed Carrillo

These days, Terry and David are actively retired in a comfortable home in the hills of Highland Park. Today, their activism devotes itself to writing for social justice and righting writers' rights through efforts of a national organization, The National Writers Union.

Offering a cafeteria plan of services, NWU features Spanish Language, Journalism, Book divisions, a highly valuable Grievance and Contract assistance service, and generalized services to freelancers or writers looking to turn their words into cash.

Membership dues flow along a sliding scale based on the writer's earnings from writing. Visit NWU.org  for details on the union's services and membership.

In addition to the speakers, Ismael Parra--local chapter chair, Elle Febbo--Chapter Chair for Southern California, David Trujillo, Eric Gordon--Past Chair, several writers, members and visitors alike, shared their own work during the evening.

Upper left, speakers Ismael Parra, Elle Febbo, Lower right, readers Thomas O'Shaughnessy, Eric Gordon

Clockwise from upper left, readers Sarah Forth, Dan McCrory, Colby Wagenbach, September Williams. Not pictured: Michael Sedano who read his 500 word memoir, "Snowy ride up the mountain."

A rich variety of readings held the group's attention. An historical essay on Nipomo, a thoughtful essay on talking and speaking Spanish, excerpt from a novel-in-process, a theatre review, Sedano's army memoir, an experimental prose-poem, a chat. Such diversity reflects the NWU's goal of "all writers, all genres, all media."

Ed Carrillo captured my attention with a memoir from his days teaching high school, including a hostile vato named Luis J. Rodriguez. Carrillo memorializes a moment during a drive back to Alhambra from a research trip to the LA Public Library when Rodriguez declares his intention to write a novel. The other kids laugh it up until Rodriguez, the alfa dog riding shotgun, turns and delivers cachetadas, promising an ass-kicking if it persists. That is the moment Always Running was born.

I'm talking to Carrillo about doing a guest column for La Bloga sharing a version of that chapter of his in-process memoir. A ver.



9th Day of the 8th Month of the 2016th Year of the Modern Era: La Bloga On-line Floricanto
Katie Hoerth, Linda Romero, Victor Avila, Ana Chig, Nancy Green

Daughter of the Valley By Katie Hoerth
I Cry By Linda Romero
The Black Handkerchief By Victor Avila
Laboral Por Ana Chig
Rage By Nancy Green

Daughter of the Valley
By Katie Hoerth

Teach her tongue how to roll the names of flowers
tickling her toes, the lantana, nightshade,
primrose. Crown her ebony curls with willow.
Teach her the word for

beauty. Show her summers were meant for sipping
raspas in the shade of mesquites, sun a
mango color turning chamoy by evening.
Teach her the word for

joy. Then let her listen to chachalaca
songs at dusk, the chants of cicadas, chanclas
rapping on caliche, the mix of lenguas.
Teach her the word for

harmony. Now make her see her reflection
in the mirror, see her own birthplace, gaze
at this flat vale, viridian river, Eden.
Teach her the word for

home.


I Cry
By Linda Romero

I cry because there is hate out there,
a hate that kills innocents wanting to see
a movie one night, taking their families
with money they probably saved up for,
for joy

I cry because hate targets gay club goers who seek
acceptance and belonging … do we not
all seek the same?

I cry for families who are told their loved one
is not coming home tonight because of the color
of their skin

I cry because children have to learn lock-down
Drills at school instead of art, music and drama

I cry for those who fear mornings when wives or husbands
leave for work, afraid they won't be home for dinner;
they want only to keep the peace in their little
part of the world for their families

I cry because our children won't always know who the bad
guys are because sometimes they wear uniforms too

I cry for a world where children are safe at school, doing
homework with friends over pudding pops and peanut
butter and honey sandwiches, and love conquers hate



The Black Handkerchief
By Victor Avila

for mg

Because I did not have
The power of a corrupt government behind me,
Or the farce of a cowardly media
That failed to speak the truth on my behalf.
Because they had threatened me
At gun point thinking it would be enough
To guarantee my silence—
Or because so many had disappeared already
That I would be too scared
To raise my voice.
But today I realized—
“What else can they do to me
That they haven’t done already?”
The mothers of Juarez cry out for their
Murdered daughters
And the ghosts of forgotten men
Haunt the very bridge you hung them from.
What else can you do to me?
You took everything from me
And that was your biggest mistake
Because you also took my fear.
And now I am no longer afraid…
If I don’t speak up now
I have only myself to blame
When the police come knocking at my door.
Are those their very trucks approaching?
And this simple piece of cloth
Once insignificant now stands for something more.
I wave it in the face of those cowards who took the 43.
I lift it high in my angry fist waving it, waving it.
I will no longer use it
To wipe away my tears or those
Of my brothers and sisters.
It is my banner in the face of overwhelming odds.
It lets the world know that I am not defeated,
That Mexico is not defeated,
And that we will bring the 43 home.


Laboral
Por Ana Chig

El día se abre entre rostros y pasos.
Suelto la mano de mi hijo.
Atrás queda el temprano patio infantil, la higuera,
los cuervos, las letras, los números, las palabras.
Siempre a la derecha escenas…
−no he de nombrar la exclusividad de la miseria humana−,
la prisa en el pensamiento y su agenda,
¡Oh, el horizonte!
A veces siento la ruptura de los diálogos con ella–la poesía.
La marcha del autobús intenta adherirme a su designio.
Es tarde, no se llega, me distraigo ante el último celaje
de la bruma levantándose de los cerros.
Entonces, enciendo las maquinas,
me programo al ruido simultáneo,
al olor del papel y la tinta impresa, a los propósitos del calendario
a la rigurosidad de la postura erguida−sucedánea fórmula de la estabilidad.
Y sin embargo, todo es tan jodidamente bello
hasta el me-ca-nis-mo hiriente, artificioso, del desasosiego.


Rage
By Nancy Green

Rage wears a mask,
appears calm, pleasant,

sharp as a razor, convinces
others to let their guard down

Deep in her soul rage listens,
scouts the territory, scrutinizes

the intentions of others,
selects the best strategy to follow

Rage contains anger, nurtures
concern, cultivates willpower,

patiently uncovers historical
facts, discards wishful thinking,

false illusions, patiently unfolds
linings of hope, faith, determination

Rage moves forward in unity,
cautiously steps into a place

of certainty, acknowledges
divine intervention, genuine support

All in one deep breath
rage inhales purpose,

sees the light at the end
of the tunnel, thrives in the
knowledge that change
is inevitable

embraces hard work as
a human right, a human

value to be cherished
with honest integrity

Rage knows her power,
her ability to destroy

racist assumptions fostered
by a system of white supremacy

Rage knows her strength
to wave off petty attacks

Rage explodes freely, fiercely
overcomes useless resistance,

exerts a will so strong
civilizations transform

to change the course
of history


Meet The Poets
Daughter of the Valley By Katie Hoerth
I Cry By Linda Romero
The Black Handkerchief By Victor Avila
Laboral Por Ana Chig
Rage By Nancy Green



Katherine Hoerth is the author of four poetry books. Her most recent collection, Goddess Wears Cowboy Boots (Lamar University Literary Press, 2014) won the Helen C Smith Prize from the Texas Institute of Letters for the best book of poetry. Her work has been published in journals including BorderSenses, Tupelo Quarterly, and Pleiades. She teaches literature and creative writing at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley and serves as poetry editor of Amarillo Bay and Devilfish Review. Her next poetry collection, The Lost Chronicles of Slue Foot Sue, is forthcoming from Lamar University Literary Press in early 2017. She lives in deep south Texas.


Linda Romero is from Harlingen, Texas. She has been published in the Valley International Poetry Festival Boundless anthologies since 2010, Along the River 2: More Voices from the Rio Grande (VAO Publishing), and Twenty: In Memoriam (El Zarape Press). She serves as Executive Director for Vidas Cruzadas, an outreach program geared toward creative arts in McAllen, TX.


Victor Avila is an award-winning poet. Recent work has appeared in the anthologies Poetry of Resistance: Voices for Social Justice and The Border Crossed Us. Victor has also written and illustrated several comic books. His latest Eyes of Demon the will be published in November through Ghoula Press. Victor has taught in California public schools for over twenty-five years.


Poeta, editora, creativa gráfica y promotora cultural. En 2012 funda y dirige la revista mensual de poesía Frontera Esquina en la que participan escritores, poetas, ensayistas  y artistas plásticos de la región fronteriza de Baja California y California, Estados Unidos.
     Durante este periodo coordina y dirige presentaciones literarias, recitales de poesía, festivales, exposiciones de pintura, en diversos foros culturales de la región.
     En 2014 consolida el proyecto editorial independiente Nódulo Ediciones que publica: poesía, cuento, ensayo, novela, periodismo cultural y cuento infantil.
     En 2015 forma parte del jurado para el Premio Nacional de Poesía Tijuana que convoca el Instituto Municipal de Arte y Cultura.


Nancy Lorenza Green is an Afro-Chicana writer & musician from El Paso/Cd. Juárez who recently released "Aura," a CD dedicated to the Ancestors that features Native American and Asian flutes and distributed by CD Baby. Check out her You Tube channel nancydelsegundo or contact her at nancygreen9@yahoo.com for presentations or to purchase CDs directly from her.



Photography note: The portraits of Rudolfo Anaya are mis-watermarked as ©2015. They are © 2016. To run a photograph, contact the photographer for permission and to receive a properly watermarked foto: msedano@readraza.com

•             Age Range: 6 - 9 years
•             Grade Level: 1 - 4
•             Hardcover: 40 pages
•             Publisher: Abrams Books for Young Readers (October 4, 2016)
•             Language: English
•             ISBN-10: 1419721305
•             ISBN-13:978-1419721304
•             Product Dimensions: 11 x 0.4 x 9 inches

-->

Toni Kirkpatrick

Review: Paul Andrew Hutton. The Apache Wars. The Apache Wars. The Hunt For Geronimo, The Apache Kid, And The Captive Boy Who Started The Longest War In American History.
NY: Crown, 2016.  ISBN: 9780770435813

Michael Sedano

Paul Andrew Hutton in his backyard

Watching the seven and half minute video  (click here) of Standing Rock Sioux versus the mega pipeline you’ve never heard of, sets off a strong sense of historic reocurrence. Cast as protestors when they defend their land, the caravan drives up to a checkpoint. They are armed only with their volition and indignation. They deliver themselves willingly into the maw of the lumbering beast. Inevitably to be arrested, they’ll view from jail cells as earth-moving machines gouge a pipeline’s path scross Indian land.

It’s a modern-day view of what those final years of the Apacheria looked like at the end of the longest war fought on US soil. The video sent my thoughts to comparable history accounted in Paul Andrew Hutton’s The Apache Wars, such as when Geronimo agrees to a meeting with the pursuing cavalry.

Arizona rural big cities bespeak the standards of the robustly acquisitive English-speaking culture. A prolonged war with the Apacheria is winding down in favor of the United States. Northern Mexico remains vastly unpopulated. In Arizona and New Mexico, people are laying claims and parceling government land into ranches and farms. Indian reservations, into a second generation, have emerged as internal colonies, administered by Indian Agents and the U.S. Army, with meetings and commerce between the occupying government and the Indians normalized.

When Geronimo, who has gone AWOL from his reservation, agrees to meeting the leader of an opposing force, he’s used to collaborative exchanges with US forces. The forces meet the Animas Valley of New Mexico. Saying “Geronimo meets” is wild synecdoche. He’s not alone.

Eight warriors, twenty-two women and children travel with their leader. The band has captured a hundred horses and more cattle on the other side of the US-Mexico border. A reader’s visual cortex goes into high gear, imagining the scene of orderly rows of tents and armed men in company formation. La palomilla of mounted warriors accompanied by wives and children and several hundred head of livestock filter into the terrain. Following a river, drawn to the campfire smoke, guided by indian scouts who are U.S. soldiers, Geronimo and his families wend their way to the meeting point, thirty souls stepping willingly into the dragon’s mouth and all those soldiers.

From there, the Army leader, one Lt. Britton Davis, wants Geronimo to speed the march back to the San Carlos reserve by shedding the livestock. Davis warns the indian that the Mexican rancheros would come looking for their ganado, and the Army and Geronimo would have a bloody time of it. Davis’ orders were to protect Geronimo from any attack or threat.

Geronimo laughs off the fear appeal. It’s a colorful exchange that underlines the political dynamic and cultural flux coming into being in the region, and is a hallmark of an arrestingly captivating book.

“Mexican! My squaws can whip all the Mexicans in Chihuahua,” he exclaimed. “We don’t fight Mexicans with cartridges,” he noted with contempt. “Cartridges cost too much. We keep them to fight your white soldiers. We fight Mexicans with rocks.”    336

The moment of swashbuckling should give a reader pause, in a history. Such is the stuff of fiction, or highly creative non-fiction. Interesting as the moment appears, it's fact. Hutton cites three sources for the quotation. An article by Lt. Davis from the Army and Navy Journal published in 1885, and two third party resources, a memoir from the period, and a 1976 biography.

Hutton doesn’t make a point of it, but in an interview, the author declares the Apaches spoke Spanish, and many spoke bilingual in native Apache language and Spanish. Lt. Davis is a fluent Spanish-speaker. Some readers will be disappointed Hutton couldn’t share more details on the linguistic situation. The key anglo character in the history is a kidnaped white boy adopted into his captor tribe. He becomes a native Apache language speaker whose rudimentary English and good Spanish make him an interpreter and a Sergeant Major—the highest enlisted rank, a patriarch in an Army unit.

Geronimo and the pantheon of Apache leaders make up the book's most interesting characters. That captured-at-eleven half-Irish half-Mexican Apache joins with the US Army. He becomes an indian scout, the government's indian police force, skilled in hunting down and fighting  Indians unhappy enough to leave the confines of reservation land.

The role of indian scouts make interesting speculation as to their motives. In fact, some readers would welcome investigations on the psychology of the indian scouts, vendidos with a vengeance. But then, such an investigation might be a new research project, or might better be told in a novel.

Extensive documentation makes The Apache Wars a useful resource beyond the book. As an academic historian, Hutton puts himself through the paces to maximize authenticity and reliability of his eye-opening, often colorful, stories and conversations. The author derives his detail from four classes of written information: manuscript collections, journal articles, memoirs, and a host of books, most from University presses.

Non-academic readers will be pleased the extensive notes don’t intrude upon the flow of the narrative. No superscript numbers dot the page demanding attention across the 424 pages. Instead, there’s a page-sequenced list at the end providing over 50 pages of documentation linking the narrative to primary and key secondary sources.

Click here to view the video at Standing Rock Sioux reservation, blockading pipeline equipment.

The Dakotas. Now that Congress and government land speculators have given away land rights in the Standing Rock Sioux reservation, Indian people announced their willingness to die for their land. It's a classic "American" value, and the fate of so many indios who fought in their time.

Dying may be Standing Rock's fate one day. For now, unlike the heavily armed Army and money-grubbing indian agents of Geronimo’s era, uniformed police work like automatons when they take a prisoner defending her sovereignty. A view is overjoyed that the scene doesn't play out like so many cop-murders of people in custody.

The cops separate her from the protest scene on the blacktop and take her out of sight behind an SUV. Several large uniforms surround her; one keeps his hand on her all the while.

Physical and vocal intimidation doesn’t silence her, the prisoner continues to call out to her fellows. While a giant woman officer pats-down the handcuffed woman, the prisoner calls to her fellows, “Don’t let them cross our land. This is our land!” As the officer slides open the SUV the prisoner uulates with a defiance and fervor that echoes back to the 1880s and Geronimo's band of dying Apache people, making a show of it as they migrate--surrender--into the Army camp.

Jesus Treviño and Paul Andrew Hutton

In an interview, Hutton observes on the inevitability of the defeat and the ongoing extinction of Apache gente and cultura. When the US moved West, it was a steamroller. Today, when US private interests want to pipeline across indian land, and major rivers, indian rights and the idea of a reservation disappear. When something as precious as ones homeland is ripped out of your grasp, it will never come back. Realizing it is a lethal blow.

“But not every visitor was smitten with Geronimo. One observed the famous Apache was ‘about as mild mannered a man as ever scuttled a ship or cut a throat and for that matter butchered defenseless women and children.’
. . . .
The army had put the Apaches to work building cabins and laying out roads. A school was built so that the children could be educated at Mount Vernon and not have to be sent away to Carlisle . . . Many ended up adjusting quite well to their new home, including Geronimo, but one holdout refused to be reconstructed.

Old Nana encouraged the people to believe that it was only a matter of time until they would be returned to their homeland. One day a lady philanthropist visited . . . to write a report on the conditions there. Nana told her that the people did not want to stay there but wished instead to go back to their homeland. The lady had brought a small globe with her and handed it to Nana. She told him that people were coming from all over the globe to America, that the country was becoming crowded. The Apaches could no longer roam over the vast territory that once was their land.

Nana stared at the globe, shaken to the core. . . After that visit, Nana slipped into a deep depression from which he never recovered. He now understood that he and his people would never go home.” 418-19



Latinopia Publishes Interview with Apache Wars Author Hutton

Latinopia and La Bloga share a history and purposes of supporting, reporting, analyzing, celebrating Chicana Chicano, Latina Latino arts, literatures, music, cultura, and history. Y más.

Recently Michael Sedano and Jesús Treviño trekked to Albuquerque to interview Rudolfo Anaya. During our stay, Paul Andrew Hutton kindly invited us to his home to talk about a book Treviño discovered in his ever-continuing research for material to populate the already extensive latinopia archives.

In this interview video, Hutton sets the backgrounds of the Apache war, the relatively peaceful first contact, the factors that changed everything. And the story of that Anglo kid who, some say, is the reason for the war.

http://latinopia.com/latino-history/latinopia-event-the-apache-wars-1/

Jesus Treviño, Paul Andrew Hutton, Michael Sedano

Jesús Treviño addresses UCR "A Day of Latino Science Fiction”

From Press Release:
The American Book Awards were created to provide recognition for outstanding literary achievement from the entire spectrum of America’s diverse literary community. The purpose of the awards is to recognize literary excellence without limitations or restrictions. There are no categories, no nominees, and therefore no losers. The award winners range from well-known and established writers to under-recognized authors and first works. 

There are no quotas for diversity, the winners list simply reflects it as a natural process. 

The Before Columbus Foundation views American culture as inclusive and has always considered the term “multicultural” to be not a description of various categories, groups, or “special interests,” but rather as the definition of all of American literature. The Awards are not bestowed by an industry organization, but rather are a writers’ award given by other writers.

The 2016 American Book Award Winners are:

Laura Da'
Tributaries (University of Arizona)
Susan Muaddi Darraj
Curious Land: Stories from Home (University of Massachusetts)
Deepa Iyer
We Too Sing America: South Asian, Arab, Muslim, and Sikh Immigrants Shape Our Multiracial Future (The New Press)
Mat Johnson
Loving Day (Spiegel & Grau)
John Keene
Counternarratives (New Directions)
William J. Maxwell
F.B. Eyes: How J. Edgar Hoover’s Ghostreaders Framed African American Literature
(Princeton University)
Lauret Savoy
Trace: Memory, History, Race, and the American Landscape (Counterpoint)
Ned Sublette and Constance Sublette
The American Slave Coast: A History of the Slave-Breeding Industry (Lawrence Hill Books)
Jesús Salvador Treviño
Return to Arroyo Grande (Arte Público)
Nick Turse
Tomorrow’s Battlefield: U.S. Proxy Wars and Secret Ops in Africa (Haymarket Books)
Ray Young Bear
Manifestation Wolverine: The Collected Poetry of Ray Young Bear (Open Road Integrated Media)
Lifetime Achievement:
Louise Meriwether
Walter & Lillian Lowenfels Criticism Award:
Lyra Monteiro and Nancy Isenberg
Andrew Hope Award:
Chiitaanibah Johnson

The 2016 American Book Award winners will be formally recognized on Sunday, October 30th from 2:00-5:00 p.m. at the SF Jazz Center, Joe Henderson Lab, 201 Franklin Street (at Fell), San Francisco, CA. This event is open to the public. 

by Ernest Hogan

San Juan Noir
Edited by Mayra Santos-Febres
Translated by Will Vanderhyden
Akashic Books - October

[from the publisher]
Akashic Books continues its groundbreaking series of original noir anthologies, launched in 2004 with Brooklyn Noir. Each story is set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the city of the book.

In Memoriam for a Friend: John Martinez Honors Luis Omar Salinas

Luis Omar Salinas left giant footsteps across the landscape of Chicano Literature. Chronologically, Salinas' work stood both as elder and avant garde to el movimiento's thundering voice. Stylistically, Omar Salinas was the movement's lyric voice, favoring a personal subject matter often flavored with an indelible sense of humor. He was an Aztec angel, offspring of a woman who was beautiful.

At the 1973 Festival de Flor y Canto, Salinas stood next to Alurista and passed the baton when Alurista honored Salinas' greatness, declaring Salinas "our greatest poet." Salinas smiled, put his hand on the San Diego poet's shoulder. "You're the man," the great Fresno poet told the up-and-coming lion, the young Alurista.

La Bloga is happy to honor Luis Omar Salinas through the voice of Salinas' friend and erstwhile roommate, John Martinez. Click here to read a guest column about Salinas in his late years.

Omar Salinas 1973: Festival de Flor y Canto, USC

I CALL OUT TO THE FARAWAY COFFIN OF OMAR SALINAS
By John Martinez

Para Luis Omar Salinas

The night is swollen
In the puffed chest of a sparrow
Manicured Bermuda
With mumbling cats,
Television heroes
Fade into pixel dust

And sleeping bankers
On leather couches, dream,
Of nothing

So, tonight, I salute
My wandering,
And call out to
The faraway coffin
Of Luis Omar Salinas

And think of his memory
In pastel yellow
And orange peel orange,
And bruised poems
Scattered like milk
Chocolate Kisses
Under the tin roof
Of Lindsay and for
The world to see

The bones of his Tia,
Forever trotting across
The tar knot streets,
Whispered to me in a dream

“Está Vivo, Luis Omar Salinas,
Durmiendo encima de un
Bus stop bench"

A caravan of ice cream trucks
And unborn babies
Falling from his pencil hand,
Stop signs moan and bend
Around him-
In life and in death

"Still, this god damned loneliness"

And Barbital itches,
And Navane, sueno,
And College girls
With unscripted secrets
Undressing to
To his romantic rue
In a cloud of Kool-

His stanza fingers

Let the tower of
The Catholic Church,
Near the liquor store
Ring its bell,
Scatter the derelict dogs,
The unemployed
Deer Dancer,
The cross dressed
Little boy and his mother,
A murdered scream
Of his father in a lunch box,
The pessimistic trucker
And his bipolar parrot-

Let them open
To the Quixotic belch;

"Omar, está vivo, en las calles de
Lindsay, Califas…”

En los llantas of trucks,
Bent chain linked fences,
Wooden houses on mud,
Politicians and their
Runaway tumbleweeds

“Huelga, Huelga,
Huelga, against the common grid,
The sculpted dream,”
Is the harmony they sing-
This flock of drugged pigeons
In white tuxedos-

"Está vivo,
Luis Omar Salinas"

Under the Orange tree
Behind his Tia's house,
Whining his shadow
Onto trawled stucco

Forever grinding
Lead onto paper

Spinning the world
Into flour dust metaphors,

Dressing dead soldiers
Of liberation in khaki clean,
And hands painted red,
Breaking the cell
Of Miguel Hernandez

This Gypsy poet,
This lazy eye, meaty faced,
Visionary-
Holding
On to us,
With a sinew smile…his smile,
That meant, only;
He loved us with his pain

Omar Salinas and Alurista at 1973 Festival de Flor y Canto at USC. ©michael v sedano

John Martinez studied Creative Writing at Fresno State University, in the late seventies, early eighties with the late, Philip Levine. During this time, he also performed music with Teatro De La Tierra (Agustin Lira) and toured with them for 2 years. After four years, at Fresno State University, and touring, on and off with Teatro, Martinez began working with the, now, U.S. Poet Laureate, Juan Felipe Herrera, and they formed the Music-Art -Performance Group, TROKA and, subsequently, went on tour, performing throughout the United States. He then moved to Los Angeles to further his education, and to possibly attend Southwestern Law School. But, owing to economic obligations (he was a single parent, and had a child to support) be began work in a Los Angeles Firm as an Investigator. 3 years later, he was appointed Chief Investigator for that firm. In 1987, he met his wife, and they purchased their first home in Los Angeles. For the next 24 years, Martinez did not write poetry. It wasn't until the passing of his brother, award winning Novelist, and Poet, Victor Martinez, in 2011, that John Martinez begin to write again; a last promise to Victor. Since then, John Martinez has produced three books of poetry, two of which are being published by Izote Press and will be ready for AWP in Washington in 2017. In addition, he has produced an unpublished novel, Wilshire Rain, which covers white collar crime in Los Angeles in the late 80's, and chronicles the formations of Special Investigation Units that are now mainstays in most large Insurance Companies.


Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery Adding Rudolfo Anaya to Collection

This foto of Gaspar Enríquez' portrait of  Rudolfo Anaya appears in the Albuquerque Journal.

Visitors to next year's AWP in Washington, DC will want to carve out time to visit the National Portrait Gallery to see in-person Gaspar Enríquez' portrait of Rudolfo Anaya.

The commission, accepted by the Smithsonian board in May 2016, is slated for unveiling in November at the New Acquisitions exhibition.

Anaya's is the only portrait of a Chicano in the National Portrait Gallery. No Chicana portraits hang in the gallery. Director Kim Sajet's letter to Don Rudy attests to the portrait as "the first that we devote to a Hispanic figure." La Bloga looks forward to reporting the Smithsonian's second, and subsequent, commissions of raza notables.


Latinopia Adds Interviews, Essay: Anaya on Poetry. Hutton and Ortego on Geronimo. 

La Bloga values our relationship with Latinopia. We are text-oriented, Latinopia video. We are multidimensional, or multimedia, as both sites feature foto, video, and essay.

This week, Latinopia adds depth and immediacy to two recent La Bloga columns, Michael Sedano's review of The Sorrows of Young Alfonso, and his Interview with Rudolfo Anaya on recent works. Last week, Sedano's review of Paul Andrew Hutton's The Apache Wars, linked to a Latinopia interview with the historian.

Click these links to navigate to an interview with Anaya discussing poetry, an interview with Hutton on the inevitability of Apache defeat. The third links to Felipe de Ortego's essay on the inevitability of conflict and Unitedstatesian hegemony.

Rudolfo Anaya
http://latinopia.com/latino-literature/latinopia-word-rudolfo-anaya-on-poetry/

Paul Andrew Hutton
http://latinopia.com/latino-history/latinopia-event-apache-wars-2/

Felipe de Ortego
http://latinopia.com/blogs/bravo-road-with-don-felipe-8-21-16-restoring-geronimo/




Call for Papers
The Inter-University Program for Latino Research in co-sponsorship with The University of Texas at San Antonio’s Mexico Center will host in San Antonio, Texas on May 17-19, 2017 the sixth biennial Siglo XXI Conference on the Mapping of Latino Research.

For detailed instructions, visit the University's Call for Papers website here:
https://iuplr.uic.edu/iuplr/conferences/siglo-xxi-2017-call-for-papers

The proceedings from the conference will be included in a report on the state of Latino research which will focus on what we know, what we need to know on how to achieve new knowledge. This publication will be geared towards private and public funders of research. We encourage cross-disciplinary discussions as well as panels that include practitioners.


Awards and Ceremonies

The new publicity for the annual Latino Book Awards bills itself as "The Academy Awards of Latino Literature & Culture." More power to the academy, entonces.

The affair should be a fun gathering of author hopefuls, friends, familia, and the raza servers schlepping drinks and finger food to the paying guests.

The producer promises "we will be saluting Zoot Suit (the movie) and many of the cast and crew will be presenters for the Awards. This adds a special Hollywood effect for our first independent Awards to be held in Los Angeles and will create an evening not to be missed."

You can order tickets for the event at this link. https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/YK9VDXS



Penultimate Tuesday of August 2016: La Bloga On-line Floricanto
Edward Vidaurre, Tom Sheldon, Tim WoZny, Elizabeth Marino, Ivonne Gordon


“Stray Bullets” By Edward Vidaurre
“cloudland” By Tom Sheldon
“The Emperor Has No Brains” By Tim WoZny
“Furrow” By Elizabeth Marino
“You Sang to the Sun” By Ivonne Gordon

When I was training salespeople the most challenging behavior was to ask for the order. The salesperson would do it all effectively and build to stressing the benefits and value of the proposal, and stop. The customer would say something like “that’s interesting” and the sales call was over.

Writers and writing is analogous, except instead of not asking for the order, some writers don't submit and don't get published.

What if they say no?

Do the math if rejection intimidates you. You have a 50-50 chance of a “Yes” if you ask. You have a 100% chance of “No” when you don’t ask.

The lesson about asking for the order comes out of today’s La Bloga On-line Floricanto, the fifth selection, “You Sang to the Sun.” Ivonne Gordon submitted the poem last year but it did not go into a floricanto. “You Sang to the Sun” had been submitted, thus the poem stood a 50-50 chance of nomination to the On-line Floricanto.

La Bloga On-line Floricanto is a joint project of La Bloga and the Facebook community Poets Responding to SB1070: Poetry of Resistance, founded by Francisco X. Alarcón qepd. In the community, poets submit poems on an Open Call. Moderators of the group read current submissions and review archived candidates. La Bloga limits the Moderators to five nominations per floricanto. It's not surprising some fine work doesn't get an immediate nod. This month, the Moderators decided Ivonne Gordon’s tribute to Francisco X. Alarcón had waited long enough.

Submit is easily typed, less so to do. In Los Angeles, Women Who Submit, an artivist collective of writers, invites peers to make submission a mutually-supportive community event. Writers don't have to be in LA to participate.  Visit Women Who Submit's Facebook page (click here to visit) and get details):

SEPTEMBER 10, 2016, JOIN US from 12-4pm at THE FACULTY: 707 N Heliotrope Dr., Los Angeles, California 90029.
"We, Women Who Submit, want to celebrate the last four years of submissions, rejections, and acceptances with one giant nationwide online submission party.
We are inviting all women and non-binary writers around the country to submit to at least one tier one journal on 9/10/16.
PARKING: Street parking is available, but there is restricted parking near LACC. MAKE SURE TO READ THE SIGNS. 
Let's inundate these top journals with our best work and shake up their slush piles."


Opportunities rarely knock after a few months. A regular flow of submissions keeps hope alive; every  submission has a 50-50 chance of being "Yes."

“Stray Bullets” By Edward Vidaurre
“cloudland” By Tom Sheldon
“The Emperor Has No Brains” By Tim WoZny
“Furrow” By Elizabeth Marino
“You Sang to the Sun” By Ivonne Gordon

Stray Bullets
By Edward Vidaurre

Some people have
poems coming to them
in the form of shovels and graveyards.

In the form of broken
neck prose and romantic
death sonnets.

In molotov cinquains and
abstract chalk outlines.

In nonet form,
in a café
with a slow view of sundown.

The poem will hit you like
a bop and stray bullet
begging for a blood
transfusion.

A shadorma that leaves
the seventh line blank
with a sigh.


cloudland
By Tom Sheldon

The trials and trying of my life

in one breath i am living and dying

I've been waiting for showers to fall

I've been standing on these shifting sands

reaching out for an open hand

gyros and lightning speak to me

perched birds breathing in secrecy ~ days drift into night...

seasons collide in change...

cloud generators and steam rise

a gentle rain falls

as night unfolds...droplets caressing stone

seedlings grow

the sun rises

one eye goes laughing,

one eye crying.



Furrow
By Elizabeth Marino

Many fields lie fallow, waiting.
The hand lingers over
the pulse from the rounded belly.
Even when the potential is gone
the mystery remains.

No perfect child will unfurl tiny fingers here.
It goes to the heart of who we are, and beyond.
Imaging seeks and finds
one intact ovary. The other
hides behind fists of gristle and blood.

The hand lingers over
the pulse from the rounded belly.
Belly and hand are mine. Many fields
lie fallow, waiting.
I am legion.



The Emperor Has No Brains
By Tim WoZny

Sing a song of Trump/Pence,
A party full of hate,
Four and twenty liars
Start the world on fire.

When the fire started
The racists began to sing—
Wasn't that an ugly thing
We did to anoint our King?

The king was in the counting-house
Counting out his money,
The queen was at the beach
Stealing words for her speech,

The GOP was in an awful state
Now the party of no hope.
Neck deep in troubled waters
With no one to throw a rope.



You Sang to the Sun
By Ivonne Gordon

To Francisco X. Alarcón

You sang to the sun
and crossed yourself
with the moon. You heal,
you healed the leaves
wrapped in the trees.
You are the root
Edged on Mother Earth.
You are not alone.


Meet the Poets
“Stray Bullets” By Edward Vidaurre
“cloudland” By Tom Sheldon
“The Emperor Has No Brains” By Tim WoZny
“Furrow” By Elizabeth Marino
“You Sang to the Sun” By Ivonne Gordon

Edward Vidaurre is the author of four books. I Took My Barrio On A Road Trip, (Slough Press 2013), Insomnia (El Zarape Press 2014), Beautiful Scars: Elegiac Beat Poems (El Zarape Press 2015), and his latest collection Chicano Blood Transfusion (FlowerSong Books) was published this year. Vidaurre is the founder of Pasta, Poetry, and Vino--a monthly open mic gathering of artists, poets, and musicians. He resides in McAllen, TX with his wife and daughter



Tom Sheldon was born and raised in New Mexico and comes from a large Hispanic family. He has always loved and appreciated the gift of creating in various forms. Southwestern themes and landscapes are among Sheldon’s favorites—the wonder and beauty of New Mexico’s history and his surroundings continually inspire his artwork.






Poet and educator Elizabeth Marino's work most recently appeared in print and online: LaBloga Best of 2014, The Significant Anthology (India), The Muse of Peace (Gambia), Overthrow Capitalism (RPB), 2016 Hessler Street Fair Poetry Anthology (Cleveland), Poets Responding to SB1070, and the online jazz poetry collection As Sweet as You Are. She studied with Juan Felipe Herrera at the first Las dos Brujas writing workshop."



Ivonne Gordon was born in Quito, Ecuador. Her work reflects her nomadic vision, which she expands to limitless inner geographies and borders. She is a poet, literary critic, and literary translator. She has a Ph.D. from UC, Irvine in Latin American Literature. She is a Professor of Latin American Literature at the University of Redlands. She has published: Cuerpos de Ceniza (forthcoming); Meditar de sirenas (Sweden); Meditar de sirenas Second Edition (Chile); Barro blasfemo (Spain ); Manzanilla del insomnio (Ecuador); Colibríes en el exilio (Ecuador). Has been invited to International Poetry Festivals in Colombia, Ecuador, Hungary, Nicaragua, United States and other countries. She was also invited to read her poetry on two occasions at The Library of Congress in Washington, DC. Her work has been included in several Poetry Anthologies published in the United States, Uzbekistan, Latin America, and Europe. Also published in poetry journals in the US, Europe, Africa and Latin America. Her work has been translated to English, Polish, and Flemish. She was Keynote Speaker at International Literature conferences at several universities in the USA. Was recipient of the Fulbright Scholar Award. Among her distinctions she received the Jorge Carrera Andrade Poetry Award in Ecuador, Finalist of the International Award Francisco de Aldana, and Finalist in the International Extraordinary Award of Casa de las Américas.

• teacher’s anthology with poems for each day of the year
• three very large size books with a selection of the poems
• a most complete website that offers:
• every poem read by either of the authors
• many poems turned into songs performed by Suni Paz
• songs from the folklore on a musical rendition that includes a sound track only for singing along
• numerous suggestions for activities
• possibility for students to print out all of the poems to create their own personal anthologies

For more info, visit Restless Books.

Melinda Palacio

Chile Rellenos:  all ingredients from my Nebraska garden or locally grown in Lincoln, Nebraska

Maize from my garden: Lincoln, Nebraska

red maize from my backyard garden (Lincoln, Nebraska)

The Plains of Nebraska

The Subnivian Zone

The Bison Trail in Lincoln, Nebraska

"Tunas" in western Nebraska:  Scotts Bluff donde tambien viven muchas Latinas y Latinos

Near the Bison Trail, Lincoln, Nebraska

The Los Angeles Public Library

The Nebraska State Capitol

In honor of the Mexican music legend, Juan Gabriel, who died Sunday at the age of 66 in Santa Monica, California, I'm posting this story.

"Song for the Living"

It's from my Tell Your True Tale storytelling experiment by Diego Renteria, who tells of his time as a young mariachi playing in South Gate at Christmas at the home of a grieving family that is requesting "Amor Eterno."

A beautiful story ... Read it! share it!