Dispatches from Poets on the Ground: Brenda Cardenas in Wisconsin

After a Rally at the Carlos Cortez Mural, Milwas, WI

Bread of the Earth: One Worker’s Perspective on the Wisconsin Struggle for Justice

The granddaughter of Mexican immigrants and German working class people who at one time belonged to Wisconsin’s Socialist Worker’s Party, I was born and raised in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in the 60’s and 70’s. I’ll never forget my grandpa Cardenas’ stories about the abuse he and his brother suffered as non-union tannery workers, how his brother died of an illness related to those labor conditions, and how only when my grandfather finally, in his 40’s, got a job as an assembly line worker in a union shop, did he feel like he was treated as a human being at work. His gratitude was such that years after he had retired, he would march on the picket lines with his union brothers when they were on strike. My father started his working life in a factory; my mother, in her 70’s, still works an office job because she cannot afford to retire. Aunts and uncles on both sides of the family labored as electricians, clerical staff, telephone operators, bookkeepers, truck drivers, grocery clerks, foundry workers, and barkeeps. They always worked, sometimes two jobs, in both the public and private sectors, both with union support and without, but no matter, they never believed that the right to collective bargaining was anything but a human right. Even the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights (item 2A) defines “freedom of association and the right to collectively bargain” as an essential right of all workers. Scott Walker is in contempt of the United Nations.

Read the rest of Brenda Cardenas' account of the Wisconsin Workers' Demonstrations at www.montevidayo.com.

"A New Ear in Chicana and Latina Poetics"

Standing, waiting for an elevator in San Antonio I hear it: the ease with which a cluster of bystanders move, seamlessly, between the two. I’m speaking, of course, of English and Spanish, Spanish and English. One of the strands of Chicano poetry I’m most enamored with is that work that can successfully recreate that phenomena in a work of literary art. The pinnacle might be “El Louie” by José Montoya. Among the poets of my generation, no one does it better than Brenda Cárdenas. It’s for this reason that one of the volumes of poetry I’ve most enjoyed in 2009 is the recently released Boomerang. I gave the book to Sandra Cisneros for her birthday.

*

from Boomerang Light

by Juan Felipe Herrera

The beginning is empty; however, the emptiness is plural—there are limitless space quadrants in the vast, open, uncharted field of “lost sounds.” And it is here in the nameless and formless universe where she rises, “braying the silence away.” What brays? you may ask. Listen: a woman half-panther, a storyteller with a snout and “coyote moonshine,” with “belly to earth.” The first pages of this multivoiced collection point to the various elements, figures, and vibratory word scales of Cárdenas’s “boomerang.”

This curved, V-like flying figure is the woman-body in motion for-itself and for-others. Self determined and self-propelled, it can take the shape, vocality, velocity, and temperatures it desires—across time, herstory, and space. And it can also ingest, incubate, pulse, and migrate internally and beyond the parameters of its form. After it has consumed the universe, the boomerang—one-half made of explosion, the other of pronouncement—“leaves a rhythm scattered on the wind.”

This collection is volatile the way a panther or trickster coyote is capable of deft performance at night or at dawn when all is quiet and seems to be in order. As the boomerang rings and rattles across loves, deaths, stories, language(s), growled and lettered utterances, rhythm narratives, and lives it leaps across the last four decades. It demarcates a new ear in Chicana and Latina poetics in the Américas.

[…]

*

ME AND MY CUZ

Mother, Father / there’s no passing the cup.

I’m going to be a troublemaker / when I grow up.

—Demetria Martínez

Me and my cuz,

the toughest chicks on the south-side strip,

we roar up and down the avenue

in her brother’s midnight-blue Barracuda,

with the tiny paint flecks that flicker in the sun,

chrome sparkling and Santana blaring from the Bose,

Dylan embroidered into the seatbelts

with rainbow floss—Tangled Up in Blue.

Me and my cuz,

we hang in the park all afternoon,

strut past boys with our long manes flowing,

our faded jeans snug and patched

to match our hips’ swing to the right and left.

We dare them to call us over for a little cervecita.

Me and my cuz,

we cruise past Tío’s bar on Saturday afternoons

to perch on the spinning stools

and sip soda while he washes glasses

and mops the sticky floors.

His voice deepens when he begins

Lesson Número Uno:

“Pretty soon you girls will be old enough

to come into taverns like this,

y esúchame bien,

don’t you ever let me catch you

take your change off the bar.

Snap up your dollar bills,

pero dejen las monedas.

We bartenders got to make a living too.”

Then he instructs us on backdoor escapes

from slimy pendejos

and fifty ways to leave los cabrones

“who just sit on these stools every night

guzzling Budweisers and waiting

patiently to pay you pretty little compliments

that turn into babies y chingazos,

pots, pans y muchas lágrimas.”

Me and my cuz

we got it down, Lesson Número Uno:

bars, boys and blue Barracudas

for the rest of our lives.



from BOOMERANG (Bilingual Press, 2009)

cosas, momotombo interviews, a podcast

COSAS

I admire the discipline of diligent web loggers.
*
Lest I get in trouble for quoting a poem in full without proper permission, here is the latter half of something. It's from a piece titled, "Missing Angels":

[...]
Remember we too migrated--
we once left our signatures on the sand
& on night
sliding through our fingers
like hourglass
And the memory of you
swearing an oath on a steel spike
then offering it deep to the earth & ocean
dead fish looking on

We promised we would not end like the others
forgetful of breeze
the smooth Caribbean relax
of conversation
the humanity of doing nothing

Soon you'll have to answer to the sand you swore
& the steel you swore
because it's possible they've hidden you
buried the script of you
the arching target of history: Yet
blood reaches home soon
Sand will eventually turn to bone
Wind will feel its flesh
Steel will give it body

& there is still music
more music
memorized in stone

from WISE FISH: TALES IN 6/8 TIME (Coffee House Press, 2005)
* by Adrian Castro

Many many months ago, when I mapped out PALABRA PURA's 2008 season, one of the things I wanted to do was invite poets whose work interested me, but who I hadn't had the pleasure of meeting.

One of those poets was Adrian Castro, whose work I was led to by Victor Hernández Cruz.

The irony is that I recently made the difficult decision to stay put and sit out tonight's reading in Chicago because my travel was taking its toll (I head out again on the 30th). So I'll have to rely on Lisa Alvarado to let me know how things go tonight at the California Clipper. On a related note, Latino Poetry Review (LPR) will be publishing a piece on Castro's work by Barabra Jane Reyes.
*
And speaking of VHC, I was in the Strand in NYC back in mid April, wandering back to the poetry section, and there was Victor: crouched and scanning the shelf for first editions of Frank Lima. He found a volume he already had: Inventory, a New and Selected. So I got to buy it instead.

Contributing Editor of LPR, Urayoán Noel, will be putting something together on Lima for a future issue of LPR.
*
One of my recuperated pleasures since my move from South Bend to the District last summer was the urban noontime stroll. Today, I took a generous one along M into Georgetown for a lunch meeting. On my way back I walked into a small bookstore. A friend had casually mentioned its existence, but I hadn't gone in till today. I handed over my bag, walked upstairs to check out the poetry section and was pleasantly taken aback:

While not rivaling, say, the selection one might find in the Poetry Room at City Lights in San Francisco, or the poetry section at the sadly defunct Cody's on Telegraph in Berkeley, or Black Oak Books on Shattuck in Berkeley, I was quite impressed for its range and aesthetic diversity. I only spent a moment, but it was enough to see that they carried titles, for example, by Rodrigo Toscano and Edwin Torres, and others. I ended up buying two volumes: one was a book published by Soft Skull Press in 1998 titled Intermission and which had an introduction that began:

Let's say, for the sake of argument, you are a lover of poetry. Why else would you be standing there in the poetry section of this bookstore? Your eyes happened to fall upon this book.
If you are a fan of Tracie Morris, as I am, then I don't really have to twist your arm now, do I?...

Cornelius Eady goes on to say:

If you are a stranger to her work, then I envy you, for you are about to experience the pleasure of discovery, a delight that seems all too rare in these cynical days

*

The second book I bought was published in 2007 by Atelos, which is a press whose editors are Lyn Hejinian &Travis Ortiz

Here's how the first poem in the volume begins:

QUARK TRICK

decorative heart slap
chasing zephyr tail

wearing red for aerial diffusion
elusive illusion reached by ruin

how to render gesture
before its mess: prefection

how to gale on DNA
while still revered by extension

the whirligigged dog arrives
bowlegged in blue surrender

how to pierce insistent whelping
...

from The Popedology of an Ambient Language

* by Edwin Torres

And the name of the bookstore?

Google "Bridge Street Books" and check it out.

MOMOTOMBO INTERVIEWS

Eduardo C. Corral and Daniel A. Olivas have generously consented to have their interviews of Kevin A. González and Aaron Michael Morales, respectively, posted on Momotombo Press' website in the "Interviews" section. Have a peek at these latest Momotombo Press website updates. There are also e-interviews of previous Momotombo Press authors, as well as a special e-interview with Gary Soto on the subject of The Chicano Chapbook Series.

A PODCAST

I was exploring the web today and came upon a podcast I did not know existed: it is of a reading sponsored by The Poetry Foundation that took place at The Art Institute of Chicago on January 24, 2008. Linking it here is consistent with Letras Latinas' mission.