At the Library of Congress Today:

THE HISPANIC DIVISION

Book Presentation

 AL PIE DE LA CASA BLANCA: POETAS HISPANOS DE WASHINGTON DC

(New York: Academia Norteamericana de la Lengua Española, 2010)

Presented by the editors:

Luis Alberto Ambroggio and Carlos Parada Ayala

The event is in Spanish

Thursday, September 30, 2010

4:30-6:00 p.m.

Mumford Room

James Madison Building, 6th Floor

101 Independence Avenue, SE, Washington, DC

 R.s.v.p.: Georgette Dorn (202) 707-2003

Request ADA accommodations five days in advance at (202) 707-6332 or ADA@loc.gov

THE EDITORS:

Luis Alberto Ambroggio

Carlos Parada Ayala

PAISAJES DE ESTADOS UNIDOS

Si cada ladrillo hablara;

Si cada puente hablara;

Si hablaran los parques, las plantas, las flores;

Si cada trozo de pavimento hablara,

Hablarían en espanol.


Si las torres, los techos,
Los aires acondicionados hablaran;
Si hablaran las iglesias, los aeropuertos, lás fábricas,
Hablarían en espanol.

Si los sudores florecieran con un nombre,

no se llamarían piedras, sino Sánchez,

González, García, Rodríguez or Pena.

Pero no pueden hablar.

Son manos, obras, cicatrices,

que por ahora callan.

---Luis Alberto Ambroggio  (p. 51)

Festival Flor y Canto. Yesterday. Today. Tomorrow.

Francisco X. Alarcón, who was present at the Festival at USC a few days ago, posted some photos on Facebok recently. They were taken by Javier Pinzon. They have given permission to share a few.

Letras Latinas 

partnered with the Poetry Society of America 

to present Thursday night's feature event:

"Celebrando Chicana Poetry." 

Javier took some nice photos of this session, which I'll share here.

Rob Casper of the Poetry Society of America

 Rob introduces the poets...

...and here they are

Diana Garcia

Maria Melendez

Emmy Pérez

 Las tres, otra vez.

***

 Dos Maestros:

Francisco X. Alarcón y Juan Felipe Herrera

 Vendieno libros con Luis Rodriguez

A group photo

The visionary who made it happen:

Michael Sedano

aka

Em Sedano

Cave Canem/Letras Latinas: PR and Photos

This was the press release:

CAVE CANEM & LETRAS LATINAS poets read in the DC Area

American Poetry Museum & The Writer’s Center Host September Programs

WASHINGTON, D.C. (August 26, 2010)—Cave Canem, North America’s “home for Black poetry,” and Letras Latinas, the literary program of the Institute for Latino Studies at Notre Dame, will partner with American Poetry Museum (APM) and The Writer’s Center to present back-to-back poetry readings on September 16 and 17 in Washington, D.C. and Bethesda, MD, respectively. The series is curated by Francisco Aragón, who directs Letras Latinas, and Kyle Dargan, a professor at American University and winner of the 2003 Cave Canem Poetry Prize. 

On September 16, 7 pm, poets Brenda Cárdenas and Paul Martínez Pompa will be joined by DC-based poets R. Dwayne Betts and Ines P. Rivera Prosdocimi for a reading and colloquium at the Sumner School, 1201 17^th Street NW, Washington, D.C. as part of the American Poetry Museum’s Intersections series. Suggested donation is $5.

On September 17, 7:30 pm, Cárdenas and Pompa team up with Cave Canem poets Teri Cross Davis and Gregory Pardlo for a reading at The Writer’s Center, 4508 Walsh Street, Bethesda, MD. The event is free and open to the public.

The readings are part of a larger initiative between Cave Canem and Letras Latinas that aims to enhance dialogue and awareness between the Latino and African American poetry communities. The events build on a relationship initiated when Brenda Cárdenas participated as Visiting Writer at Cave Canem’s 2010 writing retreat at the University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg, where she read her work, gave a talk on craft with Guest Poet Sapphire, and interacted with participants throughout a week filled with workshops, readings and conversation.

Here are some photos---all courtesy of Dan Vera

September 16:

before the reading

Fred Joiner of American Poetry Museum

Camille Rankine of Cave Canem

R. Dwayne Betts

Francisco Aragón of Letras Latinas

Brenda Cárdenas

Ines P. Rivera Prosdocimi

Paul Martínez Pompa

Post-reading discussion moderated by Fred Joiner

 Post-reading discussion (II)

 Guillermo Rivera offers some remarks

***

September 17:

Sunil Freeman of The Writer's Center

Francisco Aragón of Letras Latinas

Paul Martínez Pompa

 Paul Martínez Pompa

Camille Rankine of Cave Canem

Teri Cross Davis

Teri Cross Davis

El Público

The Public

Brenda Cárdenas

 Brenda Cárdenas

Kyle Dargan, co-curator of these readings;
and the rest of the team


***


These readings were made possible, in part, 
by the generosity of the Weissberg Foundation

Ray McDaniel on Valerie Martínez’s EACH AND HER

HERE

Michelle Otero's Post on September 14, 2010...

Momotombo Press author (Malinche's Daughter) and inaurgural recipient of the Letras Latinas Residency Fellowship, Michelle Otero, has a recent post on her blog Vessel, which I quite enjoyed. Have a peek:

HERE

Poetry Daily posts its 2010 "Poets' Picks"

Every year, for National Poetry Month, the editors at Poetry Daily, Don Selby and Diane Boller, extend invitations to poets who have previously appeared on their site. They are asked to choose (and write about) a favorite poem---by a deceased poet, preferably from the 19th century or earlier, though not necessarily. The resulting poems and commentaries are shared with suscribers of Poetry Daily's newsletter during the month of April---all in the context of their annual fundraising campaign. 

But after the fact, as in very recently, the picks are made available on their website for all to read. One can see all of 2010's picks HERE.

For its part, Letras Latinas, given its mission, would like to foreground these and, in process, commend Poetry Daily for its inclusive curating:

Poetry Daily 2010 Poets’ Picks ( a selection)

Francisco Aragón: April 8
"The Poet Speaks to His Beloved on the Telephone," by Federico García Lorca, tr. by Francisco Aragón
Brenda Cárdenas: April 15
"This Compost," by Walt Whitman
William Archila: April 21
"Sonnet 18," by John Milton
Carmen Giménez Smith: April 26
"Frost at Midnight," by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

***

SUPPORT POETRY DAILY

Southern California National Public Radio: 89.3 KPCC

Salvadoran American's poetry makes amends for silence over civil war

William Archila

September 9, 2010

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez

"Many of Southern California’s Salvadoran immigrants arrived about three decades ago, driven here by a bloody civil war in El Salvador between leftist guerrillas and the country’s U.S.-supported right-wing government. Poet William Archila is one of a handful of Salvadoran American writers beginning to document his compatriots’ immigrant experience." [...]

Guzman-Lopez's segment goes on to weave his reporting, snippets of William's story, and William's poetry into what I found to be a seamless moving piece of radio. You can hear the segment HERE.

There is also a video with William being asked a few questions by Guzman-Lopez, as well as reading one his poems HERE.

In short, KPCC 89.3, an NPR station in Southern California did a really nice job. Here is comment posted at the foot of the print story that caught my attention: 

"Louie Interiano

4 days, 14 hours ago

Link to this comment

On my commute to work I listened and found myself compelled to respond. I am a 39 year old Salvadoran-American. I am a working professional with higher degrees in the field of allied medical health and education. I concur with the observations that Mr. Archila has made and commend him on his work. I look forward to reading his book and have already spread the word to family members. I have not returned to my homeland since I was 8 years of age. Mr. Archila has sparked an interest in reconciling with my native land. Thank you Mr. Guzman-Lopez for this story and Mr. Archila for sharing his gift."

***

Letras Latinas 

will be bringing William Archila 

to the Univeristy of Notre Dame 

on November 8, 2010 

to visit a class called "Migrant Voices," 

where The Art of Exile is being taught. 

He will also give a reading in the afternoon.

Poetry and the Visual Arts: The Case of Ricardo Pau-Llosa

One of the first, if not the first initiative I embarked on when I joined the staff of the Institute for Latino Studies (ILS) at the University of Notre Dame in 2003 was Poetas y Pintores: Artists Conversing with Verse. In fact, one of the privileges of working for the ILS, whose director, Gil Cárdenas, has been collecting Latino art---that is U.S.-based Latino art---since the late 60s, is that our offices, the walls of our offices are graced with artwork from Cárdenas' collection, which numbers in the thousands. When my office was based in South Bend, I managed to hang on my office walls, all four of them, the work of Carmen Lomas Garza. In short, I think my appreciation for Latino art has evolved significantly since working here.

Last year, I got to meet and spend time with Ricardo Pau-Llosa, the poet and art critic. The Snite Museum at Notre Dame recently inaugurated an exhibit featuring works from his collection. I wandered into in the exhibit today (I'm on campus this week) and was not, in the least, disappointed---not that was I expecting to be! Here's some exhibition copy, followed by a link to a PDF of the exhibit's catalogue, which is well worth a visual stroll:

Parallel Currents: Highlights of the Ricardo Pau-Llosa Collection of Latin American Art

O’Shaughnessy West Gallery

August 29–November 14, 2010
University of Notre Dame

The Snite Museum of Art is pleased to exhibit contemporary Latin American artworks from the collection of Ricardo Pau-Llosa, Cuban-American poet, critic, curator, professor and collector.

Since the mid-1970s, Pau-Llosa has used tropes to generate an original model of art criticism which maintains that Latin American modernist painting and sculpture is distinct from parallel currents in Europe and the United States precisely because of the high presence of metaphor, metonymy and synecdoche in its images. 

He was a senior editor of Art International from 1982 to 1994, North American editor for Southward Art, and a contributor and advisor to the encyclopedic Dictionary of Art, 1996.  A frequent lecturer at major art museums such as the Art Institute of Chicago, his art criticism has appeared frequently in visual art periodicals and journals, and he has served as a juror and curator in various international biennials and group exhibitions.

Ricardo has also published six books of poems and has been published in American Poetry Review, Indiana Review, Iowa Review, Kenyon Review, New England Review, Notre Dame Review, Partisan Review, Southern Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review and in many other literary magazines, and within numerous anthologies.

PDF of the Catalogue.


***

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