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prayer wheels

on my father’s side

it’s all redwoods, fully

the climate of that &

how footfalls echo

thru the earth, stilling

quiet tremors of a heart

feeling for that longing.

the womb that bore me

now but ash, the steady

diet of words remains

nourishing, honed. &

whittled to an essense

thru practice – what tuning

is in a long birth of patience.

it is the space of events

that one is within -

forming the whole of it

which is a thing in itself

yet no thing but being

in continuity, whether

or not you might notice.

That which is irritating

remains perhaps unhealed

perhaps accommodated

pervious as background

music in an elevator when

some sudden healing pie

cosmic pie he said, hits home.

anybody ever tell you

about a deeper truth

right there within it all &

the all I mean is The All

quietly inclusive, including

the web suspended among

filaments of cosmic dust?

__________________________

.

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rd
May 2009
dob 31.05.1938
w/gratitude

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© San Francisco Film Society

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Go to the source

Reviews by David Walsh and Joanne Laurier for the World Socialist Web Site

Part 1:  PAINFUL TRUTHS
David Walsh

Sacred Places (Lieux Saints)
Documentary, 2009, Cameroon/France, 70 minutes

Jean-Marie Teno (Chief!) from Cameroon has made a film centered on a local “cine-club,” where movies are shown at low prices, in Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso. The production notes describe it as a work “about the fight to survive and to maintain one’s dignity in a hostile environment.”

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Part 2:  HUMAN DRAMA, PARTIALLY TREATED
David Walsh

Everything Strange and New
(co-stars Bay Area poet Beth Lisick)
Cinema by the Bay, 2008, USA, 83 minutes

Wayne (Jerry McDaniel), a carpenter, who lives in Oakland, California, begins by explaining that his marriage was initially pressure-free. Children arrived, two of them, and complications arose. The ad agency that employed his wife Renée (Beth Lisick) “went belly up.” Child care was too expensive and there was no point in her looking for other work. Wayne and Renée bought a house when they “were still cheap,” but now, like many others, the couple is in “negative equity.” In fact, they are only falling deeper in debt.

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Part 3:  THE TRAUMA PRODUCED BY EVENTS
Joanne Laurier

Don’t Let Me Drown
Feature film, 2008, USA, 105 minutes

New York City’s post-traumatic stress in the immediate aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks is the setting for [UC Berkeley graduate] director Cruz Angeles’s debut feature film, Don’t Let Me Drown.

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© 2009 World Socialist Web Site | wsws.org

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Kristin Wiberg

Al Young hangs with Tony Barnstone, poet and Chair of Creative Writing, just before the Whittier College Commencement ceremony begins.

Al Young

Graduating students parade across the athletics field on their way to Memorial Stadium and Whittier’s 106th Commencement.

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View the Whittier Daily News original

Whittier press release on doctoral honorees Marian Wright Edelman
and Al Young

Whittier College graduates taking on tough times

© Raul Roa

WHITTIER – Commencement speakers at Whittier College’s 106th graduation ceremony Friday made no bones about the world that awaits the Class of 2009.

It’s an “especially polluted” world, said featured speaker Marian Wright Edelman, founder/president of the Children’s Defense Fund – a world where most would rather get than give, would rather hoard than share with others.
“I think we’ve lost our sense of what’s important as people,” she said.

Marian Wright Edelman

Al Young, California’s poet laureate emeritus, told graduates that for the first time, their generation isn’t expected to live as well as their parents or grandparents.

But both implored the youngsters to be the instruments of change at the 9 a.m. commencement ceremony in the college’s Memorial Stadium, where about 370 Whittier College graduates received bachelor’s and master’s degrees Friday.

“I’m so grateful for my childhood legacy of service,” said Wright, a leading advocate for children and the disadvantaged in the United States.

“As you leave, you should be asking not how much you can get, but how much you can do without and share,” Wright said.

“You add a new consciousness to the world,” said Young, 69, who also recited his “Notes On The Future Of Love” poem at the ceremony. “So I trust you totally to save us, please.”

Whittier College President Sharon Herzberger awarded both Young and Wright honorary doctorates of humane letters.

Officials also honored chemistry professor Devin Iimoto with the college’s annual teaching excellence award.

© 2009 The Whittier Daily News

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Featured Link

Painting © Elizabeth Hack

TRIBUTE

Peace, Hope & 9/11: San Francisco Voices

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Featured Link

Al Young | Authors @ Google

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Featured Link

Visit the Magic Poetry Bus Project Web Site

California poet laureate Carol Muske-Dukes

Photo courtesy of City University of New York

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Visit the jmcnair999 channel at YouTube

SOME SELECTIONS

Joseph McNair: “Requiem for a Soldier Poet“

devorah major: “Love Offering”

Quincy Troupe discusses two of his books: The Pursuit of Happyness and Miles and Me

Opal Palmer Adisa: “The Necessity of Punctuation”

Reginald Lockett: “Yes”

Al Young: “Notes on the Future of Love”

View the more than 124 poem readings posted by Dr. Joseph McNair at YouTube. They include performances by Quincy Troupe, Eugene Redmond, devorah major, Opal Palmer Adisa, the late Reginald Lockett, and California’s poet laureate emeritus
Al Young.

Joseph McNair
Photo © Michael Stroder Marko

Joseph McNair, Professor of Education at Miami Dade College, is a prolific poet, essayist, and novelist. He edits Asili: The Journal of Multicultural Heartspeak, an influential African American online literary review.

Visit the all-new Asili the Journal Blogspot

ASILI NIGHT | Miami International Book Fair 2007
Photos at AlYoung.org

Al Young poems at Asili: The Journal of Multicultural Heartspeak, 1997

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