***** clickable

Celebrating Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. at Marin Poetry Center

MARIN POETRY CENTER presents Indigo Moor, Wanda Phipps, and Al Young. Three nationally acclaimed black poets will read in honor of Martin Luther King for the Marin Poetry Center on Thursday, January 19, from 7:30-9:00 pm.

Doors open at 7:00 pm as part of MPC’s Third Thursday Series at the Falkirk Cultural Center, 1408 Mission & E Streets, San Rafael, CA. Admission is $5 for general public and $3 for members. Book sales and signing afterwards. Refreshments will be served.

Get directions

]]> http://alyoung.org/2012/01/14/indigo-moor-wanda-phipps-al-young-at-marin-poetry-center-thursday-january-19-2012-730-9pm/feed/ 0 http://alyoung.org/2011/11/14/2011-national-book-awards-webcast-wednesday-november-16-8pm-est/ http://alyoung.org/2011/11/14/2011-national-book-awards-webcast-wednesday-november-16-8pm-est/#comments Mon, 14 Nov 2011 21:16:17 +0000 Al http://alyoung.org/?p=28320 ________________________________________________

Click to watch recorded video of 2011 National Book Awards

FICTION: Jesmyn Ward, Salvage the Bones (Bloomsbury USA)

NONFICTION: Stephen Greenblatt, The Swerve: How the World Became Modern
(W. W. Norton & Company)

POETRY: Nikky Finney, Head Off & Split
(TriQuarterly, an imprint of Northwestern University Press)

YOUNG PEOPLE’S LITERATURE: Thanhha Lai, Inside Out & Back Again
(Harper, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers)

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Wednesday, November 30, 2011
7:30pm
First Congregational Church
2345 Channing Way
Berkeley, CA 94704 | map

Congresswoman Barbara Lee, Dr. Mona Scott, Al Young
pay tribute to a legend

Click cover to read the Kirkus Review

KPFA Radio 94.1FM presents

HARRY BELAFONTE in person

My Song

Hosted by Davey D (KPFA host of Hard Knock Radio)

plus tributes by Congresswoman Barbara Lee, Dr. Raye Richardson, Blanche Richardson, Dr. Mona Scott, Al Young

From a poverty-stricken childhood in Harlem and Jamaica, Harry Belafonte rose to become one of the world’s most popular singers, a film star, and a lifelong passionate social activist in the civil rights movement and numerous other humanitarian causes. Among his friends along the way were Eleanor Roosevelt, Paul Robeson, Sidney Poitier, John F. Kennedy, Marlon Brando, Martin Luther King, Jr., Nelson Mandela, Fidel Castro, and Danny Glover.

My Song is the inspiring autobiography of this unique artist and activist—the first singer in history to sell over one million records (Calypso), a winner of Broadway’s Tony Award, the first black producer in television (for which he won an Emmy, the first African-American to do so), and Oscar nominations for Carmen Jones. After being appointed by President John Kennedy cultural advisor to the Peace Corps, Belafonte served five years. He was also prominent in working for the release of his friend Nelson Mandela, and ending the apartheid government in South Africa. He was one of Martin Luther King’s closest confidantes and strongest supporters. In 1987 he accepted the appointment as UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador. He has been honored by many diverse groups including the NAACP, the ACLU, the American Jewish Congress and the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith. He received the prestigious Kennedy Center Honors for excellence in the performing arts, and in 1994 the National Medal of Arts from President Clinton. Now 84, he remains an outspoken, progressive critic of U.S. foreign policy.

• Congresswoman Barbara Lee is the Democratic Representative for CA District 9.
• Blanche Richardson is the proprietor of Marcus Books in Oakland.
• Dr. Raye Richardson is the co-founder & owner of Marcus Books, Oakland & S.F.
• Dr. Mona Scott is the owner of Black Repertory Theatre in Berkeley
• Al Young, poet and author, was recently California Poet Laureate

$15 advance tickets: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/197066 :: 800-838-3006 or Marcus Books, Pegasus Books (3 locations), Mrs. Dalloway’s, Moe’s Books, Walden Pond, DIESEL a Bookstore, SF: Marcus Books, Modern Times Books,

($18 door) Benefits KPFA Radio 94.1FM

Information: http://www.kpfa.org/events

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The 2011 Thomas Wolfe Prize

© Jade Poteat | The Daily Tar Heel

Al Young, recipient of the 2011 Thomas Wolfe Prize, delivers the annual October Thomas Wolfe Lecture at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

Read reporter Grace Harvey’s account

Al Young to deliver Thomas Wolfe Lecture October 4 | University of North Carolina College of Arts & Sciences

Hear and watch Al Young’s 2011 Thomas Wolfe Lecture at Historic Playmakers Theatre, Chapel Hill, NC

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Wednesday, October 12, 2011
7:30pm

© Terrence Byrnes

The Fighter & the Writer:
Litquake presents a tribute performance honoring
Ishmael Reed

Musician, poet, publisher, novelist and dramatist Ishmael Reed is one of the most prolific and thought-provoking authors at work in America today. From his first novel, The Free-Lance Pallbearers (1967) to his latest, Juice! (2011), and all his poetry, plays, essays and anthologies in between, the iconoclastic trailblazer has pointedly highlighted our nation’s political and cultural repression. Reed has been instrumental in exposing the work of new authors through his online literary magazine, Konch, and the Ishmael Reed Publishing Company. As a jazz pianist and lyricist he has worked alongside such talented musicians as Taj Mahal, Allen Toussaint, Cassandra Wilson and David Murray. This evening of music, poetry, tributes and drama honoring Reed and his many contributions to the Bay Area literary scene features emcee W. Kamau Bell, music from Broun Fellinis, and live dramatic performances directed by Carla Blank.
(Rumor has it that poet-vocalist Al Young may perform with the band.)
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PS: On Wed Oct 12, 2011, Litquake presented Ishmael Reed with its annual Barbary Coast Award in honor of his long-standing contributions to the Bay Area literary scene. Hosted by W. Kamau Bell, friends/performers included Clark Blaise, Tennessee Reed, Carla Blank, Ianthe Brautigan Swensen, Boadiba, Yuri Kageyama, Alejandro Murguía, Lorna Dee Cervantes, Genny Lim; with Seth Corr, Sherry Davis, and Boadiba performing Act II, Scene 6 of Reed’s play, Body Parts. Musical accompaniment by Broun Fellinis.

P.P.S. “Fantastic crowds at all the Wednesday and Thursday events. Reports from producers are still coming in but here are a few highlights…The Barbary Coast Award tribute to Ishmael Reed rocked the Z Space theater with amazing readings and music, and closed with California poet laureate Al Young singing the classic Billie Holiday/Frank Sinatra tune “We’ll Be Together Again,” accompanied by Ishmael on piano, backed by the Broun Fellinis.”
– More Litquake Wrap-Ups | 2011 Final Call: The Weekend Blast

Al Young reads Ishmael Reed’s poem, “When I Die, I Will Go to Jazz,” sings Carl Fischer and Frankie Laine’s “We’ll Be Together Again” (backed by Ishmael Reed at piano and the Broun Fellinis), then presents Ishmael with the Barbary Coast Award. ||| Watch this and other jubilant segments captured October 12, 2011 as Litquake occupied Z Space.

Z Space
formerly Project Artaud Theatre
450 Florida St.
San Francisco, CA 94110 | map

Tickets @12

Website
415.626.0453

“While Ishmael Reed often gets slapped with the label of satirist, his stand-alone fiction, poetry, essays, articles, plays, songs, op-eds, reviews and drawings speak boldly for themselves. After all, the urge to take on fraudulence, pretension, hypocrisy, arrogance and injustice pulses at the heart of true satire. A tireless, world-class artist, teacher and arts activist of measureless passion and cares only begins to describes Ishmael Reed: a global treasure. When he tells us that ‘writing is fighting,’ he means it. Every syllable. Body and soul. Ishmael shines the laser light of his pen and wit into all manner of dark matter. Little in heaven or hell sails or crawls past him. A friend to the young, the up-and-coming, and the overlooked, he can’t help but inspire. Without his presence, savvy, strength and fierce output, the world wouldn’t work the same.”
— Al Young

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Sunday, October 16, 2011
4pm
Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists Hall
1606 Bonita Avenue at Cedar Street

dancer & artist
Patricia Bulitt

Patricia Bulitt is an interdisciplinary artist/dancer who has served for years as Project Director for “Our Neighbors Dance Their Dance: A Celebration of World Dance” in association with the cities of Daly City and Berkeley. She received her M.A. from UCLA. Her numerous awards and fellowships include a National Endowment for the Arts Choreography Fellowship, California Arts Council residencies, and the Outstanding Woman Artist Award from the City of Berkeley. Her work with improvisational dance and the making of site specific performances has been in association with Urban Creeks Council. Bulitt is a movement specialist at several schools and has been teaching creative dance/movement for over 20 years in California and throughout Alaska.

Celebration and Benefit honoring dancer & artist
PATRICIA BULITT
for her medical expenses

Sunday, October 16

4pm

Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists Hall
1606 Bonita Avenue. (at Cedar Street)
Berkeley, CA 94707 (map)

Poetry, dance and storytelling will include singer & songwriter MELANIE DeMORE • California poet laureate emeritus AL YOUNG • dancer & artist PATRICIA BULITT

Suggested contribution: $25. Any contributions welcome. Checks payable to Patricia Bulitt. For non-profit contributions, make checks payable to Berkeley Partners for Parks (7% deduction applied)

Additional information:

Patricia Bulitt: 510.841.6612, or
Berkeley Fellowship: 510.841.4824

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Part 2
Sunday, November 13, 2011

Photo: Al Young

Patricia Bulitt and poet Gary Snyder at Berkeley’s Hillside Club, 2008

4pm
Sunday, November 13, 2011
Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists
1606 Bonita Avenue (at Cedar Street)
Berkeley, CA 94707,

Very special guests: storyteller GAY DUCEY • storyteller OLGA LOYA • body musician KEITH TERRY • dancer & singer MAHEALANI UCHIYAMA

Suggested contribution: $25. Any contributions welcome. Checks payable to Patricia Bulitt. For non-profit contributions, make checks payable to Berkeley Partners for Parks (7% deduction applied)

Additional information:
Patricia Bulitt: 510.841.6612, or
Berkeley Fellowship: 510.841.4824

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City Lights Books
261 Columbus Avenue
San Francisco, CA 94133 (map)
Wednesday, October 19, 7pm

Join Kathy Sloane and guests to launch
KEYSTONE KORNER: Portrait of a Jazz Club

© Lance Iversen | San Francisco Chronicle

Read Sam Whiting’s San Francisco Chronicle article
(October 10, 2011)

Text and photographs by Kathy Sloane
Co-edited with Sascha Feinstein
Preface by Al Young
264 pages paperbound
Indiana University Press
Paperback: $40.00
ISBN: 978-0-253-35691-8
(includes an audio CD of Keystone Korner jazz artists)
November 3, 2011 — official date of publication

ADDITIONAL BOOK EVENTS

November 5, 2011, 7-9
Book reading and signing. Books Inc Alameda, 1344 Park Street, Alameda, CA 94501

November 30, 2011, 6-8 pm.
Book reading and signing. University Press Books, 2430 Bancroft Way, Berkeley, CA 94720

December 3, 2011,  2-4 pm.
Lecture and slide show. Museum of the African Diaspora (MOAD), 685 Mission Street at Third Street, San Francisco, CA 94105-4126 • “Photographer Kathy Sloane will show images from her extensive jazz archive and read from her new book, Keystone Korner: Portrait of a Jazz Club. Referencing MOAD’s new exhibition, Collected, Sloane will talk generally about cultural preservation and specifically about how and why she pursued her passion documenting the African American art form known as jazz.”

December 8, 2011, 7-9 pm.
Book reading and signing at Books Inc., San Francisco Opera Plaza, 601 Van Ness, San Francisco, CA 94102

Feature articles on Keystone Korner: Portrait of a Jazz Club —
San Francisco Chronicle
Jazziz, Fall 2011  (pp. 72-79)

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Book launch for
A QUEEN’S JOURNEY
An unfinished novel
by James D. Houston

Sunday, October 23, 2011
2:30pm
Cabrillo College Music Recital Hall
6500 Soquel Drive
Aptos, CA 95003 map

There are few more intriguing and captivating characters in the history of Hawaii than its last queen, Liliuokalani—the island monarch who could just as easily read Shakespeare as “sit barefooted on a woven mat.” Told with mesmerizing detail by master storyteller James D. Houston,  A Queen’s Journey captures the deep ambiguities of Liliuokalani’s magnetic personality and the tumultuous times in which she lived. Houston (1933-2009) was perhaps the only writer with the literary talent, courage, and deep knowledge of Hawaiian culture and history needed to tell this story, and although he died before finishing the novel that was to be his masterwork, we are lucky to have this first part, which stands alone as a fully realized and moving portrait of the queen and her time.

Order directly from Heyday

Short readings by Wallace Baine, Alan Cheuse, Rory Criss, Geoffrey Dunn, Karen Joy Fowler, Stephen Kessler, Maxine Hong Kingston, Forrest Robinson, Karen Tei Yamashita, and Al Young. Remarks by Jeanne Houston and Malcolm Margolin. Music by Braddah Timmy.

Photo courtesy Paul Kitagaki/Sacramento Bee

James D. Houston was born in San Francisco and received his master’s degree in American literature from Stanford, where he studied under Wallace Stegner, Irving Howe, and Frank O’Connor. Among his many fiction and nonfiction books are Bird of Another Heaven, Snow Mountain Passage, Where the Light Takes Its Color from the Sea, Surfing: A History of the Ancient Hawaiian Sport, Californians: Searching for the Golden State, Hawaiian Son: The Life and Music of Eddie Kamae, and Farewell to Manzanar, the last of which he co-authored with his wife, Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston. Over the course of his prolific career, Houston won many awards and honors and taught creative writing at a number of universities and workshops. With Jeanne, he divided his time between Hawai’i and an old Victorian home in Santa Cruz, California. Visit his website at www.jamesdhouston.com.

FREE advance tickets are recommended and are available at Cabrillo Bookstore, below, or online until Oct 22 at 4:00 p.m. There will be a limited number of tickets available at the door, so come early if you don’t have a ticket! For more information call 510. 549.3564 — X
316.

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poetry

Tuesday, October 25, 2011
7-9pm
Nancy Keane’s 3300 Club
3300 Mission Street
SF

GERI DIGIORNO

MARVIN HIEMSTRA

AL YOUNG

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]]> http://alyoung.org/2011/10/11/autumn-2011-recent-and-current-al-young-events/feed/ 0 http://alyoung.org/2011/09/15/2012-william-saroyan-international-prize-for-writing/ http://alyoung.org/2011/09/15/2012-william-saroyan-international-prize-for-writing/#comments Thu, 15 Sep 2011 23:40:46 +0000 Al http://alyoung.org/?p=26851 __________________________________________________________

$5,000 Fiction
$5,000 Non-Fiction
Deadline: January 31, 2012

FAQ | Details

“In the time of your life, live—so that in that wondrous time you shall not add to the misery and sorrow of the world, but shall smile to the infinite delight and mystery of it.”
– William Saroyan, The Time of Your Life

© Stanford University

Books by William Saroyan at Amerniapedia.com

William Saroyan Quotes at GoodReads.com

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]]> http://alyoung.org/2011/09/15/2012-william-saroyan-international-prize-for-writing/feed/ 0 http://alyoung.org/2011/09/11/legendary-poet-richard-o-moore-with-brenda-hillman-and-paul-ebenkamp-at-the-albany-library-tuesday-september-13-2011-7pm/ http://alyoung.org/2011/09/11/legendary-poet-richard-o-moore-with-brenda-hillman-and-paul-ebenkamp-at-the-albany-library-tuesday-september-13-2011-7pm/#comments Sun, 11 Sep 2011 07:51:22 +0000 Al http://alyoung.org/?p=26655 ___________________________________________________________

Best place to hear and read good poetry.
— East Bay Express

Second Tuesdays Poetry Night at Albany Library

Produced by Catherine Taylor with the Alameda County Library

“I really feel like we have a national treasure in Richard O. Moore — with his book coming about as it has at this late stage in his life and Richard himself the only living representative of the San Francisco Renaissance literary movement, precursor of Beat poetry. His readings at this stage feel not only like wonderful literary events, but historic.”
— Catherine Taylor

Tuesday, September 13, 7pm

Featured poets followed by open mic

Courtesy UCTV’s Lunch Poems

Richard O. Moore’s Writing the Silences (UC Press, 2010), is a 2011 Northern California Book Award
nominee, offering up over six decades of Moore’s work as a poet. This September, Moore will be joined by his
book’s co-editors, fellow poets Brenda Hillman and Paul Ebenkamp, to open the Albany Library’s 2011 fall
season of poetry readings and discussion. All three poets are known for their explorations of poetic form and
language. This reading will be followed by a brief open mic.

The last of his generation of San Francisco Renaissance poets (a literary circle that included Kenneth Rexroth and was the precursor to Beat poetry), Richard O. Moore is also known as a photographer, filmmaker, and an original founder of KPFA public radio. He is often credited with contributing to the documentary as an American genre through his films for KQED public television in the 1960s on subjects ranging from civil rights and Cuban politics to technology, 1960s jazz, and contemporary literature.

Courtesy Poets.org

Brenda Hillman and Paul Ebenkamp are co-editors for this collection of Richard O. Moore’s poetry. They will be reading from their own works at this event. They will discuss their work, the process of editing Moore’s recent release and how they worked together and learned from each other. Hillman has published eight collections of poetry, all from Wesleyan University Press. The most recent, Practical Water (2010), which won the LA Times Book Award for Poetry, is part of her larger project of meditations on the natural elements that includes Pieces of Air in the Epic (2005) and Cascadia (2001).

© Andrew Kenower / Flickr.com

Paul Ebenkamp, a writer, editor, and assistant academic coordinator, has published poetry in Try!, RealPoetik, and The Walrus. He is currently at work on An Anthology of Early Women Modernist Poets (forthcoming April 2012, Counterpoint Press).

Albany Library thanks all three September poets for kicking off the 2011-2012 Second Tuesdays’ Poetry series.

510.526.3720
TTY 888.663.0660 [What's This?]

Map and directions

Free to the public

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Read 17 poem selections at Jacket #21

“It was at Half Price Books, Berkeley, that I happened upon a used copy of this rich, seductive collection. A long-ago Spanish major, I go on losing and finding myself in its double-bladed, doubly-minted pages. Now I’d like to point other border-crossers in its direction. ‘Baja Californians remain orphans of sorts,’ co-editor Harry Polkinhorn reminds us in his foreword, ‘caught between and on the edge of the two power centers that determine their fates and that tend to render them invisible. Our goal when we began this anthology was to make them visible.’ And, indeed, they do make these 53 poets visible and audible as well.” – Al Young

Click to order

Cover: Tía Juana, graphite and charcoal on board, by Hugo Crosthwaite (Rosarito, Baja California)

Across the Line / Al otro lado: The Poetry of Baja California
Edited by Harry Polkinhorn & Mark Weiss
© 2002 Junction Press
Junction Press
San Diego
383 pages
$25
ISBN: 1-881523-13-6

“If you can’t make it across the border, Across the Line/Al otro lado is the next best thing to a trip to Mexico’s Baja California. The astonishing range of fifty-three poetic voices, traditional native chants and popular corridos, which are generously presented in bilingual format, is rooted in a time and place that is both timeless and in constant flux. The poems are by turns full of yearning, lyric, exultant, pungent, mournful, fast-paced as the streets of Tijuana or slow as a cactus growing beyond the dunes. Baja Californians are a population on the move, alive to change, living on the edge, and the poetry in this lovingly-translated anthology conveys the feel of gritty towns and cities, burning deserts, lonely mountains, a huge sky still crowded with stars, the wind blowing in off the Pacific or the Sea of Cortes, the nearness of gray whales and pelicans, the uncertainties of isolation, the jittery rhythms of urban life, the United States forever looming on the other side of the border. And I am happy to say that these poets value the beauty and importance of Baja California’s unique and fragile ecosystems; in Baja California moonlight still matters.”
– Homero Aridjis

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Tijuana

a Roberto Castillo Udiarte

Esta ciudad nos duele como una espina en la garganta,
como el hombre que pasa con el miedo dibujado en el rostro.
Nos duele como el amor y sus ejércitos,
como los ángeles irremediablemente perdidos.
Es la mujer que nos desnuda frente al mar,
la lluvia de marzo y las dos tormentas del verano,
el golpe que nos hace abrir los ojos; el beso que nos cierra los labios.
Es el monumento de la infamia y del rencor,
el perro que nos asustaba cuando volvíamos del colegio,
el mismo que a veces vemos en la mirada del hombre más próximo.
Esta ciudad se levanta sobre el sudor y los sueños de nuestros padres,
sobre el cuerpo violado de la muchacha y la mano siempre dispuesta
xxxxxxxxdel asesino.
Crece como el odio, como el polvo y la rabia,
como un mar encabronado que se te escapa de las manos.
Es la mujer que pasó sin verte, la que no te recurda,
esa que constantemente disfrazas, pero a quien siempre le escribes tus versos.

– José Javier Villarreal

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Tijuana

for Roberto Castillo Udiarte

This city wounds like a fishbone stuck in our throats,
like the man passing by with fear written all over his face.
She wounds us like love and its armies,
like hopelessly lost angels.
She’s the woman who strips us naked at the shore,
the rains of March and Summer’s two storms,
the slap forcing our eyes open; the kiss that closes our lips.
She’s infamy and rancor’s monument,
the dog that frightened us on the way home from school,
the one we sometimes see in the stare of the man beside us.
This town is built upon the sweat and dreams of our parents,
over a girl’s raped body and the murderer’s always ready hand.
She grows like hate, like dust and rage,
like an angry sea that slips through your fingers.
She’d the woman who walked right by without seeing you, who doesn’t
xxxxxxxxxremember you,
the woman you always disguise, for whom you write your verses.

– José Javier Villarreal
(translated by Scott Bennett)

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UPDATE

British poet Geraldine Green reads with
Jack & Adelle Foley
Saturday, September 10  at 7 p.m.
Laurel Bookstore
4100 MacArthur Blvd
(between 39th Ave & Maybelle Ave)
Oakland, CA 94619   MAP & DIRECTIONS

© Matthew Sumner/SF Chronicle

Jack Foley, 71, took a decade to write his 1,300-page book, Visions & Affiliations, covering 65 years of California poets and poetry.
• Read Evan Karp’s Datebook article in the San Francisco Chronicle (“A Rich Chapter in Bay Area Poetry Scene,” August 20, 2011)

Jack Foley in conversation with Nina Serrano at Pacifica Radio July 2011
Jack Foley and Cesar Love read at San Francisco Open Mic Poetry Podcasts July 2011

clickable

Mary Ann Sullivan’s review in The Tower Journal

Digital poet and editor Mary Ann Sullivan’s “The First Poem of Summer”

Charles Baudelaire’s “Invitation” (translated and read by Jack Foley; produced, directed and shot by Mary Ann Sullivan)

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Out from Pantograph Press
Now available at Amazon

© Matthew Sumner

Cover Painting: Mark Roland | Design: Stuart Bradford

Jack Foley’s

VISIONS & AFFILIATIONS

A California Literary Time Line: Poets & Poetry
1940-2005

“The twentieth century in all its confused and troubled eloquence”

Volume 1 • 1940-1980 • 575 pages • $50 U.S.
ISBN 978-1-61364-067-8
Volume 2 • 1980-2005 • 711 pages • $50 U.S.
ISBN 978-1-61364-068-5

“From about 1930 on, a conspiracy of bad poetry has been as carefully organized as the Communist Party, and today controls most channels of publication except the littlest of the little magazines … We disaffiliate.”
—Kenneth Rexroth

“Jack Foley is doing great things in articulating the poetic consciousness of San Francisco.”
—Lawrence Ferlinghetti

“I’m just sitting here overwhelmed, overwhelmed by the achievement of the two-volume Visions & Affiliations …This is an extraordinary piece of work. There should be a major, major review of this. Congratulations. What an achievement.”
—Kevin Starr, Historian and California State Librarian Emeritus

“This is absolutely stunning, overwhelming … so much so that I hardly know where to begin or how to end … probably never. I expect that I’ll continue to pore through this for years to come.”
–-Jerome Rothenberg

“The books are overwhelming! What a great time line and fabulous encyclopedia. I really am learning so much. A great read and great information. I don’t know how you did it. Your enthusiasm and first-hand knowledge show on every page.”
—Marjorie Perloff

“Visions and Affiliations is a landmark in literary studies. It is Jack Foley’s own life as a poet that makes this project stand out. In the two volumes of Visions and Affiliations, he digs deep, illuminating little known facts about such poets as Kenneth Rexroth, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and Charles Bukowski, while, at the same time, giving us ‘hidden histories’ from across California. An innovative voice in American poetry, Foley now emerges as an innovator as to how we respond to our literary heritage. This book is essential reading for poets, readers of poetry and anyone interested in our cultural legacy.”
—Neeli Cherkovski

“This brilliant, idiosyncratic, omnivorous study is simply the best book ever written on West Coast poetry.”
—Dana Gioia, The Chronicle of Higher Education

“A lasting contribution. With its deep and caring perspective, Jack Foley’s two-volume opus projects a passionate message about the poetry of our state.”
—Al Young, California Poet Laureate (2005-2008)

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VISIONS & AFFILIATIONS: A California Time Line — Poets & Poetry 1940-2005 is a chronoencyclopedia of a scene that stretches over sixty-five years. People, ideas, and stories appear, disappear, and reappear as the second half of the century moves forward. Poetry is a major element in this kaleidoscopic California scene. It is argued about, dismissed, renewed, denounced in theory, asserted as divine, criticized as pornographic. Poetry is as Western as the Sierra foothills, and the questions raised here go to its very heart. Beginning with the publication of Kenneth Rexroth’s first book, this all-encompassing history-as-collage plunges us forward into the 21st century. “California authors keep generating massive anthologies in an attempt to tame the chaos of California, to pretend it isn’t there. Yet there it is–staring them in the face like a great bear, alive, hungry and more than a little dangerous.”

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Berkeley Book Launch:
Thursday July 14 (Bastille Day)

There will be a book launch reading for Jack Foley’s Visions & Affiliations at Moe’s Books, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, at 7: 30 on Bastille Day (Thursday, July 14). Adelle and Jack Foley will host. Guests will include poet/publisher Ivan Argüelles, Mary-Marcia Casoly, Lucille Lang Day, Katherine Hastings, Andrew Joron, Michael McClure and Al Young. There will also be a musical saw played by Diana McCulloch.

MAP

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Photo: Adelle Foley

jake berry’s cat
contemplates the real
history of calif
ornia poetry oh
jake berry’s cat
looks it over oh
gives it a gander
is it his saucer of milk
or not?
jake berry’s cat
knows a lot
living as he does
familiarly w/ jake
gives it a look
gives it a gander
whoa—is that there—
in Florence, Alabama
on a day that resembles
this day in calif
ornia
jake berry’s cat
contemplates the real
(foley)
history of calif poetry
mrkgnao! *

click for luck

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* J. Joyce‘s spelling of “meow”

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Read & listen to Philip Levine@The Internet Poetry Archive

© sitemason.vanderbilt.edu

Profile of Philip Levine, poet laureate

Philip Levine was not expecting to be the new poet laureate of the United States. “It just wasn’t something I thought I’d get,” he said, sounding a little amused by the whole thing.

Levine, who has written 20 collections of poems, has already won just about every major writing award: a Pulitzer Prize in 1995 for “The Simple Truth,” a National Book Award in 1980 for “Ashes: Poems New and Old” and in 1991 for “What Work Is,” the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, the Frank O’Hara Prize, two Guggenheim Foundation fellowships … the list goes on.

To read Jessica Goldstein’s piece in its entirety, click here.

Charles McGrath’s “Voice of the Workingman to Be Poet Laureate” (August 9, 2011), New York Times

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WHAT WORK IS

We stand in the rain in a long line
waiting at Ford Highland Park. For work.
You know what work is–if you’re
old enough to read this you know what
work is, although you may not do it.
Forget you. This is about waiting,
shifting from one foot to another.
Feeling the light rain falling like mist
into your hair, blurring your vision
until you think you see your own brother
ahead of you, maybe ten places.
You rub your glasses with your fingers,
and of course it’s someone else’s brother,
narrower across the shoulders than
yours but with the same sad slouch, the grin
that does not hide the stubbornness,
the sad refusal to give in to
rain, to the hours wasted waiting,
to the knowledge that somewhere ahead
a man is waiting who will say, “No,
we’re not hiring today,” for any
reason he wants. You love your brother,
now suddenly you can hardly stand
the love flooding you for your brother,
who’s not beside you or behind or
ahead because he’s home trying to
sleep off a miserable night shift
at Cadillac so he can get up
before noon to study his German.
Works eight hours a night so he can sing
Wagner, the opera you hate most,
the worst music ever invented.
How long has it been since you told him
you loved him, held his wide shoulders,
opened your eyes wide and said those words,
and maybe kissed his cheek? You’ve never
done something so simple, so obvious,
not because you’re too young or too dumb,
not because you’re jealous or even mean
or incapable of crying in
the presence of another man, no,
just because you don’t know what work is.
— Philip Levine

© Philip Levine
– from What Work Is (published by Alfred A. Knopf)

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“When I first came upon They Feed They Lion, which continues to be one of my all-time favorite Philip Levine collections, I imagined that he must have overheard a bunch of school kids responding to an animal-feeding session at some zoo. ‘Ooo,’ I pictured one little girl or boy declaring, ‘they feed they lion!’ I told this to Philip in Seattle, where we were holding forth on a panel with poet-novelist Marge Piercy — the three of us Detroiters — at a Bumbershoot Festival in Seattle in the 1980′s. ‘Close,” Philip told me, ‘but it didn’t happen quite that way. He then told the story of how a co-worker’s remark in a grease shop had spilled over into a dream that flushed out the poem. How can you or anyone else not love the people-friendly. humanity-championing poetry of Philip Levine?”
— Al Young, California’s past poet laureate

They Feed They Lion: A taste of back-story

“In 1953 I was working in a Detroit grease shop with a tall, slender black man with a wonderful wit and disposition. His name was Lemon Still Jr., and he was a delight to work with. One day we were dividing used crosses that are the heart of a universal joint, which is a component of a transmission and not an enormous reefer. One pile was junk, the other pile was made up of those which could be refinished and sold as new. Before we stuffed the hopeless ones into a burlap sack, Lemon held the bag before me and pointed at the white lettering which read, ‘Detroit Municipal Zoo,’ and he uttered a single memorable sentence, ‘They feed they lion they meal in they sacks.’ I was stunned by the sentence itself as well as Lemon’s ability to simplify English grammar by reducing all third-person pronouns to the one ‘they.’ I don’t know how many years passed before I forgot that moment, but in the late 1960s it came back to me via an unforgettable dream.”
–Philip Levine

The whole back-story

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Philip Levine reads Belle Isle, 1949

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