____________________________________________________

6pm to 7:30pm
Thursday, March 29, 2012
Loyola Marymount University
McIntosh Center | Room 3999 | University Hall
1 LMU Drive | Los Angeles, CA 90045
(map)

FREE TO THE PUBLIC

Photo: O.O. Gabugah Zoom

Poet Al Young sings and reads from new and classic works in musical collaboration with celebrated jazz musicians: saxophonist Vinny Golia, percussionist Don Littleton, and bassist Roberto Miranda.

Produced by John Menaghan
for the LMU Department of English

For additional information, contact Maria Jackson, Administrative Assistant | LMU Department of English | 310.338.3018

____________________________________________________

“Up Jumped Spring” | Freddie Hubbard (composer & trumpter) with Art Blakey & the Jazz Messengers

________________________________________________

Al Young

for Nana

What’s most fantastical almost always goes

unrecorded and unsorted. Take spring.

Take today. Take dancing dreamlike; coffee

your night, creameries your dream factories.

Take walking as a dream, the dearest, sincerest

means of conveyance: a dance. Take leave

of the notion that this nation’s or any other’s earth

can still be the same earth our ancestors walked.

Chemistry strains to connect our hemispheres.

The right and left sidelines our brain forms

in the rain this new world braves—acid jazz.

The timeless taste her tongue leaves in your mouth,

stirred with unmeasured sugars, greens the day

the way sweet sunlight oxygenates, ignites

all nights, all daytimes, and you—this jumps.

Sheer voltage leaps, but nothing keeps or stays.

Sequence your afternoon as dance. Drink spring.

Holding her hard against you, picture the screenplay.

Take time to remember to get her spells together.

Up jumps the goddess gratified, and up jumped spring.

– Al Young
from Coastal Nights and Inland Afternoons: Poems 2001-2006

________________________________________________

_______________________________________________________

www.gov.ca.gov

Juan Felipe Herrera Named California Poet Laureate by Governor Brown

UC Riverside Professor a renowned poet

Published: 03-22-2012 | California Arts Council

Photo © Randy Vaughn-Dotta

Governor Jerry Brown has appointed Juan Felipe Herrera as the California Poet Laureate. Herrera, 63, is the author of 28 books and currently serves as the Tomás Rivera Endowed Chair in the Department of Creative Writing at the University of California, Riverside. He was a professor and chair of Chicano and Latin American Studies at California State University, Fresno, from 1990 to 2004 and a teaching assistant fellow at the renowned Iowa Writer’s Workshop at the University of Iowa from 1988 to 1990. Herrera’s work has received wide critical acclaim, including numerous national and international awards. The appointment requires Senate confirmation.

The mission of the California Poet Laureate is to advocate for the art of poetry in classrooms and boardrooms across the state, to inspire an emerging generation of literary artists, and to educate all Californians about the many poets and authors who have influenced our great state through creative literary expression.

GOVERNOR’S PRESS RELEASE

The California Arts Council manages the nomination process for the California Poet Laureate as established by law. After a call to the general public for nominations, applications are reviewed by an expert peer panel to narrow the number. Panel recommendations are sent to the Governor’s office for additional vetting. The Governor makes the final selection and names the California Poet Laureate, who must be confirmed by the Senate.

MORE ON THE ROLE OF THE CALIFORNIA POET LAUREATE and of the California Arts Council

The California Arts Council and AlYoung.org congratulate Mr. Herrera.

_______________________________________________________

___________________________________________________

furiouscinema.com

Listen to Al Young’s March 2012 poem for KQED’s ‘The California Report’

DID SHE WHO MADE THE LAMB
MAKE THE MGM LION, TOO?

Did she who made the lamb make the MGM lion, too?

No Hollywood hurrah, no roar, no Big Sur purr

can coolly calm or claim you, whether for weeks

or days or nights you blow cold or warm or you blow

wet or hot or not at all. Tell us now, will you tango?

Will you waltz? Will you boogie? Will you guaguancó?

Will you even dance? Or just throw down and march?

Marshlands of the Golden State, all you ancient,

mushy wetlands — baylands, swamps, marshes,

bogs; lungs of our coastlines, raw river- and lake-

and creek-sweetening filters — unite! You’ve still got

plenty to lose. From Long Beach to Fremont

to Arcata, Sacramento and Sheep Ranch on up

to the Great Washoe Basin, you’d better watch yourselves.

In the run-off and run-up to spring anything goes.

© Al Young

© Marek Fijalkowski

___________________________________________________

_______________________________________________________

Are We Happy Yet?

© Andreas Gursky

The Shadow Industry

“You see people in dark glasses wandering around the supermarket at 2 a.m. There are great boxes all along the aisles, some as expensive as fifty dollars but most of them are only five. There’s always Muzak. It gives me the shits more than the shadows. The people don’t look at one another. They come to browse through the boxes of shadows although the packets give no indication of what’s inside. It really depresses me to think of people going out at two in the morning because they need to try their luck with a shadow. Last week I was in the supermarket near Topanga and I saw an old man tear the end off a shadow box. He was arrested almost immediately.”

_______________________________________________________