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May 16, 2012|By Reed Johnson and Ken Ellingwood, Los Angeles Times

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File Photo

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Carlos Fuentes, Mexican Man of Letters, Dies at 83 | Anthony DePalma | May 15, 2012

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Muere Carlos Fuentes

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A PERSONAL AlYoung.org ASIDE

Whatever Carlos Fuentes wrote I gobbled up with ever-growing admiration and respect. Multilingual, the son of a diplomat, Fuentes had to decide whether he would write in English or Spanish. He chose Spanish. I loved those TV moments when Fuentes responded to his prejudiced Yankee political assailants in crisp, accentless, idiomatic American. He was a tireless fighter and spokesman for social justice, who respected and stuck up for the underdog, and who never sold out to anyone for anything.

In the late 1960s, when I was just beginning to publish, one bilingual venue friendly to writers in Spanish or English was El Corno Emplumado (The Plumed Horn), which billed itself as “A Magazine from Mexico City.” Co-edited by American-born Margaret Randall and Sergio Mondragón, her Mexican husband, El Corno with its global and culturally diverse perspective, was as exciting to read as it was unpredictable. I took pride in having my stuff come out alongside the work of such writers as Ernesto Cardenal, Philip Lamantia, Pablo Neruda, Diane Wakoski, Octavio Paz, Carol Bergé, Cid Corman, Raquel Jodorowsky, Robert Creeley, Carlos Pellicer, Denise Levertov, Dan Georgakas interviewing James Baldwin, and Carlos Fuentes. The list still staggers.

So when novelist-essayist-screenwriter Cecil Brown relocated from California to Paris in the late Sixties, one of the writers in his expatriate circle was Carlos Fuentes. When my name came up for discussion one night, Fuentes told Cecil: “Oh, yes, I know Al Young, he’s a good young writer.” It shocked and thrilled me to hear this from Cecil. Only in the pages of El Corno did Carlos Fuentes and I ever meet. Still, I loved him for acting as if he really did know me and my work. The stories we tell ourselves and one another! The great Carlos Fuentes was truly a master.

–Al Young

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© Ricardo Gutierrez | El País (Madrid)

Muere a los 83 años el escritor Carlos Fuentes

15 de mayo de 2012

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Welcome to San Francisco Peace and Hope, a literary journal devoted to poetry and visual art.

First Anniversary Poetry Reading for
San Francisco Peace & Hope

Open mic followed by featured readers

“Sign-up for the open mic begins at 7pm. The open mic begins as soon as that is over and a few announcements are made. So we are usually underway by 7:10 or 7:15. The feature usually goes on about an hour later.”
– Poet-host DAN BRADY

Sacred Grounds Café
7:00pm
2095 Hayes Street at Cole
SF 94117-1127
415.387.3859
map

Painter Elizabeth Hack, founding director and editor of
SAN FRANCISCO PEACE AND HOPE

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featured readers

Café Cam

Al Young

Niya C. Sisk

|

Dan Brady | Marvin Hiemstra | Tanya Joyce
Kit Kennedy | Ken Saffran

San Francisco Peace and Hope is proud to announce a poetry reading celebrating the first anniversary of its magazine debut in San Francisco on June 6, 2012, featuring readings by AL YOUNG, , poet-host DAN BRADY, MARVIN HIEMSTRA, TANYA JOYCE, KIT KENNEDY, and KEN SAFFRAN. Founding editor ELIZABETH HACK and creative director NIYA C. SISK will comment on the evolution of SF Peace and Hope, and where the exciting online journal now stands.

Informed by the idealism of the 1960s, San Francisco Peace and Hope is a continuing labor of love produced by the poets and visual artists of the Bay Area. For the new edition — which launches Ftriday, May 18, 2012 — advisor Al Young, California’s former poet laureate, has updated his One Two-Step Foreword. Writer and web designer Niya C. Sisk of Ritual Labs and Niya’s Place, has freshened the journal’s cool look.

Contact: Elizabeth Hack, Founder/Editor
Email: sfpeaceandhope@gmail.com
Website: sfpeaceandhope.com

Sacred Grounds Café | 415.387.3859

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Photo: Kindness of Strangers

In the flickering December light of 2010, following a late Rockridge luncheon devoted to SF Peace and Hope’s launch, Elizabeth Hack, Niya C. Sisk, and Al Young smile for their savvy waitress.

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Al Young

Jimmy at home in 2006

Al Young

Mountain View Cemetery, Piedmont, CA

Sandy Simon

Jimmy Lynn (James Curl Lynn), a friend of Al Young, is interred in a crypt beside his mother’s at Mountain View Cemetery in Piedmont, California. An only child, Jimmy took care of Rachel Fuller, his schoolteacher mother — at first on Long Island, then in Oakland — for her last 12 years.

Al Young and Jimmy Lynn at the popular Berkeley Bowl in the summer of 2005.

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THE HOUSE ON DANA STREET

(from Med Café Stories)

He, the new young man never knew
what to make of Jimmy Lynn’s house
on Dana Street in Berkeley,
writers coming and going, mostly blacks,
talking revolution never tired of
talking about what it was all about
being black
what the whites did to the blacks.
We got those college degrees, yeah!
Some writing movie scripts, some
writing poetry, some doing it all,
Al Young sitting late night on a stool
at the kitchen counter, paying respect
to his older friend,     Al was relaxed,
while Jimmy was in motion,
Al listening to Jimmy telling it like it is.
Listening closely to Jimmy’s paranoia
which as it turned out,
we said one by one, “it wasn’t paranoia,
it was hieroglyphics on the wall.”
World politics vindicated Jimmy.

At Jimmy’s house, some writing novels,
some writing plays, Big Herb
Handsome, devilish, and trailing a
King’s robe behind him.
“Won’t you come in and have a cup of tea
I’ll tell you about my play,
The Day of the Nigger.
Let me explain the storyline, it’s the
day all the white people are killed
except, of course, some women.”
He grinned.
Jimmy, an intellectual who supported his art life
working on the docks,
gave free room and board to one young man,
“until you get a place,” he said.
The new border, light-skinned, ethereal, smiled
dreamily;  was he listening?  to urgent discussions in
this Parisian Left Bank on Dana?
While they talked revolution, the young man’s soul
whispered dreamily,     “Lena Horne   Lena Horne”
He was inside his own song and sweetly melancholic
as if he knew then he would later die young.

When I met him, he was floating, flute in hand
into the Med Café, speaking in rhyme, keeping time.
Some thought it odd but all thought him beautiful, with
sea green eyes and gold skin.
I couldn’t understand his words but sat with him
xxupstairs
where the blacks sat at the Med if not at Robbie’s.
The new boarder dreamily wafted in and out
of the Dana Street flat, like a mirage,
like a collage on the wall,
to be viewed or ignored by writers, musicians, artists,
smoking pot, making movies, talking about Camus as if
the subject was inexhaustible.
Jimmy let him stay there, saying wistfully,
“I just wish the young man would pick up his socks
and underwear from the floor.”
“But he’s so beautiful,” I said.
The young man overhearing, smiled sadly,
“Yes, of course, I am beautiful.
My mother is LENA HORNE!”

– JESSE BEAGLE
from Poetry In Jazz: Selected Writings 1987-2011
(Beatitude Press | Berkeley, CA)

© 2011 Jesse Beagle

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© Lillian Kemp

SONG

You’re wondering if I’m lonely:
OK then, yes, I’m lonely
as a plane rides lonely and level
on its radio beam, aiming
across the Rockies
for the blue-strung aisles
of an airfield on the ocean.

You want to ask, am I lonely?
Well, of course, lonely
as a woman driving across country
day after day, leaving behind
mile after mile
little towns she might have stopped
and lived and died in, lonely

If I’m lonely
it must be the loneliness
of waking first, of breathing
dawns’ first cold breath on the city
of being the one awake
in a house wrapped in sleep

If I’m lonely
it’s with the rowboat ice-fast on the shore
in the last red light of the year
that knows what it is, that knows it’s neither
ice nor mud nor winter light
but wood, with a gift for burning

© Adrienne Rich

Adrienne Rich at a Glance (5:58)

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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.

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