TOMAS RILEY'S "POST CHICANO STRESS DISORDER"

Post Chicano Stress Disorder (Tinta Vox, 2010) by Tomás Riley with images by Ricardo Islas

I don't imagine Tomás Riley’s message in Post Chicano Stress Disorder (Tinta Vox, 2010) to be a decidedly political one; his brand of poetry is political as a matter of existence, rather than of taste or style, "so what is young/ and brown so far a living/ corpse of language?" (33). In Post Chicano Stress Disorder, Riley spits sparse bars cadenced by Hip-Hop Mythology, PoMo's nuanced wordplay, and that threshold where the political becomes the factual. Riley’s book is a manual, bluesy sheet music, and a slowly-gentrifying, inner-city quirófano, simultaneously.

At the height of Reagonomics, Chuck D said, "Rap is C.N.N. for black people," and that operating principle could easily be what drives a poet like Riley to write Post Chicano Stress Disorder. His is a book of poems in which impetus comes not from other forms of poetry per se, but from canonical Hip Hop anthems, like Wu-Tang's "C.R.E.A.M.", and the swag of the blues, "an eloquence/ unflattering as game; the hold the/ note twelve bars and cry a/ little at the end" (39). In this sense, it’s just another mash-up, just another amalgam, hybrid, simply another component in a system; Riley intersperses that hybrid imperative with snippets of displaced narratives, and tectonic descriptions of San Francisco's Mission.

It's also a book of poems in which an experimental litany ("litanias") is also a "record that skips on all four sides." (Imagine what Terminator X could have done with Riley's four-sided record?) Maybe, it's simply a shiteater's pean to the reflective largesse of reconstructed meaning vis-a-vis wordplay; for example, what exactly does Riley mean with the phrase, Post Chicano? Is the contemporary Chicano somehow different than the Chicano that came before him, or is he saying that altogether, Latinos have moved past regional categorization? As Latinos, have we moved past our own selves? Have we enclaved ourselves out of a relevance of existence?

"Conjure," the first poem, reads like an abracadabra for a minority caucus, "say your name right/ be it bold/ or stand up treacherous/ bind myth back to the bone/ take shape again" (1). The invocation in "Conjure" is not only interested in producing magic, there's a playfulness that's evocative and discursive and ultimately sonorous, "drive cedar through the crevice of your accent" (1). At the same time, "Conjure" seeks to salve the wounds the Beauvoirian other might feel, "find protection in the meeting place of moments/ meant to curl the skin right off you" (6).

But, Riley ensures that the ethnic navigation system is not on the blind tourist circuit; in "hip: a sickle moon injunction" Riley has a frank dialogue with Obama in no specific terms, and takes aim at the marketing promises ("Hope" and "Change") made during his candidacy and re-election, "deplorable non-cause/ a mantra so perverse/ produces/podium acceptance speeches"(17). There is plenty of reflexive poetic exposition asking the inconvenient questions and seeking the ugly answers, 'my god," they say, trying to nod/ we wanted/ change"(19).

Moreover, Riley queries the negative forces at work within his community ("breakdown of a / brown on brown remix") (40), as well as the negative forces (gentrification, scapegoatism) that impose themselves and originate outside his community. Possibly what Riley is trying to achieve is to inspire the "best of us" to never "stop/ singing" (40), while at the same time being cognizant of the damage that unchecked ambition (hardheartedness?) can wreak on burgeoning minorities, "whatever violence/ efficiently/ installed us at the verge"(32).

To have grown up during the Cold War, to be a veteran of the Cold War, implies a certain way of looking at minorities, poverty, and U.S. militarization. During the Cold War, the country spent billions on Defense, but the inner cities fell apart as crack cocaine ravaged families and rent communities. During the late 90's those same neighborhoods were gentrified, pushing out long-standing residents for affluent young professionals, "(for Walgreen's and a few condos with insolent/ price tags)". Riley's Post Chicano Stress Disorder deftly captures the landscape of a community in flux and lays bare a foray, a response, and possibly a template for addressing the gentrification and disorientation that has polarized many communities.

This title is perfect for academic libraries wanting to accession collections of contemporary Latino poetry, or are seeking to augment their collections with Latino and African-American poets will definitely find this title of interest. Academic libraries that support programs relating to urban studies, ethnic literature, comparative literature, or even Chicano studies might also find this title of great interest, especially when paired with books by Mike Davis like "Magical Urbanism: Latinos Reinvent the U.S. Big City," Juan Gonzalez’s "Harvest of Empire", or "Eminent Domain" by Justin Petropoulos.

VIDEO SCRIPT FOR KICKSTARTER PROJECT

Hi, my name is Yago Cura, and I am the publisher of Hinchas Press, and the founder of Hinchas de Poesia, the contemporary digital journal of Pan-American writing. I am here today to ask for your assistance in helping Hinchas Press publish Jim Heavily's Bringer of Culture. We reached out to BookMobile for a quote on the suggestion of elena minor, the editor of PALABRA, an amazing magazine out of Los Angeles.

This is Jim's first book, and our first printing. Our Arts Editor, Jennifer Therieau, has layed out Heavily's book in a format that is 5.5 inches wide x 8.5 inches high. The insides are pretty much standard, except that the cover has been nicely conjured by Jennifer's evocative graphic design acumen. The cover is a 4-color cover on 10 pt C1S/white stock with gloss layflat lamination, bleeds, prints one side only.

For 750 copies, Bookmobile's quote is $1,697.26, so let's just call it seventeen hundred or $1,700.00. Now, our kick starter project is asking for $2,000.00 is because we will have to snail mail contributors who donate more than $25.00 a copy of our premiere book. And despite the fact that I will try to get the lower printed matter rate, we imagine that it might take us $2.00 to send a book through the snail mail. Therefore, we can send at least 150 donors a copy of the book, but it will only take 80 people donating 25 for us to reach out $2,000.00 goal.

If we send 80 people a book and the postage is $2.00 then our mail costs shouldn't exceed $160.00, but as we have conscripted Jim to send any person who donates at least $10.00 a signed poem from Bringer of Culture. We imagine it would cost $.45 to send those donors their copy of a poem, and with $140 ($300-160) we could send approximately 311 donors a signed poem.

As you can see, we are just hoping to break even, or not have to dip into our retirement funds, savings accounts, and mattresses (if possible) to bring this wonderful book to light. Furthermore, by allowing Hinchas to publish Jim's book, we not only amplify the roster of American poetry, but we publish the first book of a poet whose time has come.

Please help us to achieve this feat and enter in the publishing racket. Without your help, many small presses like Hinchas will not be able to overcome operations costs and stay afloat or at least solvent. By helping Hinchas you ensure that a healthy cross-section of poetry is available to poets and writers and readers interested in the Pan-American writing.

Thank You

Yago Cura

THIS IS NOT AN ODE TO MICHAEL BALLACK

Brother, if I were Michael Ballack,
I would kick back in the Poconos of the Pyrenees
with a carton of Shiteater Iced Tea.

I would move to the south of Germany, a village
known for tallest tower or most egregious bees

and run the high school Latin racket in rural
high schools, and Volvo my daughter to recitals of Carmen.

I would live in track suits, trainers, and logoless cotton shirts
that would allow my skin to inhale all the aerobic intent
of a given space until I reach my lactic threshold.

I would start a kraut musical junta and go on tour
with my model wife (different from standard wife-models)
until there is no hotel in Majorca which will render
us Rolling-Stones-shelter.

I would start an University of Power, a Cathedral of Brunt,
a Montessori Compound for Teutonic Bruins.

Brother, this Ballack guy, he can headbutt
I.C.B.M.s into the pocket-most-yonder on corner kicks.
He cracks balón like woodsman with vector know-how
and can arrest the balon on his chest like some Magnús.

There is no one can stop the laser-pointer once Ballack
lays it on you like the Lord's unequivocal retribution,
like a black rain that refuses to go into gutters.

Brother, there are some honors not granted despite hunger
for those honors, and there are hungers that amp the status
of a legend, but can’t do squat for their celebrity entropy.

HINCHAS NUMERO SEVEN!!!!

Hinchas de Poesia, the digital codex of contemporary Pan-American writing, is set to publish its seventh issue on August 31, 2012; this is the same day in which a "blue moon" will appear in the skies above our heads. While the moon will not actually appear blue, a blue moon just means that August 2012 was a month in which two full moons encapsulated the month (meaning there was one on Aug 1 and there will be one on Aug 31).

What's special about this issue of Hinchas is that we have completely changed our look and aesthetic. Our Arts Editor, Jennifer, has switched us over to a CMS (Content Mgmt Site) so that our protocols and processes would be streamlined. To upload content the old way, all the respective editors had to wait for me to upload, FTP-style, the content that they had designated. Using the new way, respective editors can upload content themselves, but they have to ensure that the mechanics are sparkling.

Issue Seven is our most eclectic issue yet. We have two fiction submissions that are going to completely knock your socks off. I know this is weird, what with the title of our journal being Hinchas de Poesia, but these fiction pieces are not only strong but intense. And, both our fictionists have had successful books already published. Shauna Seliy is the author of When We Get There and Patricia Engel is the author of Vida, which was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Fiction Award.

In terms of poetry, we have a lot to offer this issue. We not only have experienced and seasoned poets like Madeline Beckman, James Cervantes and Brian Young, but we also have a repeat performance by Stephen Page, our scribe from the city of good airs or Buenos Aires. We also have two pieces by Gregorio Gomez, the emcee of Chicago’s wildest and longest-running poetry series at Weeds on Dayton Ave. We also have a Canadian poet, Daniel Hedges, who teaches in Quebec and is the founder and editor of the literary collective HUMANIMALZ. Truly there's a lot to like here and I imagine that readers looking for poetry will have lots to peruse.

In terms of review and letters, we have two poetry reviews and a letter to AWP President Steven Heller from LeAnne Howe concerning the wonderful work of the Indigenous-Aboriginal American Writers Caucus. There's also a review of D.A. Powell's "Chronic," and "This Side of Time" by South Korean poet Ko Un. Last, Cristian Paiz, a doctoral student at the University of Souther California has been nice enough to let us excerpt an essay he has written on The United Farm Workers in 1974 and there collusions with the Border Patrol. Paiz's essay is based on work he carried out at the UFW archive at the University of Michigan.

KO UN'S "THIS SIDE OF TIME" (WHITE PINE PRESS, 2012)

Ko Un's This Side of Time, (White Pine Press, 2012) Translated by Clare You and Richard Silberg

This Side of Time (White Pine Press, 2012), Ko Un's newest collection of poetry, is drawn from several collections of terse poems by the South Korean author. So, for example, the first chapter's, "Little Songs," are taken from Poems Left Behind, whose title suggests a natural disaster, or an ephemeral methodology. Clare You and Richard Silberg have manged to order and translate an eclectic range of poems that highlight Ko Un's utterly Korean, yet unflinchingly human registers.

I hope you're asking yourself what utterly Korean means, because the poems concern themselves with the natural world, "My poor old mule," and spirituality, "Zen Master Imje", but in acutely cosmopolitan and post-modern brushstrokes. None of the poems are titled or numbered, which aligns harmoniously with the voice in these "Little Songs," but the whit is whip smart. On page 32, a five line intimation anchors us to the bottom of the page, to the absurdity of existence,

On the trash by the road
a thrown-out fan
was turning in cold wind.
It fanned fiercely.

I stopped for a long time.

While the songs in Chapter 1 are stout, they expand the parameters of timeless themes, like pluralism versus xenophobia. On a continent that followed a a serious program of isolation, Ko Un is saying something especially salient about perception, and how contradictory and sometimes conflicting ideologies occupy the same moment in time and space. Ko Un is also saying something political about what constitutes "a foreigner" and how locals might never understand the pain and emotional numbness associated with exile

If she doesn't understand what I say
I'm a foreigner.
If I don't get her silence
she is just a mute.

Chapter 2, "A Few Small Songs," continues with its cavalcade of tiny, mostly nameless (title-less), almost random, procession of meditations that range from the expansive and humbling, "If wisdoms/ not love,/ love is/ not wisdom,/ wash them/ off our hands./ A breeze startled the calf from it doze," to the searingly political and preemptive, "Once/ when Iran's Tehran oil pipeline was laid,/ didn't he wallow in lust all night...The sun's going down; the darkness deepening." Likewise, the impending romantic history between two star-crossed lovers is put off once again by the pure caprices of Time. In "1:30 AM," (page 50) the poet writes

The light went out in Unit 506 on the 18th floor.
Across
on the 19th floor, the light in 706 went out soon after.

Sleep Well.
Get to know each other tomorrow.

"1:30 A.M." sounds like something that Paul Auster might write about: two protagonists in opposing brownstones in Brooklyn, or what Murakami might pen about two loveless Tokyo types stuck in heartless publishing scenes. In other words, there are "songs" about natural subjects, "cranes," "Hwenggye Mountains of Kangwon Province," Yunpyung Island," "Ch'uja-do, the vacant island, etc., but there are just as many about the terrestrial and tangible, like the "pipeline to Tehran," or "Torture" (page 94)

If you're tortured
you know a human is inhuman.
Both the torturer
and the tortured
deep at night in the second basement room

Politically, and somewhat aesthetically, Ko Un reminds me of Turkey's Nazim Hikmet and the poets of Generation 27, especially Alberti whose poems are sometimes compact, nano dynamos. I'd be lying if I said there wasn't a little but of Jose Marti's crazy idea that South America and North America should be considered one America. Ko Un has vigorously encouraged reunification between North Korea and South Korea in full frontal view of the military games engaged in by both governments.

But, more than anything, Ko Un's poetry is full of the mind, that gnarly entity that stands before what is thought and all up in what is written. In many ways, if the mind is a variable just waiting for the light of understanding, then maybe a filament of pure light might help to unlock a higher order of knowing. Ko Un is South Korea's most revered poet to be sure, but chances are you have probably never heard of him. According to White Pine Press, Un has published "over 100 collections of poetry, and many volumes of fiction and non-fiction in his native Korea." Along the way, he has opened up the playing field for South Korean Lit., making it kosher for South Korean writers to write about things of a particularly non-Korean pedigree, to openly question the South Korean government, and the carriers of small tunes. Ko Un's little songs are not only keen in the sense of music, but also as a marker of space and time, transcribed through language.

This title would be perfect for community college libraries, or for any program on international relations with an emphasis on Asia. I think any class on contemporary South Korean politics would be greatly enhanced by reading "This Side of Time," and introducing students to the work of Ko Un, South Korea's greatest living author.

"Ko Un." Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2008. Gale Biography In Context. Web. 21 July 2012.