20th Century Latin American Poetry @ Beyond Baroque

Starting February 6, 2012 Beyond Baroque, 681 Venice Blvd Venice, CA 90291-4805 (310) 822-3006, will offer a 20th Century Latin American Poetry workshop on Monday nights from 7-9. Yago Cura, publisher of the online journal Hinchas de Poesia (www.hinchasdepoesia.com), will serve as facilitator of the free workshops. Each session will address the work of a different 20th Century Latin American poet, and allow students to generate a piece inspired by some of their signature poems.

In Spanish, Rubén Darío’s Azul (1888) is widely credited with ushering in the literary movement called, Modernismo. The work of 20th Century Latin American poets is important because their efforts predate the work of Modernists like T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound. As Ilan Stavans writes in the introduction of The FSG Book of Twentieth Century Latin American Poetry (2011), “Modernism, which, roughly speaking, came about in the English-speaking world a couple of decades later and includes Woolf, Stein, Pound, and Joyce.” It is not only erroneous to assume that modern poetry starts with Eliot’s The Wasteland (1922), but it also highlights our prejudices towards literary movements that don’t emanate in our country.

But what characterizes poetry as “Latin American?” What set of traits distinguishes it from say Icelandic poetry, or Urdu verses? Latin American poetry is eminently political and playful, sardonic, nostalgic. It has its roots in French symbolism, but was inspired by Walt Whitman and Edgar Allan Poe. It is highly modern, and at the same time always harkens hindsight. The module starts with Rubén Darío and ends with Eduardo Galeano’s, Memory of Fire. However, Ernesto Cardenal’s epigrammatic forms will be discussed, and so will Robert Juarroz’s Vertical Poetry and Nicannor Parra’s Anti-Poetry. The fact of the matter is that Latin American poetry encapsulates many “poetries.”

Please join us on Mondays nights as we discuss the work of these great poets, and gain inspiration to compose our own works. Moreover, join us as we resuscitate the spirit and aesthetics of these writers and try to understand what makes them memorable. The work of 20th Century Latin American poets not only informs us about the history and politics of Latin America, but also about our predilections in the U.S. as many of our poets have emulated and embraced Latin American styles.

LAGUARDIA CC DAZE

Some stories you remember because you were there, and your mind has a way of indexing random negatives. Other stories are pure incantation, either because your physical presence was not an ingredient, or because every time you tell the story you are working your way towards making the episode more real and whole.

In the winter of 1979, Estela entered LaGuardia Community College in Queens. Horacio and her had completed their G.E.D.s at Dewey High School in Bensonhurst the previous year and were primed for some vocational education. The concession machines in the student union buzzed with pure American products, and on the far wall a projector played an episode of "Sanford and Son." I can tell it was "Sanford and Son," because of the theme music (a jangly, gypsy chortle set to harmonica puffs), which even today makes me crave Twinkies, Ding-Dongs, and TAB.

Or maybe it was the following year, after Estela had worked her ways towards higher-level Fashion technology classes. Those where held in a refurbished, repurposed factory barracks and parking athenium; they had left the walls exposed brick and all the doors to the classrooms where china white. Inside the classrooms there were drafting tables and mismatched mannequins (brown heads and necks and pale torsos, etc.) and jeweler's repair tables. They had not changed the factory windows so there were what seemed like hundreds of glass squares each dolloped with a little landscape. I wish I could say that my mother created thousands of original, fashionable iterations but that would be like cheating because it never happened.

DUBIOUS STRIKES AGAIN!

The hacktivist collective also known as DUBIOUS had struck again, disabling the websites of several law enforcement agencies, exposing their weaknesses and highlighting the severe limitations of their knowledge.

They had fucked with the code so that the websites for the DOJ, FBI, and HSD looked as if an imbecile had violated it with Paintbrush; they had literally defiled the site's integrity, and the violence of the strokes denoted that the fight had gotten territorial.

What to do with DUBIOUS? Most law enforcement agencies had profiles on who the leaders were and how they made their living. The problem was that many of those sought had been living off the grid for decades. And, these technicians were so nuanced, and such virtuosos, that they could pretty much ply their trade anywhere.

Their intimate knowledge of systems could be used as a tool or a weapon. And, that was what made it so hard to prosecute them: they were methodical architects while at the same time double-jointed escape artists. In other words, DUBIOUS had keys for both sides of the door, and how they used the door was completely at the disposal of their discretion.

I have a cousin, Juan Martin; he's some type of cellphone engineer or professor programmer in Barcelona. Juan's from the same jungle province as my mother, but he recently designed some concrete that conscripts your phone into acting as a visual transponder and relaying certain physical data, say for example lack of food in your upper intestine, to the vendors in your immediate digital environment.

Juan found a way to force his phone to scan and divulge whether or not he should be hungry, or could use a surge of sucrose or caffeine in his veins; it narcs on him because people are not to be trusted with knowing when their bodies tell them things anymore.

For example, I doubt whether his brain was not saying to tone it down the other day when he got all megaphone on one of his channels, egging on the efforts of DUBIOUS, the internet maven cadre, and their Denial of Service attacks. If I am not mistaken, the post was a mixture of flaming grammar, capital letters, and adolescent wit.

Something real subtle like:

La REPUTAMADRE K te pario FBI!!!! La informacion es gratis!!! YANQUIS DE MIERDA!!! FUERA DE NUESTRO INTERNET!!! Motherfucker Hijos de Puta! Que DUBIOUS te cage todos los sistemas y te resinde al Tiempo de las Cuevas.

ABEL FOLGAR'S FIRST POSTCARD

I am currently engaged in a Postcard Feat with Abel Folgar. This is Abel's first postcard that I have received. As you can see it was made by a psychotic bouncer librarian; the poem on the backside is titled, Dusty Roads Beg Water. I predict that Abel will take to the roads sooner than later, and the United States will shudder as he traverses its veins. I would have put Abel's poem here as well, but what the hell am I going to sell if I let you read the actual poem. It's like someone's grandmother used to say, if you give away the milk, no one is going to want to buy your cow.

CLANDESTINE DEPTO.

My mother's apartment had not been "marked" by the police for increased surveillance; word had not come down for an unmarked Ford Falcon to circle her block like a bull shark. No order came down for her to be shadowed.

Her address had not been registered at the cuartel, nor had it been the added to the lists the police were constantly smashing together. In a word, she was a nobody, and that suited her fine because of the anonymity being a nobody afforded her.

But, she had gotten to know people in the movement, and she sometimes feigned being a reporter so she could get into lectures for free. She was known to carry a tape recorder as a prop; shortly thereafter, it became her talisman. And once or twice, she even offered up her tiny departamento as a venue for lectures or presentations.

One time she hosted two Cuban compadres from the Administración Postal de Cuba. Because they called my mother, Negra, the two Cubans could pass for her brothers, cousins, or kin. The three of them together raised less eyebrows than my mother alone, somehow.

She had run away from Tucumán to Buenos Aires at 14, home being one of the thickest and at times remote provinces in Argentina's 23-stared province-diadem. On her own, my mother, stood out like a sore thumb; also, she had a mythological pair of gams she liked to flaunt in mini-skirts and boots.