Category Archives: I Speak of the City

I found this poem while going through the used Poetry section at Pegasus Books and finding the anthology City of Buds & Flowers: A Poet’s Eye View of Berkeley. The first thing that caught my eye was that it was a collection of City poems, the second thing was its editor, John Oliver Simon—a great teacher of poetry, fine poet & translator, and true gentleman.

Simon’s anthology speaks to all of Berkeley’s complexities by drawing a group of poets whose work speaks of their citizenry giving us more than just the standard hippie-go-lucky take. Of course, you will find hippie poetry here, written by proud card carrying hippies, as well as poems from the lower sections of San Pablo Avenue and other less touristy corners.

This book also gave me a chance to read some Berkeley poems from Telegraph Avenue’s own Julia Vinograd aka the Bubblelady (Vinograd’s bio in City of Buds & Flowers mentions that she is known as the Bubblelady but no one calls her that to her face). Vinograd’s contributions to the collection are great, a true reflection of what Berkeley means to those who remember why People’s Park came to be, the sense of responsibility that was an answer to frustration and how that responsibility to an ideal, an artform, a place never has to fade.

Fire

I warm my hands
where the rocks are thrown,
where religion whirls at the feet of unruly crowds,
where minds melt down a face without the compass of tears,
because my hands are cold.
My pulse beats slowly so I drink the beating drums.
I have no nerves in myself, but the flute, the heckler, the siren
supply me. I follow a skinny smack-dealing girl
in a mink coat and bare feet,
and I follow a Jesus freak lady,
tall, white-haired, aristocrat born in Russia
as I would come to fire,
for my eyes see only in the light of the fire.
I refuse what they offer
and take the fire instead.
I am the golem of Berkeley
and Berkeley carved its name upon me,
but it doesn’t always work.
And then the city sinks under older cities
and finally the ocean where I swim among the sharks
and the ruins of Atlantis, until I change again.

© Julia Vinograd

Goodreads Review:

The ruins of a modern city gets a harsh but humanistic treatment in Roberson’s City Eclogue. As per the title, the shepherds gather and discuss what has befallen their flock–in this case the various citizens of NYC speaking on the destruction surrounding the city that they care for and in return cares for the shepherds. Strangely, many of the conversations feel solitary, as if the speaker is speaking to absence or speaking to everyone at once, which is to say we have some great isolated speech that echoes on the page (perhaps mimicking the isolation and desolation the speaker is in). Roberson’s free jazz movements of repeated staccato phrases that spiral into each other also enhances this droning effect.

The initial poem, Stand-In Invocation, is a fractured sonnet that speaks to how the citizens of the city now treat each other (A New York scoping out instead of eye/contact.) that ends in total disruption of ould’ves (could’ve, would’ve, should’ve, the familiar cries of hindsight) that is restiched with a footnote (She knows the form, her tongue’s just sharp and short of.) indicating the speaker has a sense of history and education but the immediacy of the breakdown in human relations in the city hurries the speaker past formal constraints.

This breakdown is not without a sense of hope and renewal that even from these cracked pieces of language and isolation, a new language can emerge to reestablish that essential communication necessary in urban living.]

Stand-In Invocation

One of your clairvoyances who could’ve
seen her way to speak     stared clearance through.
A New York scoping out instead of eye
contact.   No voice of vision, no called muse —

one of your sightings that would be a dream
if it cared, if it loved you more, kept you
awake asleep and fucked you with your eyes
rested in the open beyond what’s seen.

No. One more of the feeling un-invoked
spoken out of these days’ put you through
proofs before granting you speech     testifies
she is not the mouth of anything you wrote

these days                                                    ould’ve
ould’ve.

_________________________________________________________

She knows the form, her tongue’s just sharp and short of.

© Ed Roberson

[Last night’s SPT MLA Off-Site Reading was a great chance to hear some local work, read a duet poem with Barb and drop one of my more favorite recent poems (A Bodega on Anywhere Avenue) but the biggest thrill was meeting Stephen Vincent. I’ve been a huge fan of Vincent’s visionary work as publisher and editor of Momo’s Press which published much of Jessica Hagedorn, Ishamael Reed and Victor Hernández Cruz’s early work.

Finding a used copy of Cruz’s By Lingual Wholes (for $1!) was not only a great addition to the Sexy Loft Library but also helped me in my quest for publication. Yes, online journal and e-books are a new part of the literary landscape that are here to stay but the physical object that is the book will remain timeless and can;t be easily replaced by a screen image or PDF as evidenced by Momo’s Press layout of the graphic poems in By Lingual Wholes.]

The Four Corners

The first corner has become a
bodega whose window is full of
platanos who have traveled
miles to rest in that reality
green with splashes of black
running down their spines
The other corner had a restaurant
a crab running out of the door
speaking: You can’t write about
my belly unless you taste it
The other third corner found
a group of friends singing
They became clocks with their
a zoon zoon zoon
zoon su Babare
The last and final corner
is where I stand
like a fool making this up

© Victor Hernández Cruz

[Chi-town sure does produce some good poetry. I’ve only been to Chicago a few times but each time has been memorable especially my first time in the dead middle of Logan Square (circa 1995) spending the week in what would kindly be called a hotel (OB: Cabbie, drop me off right here. CABBIE: Here? OB: Yeah. CABBIE: You sure you don’t want me to take you somewhere else?). The place was a wreck but the neighborhood was great with some of the best mornin’ café con leche and warm buttered pan de sal I’ve ever had in the states. It also gave me a great chance to walk around and get a feel for the history of Chicago architecture and city planning with its long alleys and wooden fire escapes reminding me of the BX but not at the same time.

This Gwendolyn Brooks poem is giving me the same feeling, like I’ve been in this building and heard the same conversation but under different circumstances. An artistic feat that Ms Brooks seems to be able to accomplish in every line break.]

Kitchenette Building

We are things of dry hours and the involuntary plan,
Grayed in, and gray. “Dream” mate, a giddy sound, not strong
Like “rent”, “feeding a wife”, “satisfying a man”.

But could a dream sent up through onion fumes
Its white and violet, fight with fried potatoes
And yesterday’s garbage ripening in the hall,
Flutter, or sing an aria down these rooms,

Even if we were willing to let it in,
Had time to warm it, keep it very clean,
Anticipate a message, let it begin?

We wonder. But not well! not for a minute!
Since Number Five is out of the bathroom now,
We think of lukewarm water, hope to get in it.

© Gwendolyn Brooks