at weekend's end

CISA was awesome. and exhausting. i love the smith campus, especially their uber-chic campus center. much thanks to s.l. for all the support/kdrama-watching/camping trip adventuring this weekend. i feel like i've been on this adrenaline rush high all weekend, running around campuses, performing/explicating/living poetry. i hate it when ppl talk about 'living poetry,' though. it's so corny. i mean. one shouldn't have to state it so obviously. it needs to be a bit of a silly secret, this poetry thing. or so obvious that it loses that kind of pretentious sacredness.

anyway. CISA was great, yes. inspiring. i realize i might want to do another process piece or continue in a whole set of process pieces--maybe as part of an independent study at some point--with the main poem i've been performing this month, and others...because revisions, revisions, revisions...things change...thinking changes. and it's nice to follow that trajectory, have some record of it.

btw, i really loved marilyn flores' presentation, " 'Social Justice Was Just Like Breathing': Luz Rodriguez and Women's Participation in the Creative Resistance of the Nuyorican Renaissance." here was her abstract:

From El Barrio on the northern reaches of Manhattan to the Lower East Side neighborhood known as Loisaida, young Puerto Rican New Yorkers in the 1960s and 1970s formed a unique culture of art and resistance. This paper refers to this period as the Nuyorican Renaissance for its obvious parallels with the African-American art movement known as the Harlem Renaissance. Though underrepresented in academia, Nuyorican art and literature is expansive, and it noticeably flourished in this period. This was a time of rebellion across America, no less for the Puerto Ricans of New York, who took to the streets to protest housing conditions, petition for bilingual education, and demand independence for Puerto Rico. This era of Puerto Rican political awakening was uniquely expressed through Nuyorican poetry, an art form that has retained a special position in Nuyorican culture, as well as through dance, theater, and visual art. Drawing on the oral history of Luz Marina Rodriguez, a Nuyorican artist-activist, as well as poems, interviews with other Puerto Rican artists, and the relevant historiography, the role of women in this explosion of sociopolitical action and cultural production is explored. This project also highlights the significance of the movement for Nuyorican women's current engagements in community activism.

and here's excerpts from a poem by Martita Morales, "Sounds of Sixth Street," which Flores provided for us (excerpted as such) on a nice little handout of Nuyorican poetry:

...
and she rebels against the fact
that where she lives at
is a
95% Puerto Rican and
black community
and the white
honky-ass bourgeoisie
wants to take over
and she fights and she fights
...
and she is in assembly in school
and because she does not stand up
like the rest of her fellow students
to do the pledge of allegiance to the amerikan flag
she is harassed by her teacher and two deans
she is almost expelled
at which she more fully rebels
...
this is a Puerto Rican girl
trigueña and fifteen years old
this is a Puerto Rican girl
to her, her flag is GOLD
and she rebels
and she rebels
and for this, they want her expelled
but she keeps on fighting
yeah, she fights and she fights
because she knows she is Right!

plus:
~wonderful website for the nuyorican poetry cafe in new york city.
~a new york times article on nuyorican poetry and the above-mentioned cafe.
~npr interview with two poets from the cafe
~more poems
~and more poems

**

something just re-sparked the thought that i am going to school/living most of the time now in the town of emily dickinson. and i've lived in amherst before--indeed for several years--and visited emily dickinson's place (yeah emily and i are real tight). well, i stumbled across a photograph entitled "a swelling of the ground." and i could not help but think of "Because I could not stop for Death." so here:


Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.

We slowly drove, he knew no haste,
And I had put away
My labor, and my leisure too,
For his civility.

We passed the school, where children strove
At recess, in the ring;
We passed the fields of gazing grain,
We passed the setting sun.

Or rather, he passed us;
The dews grew quivering and chill,
For only gossamer my gown,
My tippet only tulle.

We paused before a house that seemed
A swelling of the ground;
The roof was scarcely visible,
The cornice but a mound.

Since then 'tis centuries, and yet each
Feels shorter than the day
I first surmised the horses' heads
Were toward eternity.


**

i think i'm getting a bit sick, after such a crazy (and enormously fun) weekend >.< need to take it a bit easier. focus on the (tons of) schoolwork i have left for the semester. but just calm down, sit down, do what needs to get done.