Lorna Dee Cervantes

Still Time to Register for Lorna Dee Cervantes's Intensive Poetry Workshop This Sunday, 7/12, 10-4 pm, Live Oak; 7/14 Reading in Bookshop Santa Cruz

2009-07-10T10:32:00.001-07:00

Now Is Your Chance to Sign Up for the Poetry Workshop with Lorna Dee Cervantes
Sunday, July 12, 2009, 10:00 AM to 4:00 PM. At a private residence in Live Oak near Capitola.
Lorna Dee Cervantes is an internationally acclaimed Chicana poet from San José, California. Her poetry has appeared in nearly 200 anthologies and textbooks, including The Norton Anthologies of Modern, American, English, Contemporary & Women’s Poetry, and in hundreds of literary magazines. She founded and directed “Floricanto Colorado,” showcasing Xicano & Xicana literature in Denver and surrounding school districts, which, among other events, helped to bring about the proclamation of “Abelardo ‘Lalo’ Delgado Day in Denver.” The recipient of two NEA Fellowship Grants for poetry, several California and Colorado State grants, and a Pushcart Prize for Best Poem, she was recently a finalist for Poet Laureate of Colorado, along with Reg Saner and Mary Crow, who holds the position.
Cervantes holds an A.B.D. in the History of Consciousness. Her first collection of poetry to appear in 15 years is Drive: The First Quartet (Wings Press, Jan. 2006). She is currently Associate Professor of English at the University of Colorado in Boulder where she is finishing sick-leave and beginning a sabbatical to complete her book of literary nonfiction, I Know Why the Quetzals Die: An Education. She is presently confounded by the prospect of peddling her screenplay, Pigmeat: The Life and Times of Memphis Minnie, a 20-year project, to Oprah.

The workshop will include writing new work and response to a poem brought in by each participant. Participants should bring to the workshop 14 copies of the poem for which response is desired. They should also send that poem and four others as an email attachment by Friday, July 10, indicating which one is for response.

Cost: $50. Limited to 13 participants. Advance registration and payment required. To reserve a place, call Adela Najarro at (831) 600-7319. Email: adelanajarro@comcast.net. Checks made out to Poetry Santa Cruz should be mailed to the address below. Call first to make sure there is room. Then send in your check to hold your place.

Adela Najarro
1610 Thompson Ave.
Santa Cruz, CA 95062

Where In The World Is Lorna? To Quote Michael Jackson...

2009-07-04T15:49:00.000-07:00

I'll be there.

Alfred Arteaga (May 3, 1950-July 4, 2008)

2009-07-04T15:17:00.000-07:00

"The sorrow of war inside a soldier's heart was in a strange way similar to the sorrow of love. It was a kind of nostalgia, like the immense sadness of a world at dusk. It was a sadness, a missing, a pain which could send one soaring back into the past. The sorrow of the battlefield could not normally be pinpointed to one particular event, or even one person. If you are focused on any one event it would soon become a tearing pain."

~ Bao Ninh, THE SORROW OF WAR: A Novel of North Vietnam

He would have hated
Dying on the 4th. How sad
He'd say. And then he'd laugh.

His last words to me:

"We could drive home together. I'll tell you some lies."

Rest in color, mi companero.

Alfred Arteaga

May 3, 1950-July 4, 2008

Fourth of July In The Mission

2009-07-04T15:13:00.000-07:00

Fourth of July In The Mission

for Alfred Arteaga

Fireworks and sirens
A little girl screams, "Daddy!"
Cries. You died last year

Everyone going
A pink velveteen jumpsuit
She's already gone

Because you loved me
All the colors remind me
Of ones you wanted

Where is hummingbird?
You loved like that: a bright
Awakening. You?

Too soon. Your laughter
On this morning an echo, a trace
Derrida's stammer

You would have hated
Dying on the 4th. How sad
You'd say, and then laugh

How lit up I was
That first foto, your return
From the dead. Again

For you I would have
Dyed my hair, magenta or
Chartreuse, would have dyed

Not so morose, your
Memory, last words to me
"I'll tell you some lies"

Why didn't I go?
"We could drive home together"
Would have been our last

Discolándia
Open. Manú o Maná
I'll buy one for you

Today I'll toast to
Revolution at Sunrise
Watch men with your hair

This Fourth of July
I'll think of you, relove you
Fireworks and sirens

7/4/09

Michael Jackson: Defense Rests

2009-06-25T18:37:00.000-07:00

This is a poem I wrote in May, 2005, right after Michael Jackson's acquittal and after a collage portrait of Michael Jackson by Rosie O'Donnell which is no longer available. I thought I'd post it here again. RIP. LDC
http://lornadice.blogspot.com/2005/05/michael-jackson-defense-rests-mixed.html

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Michael Jackson: 'defense rests' (a mixed media on wood, a 3x5 Portrait)

~~~~~(from a portrait by the artist, Rosie O'Donnell)

You, laid out like a crazy
pathwork quilt on a bordered bed, a number
stamped in the left-hand pocket: "to prison,
with love." They got yours
slapped on like brown pigment,
the stain of your famous face
in caricature, a caricature of Am I Blue,
Little Boy? Little bouy, (blue?)
bobbing in the photos, the snap
shot of you, a graffittied plaque against
the Real McCoy. Perpetrator
of a Love Supreme fractured
against the pawl. Against the pale
portraits of a king, recessed
in flame and flourish, hides a checker
board past flaring in the distance
between a father and his dancing
son.... Between the sheets, a child's love
lies. Between the press, the next morning,
of the palate knife, centuries aged,
some duotone of passion and burn, some law
writ in the land and heart, that forgiven
species. And health: the child. What lies
ahead?

c May 27, 2005 by Lorna Dee Cervantes
All rights reserved between consenting adults in the privacy of your own home.

Ecopoetics: A Poet's Way of Knowledge, Intensive Poetry Workshop with Lorna Dee Cervantes, Sat., 6/27, Wash., DC

2009-06-22T12:23:00.000-07:00

Split This Rock and the Sunday Kind of Love reading series invite you to participate in a writing workshop with Lorna Dee Cervantes (who is reading at Sunday Kind of Love on Sunday the 21), Saturday, June 27, from 1-4 pm. Thanks to support from the DC Commission on Arts and Humanities, the cost is $25. The workshop is open to all levels of writing from beginning to advanced—and will be geared towards helping you generate new work. (Our next and final writing workshop of the season will be in August with Terrance Hayes... stay tuned for more details on that).

Register today; send an email to melissa.dcpaw@gmail.com.

Workshop Description: Ecopoetics: A Poet's Way of Knowledge

There are about as many ways to write a poem as there are people on the planet. In poetry, as in love, there are no absolutes, and that's the only absolute. So, how does one make sense of the plethora? How, when faced with the whole enchilada, does one go about the process? For poetry is a process, above all else. As Coleridge once wrote, "Poetry is the pleasurable activity of the journey itself."

In this workshop we will map out the journey by dividing the poetic universe (multiverse) into four distinct phases of the creative/critical process: GENERATION, SELECTION, Re-VISION, and CRITICAL EVALUATION. Much the way we splay out the patterns on a globe into east, south, west and north in order to get anywhere, no individual phase is more important than another and each has its own distinct character and unique phenomena. We will participate in exercises designed to match each phase of the process - rather than focus undue or premature attention upon poetry as product. We will discuss and consider many roads leading us there, to the finished poem ("finished" in the orgasmic sense rather than as executioner or, worse, as taxidermist.) We should, by the end of the day, come away with at least 4 new poems and a sense of our own patterns and patterning (for better or worse) and we will acquire a new toolbox of techniques and methods, a new confidence and playfulness, a new sense of our own strengths and weaknesses as writers, and maybe even become acquainted with our own inner critic as well as become accustomed to the sound of our voice as well as our own individual "Voice" as a poet.

Each workshop will be unique to its participants. This workshop respects all and expects such from participants. Expect diversity. Expect to learn how to pleasure yourself - so to speak.

Lorna Dee Cervantes is the author of DRIVE: The First Quartet (Wing Press, 2006), From the Cables of Genocide: Poems on Love and Hunger (Arte Público Press, 1991) and Emplumada (1981), which won an American Book Award. Her work has been included in many anthologies including Unsettling America: An Anthology of Contemporary Multicultural Poetry (eds. Maria Mazziotti Gillan and Jennifer Gillan, 1994), No More Masks! An Anthology of Twentieth-Century Women Poets (ed. Florence Howe, 1993), and After Aztlan: Latino Poets of the Nineties (ed. Ray González, 1992). In 1995 she received a Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Writers' Award.

Where In the World Is Lorna? Berkeley City College TONIGHT 7:30 6/19 w/ Al Young & Busboys and Poets DC 6/21, wkshp 6/27 Split This Rock, DC

2009-06-19T09:35:00.000-07:00

Join me tonight as Al Young and I kick off the Summer Creative Writing Intensive at Berkeley City College, June 19, 20, 21 and then on-line for six weeks. Spend the summer exploring poetry, play and fiction writing, earn 3 units of transferable college credit and still travel.

Friday, June 19 at 7:30-9:30pm reading and discussion byprofessional writers: poet and musician Al Young, former Poet Laureate of California and author of numerous books including _Coastal Evenings and Inland Afternoons_ and _Something about the Blues_and poet, publisher and cultural critic Lorna Dee Cevantes, _Emplumada_ and _From the Cables of Genocide: Poems on Love and Hunger_.

Sign up for English 10, Creative Writing taught by Sharon Coleman, MFA in
Poetics, editor at Poetry Flash, poet and essayist, or English 70: Autobiography
into Creative Writing taught by Robyn Brooks, MFA in English and Creative Writing (with a focus in Poetry), poet and playwright. Cost is $60 for California residents. For Information, email:
scoleman@peralta.edu or rbrooks@peralta.edu. You must sign up in advance: www.peralta.edu or at Berkeley City College, 2050 Center Street, Berkeley (one half block from Downtown Berkeley BART)

--------------------------------

Washington, DC: June 21st, 4-6 pm., Father's Day (Bring your dad! Buy him a love poem from me to him!) - "A Sunday Kind of Love" at Bus-Boys and Poets with my favorite poet (I don't know how she buses), Reb Livingston! Join us for good eats and good poetry. Guaranteed to be hot and spicy in the Langston Room.

Intensive Poetry Workshop: "Ecopoetics, A Writer's Way of Knowledge" With Lorna Dee Cervantes, June 27th, the following Saturday, 1-4 pm. in Washington, DC for Split This Rock. Sign-up info to follow; or, come to the reading!

--------------------------------

July 12th: Intensive Poetry Workshop with Lorna Dee Cervantes in Santa Cruz, 10 am - 3 or 4. Info to follow. Don't miss this rare opportunity, thanks to Poetry Santa Cruz which also presents:

Lorna Dee Cervantes and Francisco Alarcon, Tuesday, July 14 at 7:30 PM, Bookshop Santa Cruz, 1520 Pacific Avenue, Santa Cruz. $3 suggested donation to Poetry Santa Cruz.

Come and buy my love. I'll write you a personalized love poem for whomever, whatever, or, just for you. Hey, it's all for the book... 100 LOVE POEMS TO STRANGERS.

--------------------------------

Your gig? Book me now! Have Poems. Will Travel. I'm looking for whatever in the East: DC, VA, NYC, NY. I'll be staying near NW VA, flying in an out of DC or train out of VA. I can stay through early July.

Also: COLORADO. Come on, homies. Boulder? I still need to move, and, frankly, haven't been able to afford it.

I'll be in Alabama the first week of October.

I'm available anytime for anything ASAP.

AND, I have a new book! 100 100-WORD LOVE POEMS maybe from my favorite press... (shhh, announcement to follow.)

I'm producing 150 self-designed books hand-stitched in signatures in its own gift box. Desperate times require desperate measures, requires love. These are lovingly produced and all about love. Desperate price of $10 each. $12.50 to mail ($15+ if you're nice.) Send by snail to:

Lorna Dee Cervantes
3181 Mission Street, #16
San Francisco, CA 94110

I may even write you a hay(na)ku on each one.

$25 for a signed copy of DRIVE: The First Quartet (while they last!)

Email: I don't like to post it due to the bots. Just send to my full name, don't forget the dee, at MAC, the usual dot and the typical COMmercial domain. You can also send to same AT ME and the usual. Don't ask. They changed. It's all the same. It's all good. Hope to hear from you soon. Or, see you there!

Lorna Dee's Keynote Address to El Sausal Middle School Promotion Ceremony, 6/10, Salinas, CA

2009-06-11T15:00:00.000-07:00

Keynote Address to El Sausal Middle School Promotion Ceremony,
Salinas, California, held at Hartnell College, June 10, 2009

8th grade was the worst year of my life. I'm fifty-four now. Perhaps when I'm 86 I'll have a worse year than 1968. That year nothing happened and everything happened.

(sings): "Willow, weep for me./ Willow, weep for me./ Bend your branches down,/ down to the ground and cover me."

Yeah, I liked that goofy song. I wanted the willow to bend down and cover me. I saw myself in the willow trees that grew along the creeks and empty lots. Skinny, but strong. I liked to think I had a changing beauty, too, just like that willow tree growing green to yellow to brown and back to lime-colored swishing in the wind.

To bend, but never break. That's what the willow represents to me. El Sausal, a sacred tree to my native California ancestors who wove baskets and fishing gear from its leaves and limbs. Adaptable, able to change with the conditions and forces. To bend, but never break.

I come here today to wish you the Spirit of the willow; The Spirit of change; The Spirit of strength; The willow's protection; To tell you, as a poet once told me, when he was 86: "It gets better."

It gets better. 8th grade was the worse year of my life. Bad things happened. But people change. I changed. And you CAN change for the better. I learned that you may not be able to change what happens to you, but you can change how you're going to react. You can change what you become.

I became a poet. Maybe because I liked that song (sings): "When the shadows fall/ hear me, Willow,/ and weep for me." Maybe because the poets I read always seemed to be writing songs that wept for me.

You can weep. You can bend. You can change for your friends. You can change for your family. You can change for yourself. You can change for the better. You can't change somebody else. But you can set an example, just like the willow sets: el sausal, fuerte y suave; To be strong and never break; To do right; To hold.

You will hold. This is just one of many promotions. You are kids of el sausal, the willow. You may bend, but never break. You have seen nothing and you have seen everything. And, just like the willow tree, the kids of El Sausal will grow strong and give back.

Thank you for inviting me.

(shares closing poem written in 8th grade):

THINKING

I think I grew up last year
or maybe today is just a phase
like autumn's bright red foliage
just before winter's death.
Sometimes I think that life is nothing
but one big phase waiting for the next
and death is what you have
when you run out of phases.
I think that maybe I did grow up
some.

Fall, 1968

Lorna Dee Cervantes
June 10, 2009

Where In The World Is Lorna? Berk. Com. Coll. w/ AL YOUNG! 6/19, DC: Bus-Boys & Poets, 4-6 pm, 6/21 & wkshp 6/27; Santa Cruz wkshp 7/12, 7/14

2009-06-09T10:42:00.000-07:00

Summer Creative Writing Intensive at Berkeley City College, June 19, 20, 21 and
then on-line for six weeks. Spend the summer exploring poetry, play and fiction
writing, earn 3 units of transferable college credit and still travel.

We'll begin Friday, June 19 at 6:00-9:30pm with a reading a discussion by
professional writers: poet and musician Al Young, former Poet Laureate of
California and author of numerous books including _Coastal Evenings and Inland
Afternoons_ and _Something about the Blues_and poet, publisher and cultural
critic Lorna Dee Cevantes, _Emplumada_ and _From the Cables of Genocide: Poems
on Love and Hunger_.

On Saturday June 21 from 10:00 am to 6:00pm will be writing, discussion, and an
introduction to three genres. From 7:30-9:30 are reading by novelist Shawna
Yang Ryan, _Water Ghosts_ (_Lock 1929_) and poet and novelist Jerry Ratch,
author of 14 books of poetry and one novel. His _A Body Divided: A Memoir on
Growing up with Polio_ comes out this year.

Sunday afternoon from noon to 3:30, we discuss workshopping, public readings and publishing.

For the next six weeks, you'll write two pages of creative work per week
and comment on the work of four other students. By July 31, you'll turn in
a twelve page portfolio of creative writing in any or all of the genres.
We'll also have a potluck and open mike on Friday July 24 from 6:30-9:30.

Sign up for English 10, Creative Writing taught by Sharon Coleman, MFA in
Poetics, editor at Poetry Flash, poet and essayist, or English 70: Autobiography
into Creative Writing taught by Robyn Brooks, MFA in English and Creative Writing (with a focus in Poetry), poet and
playwright. Cost is $60 for California residents. For Information, email:
scoleman@peralta.edu or rbrooks@peralta.edu. You must sign up in advance: www.peralta.edu or at
Berkeley City College, 2050 Center Street, Berkeley (one half block from
Downtown Berkeley BART)

--------------------------------

Washington, DC: June 21st, 4-6 pm., Father's Day (Bring your dad! Buy him a love poem from me to him!) - "A Sunday Kind of Love" at Bus-Boys and Poets with my favorite poet (I don't know how she buses), Reb Livingston! Join us for good eats and good poetry. Guaranteed to be hot and spicy.

Intensive Poetry Workshop: "Ecopoetics, A Writer's Way of Knowledge" With Lorna Dee Cervantes, June 27th, the following Saturday, 1-4 pm. in Washington, DC. Sign-up info to follow; or, come to the reading!

--------------------------------

July 12th: Intensive Poetry Workshop with Lorna Dee Cervantes in Santa Cruz, 10 am - 3 or 4. Info to follow. Don't miss this rare opportunity, thanks to Poetry Santa Cruz which also presents:

Lorna Dee Cervantes and Francisco Alarcon, Tuesday, July 14 at 7:30 PM, Bookshop Santa Cruz, 1520 Pacific Avenue, Santa Cruz. $3 suggested donation to Poetry Santa Cruz.

Come and buy my love. I'll write you a personalized love poem for whomever, whatever, or, just for you. Hey, it's all for the book... 100 LOVE POEMS TO STRANGERS.

--------------------------------

Your gig? Book me now! Have Poems. Will Travel. I'm looking for whatever in the East: DC, VA, NYC, NY. I'll be staying near NW VA, flying in an out of DC or train out of VA. I can stay through early July.

Also: COLORADO. Come on, homies. Boulder? I still need to move, and, frankly, haven't been able to afford it.

I'll be in Alabama the first week of October.

I'm available anytime for anything ASAP.

AND, I have a new book! 100 100-WORD LOVE POEMS maybe from my favorite press... (shhh, announcement to follow.)

I'm producing 150 self-designed books hand-stitched in signatures in its own gift box. Desperate times require desperate measures, requires love. These are lovingly produced and all about love. Desperate price of $10 each. $12.50 to mail ($15+ if you're nice.) Send by snail to:

Lorna Dee Cervantes
3181 Mission Street, #16
San Francisco, CA 94110

I may even write you a hay(na)ku on each one.

$25 for a signed copy of DRIVE: The First Quartet (while they last!)

Email: I don't like to post it due to the bots. Just send to my full name, don't forget the dee, at MAC, the usual dot and the typical COMmercial domain. You can also send to same AT ME and the usual. Don't ask. They changed. It's all the same. It's all good. Hope to hear from you soon. Or, see you there!

I'm Writing A Book For Carlos Santana

2009-05-28T11:19:00.000-07:00

On Yesterday's Franklin Planner Page:

My New Goal:

Write the book for Carlos Santana.

I'm Writing A Book For Carlos Santana

Not just any book: The Book. Don't ask me if, how, when or why. I don't know. It's today's dream. A epiphany I had while gazing down on 24th Street Discolandia while applying for any writer job at all.

"I'm writing The Book for Carlos Santana."

I'm just putting it out there, on the net and in the cosmos, into words which our ancestors knew were the bridge to reality, the rope holding up the ceiling of the world.

There. Don't I sound like Carlos Santana?

Maybe I'll just channel him. No. It wouldn't be the same. And "ghost" is not the right word. Midwife the Spirit. That's it.

Carlitos, you listening? Let me write it for you.

* Pssssst, spread it around. Habla la palabra!

Where In The World Is Lorna? Acentos: Hostos College (Bronx), free wkshp! Noon TODAY! 11th St. Bar (E. Vill) 7pm Monday, NYC.

2009-05-16T23:08:00.000-07:00

Workshop - Lorna Dee Cervantes
When:
Sunday, May 17, 2009 12:00
Where:
Bronx

The Acentos Writers Workshop was established with the purpose of nurturing the newer voices in the poetry community. With writers from across several genres donating their time, the workshop encourages newer writers to hone their craft, establish and create community, and perform their work in front of growing audiences. The workshop accepts writers of all backgrounds and skill level to foster growth and maximize their full potential and grow as writers.

The workshops are free. RSVP is required. Email fish at louderarts dot com.
Venue

Venue:
Hostos Community College
Street:
450 Grand Concourse
ZIP:
10451
City:
Bronx
State:
NY
Country:
Country: us

Description

Hostos Community College - Building C, Room 456

By subway:
Take the 2, 4, 5 IRT trains to 149th Street (Eugenio María de
Hostos Boulevard) and the Grand Concourse.

By bus:
Take the Bx1 or cross-town Bx19 to 149th Street (Eugenio María
de Hostos Boulevard) and the Grand Concourse.

By car:
From Manhattan, take the FDR Drive north to the Willis Avenue Bridge
to the Major Deegan Expressway (87N). Proceed north to Exit 3. Take
the right fork in the exit ramp to the Grand Concourse and proceed
north to East 149th Street (Eugenio María de Hostos Boulevard).

From Queens, take the Triborough Bridge to the Major Deegan
Expressway. Continue north to Exit 3. Take the right fork in the exit
ramp to the Grand Concourse and proceed north to East 149th Street
(Eugenio María de Hostos Boulevard).

From Westchester, take the Major Deegan Expressway south (87S) to Exit
3. Turn left at the light. Turn left again at Grand Concourse and
proceed north to East 149th Street (Eugenio María de Hostos Boulevard).

From New Jersey, take the George Washington Bridge to the Major Deegan
Expressway south to Exit 3. Turn left at the light. Turn left again at
Grand Concourse and proceed north to East 149th Street (Eugenio María
de Hostos Boulevard).
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Monday May 18 Lorna Dee Cervantes is the featured poet with Alison Stine and Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon. The reading starts around 7 PM at the 11th Street Bar (510 East 11th Street, between Avenues A & B, http://www.11thstbar.com/). Here is more information about how to get here: http://www.readab.com/directions.html.

"17 REASONS why?"

2009-05-04T22:01:00.000-07:00

17 REASONS why?

Because the wind smells like jasmine
through the pools of dog shit
when people can't afford to feed;

Because you live another day though your dreams
are punctuated with the sounds of rusty shopping
cart wheels and destiny smells like frijoles con ajo;

Because freedom's just the change in your pocket
and the poor are rich but nobody feels this,
but a smile is the passport, buenas, the plane;

Because heaven lives on Harrison and school
children skip through the rituals on Valencia
and my mom is not afraid to walk alone under moonlight;

Because you are living in interesting times
in interesting ways as an interesting force and even
the pigeons acknowledge this, and are interested;

Because Destiny doesn't stop here anymore,
she took off with Mañana who then eloped
into Yesterday and Whatever, La Reina, reins;

Because the corner store will stock anything you want
and the produce is cheaper and better and comes from
a local garden where all the bugs have an understanding;

Because ColorChrome is still stored in someone's garage
and on the door of La Misión una Visión is overheard
while the people paint The Constitution into Acts of Art;

Because art isn't a fantasy on 24th Street
and the boleros and beat box intertwine and harmonize
despite themselves and teknopop parrots dance La Guacamaya;

Because busses chug a grime on the windows
which screens out the decay into a magical hope
for a sweet breath, sweet life, sweet remembrance;

Because charros murmur of horses en la madrugada
and a mother's hands grind into la masa
and many tongues huddle inside the mouth of the Mission;

Because food is the universal language
and everyone knows the cost, curanderos
on the corners sell lilies and cure cuando quiera;

Because even though the blanched walk through
the lives that seem strewn here, they come away
with the seeds in their cuffs, they eat their words;

Because La Palabra is the only currency
and the Super Mercado of the empty aisle or alley
is where a treasury is founded on what others leave behind;

Because you leave behind, like a husk of dung
beetle coming anew, all those webs and pupae
puddlings, and everyone's an extinct butterfly, rediscovered;

Because you uncover the unknown self
you knew all along at your neighborhood dive
where every breath is one and the hips, El Mundo;

Because every head's a mundo, every eye, a
telescope, everyone sees what's coming down:
the change is going to come because it's already here.

Lorna Dee Cervantes
5/4/09

--------------------------
Please join Mission17 Gallery & BARGE at a special reading held in conjunction with the exhibit "17 Reasons Why," an ongoing residency exploring the cultural politics of the Mission district, hosted by David Buuck & BARGE. Come for prose, poetry, & conversation-- hope to see you there!

Michelle Tea (*Valencia*)
Alejandro Murguía (*This War Called Love*)
Lorna Dee Cervantes (*Drive*)

Saturday May 9, 4-6 pm
Mission17 Gallery
2111 Mission Street @ 17th, 4th Floor

mission17.org
buuckbarge.wordpress.com

--------------------------

BARGE - The Bay Area Research Group in Enviro-aesthetics - was started by David Buuck in 2003. BARGE has organized several (de)tours around the Bay Area, investigating regional sites & spaces that are underrepresented & overlooked in more conventional touristic, commercial, & socio-political notions of place & public space. See davidbuuck.com/barge for more information.

"People's Park Reunion"

2009-05-04T10:07:00.000-07:00

People's Park Reunion

Welcome home.
Some of us never came back.
We caught a star (a missed mantra),
a one-way ticket
to delirium. This is what
all falls out
when you shake it,
what jingles away
when you empty the rainbow.
Come here, Jingle Jangle
Man. Let the good times roll.
And all the ones who did
their part, they're walking
around with a shopping cart
and it all comes marching home.

Lorna Dee Cervantes
4/17/09

"The Miracle of Water" (after Emoto)

2009-04-28T18:45:00.000-07:00

The Miracle of Water

(after photos from The Miracle of Water by Masaru Emoto)

Truth is a crystal.
The devil is a black hole.
Love will make you beautiful.
Hate is crystalline,
but it blocks you inside.
Affection is a snowflake
growing out of an arbor.
Rage and murder forms
a figure of an assassin
with his cock and bow.
Unhappiness is a word
which should be avoided.
Do it! makes a crater
in the heart, a volcano.
Let's do it harbors a peace
sign in the middle, is a bright
flower of fern leaf growing,
cuttings of lit evergreens.
Happiness is refined
and highly detailed, sharp,
in focus. The soul, in Japanese,
is created by combining
to speak with Evil Spirit.
(Evil Spirit is a toad-shaped
boot print in the mud,
a melanoma blotch.
The soul looks like friendship,
fleshy crystals circling
a black hole turned into portal.
Friend is a single star
of the same crystals,
a single point of light,
a platinum stamp for sealing
wax on the envelope.
Thanks to you is the perfect
reason for living, which tries
but is stunted, a hexagram
of melted snowflake
(a growing darkness forming
a hurricanes eye in the middle),
a target, a Tibetan mandala.
I'm sorry is thanks collapsed
in on itself, crumpled
around a jagged-mouthed void.
Peace of mind is a stable crystal,
is a woman beneath the roof
of her home, a leaf emerging,
a shaft going down to the core,
to the rich vein, simultaneously.
Self-love is more involved:
all hands raised in all directions,
is many-faceted, many paths
full of energy, each one
tending its own forest.
Spousal love is twinned,
one nestled within the other's
peace of mind, one
protecting the other, six
spokes aligned in the overlap.
Family love is an outward
spiral, three layers of water
building, bee-like, from
a single source.
Neighborly love is shining harmony,
is a kaleidoscope of trace
and chance, an endless play.
Love of country is the pentagon
inside a hexagram inside the swords
of fleur d' lis, a single crown
off to the right; all inside a giant planet
(the sun?) with a sawed-off handle.
The love for humanity is a beautiful
formation, an engagement ring
with an arena in the center.

A Buddhist sutra will
get you an Indian yarn painting,
a God's Eye of light, the pegs
it's strung on, the shape
of a woman's legs, as if all
is hooked by birth. It's all there.
The circle and the infinite
form, the weave and the blocking:
namu-amida-butsu.
Namu-myoho-renge-kyo
will turn tap water
back into snowflakes,
both crystal and web.

Love and gratitude
will get you back,
back from bacterial mold,
back from water left sitting
in front a television, away
from the ringworm watermark
in front of a constant computer,
the bombed out petri dish
look of the microwaved drop.

Love and gratitude will grow
you from the unforma
of your cell, will create
something from the womb
of possibility, a fetus
under the sonar of your voice.

A new being, a new light shed'
A new thirst and the incessant quenching.

Namaste.

I love you. I thank you.
I wish you harmony and happiness.
May you find your peace of mind.

Lorna Dee Cervantes
4/18/09

I'll be returning to this with the photos these were written from; almost like the poetry of water. Things speak to us. We should at least have the manners to speak back.

Where In the World Is Lorna? UC Berkeley TONIGHT, 4/24 & Stanford SATURDAY, 8pm, Casa Zapata & MONDAY Class, Reading & Workshop

2009-04-24T09:02:00.000-07:00

3rd Annual Noche de Flor y Canto
come for the legendary poets, stay to hear new legendary poets in the making...

Friday, April 24, 2009
7:00pm - 10:00pm
Maude Fife Room, 3rd floor of Wheeler Hall
Berkeley, CA

This year, our Noche de Flor y Canto (Night of Flower and Song) will feature:

Opening Songs by ALL NATIONS DRUM

Poet Laurete of Aztlan ALURISTA

Legendary Xicana poet LORNA DEE CERVANTES

our own Robert "Bob" Reyes

possible appearance by YOSIMAR REYES

a special performance by

BIG Dan from BRWN BFLO

and many, many more...

This year's event is especially significant because we will also be honoring our fallen brother, Alfred Arteaga.** To commemorate Alfred and his generosity as a friend and mentor in helping establish Flor y Canto and the Xicano Working Group, we will name our undergraduate poetry contest in his honor: The Alfred Arteaga Poetry Prize. This award will be granted to an undergraduate poet whose writing reflects the beauty and strength of Chicana/o culture.
___________

**Alfred Arteaga (1950-2008 y PRESENTE) was a poet and professor of Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley. His books include Chicano Poetics, Cantos, House with the Blue Bed, and Frozen Accident. He was awarded the Pen Oakland Josephine Miles Award and the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. Alfred offered an unconditional friendship and mentorship to XWG and its members. As a humble gesture to honor him, our organization has unanimously decided to name our annual florycanto poetry prize after him. Te queremos Alfred.

***Brought to you by the Ethnic Studies 5th Account, The Graduate Assembly, the departments of English and Chicano/Latino Studies, the Center for Race and Gender and The Townsend Center.

The Xican@ Culture Working Group is for graduate students from all disciplines interested in engaging with Chicana/o cultural production (art, music, literature, film, dissertations, teatro, activism, and poetry)
-------------------------------------
AND

*Encuentro Xican@ *

*&*

* Noche de Flor y Canto*
*Xican@ Love and the New Familia: * *Gender, Sexuality, and **Alliance***

* *

*University** of **California**, Berkeley · **Friday, April 24, 2009***

*9:30 - 5:00** Tilden Room, MLK Student Union (Encuentro)*

*5:45 - 6:45** Reception, 330 Wheeler Hall *

*7:00 - 10:00** Maude Fife Room, 315 Wheeler (Flor y Canto)*

Does La Raza love all its members –regardless of sexual
orientation—equally? Through dialogue and discussion the second annual
Encuentro Xican@ will explore tensions and alliances among queer, straight, male, female, and transgender Xican@s. How can alliance be redefined as familia, without the fetters of gender roles, with all its tensions and all its loves?

*2nd Annual Encuentro Xican@: Tilden Room; MLK Student Union*

10-10:45 Opening Keynote—Carla Trujillo

10:45-11:45 “Tonanztin & Spirituality” Workshop (Xinaxtli)

11:45-12:45 Performances by Luna Maia

& Fe from In Lak Ech & MDM

Lunch

1:00-2:30
“Crossing Genders: Towards a Feminist Latinidad" Workshop

2:30-3:30
“Navigating Latinidad: Notions of Selfhood Before and Against The
Institution" (XWG)

Moderator: Jose Saldivar

Luis Ramirez (UC Davis) & Melissa Moreno (Woodland Community
College): "Power, Language, & Latino Young Adult Men in a Community
College Context"

Agustin Palacios (UCB): "Undoing the Coloniality of evolutionary
mestizaje OR this xicano has no love for Mestizofilia"

Javier Huerta (UCB): "In Praise of the Mouth": Oral Love in the
works of 3 Chicano Gay Poets"

3:30-4:30
“Coming out of Two Closets: At the Intersection of Immigration &
Sexuality” Workshop (YQUE & MALCS)

4:30-5:15 Closing Keynote—Yosimar Reyes

*3rd Annual FlorYCanto Wheeler Hall*
6:00-7:00 Reception (330 Wheeler)
7:00-10:00 FlorYCanto (Maude Fife Room; 315 Wheeler)

All Nations Drum

Lorna Dee Cervantes
Alfred Arteaga Poetry Prize winner: Cecilia Caballero
alurista
Big Dan (from BRWN BFLO)
Yosimar Reyes
Alfred Arteaga Poetry Prize honorable mentions: Edgar Mojica and Ana Cansina
Robert Reyes
Xamuel Banales & Dejarnia Cruz

Both events are free of charge. All are welcome.

Organized by UC Berkeley's Xican@ Culture Working Group (XWG), Mujeres Activas en Letras y Cambio Social (MALCS), Xinaxtli: the Seed that Grows, and Young Queers United for Empowerment (YQUE), with additional sponsorship by The Graduate Assembly, The Townsend Center, ES5th Account, The Center for Race and Gender, and the Departments of English, Chicano/Latino Studies, and Ethnic Studies.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
APRIL IS FLORICANTO MONTH!

SATURDAY, 8 pm
Casa Zapata - Stanford University
Lorna Dee Cervantes
with Steve Cervantes, musician

MONDAY, 4-6
Cherríe Moraga's class, Memorial Hall
6:30 - ? dinner & workshop, Casa Zapata

Come and get your own personalized love poem!

Not Fade Away

2009-04-18T12:29:00.000-07:00

Not Fade Away

I gonna tell you how it's gonna be
You're gonna give your love to me
I'm gonna love you night and day
Well you know my love is not fade away
Well you know my love is not fade away

And my love's bigger than a Cadillac
I try to show it and you're drivin' me back
Your love for me has got to be real
Before you to know just how I feel
Love is real not fade away
Well love that's real not fade away

(Instrumental)

I gonna tell you how it's gonna be
You're gonna give your love to me
Love that lasts more than one day
Well love is love and not fade away
Well love is love and not fade away
Well love is love and not fade away

(Instrumental)

song by Bo Diddley
copyright by Buddy Holly & The Crickets, 1957

I've long been fascinated by this song: as performed by Bo Diddley who I'd heard play around the Bay Area way before I heard the Crickets. (But who can resist Mick's, uh, maracas? And that guitar from that guy before his body was taken over by aliens! But, mostly, that harp drive.) I've been thinking of it lately, it's influence. There's something really sexy about a male singing it. Provecho!

I'm off to People's Park 40th Anniversary!

Finish The Sentences Facebook Meme (just because)

2009-04-15T02:23:00.000-07:00

Yes, I know I've been neglecting you. So I'll post this Facebook meme just because. Or, play with me over there, too. Can you say, "procrastination?"

Finish the sentences. Then re-post it as "Finish the sentences" when you're done!

1. I've come to realize that my last kiss... was too friggin' long ago.

2. I am listening to... the heater: rare silence in the Mission at 1am. Now a car revs by. I just finished listening to the Blues Biography Muddy Waters.

3. I talk.... when I feel like it.

4. I love.... I loved. I will love. (so what's it to ya?)

5. My best friends.... are persistent, very smart and very sensitive.

6. My first real kiss… has been on my mind since I'm writing about 14 year olds. Michael Naillon, where are you??

7. Love is.... "but a song we sing. Fear's the way we die."

8. Marriage is.... getting the State involved in your personal life.

9. Somewhere, someone is thinking.... "I have to pee."

10. I'll always remember.... so much I forget. (Ok.Ok. The day/night my son was born.)

11. The last time I really cried was because.... of love.

12. My cell phone.... is an anomaly. My friends think that pigs are going to fall out of the sky.

13. When I wake up in the morning.... I think about who I'd like to snuggle against...

14. Before I go to bed.... I brush my teeth. And then who knows, I like to be unpredictable.

15. Right now I am thinking about.... whether or not I'm revealing too much and the relationship between ekos and poesis simultaneously.

16. Babies are.... babies. Truthfully, I never paid too much attention to them until I had my own. I used to like Robin William's impression of a baby. I think of it often at odd moments and I smile.

17. I get on Myspace.... less frequently these days. I don't like the new format. It's too easy to fall into checking out all the neat bands and musicians. I get a lot of spam when I visit there. Here, too.

18. Today I.... thought about doing my taxes and went to get the forms. I wrote some notes for my never completed dissertation. I bragged about my new old bicycle. I went to hear a non-fiction talk/reading where I didn't know a soul.

19. Tomorrow I will be... procrastinating on my taxes. Probably. Maybe I'll paint my door. I will be tempted to ride my yellow bicycle if the wind stops. I might go to Berkeley. Or Santa Cruz. Whatever it is, I'll be sorry I didn't write it down, but not sorry I did whatever I did.

20. I really want to be.... a brain surgeon. (Not really. I really want to be the poster child for predilective labor.)

21. I am allergic to.... my poor sweet kitty back in Colorado, but I know I should eat better and stay away from wheat.

22. I am annoyed by.... people who step on me because they pretend I'm not there. Hey, it happens. Don't ask unless you want to talk suppositions of race, class and gender.

23. One food I refuse to eat is... fried liver and onions. (I've got a entire menu of 1984 style torture foods.)

24. The most recent thing I've learned is.... (hmm, hard one: what don't I already know? Lots. Problem is, what did I learn today as my grandma always told me I do? That I should have written it down. It had to do with the number of jobs lost since the end of 2001. Oh yes, I learned that hundreds of dolphins surrounded a Chinese ship in Somalia and kept them from pirates by leaping out of the water at once. The pirates went away. I learned that dolphins have learned the art of civil disobedience and are saying, "Basta ya!"

25. The number one thing on my bucket list is.... who knows? since I didn't see the movie. I don't really think of such things. I'm too much of an existentialist. Oh yes! Since a child: 1.) watch a condor in the wild in my native land; 2.) watch big-horned sheep in the wild (done); 3.) own a black (blue?) racer (snake) (hey, I was 8 years old with an ambition to become a herpetologist); 4.) Go to Ireland; 5.) ascend the heights of Macchu Picchu; 6.) become a man-of-letters (I'd say, done); 7.) Own my own land and let all the plants and animals do what they want on it (done, but not in the way I expected); 8.) write a novel (so close I don't want to jinx it); 9.) live the "good life" a la Aristotle; 10.) (ready for it? drum roll...) find true love. As I've aged, my list has reversed in order of importance.

26. Something I've always wanted to learn to do is.... Navaho weaving/speak my native language/play the banjo

27. I have a high tolerance for.... eccentric people.

28. I have a low tolerance for.... fascists/fascism

29. My wish... is none of your business.

30. One person I would happily make a fool out of myself if I ever saw in person.... Okay. This is supposed to be fast first answer. First thing that crossed my mind is "Michael Moore."

Lorna Sells Love (Poems) at 24th St. Fair Today - Cesar Chavez Day Parade From Dolores Park, SF, 1-5 pm

2009-04-04T10:00:00.000-07:00

Come visit me at the 24th Street Fair in The Mission, corner of 24th and Harrison, after the César Chávez Day March from Dolores Park at noon. El Poeta, José Montoya is the Grand Marshall. I'll be selling original personalized love poems for a collection I'm working on, 100 Love Poems to Strangers. Come and get your love!

Cesar E. Chavez
Holiday Parade & Festival 2009
Commemorate & Celebrate
the Life and Work of
Labor & Civil Rights Leader
Cesar E. Chavez
March 31, 1927 - April 23, 1993

Saturday, April 4, 2009

11 a.m. - Assemble for Parade
Dolores Park - 19th St. / Dolores

12 noon - Parade

Grand Marshal Jose Montoya
and the Royal Chicano Air Force

Danza Azteca Xitlalli

24th Street Fair
1 p.m. - 5 p.m.
24th Street / Harrison-Bryant

Kids Arts & Crafts, Music, Entertainment
Community Service, Information,
Arts & Craft Booths

Classic Car Show
Featuring The Dukes - SF Finest

Music by Louie Romero Y Su Grupo
Mazacote

"Manzo" & Members of Malo

Native Elements

Lorna Dee & Steve Cervantes at UC Berkeley Indigenous Peoples' Night of Resistance, 4/2, 7:45 pm

2009-04-02T09:38:00.001-07:00

Thursday, April 2, PAULEY BALLROOM (Bancroft and Telegraph at UC BERKELEY)
5:30-10:30PM ALL AGES WELCOME!!

Indigenous People’s Night of Resistance is a night to honor all people who walk with the earth to protect and defend it. Indigenous peoples from Africa, Asia, Native America, and the Pacific Islands are not of the past but continue to live with dignity and continue to hold a great responsibility in sharing the knowledge of our ancestors who resisted colonialism in order for us to be here today. We envision a world without borders and seek to unite all marginalized communities through the intellectual, cultural and spiritual resistance that runs in our veins. Through our music, dance, art and spoken word we will share our experiences in hopes of building a more inclusive world-view within this university and all social systems at large.

ALL AGES WELCOME!

THIS IS A COMMUNITY EVENT. ABSOLUTELY NO DRUGS OR ALCOHOL. NO COLORS - NO RED OR BLUE.

MCs (our very own xinaxtli guerilleras): Crissy Gallardo & Alison Dorantes-Garcia

opening prayer by:
Spirit Drum
Danza In Xochitl In Cuicatl

Performing Live:
Gaby Erandi Rico
Lorna Dee Cervantes
w/ Steve Cervantes
The Fullness
Sistahailstorm
Ise Lyfe
& many more to be announced!!

Speakers representing:
Indigenous Premaculture Project
Indigenous Identity & Muxeres from El Salvador documentary

Vendors:
Dignidad Rebelde
Chiapas Support Committee
Xinaxtli
Huaxtec
Inkza Crafts
Brown Berets
Henna & Art by Rachel-Anne
Art by David Tofella
SNAG Magazine
& many more!!

RAFFLE= tight prizes!! stay tuned for details

**t-shirts will be available for a small donation to complete the funding of this event, please be generous**

Where In the World Is Lorna? LA Tomorrow: Pitzer College 3/5, Mujeres de Maiz 3/8 - SF: Lunada, Galería de la Raza w/ Cherríe Moraga & Sharon Doubiago

2009-03-04T04:04:00.000-08:00

Thurs., 3/5 - Pitzer College, noon-1:30 pm at Gold Student Center, Multipurpose Room
Reception 2-3:30 - CLSA Lounge

(click on images to enlarge)

Sun., 3/8 - Mujeres de Maiz Live Art Show, 6-10pm at Metabolic Studios (FarmLab), 1745 N. Spring St., LA 90012
($10-15 sliding scale)

LUNADA: Mango Toast & Jam for International Women’s Day

Featuring Sharon Doubiago, Cherrie Moraga and Open Mic.
Curated and co-hosted by Lorna Dee Cervantes.

Date: Tues., Mar. 10
Time: 7:30pm
Admission: $5 or free w/food dish/ Galeria membership
Galería De la Raza
2857 24th St. @ Bryant
San Francisco,CA 94110
info@galeriadelaraza.org | 415.826.8009

In honor of International Women’s Day, the Mission’s own, Lorna Dee Cervantes, curates and co-hosts one of the most incredible LUNADAs ever! A trifecta of feminine literary power, featuring Lorna Dee along with award winning, renowned writers Sharon Doubiago and Cherri Moraga. Lorna Dee brings back her “Mango Toast & Jam,” tradition in March.

“Years ago when I was running my press, I would have these ‘Mango Toast & Jam’ events. I'd invite poets from all over for pot-luck spin-the-bottle readings. Over 60 people in my little one bedroom house and yard.” –Lorna Dee Cervantes.

Lorna Dee Cervantes is the author of Emplumada, From the Cables of Genocide: Poems on Love and Hunger, and Drive: The First Quartet which was nominated for a Pulitzer. Among her many awards and fellowships, she has received the American Book Award, Paterson Prize, Latino Literature Award, Balcones Award, two Pushcart Prizes and the prestigious Lila Wallace Readers Digest Fellowship. Her poems have appeared in hundreds of anthologies and collections. Cervantes, a printer, editor and publisher, founded the influential Chicana/o press, MANGO and was the first to publish Sandra Cisneros, Jimmy Santiago Baca, Alberto Rios, Víctor Martínez, and many other major poets. A former Associate Professor of English and Director of Creative Writing at CU Boulder, she currently lives on 24th St. where she is writing a novel set in the Bay Area in the early 70s and completing a young adult novel about life in the Mission. She is a trained philosopher, considering a treastice on axiology (the study of value/s) and the philosophy of love. She will be writing love poems for strangers for $5-$20 for a new collection, 100 Love Poems to Strangers. Love for sale! Come and get your love.

Sharon Doubiago is the author of numerous collections and book-length poems including Hard Country, South America Mi Hija - which was twice nominated for the National Book Award, The Husband Arcane: The Arcane of O, and a new prize-winning collection, Love on the Streets: Selected and New Poems. Doubiago holds three Pushcart Prizes for poetry and the Oregon Book Award for Psyche Drives the Coast. Doubiago is a long-time activist involved in solidarity work and was an influential member of San Francisco's Third World poetry movement of the 70s and 80s.

Cherríe Moraga is a playwright, poet and essayist whose plays and publications have received national recognition, including a Theatre Communications Group Theatre Artist Residency Grant in 1996, the NEA's Theatre Playwrights' Fellowship in 1993, and two Fund for New American Plays Awards. Moraga has also published extensively as an essayist and poet. She is the co-editor of the ground-breaking anthology, This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color, which won the Before Columbus American Book Award in 1986, and was re-released in a twentieth anniversary edition in 2002. She is the author of Loving in the War Years: Lo Que Nunca Pasó Por Sus Labios (1983) and The Last Generation (1993). She is currently teaching at Stanford University.

Somebody Buy Me This Banza! Please

2009-02-22T22:49:00.000-08:00

Somebody buy me this banza! Pretty please.

And for a pretty please please take a listen to this beautiful one of a kind instrument, a cross between a Persian kemancheh and an African gourd banjo, a banza. This unique instrument, the Yayli banza, is bowed or plucked and features a goatskin head. Check out the link and listen to the youtube videos.

Oh please, oh please, poetry lessons for life. Opening bids start at $900.

Fun With Blog Buddies: My BBC List of Read Books

2009-02-18T12:22:00.000-08:00

From C. Dale Young via Peter Pereira via Teresa Ballard:

Apparently the BBC reckons most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here.

Instructions:
1) Look at the list and put an 'x' after those you have read.
2) Add a '+' to the ones you LOVE.
3) Star (*) those you plan on reading.
4) Tally your total at the bottom.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen x
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien x+
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte x
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling x
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee x+
6 The Bible- x
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte x
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell x+
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens x
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott x+
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy x
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller x+
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare x+
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier x
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien x+
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger x+
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot x
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell x+
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald x+
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens x
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy x+
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy x
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh x
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky x+
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck x+
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll x+
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame x
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy x+
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens x
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis x
34 Emma - Jane Austen x
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen x
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini *
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden x
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne x
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell x+
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez x+
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery x
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy x
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood x+
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding x+
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert x
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen x
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon *
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens x
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley x+
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez x
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck x+
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov x
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold *
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas x
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac x
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie *
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville x
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens x
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker x
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett x+
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce x+
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath x+
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola x
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray x
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens x
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker x+
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert x
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White x+
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Alborn
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle x
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad x+
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery x+
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams x
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole x
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas x
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare x
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl x
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo x

(98 is obviously a trick question)

I've read 82 out of 100 of these books, and there's only one I haven't heard of, so, not bad for a lit prof, eh?

Lorna Dee's Best Random Thing On The Net: Clinton's Lamb Chop & A Work of Mirth

2009-02-09T19:12:00.000-08:00

Hey, how very cool. Jeffry the ThingMeister has selected one of my 25 Random Things About Me as the "Best on the Web in today's entry: Just Plain Funny: Today's Best Random Things Stories.

Here's a little piece I wrote last year that tells more of the story behind the factoid. Enjoy!

A Work of Mirth

I miss his laugh the most. I miss making him laugh, the way I could make him laugh daily. I miss that strange power of our mutual mirth. Hearing it again brought back our first time. He'd picked me up at the bus stop near his house and drove me through the city-suburb maze to get there. On the way I told him my story about meeting Clinton. How we were both the last two at the banquet buffet table, both former poor kids, now laden with baby lamb shanks (my vegan downfall) and delicate cookies. He held a lamb chop in one meaty fist and a tiny plate piled high like a mini earthworks sculpture. He gazed longingly at the cookies, set down his plate after trying to hold it along with the chop, and, not seeing any room on his plate for the cookies, grabbed a huge handful and stuffed them in the pocket of his expensive suit (no cares for dry cleaning bills with Bill); and then he noticed me, also still eating, and sheepishly saluted me with his lamb chop. The President with a pocket full of cookies saluting me with a greasy lamb chop! The Secret Service, tugging at his sleeve and talking on their phones at once. "Yes, he's on his way..." "Why don't they just wheel the whole table into his office?" I thought. "I'm sure he's done worse."

It was funny the way I told it to him. In real life it was surreal, or like a skit on Saturday Night Live, the one where he jogs into the local Burger King and asks the guy at the counter, "Are you going to eat those fries?" And grabbing a handful. Yup, someone who knows Bill well wrote that skit. He had to pull over, he was laughing so hard. We were laughing until the tears made it hard for him to drive. Every word I said just seemed to him to be funnier than the last. That was the way it was with us. When we did talk; me, making him laugh. He thanked me, after he had composed himself enough to drive again. A widower, he said it felt good to laugh again. He hadn't laughed for years, thought he'd forgotten how. After that, I considered it a wifely duty.

Yesterday, on the phone, our easy connection. I don't remember what I said, telling some story or other, that brought back that laugh, a huge wheezing guffaw that made it hard for him to catch his breath. We laughed the entire difficult conversation (a finalized divorce, a house that still needs to be sold, some form needing a notarized signature) - an hour of laughter, catching up on the year. I remember what I'd written to someone: I'd like to find that again. Someone who gets my jokes and vice versa. Someone for whom I am both vice and verses. Someone I can make cry with my laughter. Nice work if you can get it. And, anything but logical. I want to dance in that surreal reel again. What, with the real realm, hey, sometimes you just gotta laugh.

Got any?

11/16/07
Lorna Dee Cervantes

Internet Dating Haiku

2009-01-31T16:44:00.000-08:00

Internet dating:
Find the love of your life now.
Hurt someone. Get hurt.

1/22/09

Alfred Arteaga, Raulsalinas & Other Writers Remembered Today

2009-01-31T04:27:00.000-08:00

I'll be remembering my dear friend, Alfred Arteaga, today at "Writers Remembered" at 1pm in the SF Public Library - perhaps I'll see you there?

• Writers Remembered, an annual literary event with readings, personal stories, and reflections by Bay Area authors on some of the writers, poets, editors and journalists who died in 2008, including tributes to William F. Buckley by Tom Barbash, Hayden Carruth by Barbara Berman, James Crumley by Peter Plate, Mahmoud Darwish by Deema Shehabi, Tony Vaughan by Jack Hirschman/Agneta Falk, Reginald Lockett by Al Young, Raulsalinas by Alejandro Murguia, Studs Terkel by Gerald Nicosia, John Trumbo by Sharon Doubiago, Dave Church by A. D. Winans, and Alfred Arteaga by Naomi Quinonez, Koret Auditorium, San Francisco Public Library, 100 Larkin, at Grove, SF, 1:00-4:00 (415/557-4277, sfpl.org)