Tag poetry

* why america needs better poets and the countdown begun

José Angel Araguz Leave a comment

This morning at breakfast I shared this following anecdote about Pablo Neruda:

“To decorate his houses he has scoured antique shops and junkyards for all kinds of objects. Each object reminds him of an anecdote. “Doesn’t he look like Stalin?” he asks, pointing to a bust of the English adventurer Morgan in the dining room at Isla Negra. “The antique dealer in Paris didn’t want to sell it to me, but when he heard I was Chilean, he asked me if I knew Pablo Neruda. That’s how I persuaded him to sell it.” ”

– this excerpt is taken from here: http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/4091/the-art-of-poetry-no-14-pablo-neruda

I remarked on how great it was to be so representative of where you are from that you get associated with the country.  Do we have that here these days, I asked, to which my girlfriend responded with a story about her time in Spain, how when she was there she was often asked if she knew George W. Bush.  There came a point where she was even asked this question in front of a class of thirty students while doing a presentation.  She told them: yes, I know him, we have tea every Thursday.  They believed her for a second.  Then she drew a map of the States, pointed where the president lived in comparison to where she lived at the time (Oregon).  She gave me the impression that the vastness of our country blew their minds even more than the possibility of the president having tea with my lady.

And that blew my mind.

***

“The countdown begun” is in reference to my upcoming reading at Page One Books on May 8th.  I will be the feature during the Adobe Walls open mic run by Kenneth P. Gurney, a generous human being and an outstanding poet in his own right.  His website is: http://www.kpgurney.me/Poet/Welcome.html

In preparation for this feature, I went to the East of Edith open mic last week.  The poems I read were well received.  It had been years since I read in public – almost three.  Felt good.  Spotlight still blinds.  And the sound of your own voice always surprises.

I will periodically post about what the countdown means: the psyche out, the preparation.  Of the three poems I read this week, only one didn’t work live.  You want to talk about sensitivity to language, there’s nothing like reading something out loud.

J

p.s. the reason america needs better poets is, of course, to haggle at foreign antique shops…

* sensitivity and an introduction

José Angel Araguz 2 Comments

This morning as I was leaving the cafe I was stopped by one of the waitresses and asked: So, is this like your office or what – I see you come in and get lost for hours over there.  Which is true: I do get lost for hours over there.  Over there with scraps of paper.  With notebooks.  With ink.  I have spent more of my life than not getting lost for hours.  What my girlfriend terms: sinking into words.

Granted, this has led me to be the kind of guy who is no good at comebacks.  I will stew over what someone says, look at it from every angle, think of every possible comeback, and only hours later have the thing I should have said.  Which is a terrible way to be if one wants to interact socially.  As a writer, however, I get to use the phrase a sensitivity to language to explain myself.

It is this sensitivity that has me hours later thinking about what else I could have said to the waitress.  I believe what I did say was something along the lines of: O yeah, uhm, it’s great, sitting, writing, losing…  Which, again, is true: I love to sit, write, lose.

It is the same sensitivity to language that had me earlier this week turn to my co-worker in awe when he said: I hope there is a light rain tonight so that tomorrow when I go riding in the mountains the roads are tacky.  Tacky!  Brilliant!  I scramble and scribble each day hoping for the kind of clarity of thought that people speak in.

***

This is to be a blog about poetry.  Soon there will be links to published poems.  I will also post some original stuff every once in a while.  For now, check this out:

http://thingsinlight.blogspot.com/2012/04/nm-poetry-jose-angel-araguz.html

J