If you're a poet in New York...

Go here this week!


Monday, May 7th @ 6pm
Quetzal Quill Reading Series

Curated by Rigoberto González, this reading series showcases the best new voices in American letters. Featured readers include poets Cynthia Cruz and Ada Limón, and short story writer Manuel Muñoz.

Cornelia Street Café
29 Cornelia Street
between Bleecker and Sixth Avenue
Hosted by Rigoberto Gonzalez
$6 cover includes free drink

A,F,V trains to W 4th St.
www.corneliastreetcafe.com
212-989-9319.

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Monday May 7th @ 7:30pm
louderARTS: The Reading Series
louderEDGE featuring Marie Howe

13 Bar/Lounge
35 E. 13th Street
corner of 13th St. and University Place
N, Q, R, W, L, 4, 5, 6 trains to Union Square
Hosted by Lynne Procope
$6 cover/$5 students
2-for-1 drinks

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AND OF COURSE...

Tuesday, May 8th @ 7pm
ACENTOS Bronx Poetry Showcase
The Uptown's Best Open Mic and Featured Poet Francisco Aragón

Francisco Aragón's poems and translations have appeared in various print and web publications, including Chain, Crab Orchard Review, Chelsea, The Journal, ZYZZYVA, and the online magazines Jacket, Electronic Poetry Review, and Tertulia. In addition to Puerta del Sol (Bilingual Press), he is the editor of The Wind Shifts: New Latino Poetry (University of Arizona Press). He directs Letras Latinas, the literary unit at the Institute for Latino Studies at the University of Notre Dame.

The Bruckner Bar and Grill
1 Bruckner Boulevard (Corner of 3rd Ave)
6 Train to 138th Street Station
Hosted by Rich Villar
FREE! ($5 Suggested Donation)

Coming from Manhattan: At the 138th Street Station, exit by the last
car on the 6. Take the exit to your left, go up the stairs to your
right to exit at Lincoln Avenue. Walk down Lincoln to Bruckner Blvd,
turn right on Bruckner past the bike shop. The Bruckner Bar & Grill
is on the corner. For more directions, please call 917-209-4211.



See ya there, kids!

Foundations

In June of 2003, I had only just become comfortable parking my car on the street in New York City. Until that point, the City was a monolith of crime and fear and grand theft auto, so it made sense to put the car in a garage, often at great cost, because parking garages are a complete rip-off. I was (still am) a suburban Jersey boy, raised to have caution, and my brand of Jersey caution told me that the City was a zoo not to be trifled with. Time had straightened out this assumption, but there was still one daunting task left for the cautious Jersey boy to conquer: driving to the Bronx for poetry.

The Bronx, as I discovered, is a huge place, stretching from Harlem to Westchester. Parts of it are among the richest suburban neighborhoods in the nation. Other parts of it have 24-hour mobile police precincts. In this regard, the Bronx is not unlike where I come from. In Northern New Jersey, you can drive fifteen minutes in any direction and end up somewhere your parents would love to visit. You can drive another ten and end up somewhere your parents think they fled by living in Jersey. So it was that despite my lingering fear of a shattered car window, I found myself at peace sitting on 139th Street and 3rd Avenue in the Bronx, what was then the Blue Ox Bar, a place that may as well have been 21st Avenue in Paterson, New Jersey.

This was the place, and Acentos was the reading, where I fell in love with poetry again. I was writing a new poem every week. Every day. I didn't even keep half the poems I wrote there. I didn't care about the archive. I just knew that I was in a safe space, where I could be an unabashedly Spanglish-speaking Puerto Rican/Cuban young man with genuine insecurity, and that I could work it all out on the page. It helped, of course, that the reading's two founding poets (Oscar and Fish) had befriended me and were willing to feed my jones(es) for poetry and bochinche. I had friends and fellow poets sharing in the experience (Maria, Jessica, Eliel, Raj). But yes, most of all, I had the space, the physical space to sit and read, to speak on the open mic, and to do so among people who spoke both the languages I was attempting to express myself in.

This was not a particularly new concept, even though what we were doing was new shit for us. The early days of the Nuyorican Poets' Cafe (both on 6th Street and 3rd Street) gave us the template: Fearless writing, with the themes we grew up in, and the opportunity to grow into our own styles, the way we choose. This has been the story of my development as a writer. The space nurtured my voice...MY voice, my authentic experience, and to date I haven't felt a particular need to translate concepts, or apologize to anyone for writing in two languages. I want...we want...this space, Acentos, to do the same for other writers what it's done for myself and other writers of Latino descent.

How we gonna do that? Glad you asked, muffin.

Of course, the reading itself still happens every second and fourth Tuesday, in a venue five blocks south of our old one. The Bruckner Bar and Grill, despite its admittedly earthy name, is a haven for performers and poets who want the intimacy of the club with the urgency of the black box theater. We've been there for two years, and we're only now coming into our own with it. Last month, we had a collaborative duo share poetry AND sonic art; this month, we'll be having both a scholarly poet and a jazz ensemble doing their respective damn things in the name of Latino poetry. This reading nurtures voices and incubates talent. It should not be missed. There are links to follow on the right...so follow them.

As all movements can and should do at some point, this movement will be expanding outward. Our intention is to be for Latino poets what Cave Canem is for African-American poets: a home for Latinos and Latinas in poetry. We've been doing it for four years in the Bronx. We hope to do it for as long as we can in workshop with other writers of Latino/a descent. We will meet yearly, in fellowship with other writers and distinguished Latino faculty, for a weeklong retreat. The details and timing of this retreat will be worked out in time, but this is our mission: to nurture and develop writers of Latino/a descent, honor those already here, and advance writing by Latinos and Latinas in the United States.

To put it plainly. Our place in American letters is clear to us, but not always clear to the scholars. We will make it clear. Our peoples' experiences are often invisible. We will make them visible. Our presence in the publishing world (and other places) is often predicated on others' sense of "the Latino market." We will determine this presence for ourselves.

This, in a nutshell, is what we're working on over at Acentos. In another entry I'll talk a bit about both the retreat and our planned youth component. For now, I wanted to share my enthusiasm about this new phase we're entering, and how proud I am that it's coming from my home. We hope.

So I'm digging this new blog, folks! I think I'll be here more often. NICE!

Paz, pasteles, and everything else....

Meet the New Boss...Same as the Old Boss...

As much as I love MySpace, I feel some kind of strange affinity for Blogger. So I am starting something new here. It's still me, still very much irreverent and silly, but with a slightly different focus. I am still the star of the show. My inner egomaniac won't allow this to become a full-time literature blog, but I do intend to bring up big topics in literature and politics and culture quite freely. I guess I still want to blog, but not so much about shit I know I'll get bored with. Because mundane blogging is beginning to piss me off. Say, Bloggers: I really don't need to know about your man drama, and you really don't need to be telling people about it. Not sayin. Just sayin.

So I guess I'll start with the happenings in the life of me over the past few months.

-Was accepted into the MFA program at Rutgers-Newark

-Turned 29, a hair away from my Saturn return year.

-Got to know Cave Canem, many as individuals and as an amazing network of artists.

-Took workshops. Lots of them.

-Went to AWP for the first time, submitted a panel proposal for 2008. Met Latino poets from across the country.

-Announced a foundation for Latino poetry. Acentos Foundation. Neat-o, yes? Bet you'd like to hear more, wouldn't you?

-Lost my little boy haircut, put back the pushback. Because the lady likes it. Hee.

Okay, so we're going back to the mundane. Ah, shucks. But anyway, here it is, folks. I will not be updating the livejournal, so the slam poets are just gonna have to get with the program and sign up with Bloglines or something to keep up.

Welcome to the new joint. Same as the old joint. Kinda.

New Shit?

Hmm. Possibly....