Monday, July 25, 2005
A failed experiment and a west coast fortnightSo I guess the lotería exquisite corpse idea was a bad one. Oh well! 10:58:38 PM | I'm going to be out west for the next two weeks -- San Francisco, LA, and Baja -- so my posts may be light depending on internet access. I'll be spending much of my time with my good friends Fred and Selma. And I'm going to read. Books. And none of them are about politics for a change. Take care, everyone. 
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La Loteria: Help Me Create a Web-based Exquisite CorpseLa Lotería is a game of chance similar to Bingo that is played at
ferias, carnivals, and parties across Mexico. In Oaxaca, and I'm sure
elsewhere, the caller speaks poetry when giving the image to mark on
your tabla. Often these are only several lines and give a complex look
at the contradictory nature of the images, or personalizes them in some
way. Here is a great site about La Lotería and here is a tabla from the
set I bought last summer: 1:55:22 PM |  Looking through the tablas last night I had an idea for the blog, a media made somewhat interactive by comments. I've noticed there are a number of other poets out there in the blogosphere and a number of writers who may not be poets by name but are by their insight into our precarious, peculiar condition. Why not collaborate? Please join me in creating an exquisite corpse, an expression of chance itself, out of this tabla in the comments. Choose a square and write your own poetic "call." Here are the choices on this tabla: La Rosa (Rose), La Calavera (Skull), El Mundo (The World), El Apache (Apache -- a representation of the native peoples of the Americas), El Pescado (Fish -- this one is already caught on a hook), La Palma (Palm Tree), El Sol (Sun), La Corona (Crown -- royalty), El Paraguas (Umbrella), La Sirena (Siren of the Sea), El Gallo (Cock), El Diablito (Little Devil -- playful and not entirely sinister, perhaps...), La Muerte (Death with her scythe), La Pera (Pear), El Arbol (Tree), and El Melon. Your "calls" can be political or not. They can be serious or ridiculous, or even dull. They can be poetry or prose or polemic. All are good. I think this will be fun. Please join me!
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Sadako's 1000 Cranes and a Count of DaysYesterday the Blue Voice told the story of Sadako and her 1,000 crane
answer to the nuclear holocaust we dropped upon Hiroshima in 1945. 1:28:05 PM | Soon after moving to New Orleans in 2002, I read an essay in NEST about Hiroshima's peace monument. I was so moved by the story of Sadako and the community's response to her death and our violence that I presented the essay to my students last year for a paper they wrote about revenge and forgiveness. I was inspired after reading the essay to write a poem and do a photography project based on the cranes. Here's one of the photos:  A version of the poem, "Day Count", was published in Free Verse. Here's the original version: 1. There once was a promise of 1,000 cranes made to a girl who had survived the bombing at Hiroshima. 1,000 paper cranes, folded with perfect corners, were given to her so she would live. When the girl died soon after, a pond was made in her honor. Cranes come there to dance together, to swim in the water. 2. "She was pulled out by the weight of curiosity," they said, after her small body, heavy with lifelessness, was found below the third floor window. That she was blind and deaf and tied to a radiator pipe in a featureless bedroom goes unsaid. "They enjoy seeing themselves corrected," they said when questioned. 3. On the 25th floor of a concrete and steel building on Michigan Avenue two peregrine falcons are born. They flap their wings in a nest that seems to hang from nothing, suspended in air. "More than half are born up there," they tell you, "because they're endangered." 4. We come home late. Plastic bags hang from trees up and down our block, carried on the wind brought by street sweepers, garbage trucks. They hang as unlit lanterns, opaque bird catchers. Swallows whisper in the leaves. 5. A young woman's wrists are bound in steel. Her newborn was found this morning in the neighbor's trash can, wrapped in flimsy plastic shopping bags. The night before, Mars aligned with Venus, then Jupiter, above her. Three planets set in permanent motion around the sun, with no thought of breaking free. 6. "I found a baby bird near the deck," he told me. "It's nearly lifeless, just lying there." "What do we do?" I asked. "They say to leave it there. The mother may come back. If we move it, she won't know where to come back to." 7. Creation's twins play by the water. Always, one is angry, the other feels nothing. They throw small stones at each other, then into the water. From the water comes a woman, her belly swollen.
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Bouphonia on Julie Powell's Editorial on OrganicsBouphonia has an excellent analysis of former Salon blogger Julie Powell's editorial from
the NY Times this week about the "elitism" of organic farmers' markets
and grocery stores. 9:18:55 AM | I have written about our thoughtless consumption and how we rate "cost" over the past couple of years (you can read the entries here, here, here, and here.). Our culture teaches us we are entitled to the shiniest, newest product whenever we want it. Many of us give no thought to the consequences of our purchases or the true "cost" in environmental degradation and human suffering, only the cost to our pocketbooks. Apparently Julie Powell is no exception.
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Last update: 8/3/05; 12:28:52 AM .
