from LE MONDE:

La France commémore le 13-Novembre dans le recueillement et l’émotion, dix ans après : « Il y a un vide qui ne se comble pas »

RÉCIT
La France commémore le 13-Novembre dans le recueillement et l’émotion, dix ans après : « Il y a un vide qui ne se comble pas »

Du Stade de France au Bataclan, anonymes et officiels ont rendu hommage, jeudi, aux 132 morts dans les attentats de 2015. Place de la République, une cérémonie a réuni les Parisiens jusque tard dans la nuit

R.I.P. Nohemi Gonzalez.
Ms. Gonzalez was a student in her senior year at California State University, Long Beach, where I have taught since 2006. She was studying in France at the time of her murder. One hundred and thirty-one other people were murdered on that day, too.

Linda and I were at the airport that day, waiting to fly to France so that I could give a talk at a conference in Dijon, France. The two weeks Linda and I spent in France left us with memories that help us understand that people in the United States may have forgotten about what the French called “the events,” but why France has not.

Linda and I send our deeply felt condolences to all the people of France, whose company we were privileged to share at a time of extended national mourning.

“Self/not Selfie: An Exhibition of Self-Portraits
Golden West College Art Gallery
Fine Arts Building, Room 108
15751 Gothard Street
Huntington Beach, CA 92647

Gallery open Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

FINAL WEEK

This show just received a very glowing review by Kristine Schomaker in ART PLUS CAKE magazine.

https://www.artandcakela.com/post/self-portraits-as-existential-affirmations

This show includes work by Amy Runyen, The Giver (Graphite and watercolor); Nurit Avesar Acrylic; Sarah Soward, Leap Before Looking (2025) Mixed media on canvas; Valentina Aproda Maurer, Camouflage (2), 2021, Digital inkjet print; Laura Meyer, Self Portrait, Crying; 2023, oil on canvas; Marina Claire, When Every Particle of Dust Breathes Forth Its Joy, 2025, Oil on wooden panel; Phyllis Chumley Martinez, Can’t Live in Daddy’s Playhouse, 2019, Oil on Canvas; Kerri Sabine-Wolf, Unraveling, 2025. Oil, Graphite, and Charcoald on Canvas; and Linda Fry, Self-Portrait, 2025, watercolor.

Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center
681 Venice Blvd.
Venice, CA 90291

Founded in 1968 by George Drury Smith

Alumni and/or leaders of Beyond Baroque’s poetry workshops include James Krusoe, Harry E. Northup, Leland Hickman, Wanda Coleman, Kate Braverman, Bill Mohr, John Doe, Exene Cervenka, Alicia Ostriker, Carol Lewis, Michelle T. Clinton, Bob Flanagan, Viggo Mortenson, liz gonzalez, John Harris, Joseph Hansen, Jack Grapes, FrancEye Dean Smith, Barbara Maloutas, and Amanda Gorman.

On Saturday, November 15, from noon to 9 p.m., Beyond Baroque will hold a marathon poetry reading as a way of raising money to compensate for the cancellation of its grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. Here is the schedule and lineup, which oddly enough does not include a dozen of the most prominent poets working in Los Angeles for the past half-century. Nevertheless, this is a rare opportunity to hear an ensemble of poets, in a single swoop, that few cities in the United States could claim to have a similarly diverse equivalent of.

Lynne Thompson
Michelle Bitting
Kim Dower
Tom Laichas
Gail Wronsky
Luivette Resto
Pam Ward
Teresa Mei Chuc
Ramón García
Angelina Sáenz
Ivan Sálinas
Anthony Seidman
Brian Kim Stefans
Mariano Zaro
Will Alexander
Molly Bendall
Laurel Ann Bogen
Brendan Constantine
Rich Ferguson
Amy Gerstler
Larkin Higgins
Sara Ellen Fowler
Holaday Mason
Meghann Plunkett
Jack Skelley
Daniel Tiffany
David Trinidad
Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo
Meghann Plunkett
Elena Karina Byrne
Holaday Mason
Sesshu Foster
S.A. Griffin
Susan Hayden
Sehba Sarwar
Anika Paris
David St. John
Gloria Vando
jimmy vega

Reading Segments in The Wanda Coleman Theater
Saturday, November 15, 2025

1-2 PM: “Metaphors Be With You” (NOTE: This phrase originated with Los Angeles poet and publisher Peter Schneidre.)
Pam Concepcion, Nikolai Garcia, Martin Jago, Doug Manuel, Amy Raasch, Laura Sermeño.
2–3 PM: Honoring Ancestors & Lineage
Taz Ahmed, bridgette bianca, Cynthia Briano, Shonda Buchanan, Lynda V.E. Crawford, Barbara Fant, Cynthia Guardado, Jose Hernandez Diaz, Arthur Kazakian, Mylo Lam, Darby Price, Lynne Thompson.
3–4 PM: Ode to Humanity
Lisa Alvarez, Michelle Bitting, Amy Davis, Kim Dower, Jeffrey Graham, Gedda Ilves, Tom Laichas, Frank Lutz, Jose Oseguera, Annie Reiner, Luivette Resto, Amy Shimshon-Santo, Gail Wronsky, Brian Sonia-Wallace.
5–6 PM: QTPOC Power & Resistance
Rhiannon Cielos Chavez, Alice Fulmer, Sonia Guiñansaca, Nikki Ochoa, Dewi Oka, Luis Antonio Pichardo, Karo Ska, Christopher Soto, Pam Ward.
6–7 PM: Twisting Tongues
Teresa Mei Chuc, Lisbeth Coiman, Ramón García, Angelina Sáenz, Ivan Sálinas, Anthony Seidman, Brian Kim Stefans, David Quiroz, Mariano Zaro.
7–8 PM: Possibilities of Language
Will Alexander, Giovan Alunzi, Molly Bendall, Laurel Ann Bogen, Brendan Constantine, Rich Ferguson, Sara Ellen Fowler, Amy Gerstler, Larkin Higgins, Holaday Mason, Meghann Plunkett, Jack Skelley, Daniel Tiffany, David Trinidad.
8–9 PM: Building Visions
Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo, Elena Karina Byrne, Zoë Edeskuty, Sesshu Foster, S.A. Griffin, Susan Hayden, Anika Paris, Sehba Sarwar, Adam Stutz, David St. John, Gloria Vando, jimmy Vega.

Should anyone in the above list have to cancel at the last moment, here is a list of poets that the organizers of this event at Beyond Baroque can give a phone call to the night before, on Friday, November 14, and ask them to fill in:

Harryette Mullen
Lynne Bronstein
Matt Sedillo
Mike Sonksen
Karen Kevorkian
Michael C. Ford
liz gonzalez
Sarah Maclay
David A. Romero
Ellen Maybe
Calvin Bedient
Jamie Asaye Fitzgerald
Phoebe MacAdams
Robin Coste Lewis
Luis J. Rodriguez
Kamau Daaood
Charles Harper Webb
Suzanne Lummis
Paul Vangelisti
Deena Metzger
Eloise Klein Healy
Alexis Rhone Fancher
Iris Berry
Joan Jobe Smith
Nicelle Davis
Donna Hilbert
Tamara Madison
Rick Lupert
Dennis Phillips
Peggy Dobreer
Martha Ronk
Jeanette Clough
Harry E. Northup
Jack Grapes
Dinah Berland
Don Kingfisher Campbell
Gloria Alvarez
Alison Hedge Coke
Richard Modiano
Marisela Norte
Aleida Rodriguez
Terry Wolverton
Cecilia Woloch
Ron Koertge
Douglas Messerli
Dorothy Barresi
William Archilla
Marsha de la O
Guy Zimmerman
Tony Barnstone
Nancy Lynee Woo
Luis Campos
Judith Taylor
Ricardo Means Ybarra
Carol V. Davis
Chiwan Choi
Jessica Ceballos
Mitchell Untch
Timothy Steele
Amber Tamblyn
Marilyn Robertson
Tonya Ko Hong
RD “Raindog” Armstrong
Majid Naficy
Clint Margrave
Steven Reigns
Matthew Timmons
Patty Seyburn
William Slattery
Steve Yenser
Carol Muske-Dukes
James Ragan
Kevin Ridgeway
David Hernandez

It’s a very deep, heavy bench.

Saturday, November 1, 2025

I celebrated another birthday this past month by making a trip to Northern California to visit my painter friends, Jim McVicker and Terry Oats. While we had gotten together several time when they made trips to Southern California, this was the first time in 30 years that I had seen them where they live. In 1995, I posed for a painting Jim did in which I was kneeling in his garden. On this trip, I posed for a portrait, though it was not the first time I had done so. Back in 1981, when I first met Jim, I posed for a portrait. There are references to being painted that first time in a long poem I wrote called “Your Move,” which will be published in its entirety for the first time along with two other long poems in a book entitled REMIGES in the fall of 2026. The publisher is WHAT BOOKS, a collective of writers in Los Angeles that recently published books by my collegues at CSULB, Patty Seyburn and Stephen Cooper.

(1981)

PORTRAIT IN McVICKER’S GARDEN

My face cannot be finished. Two days
I’ve stared and slouched near cusps
of dahlias, foxgloves creamed with red,
my chest and shoulders swelling
in a dark shirt, jeans trenched
between white petals as each slides
an edge under another’s wavering
fan of points — “It’s not working,”
he says, lifting the canvas off.
As I kneel on a narrow stone path,
the wetness of mud seeps through
my pants, sipping up my thighs.
A big hat darkens my chin. Yellow
peonies uncoil. A leaf isn’t smooth,
but puckers from edge to spinal thread.
Light scuffs the repetition
until color roughens: lilac squats,
orange puffs, yellow crouches
in creased gourds, thick husks
of amber, shrill asperities,
stretched greys, pink’s ziggurats,
lips parted for your garden’s kiss.

This poem can be found in my previous book of poems from WHAT BOOKS: “The Headwaters of Nirvana.”

In the next two months, I will be proofreading REMIGES and making plans for giving readings in the fall of 2026. If I have been able to sustain my efforts as a poet all these decades, it is in part because of friends such as Jim and Terry. I am grateful for their companionship and encouragement.

Cole Heinowitz was a poet….

Somehow, from all the accounts of her I read this morning, I don’t think the past tense is appropriate.

Cole Heinowitz remains a poet, scholar, and performer whose life brings to mind the question that Cary Nelson posed at the end of “Repression and Recovery”: “What is the social value of a life devoted to poetry?”

One possible answer is that the social value of a poet’s life resides in its capacity to articulate the munificence of a gift exchange economy. Given the number of other poets who have testified to Heinowitz’s generosity in sharing her knowledge, I am left with the wish that she could have spent more time on the West Coast; to that extent, there is an irony to the fact that she died while on a jaunt on a river in Northern California.

On Monday, October 27th, the Poetry Project at St. Mark’s in NYC will host a memorial service for her, at 8 p.m., featuring Cat Tyc, Carla Harryman, Christopher Funkhauser, Nada Gordon, Matvei Yankelevich, Barrett Watten, Anna Moschovakis, Lucía Hinojosa Gaxiola, Iris Cushing, Abe Etkin, Marianne Shaneen, Felix Bernstein, a performance by Shiba Nemat-Nasser, Lea Bertucci, and Stephen Cope.

For those unfamiliar with her work and life, I recommend the tributes that are posted in the Brooklyn Rail.

https://brooklynrail.org/tribute/a-tribute-to-cole-heinowitz/

https://brooklynrail.org/tribute/a-tribute-to-cole-heinowitz/a-tribute-to-cole-heinowitz-champion/

https://brooklynrail.org/tribute/a-tribute-to-cole-heinowitz/imagining-cole/

https://brooklynrail.org/tribute/a-tribute-to-cole-heinowitz/a-tribute-for-cole-heinowitz-cushing/

https://brooklynrail.org/tribute/a-tribute-to-cole-heinowitz/for-cole-kaufman/

https://brooklynrail.org/tribute/a-tribute-to-cole-heinowitz/for-cole-katz/

https://brooklynrail.org/tribute/a-tribute-to-cole-heinowitz/grays-elegy/

https://brooklynrail.org/tribute/a-tribute-to-cole-heinowitz/a-tribute-to-cole-heinowitz-cope/

********

In today’s post, I would also like to note the passing of Susan Griffin, a West Coast poet whose work emerged of the small press movement in the 1970s with a publication by Alta’s Shameless Hussy Press. Griffin went on to instigate a critique that came to be known as ecofeminism. I was somewhat surprised to see that the New York Times allotted her significant space for an obituary, given that the NYT did not believe that Lyn Hejinian merited such a notice. Griffin’s generosity in giving of her life as a poet to address the environmental crisis, however, seems to have caught enough attention on the East Coast for the NYT to acknowledge her contribution to this discourse. Author or compiler of over 20 books, her writing was translated in 12 languages.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/12/books/susan-griffin-dead.html

Remembering Susan Griffin, pioneering voice of ecofeminism

https://www.uni-muenster.de/news/view.php?cmdid=12218&lang=en
THE UNEVEN UNIVERSE
“It is almost always assumed in cosmological calculations that there is a even distribution of matter in the universe. This is because the calculations would be much too complicated if the position of every single star were to be included. In reality, the universe is not uniform: in some places there are stars and planets, in others there is just a void.”

***

https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Planck/The_cosmic_microwave_background_and_the_distribution_of_matter_in_the_Universe

The cosmic microwave background and the distribution of matter in the Universe

How is matter distributed in the Universe?
“A glance through our cosmic neck of the woods reveals that matter in the Universe is distributed in a highly structured fashion. Large concentrations of matter, such as stars and planets, are interspersed with large areas of empty space.”

“Poetry Loves Poetry” was not my first anthology of L.A. poets, but it is the one that most people are familiar with. In part, this is because the scene in L.A. when I published THE STREETS INSIDE, in 1978, was still benefitting from the plethora of bookstores that were willing to sell poetry books. By 1985, several of those stores were gone. In particular, Papa Bach and Intellectuals & Liars had closed. As one can see from the flyer I made for “PLP,” there were still a considerable number of literary bookstores in Los Angeles in the middle of the 1980s.

But not having any magazine coming out of Beyond Baroque to review it, or a magazine such as BACHY or INVISIBLE CITY to conduct a discussion of its premises and contents, PLP simply didn’t get the attention it deserved. I am grateful to Sharon Doubiago for a review she wrote in ELECTRUM magazine as well as one that appeared in POETRY FLASH by Joe Safdie.

And many thanks go out to Sheree Levin for her portfolio of L.A. poets, which appeared at the end of the volume.

Saturday, September 20, 2025

As anyone who has worked on a creative project can attest, being able to still the mind is the first incremental necessity. Even those in an occupation such as writing advertising copy know that the most inspired moments often occur when one finally stops trying to think of something “brilliant,” but simply stops thinking about it and stares off into space; or takes a brisk walk, and then a shower. The notebook paper one keeps on a bathroom shelf might warp slightly when the damp imprint of your hand dries, but at least you’ll have those phrases that arrived “out of nowhere” recorded as close as possible to their original syntax.

And that’s the problem with “artificial intelligence,” which I have previously referred to as “airbrushed intelligence.” AI is incapable of yearning for silence — any kind of silence. Even if it were programmed to stop engaging in searches, that wouldn’t lead to a generative silence.

It has been promulgated from “on high” that AI will soon surpass the capabilities of human consciousness. Silence — artificial or otherwise — will eternally elude the collage powers of AI’s stupendous warehouse of digital knowledge, and thereby restrict its access to the most important aspect of consciousness: the imagination.

It is the lingering presence of silence that enables a poem to be remembered as an event. Versification, no matter how nimbly enchanting, is in contrast simply a display of masterful technique. No doubt AI can generate an ensemble of words that faithfully reiterate various rules of versification. Not having access to silence, however, means that — as John Lennon said — it’s “crippled inside.”

In the aftermath of the dissolution of Venice West in the early 1960s, Beyond Baroque’s founding by George Drury Smith proved to be an unexpected resurrection of the ideals of that maverick Beat community. Steven Belletto has commented in his book, THE BEATS: A LITERARY HISTORY about the difficulty of sorting the “messy” cartography and genealogy of Beat-associated projects. Beyond Baroque will celebrate its 60th anniversary as the Olympic Games take place in Los Angeles. I can only hope that Beyond Baroque and the poets most associated with it over the decades are not ignored as they were the last time the Olympic Games were in L.A., in 1984. Given the level of state and corporate coordination in suppressing free speech in the United States in September, 2025, perhaps we poets should consider ourselves lucky if we are still alive in 2028. Reeducation camps tend to have a high mortality rate.

In the meantime, all the more reason to celebrate this weekend the anniversary of the Poetic Research Bureau, which was founded in 2000. A marathon reading and fundraiser will take place on Saturday, September 20th, from noon to 7 p.m. at a venue called ARTS+ARCHIVES.

MARATHON POETIC RESEARCH BUREAU READING
featuring
Diane Ward, Brian Kim Stefans, Larkin Higgins, Jos Charles, Johanna Drucker, Jack Skelley, Brent Armendinger, and Giulia Bencivenga.

Saturday, September 20
12pm – 7pm
at 2220 Arts+Archives
2220 Beverly Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90057
This is located between S. Alvarado and S. Rampart in Historical Filipinotown, which is west of DTLA and south of the 101 Freeway.

Purchase Tickets (from $15)
Tickets are tax-deductible donations
And don’t miss Friday’s film program, What Is Poetry to You? curated by Rotations
Tickets Here!

FULL LIST OF PRB MARATHON READERS: Diane Ward, Christopher Soto, Corina Copp, Jos Charles, Deborah Meadows, Syd Staiti, Rosie Stockton, Elaine Kahn, Sophia Le Fraga, Sarah Yanni, Feliz Lucia Molina, Anthony McCann, Sophie Appel, Kyle Dacuyan, Anahid Nersessian, Emji Saint Spero, Emily Simon, Mathew Timmons, Ara Shirinyan, Tom Comitta, Danny Snelson, Brian Kim Stefans, Angela Peñaredondo, Ben Segal, Brian Ang, Johanna Drucker, Gabrielle Civil, Ted Dodson, Brent Armendinger, Tilghman Goldsborough, Isabel Boutiette, Giulia Bencivenga, Jeanetta Rich, Jack Skelley, Nikki Ochoa, Ivanna Baranova, Carson Jordan, Nata Perla-Ward, Mary Clark, John Tottenham, imogen xtian smith, Zara Schuster, David Horvitz, Kim Calder, Paul Maziar, Alex Gootter, Hedi El Kholti, Jolie Mayers, Mashinka Firunts-Hakopian, Matias Viegener, Chloe Watlington, Larkin Higgins, Diana Arterian, Emily Joyce, Cleo Abramian, Amanda Ackerman, Aaron Winslow + more

The small press book fair will features Insert Press, Make Bow Books, nueoi press, Material Editions, X Artists’ Books, Semiotext(e), and HEXENTEXTE.

Tarot card readings by Angi Brzycki.
Food by Los originales Tacos Arabes De Puebla and Rosita’s Fruits
Wine donated by Silverlake Wine
T-shirts by Chariot Wish
Posters by Mark Allen

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2220 Arts + Archives is a volunteer-run cultural center featuring film, literature, music and performing arts in the Historic Filipinotown neighborhood of Los Angeles.
2220’s programming team is composed of longstanding arts nonprofits, archival projects & event series, including Acropolis Cinema, Black Editions, LA Filmforum, Late Breakfast, Lightstruck, Mezzanine, Mythscience, Pehrspace, Poetic Research Bureau, Rotations, and Wild Up.

Thursday, September 18, 2025

The current President of the United States, Mr. Donald J. Trump, has decried all the initiatives of social agency that have promoted diversity as an essential ingredient to a functioning democracy. In at least one current area of cultural embellishment, the position of U.S. poet laureate continues to promote its recent emphasis on ethnic identity in choosing a writer for this position. Arthur Sze, the son of Chinese immigrants, has accepted his appointment to be the next nation’s poet laureate. According to the New York Times article that covered this announcement, “Sze’s work does not focus on identity,” which makes his choice stand apart from other recent poet laureates as Joy Harjo, Tracy K. Smith, Juan Felipe Herrera and Ada Limón.

I myself would have asked Garrett Hongo to be the next U.S. poet laureate, but in the interests of full disclosure, I have to point out that I was the first editor anywhere to publish Mr. Hongo’s poems. Four of his poems appeared in the second issue of MOMENTUM magazine, issue number two, which came out in 1974. I have admired his work for a half-century. Although he was born, in 1951, in Volcano, Hawai’i, he spent many of his youthful growing years in Los Angeles County; he was educated at Pomona College (B.A.) and the University of California, Irvine (MFA, 1980). He would have been the first poet laureate of the United States to be so closely associated with Los Angeles, had he been selected. For examples of his L.A.-based work, see Laurence Goldstein’s POETRY LOS ANGELES and Suzanne Lummis’s POETRY GOES TO THE MOVIES.

In any case, congratulations are to be offered to Arthur Sze, who certainly has received as many awards as Garrett Hongo and has had his poems translated into 15 languages. This last fact is perhaps the most important factor in saluting his appointment. I gather that Sze wants to emphasize poems that have been translated into English as a way of expanding the discourse around poetry while he is poet laureate. I have no objection to that as long as he equally reminds his audience what all too many American poets would prefer to forget. Too little poetry written in English in the United States deserves to be translated into another language. American poets all too often like to sit back and celebrate their appropriation of poems in other languages as a form of cultural condescension. Their assumption is that their poems are every bit the equal of what has been translated into English.

Guess again.

*** *** ***

“(Arthur Sze’s) poetry is distinctly American in its focus on the landscapes of the Southwest, where he has lived for many years, as well as in its great formal innovation. Like Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman, Sze forges something new from a range of traditions and influences — and the result is a poetry that moves freely throughout time and space.”
—Acting Librarian of Congress, Robert Randolph Newlen

* * *

Post-script: It has been a bit of a puzzle to me the past several days. On a daily basis, I almost never get more than one visit to my blog from China, but for some inexplicable reason I have been getting a couple dozen a day recently. Maybe one of my readers in China would be kind enough to write and explain the sudden interest. I have never had more visitors from a country other than the United States before this most recent report. This has all happened before I wrote today’s post.

TOTAL NUMBER OF VISITS FROM INDIVIDUAL COUNTRIES IN THE PAST SEVEN DAYS:

China — 123
United States — 80
France — 4
Canada — 3
Mexico — 2
United Kingdom — 2
Spain — 2
Germany — 2
Belgium — 2
Russia. — 1