Since opening in 2016, the Quartz Hill Public Library has been host to many events. Quite a few of these have been related to literature and the arts.
A local poet, Lida Abramian, is taking advantage of the space offered in this stylish and still very new library.
The event is open to the public and seems like a nice way to workshop some of your work if you’re a poet seeking practice and next steps. Or if you are just looking to engage with the written word as a writer or as a lover of letters.
Sagebrush Cafe is looking for your creative work – creative writing and art submissions – to be published under the project banner – RAVENSONG.
Theme: PUTTING DOWN ROOTS
What to submit?
RAVENSONG – Call for Creative Writing & Art Submissions
We’re hatching a scheme to publish an alternative to the traditional arts magazine, keeping things low key and posting creative work monthly on our blog page. Twice this year, we will also send out an omnibus creative newsletter featuring selected submissions.
We want to see what people are getting up to, thinking about, creating and exploring. And we’d like to see if we can help share the product of that creative work.
Sagebrush Cafe is turning ten years old this year, so our theme is PUTTING DOWN ROOTS, but we are accepting work on any subject.
What song are you singing?
Send in your work to art@sagebrush-cafe.com.
HAPPENING NOW: Antelope Valleys Arts new initiative, the AV ArtConvo, featuring poems by Hollie N. Martin.
SATURATION 2.0: The Arts in Conversation project at Antelope Valley Arts is now live: Local artists (painters, poets, photographers, fiction writers) have been invited to submit art and partake in a conversation on artistic influence and inspiration as the print arm of Antelope Valley Arts is going digital.
This week we are featuring the work of Hollie N. Martin, a poet with a vivid and deeply rooted connection to the arts. When she is not actively meditating on sound through her writing, Martin teaches at Antelope Valley College, where she is probably also meditating on vowels and consonants in delicate contrast and delightful pattern.
Laguna’s Labor
Waters of sanctification scattered.
The sonogram of fish.
A birthing, writing baby
begging to issue from the womb.
Waves do not seem as harsh
from so great a height,
from so small a whisper
not wanting to crack the air with human language.
The tide sings an aria of rocks,
of an intercourse between liquid and solid.
Freely you have received.
Freely give.
Waters of sanctification scattered.
The out-spray of a crash.
Brute force munching a foundation,
eating the cracks of the earth.
And you are down there,
deep-sea decked in 80s yellow.
World never to be born.
World who wonders what it must be like
to inhale deep and
escape amniotic fluid.
And I am up here,
arms cradling the metal guardrail, my own tightrope,
waiting for this foundation’s dissolve,
for the moon’s glow to liquefy my heart
and issue a prayer.
Interview Part 1
Who is your favorite writer? How does he or she influence your work?
Li-Young Lee will always be my favorite poet, and Book of My Nights will always stand in my mind as his best work. I was first exposed to Lee as an undergrad at CSUN, and I fell in love with the spirituality and sensuality of his language.
I love the recurring theme of the father figure in his work, as in the poem “Little Father,” which discusses burying the father in the heart and birthing him again into the child’s own image. This is especially touching now, as my own father is suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease; I am having to rebirth him today, to take his sounds and movements and make words out of them.
Lee also brings in song and birds, which are two intense touchstones in my life; these images brought me through my own “book of nights.” This line from “Lullaby” comforted me when I was suffering from depression and suicidal thoughts while in college: “After crying, Child / there’s still singing to be done.” The capitalization of the Child spoke to me of importance and significance, as a push to keep existing. Then the lines, “After wings // and the shadows of wings, there’s still / the whole ungrasped body / of flying to uncover.” This spoke to me of the promise of potential: there was, and is, so much more flying to do.
I have wanted to emulate the sense of pause and depth in his work, and while I am far from achieving that goal, Lee gave me a deep appreciation of the way one word can change the timbres of a work.
Shakes in Heat
Christmas
does not feel like Christmas
until there are lights.
Small and white
like rain drops.
Large and pied
like gum drops.
Lights from trees, cars, overpasses,
lights from a city screaming daytime in nighttime tongue.
And I whisper words
while the lights scream. Somehow.
They pulse. I think it’s my eyes.
I think it is lack of 20/20,
lack of hindsight, no time to reason,
only to eat the moment
one droplet at a time.
Sometimes I choose to unfocus.
I open eyes wide and rest.
The lights explode in blur.
Then I strain, then I readjust,
then the light’s song rushes toward me
and it shakes in heat.
Completely mechanical. What
isn’t mechanical.
Christmas becomes a series of bulbs
dangling from gaunt-green strings.
Swear words
at the raising of a killed tree.
So I look for a miracle in shivering lights.
(They’re cold from lack of attention.)
I look for a dream through bars
locking away the view.
Dear city of angels,
I look for winged creatures under every bush.
We with our snowless eves.
Us with questions and pleas.
You and I and cries for peace.
My heart matching a pulse too great to be a machine.
I think light is magic.
I think the city is lit by Gabriel’s torch.
The cries accompany glorias.
I will catch the light in my hands.
I will take it home, sew a little nest,
and watch its wings develop.
I will ask it to fly inside my eyes.
Interview Part 2
How does music influence, shape or fit into your work?
To be honest, I often can’t write anything creative without music.
I have been singing since I was little, and I learned to play guitar when I was 21. I tried to form a band with my sisters for a time, and we had our own level of success, but it never went very far. I think I was more fascinated with the writing process of music and performing it for a few friends than for “musical success.” (One of my favorite pieces of ours was a melodic rendition of pieces from Eliot’s “The Hollow Men.”)
Musical sounds captivate me. Playing a chord progression in a repetitive manner will often allow me to “see” words or images (I’m a sucker for very traditional time measures with sticky melodies). I will get a concept, set the guitar down, and start writing. Some of my strongest poems have been written in these moments.
I have also produced work while listening to the music of others. My musical tastes tend to not reside in the mainstream—and I’m not talking about the “cool” non-mainstream. I grew up surrounded by music that was written from the perspective of people who were followers of Christ. I attended concerts almost every weekend through my teens and twenties, and some of those musicians have remained in my auditory repertoire ever since.
The artists Jason Upton and Rita Springer are two of these people, and they produce music that I just can’t classify into a specific genre. Upton is extremely free-flow, in the sense that he often writes songs while in the concert experience itself. That creativity helps uncork me, especially when I am suffering from writer’s block. Springer channels a Janice Joplin type of voice and pounds out melodies on the piano. She is very raw—like a wild lioness who could kill you at any moment and afterwards comfort her baby cubs. She is so different from me that she also uncorks new arenas of creativity. Their albums can’t even capture how they sound live, so whenever I can, I try to see them, often with a notebook and a pen in my hand.
Most recently, I have been moved to write while listening to “When the Music’s Over” by The Doors and “The Fire and the Flood” by Loud Harp (a duo who sings the Psalms).
Note: Image above of “Rocky Sea Coast” by William Trost Richards (public domain image).
HAPPENING NOW: Antelope Valleys Arts new initiative, the AV ArtConvo, featuring poems by Tino Garcia.
SATURATION 2.0: The Arts in Conversation project at Antelope Valley Arts is now live: Local artists (painters, poets, photographers, fiction writers) have been invited to submit art and partake in a conversation on artistic influence and inspiration as the print arm of Antelope Valley Arts is going digital.
This week’s featured artist is a musically inspired and intellectually playful poet, Tino Garcia.
Tino Garcia: “I am a teacher, artist, and writer who currently teaches at Antelope Valley College. I grew up near Santa Fe, New Mexico and then attended high school and college in Moorhead, Minnesota. I studied English and Spanish and then taught English as a Second Language in Mexico City for a year, before earning a Master’s in Religion (Philosophy of) in Claremont, CA. I studied further in that field at UCSB, while also teaching ESL. I started teaching English at AVC in 2015.”
Predators
I lie on my back on a yoga mat
on my patio in Ventura,
land of good fortune,
on a Tuesday morning,
stretching my body and supine mind
into contemplative poses
and prayer recitals,
in the hour after I awaken.
Noticing the rich green
of the pine tree as it babbles
with birdsong, a faint plane
crosses my sky,
draggin in its wake
across my mental sky
an indelible image
from an magazine ad:
a model in a snow-white bikini,
and black stilettos,
lounging near a chic LA hi-rise pool,
cocktail in hand –
airbrushed goddess
of Californicated imaginations –
a Skyy Vodka bottle perched
on the her side table,
luring us into her posh privilege
and luxurious repose.
The scene sizzles in a sexy, blasé
devil may care kind of way.
Oh how lovely it would be
to bask with her under that sun
forget schedules, obligations, calls:
pour some Skyy into us
and just chill…
chill until we feel
a flood of numbness
a rush of inertia
sweep our minds clean
of this dirty world
at least for a little eternal while.
But as I blink and squintingly drink
in the ad’s imagery again,
I notice a plane’s shadow pass
over her oblivious repose,
with an elongated, phallic nose
and wings with protrusions:
not engines, but bombs.
Suddenly she’s cast not
in the city of angels,
but under the hijacked plane
and gaze of predators.
Their shadow and eyes invisible,
except their embeds
in the splay of her lustrous,
raven black hair:
I gaze and am gazed at
by the unblinking,
unmistakable head, beak, and eye
of the black bird of death.
Why is this predator eyeing me, us?
I look again to the sky and see
across it a 15 year old
lying on his patio,
stretching his body and supine mind
into contemplative poses
and prayer recitals,
in the hour after he awakens
on a Tuesday morning
in a foreign land:
in al Majala, Yemen,
in Waziristan, Pakistan,
in Nangahar, Afghanistan.
The boy, the woman, and I
all haunted by homeland insecurities
and their predators: I spy
predator-menless-metal-machines,
predator-liquid-spirits,
predator-ad-men-mad-men,
predator soldier-criminal-complexes,
and a dove-colored Predator drone
flying invisibly over his house
at 5,000 feet
haunting his entire sky.
And on a Tuesday morning as he prays,
it buries that boy’s prayer
in a missile squawk as hot
and haughty and eternal as the hell fire
for which it is named.
And in a control room in Vegas
and in the Pentagon, if you listen
you can hear the brass squawks
of Pyrrhic victories,
as a whole world heaves and
shrieks,
again
and
again
and
again.
Interview Part 1:
How does music influence, shape or fit into your work?
Music bears an intimate relationship to my poetry: intimate in the sense that they seek to speak the unspeakable to each other. They turn to and turn into each other and I can never separate them, as if they are divine twins, or shadows of each other. Most of my poems are meant to be spoken out and I often set them to music. Music is a many-voiced muse whose rhythms and sways and beats I aim to channel into my words as I speak them, whether the poem is accompanied by actual music or not. I also rap, so many of my poems are essentially raps and vice versa.
Who or what are your major artistic influences?
My major artistic influences come primarily from three forces: music, especially rap; literature; and diverse intellectual traditions (philosophical, religious, political, etc.). The figures I draw on most tend to blend these forces. In terms of rap, who comes to mind are Mos Def and Kweli, Immortal Technique, Brotha Ali, Wu-Tang, Common, the Roots, and many others. In terms of literature, diverse figures such as Sherman Alexie, Langston Hughes, Jimmy Santiago Baca, David Whyte, Junot Diaz, Rumi, Walt Whitman, Julio Cortázar, Nikos Kazantzakis, John Fowles, Herman Hesse, and others. On the intellectual tip, Nietzsche, Socrates, Jacques Derrida, Cornel West, Frantz Fanon, Enrique Dussel, and others.
Rap and Bone Shop of the Heart
I crack the question open from the start to you:
What if rap is a rag n bone shop of the heart too?
What if it were true?
Would it sound different to you?
Cuz like Hughes the classic forms it may eschew,
But it too hews and drops innumerable jewels
Cuz rap did not come here to do tricks with rhymes, no –
It came to reproduce the human soul:
To lay stun hew and shake its peers’ ears.
But too many still don’t hear, so to be clear:
Rap’s best should be appreciated as peers
Of master creators like Shakespeares.
Huh! You may jeer,
Thinking they’re not on par,
But peer again, ask yourself who’s the bard:
Quote “The most benevolent king
Communicates through your dreams” unquote –
Is this the yearning of Elizabethan tragedy
Or a 21st century soul activist MC?
They said hip-hop was much ado about nothing:
Not to be thought of as true sound conducting.
But Shakespeare too was born under a rhyming planet
And a stork dropped hip-hop into the pocket of iambic
Pentameter, so you could rock “Shall I Compare Thee”
At 80 b.p.m.s or 140, get it really racing!
Open up the Bard’s unique vocab and let its canon blast
But I heard he busts fewer unique words
Per first 35,000 words in his oeuvre
Than the Wu-Tang Clan, who drops science like WMDs.
So Socrates’ philosophies’ hypotheses can’t define either of these
Griots, custodians of alkaline knowledge from parallel streets;
Peep the Rag and Bone epigraphy:
“Those masterful images because complete
Grew in pure mind, but out of what began?
A mound of refuse or the sweeping of a street
Old kettles, old bottles, and a broken can
Old iron, old bones, old rags, that raving slut
Who keeps the till. Now that my ladder’s gone
I must lie down where all the ladders start,
In the foul rag-and-bone shop of the heart.”
From this foul place excavated by W.B. Yeats
Comes the profound base of rap’s heavy weights.
For who quipped, “Maybe it’s hatred
I spew, maybe it’s food for the spirit”?
Was it the haunted Lord Hamlet
Or the sarcastic Marshall Mathers
A.k.a. Eminem? Well it was the latter;
But that’s just to say affinities resound, even if
Shakespeare ever redounds to peerlessness,
Cuz stripped of our contextual lenses
The lyrics begin blendin
And raisin conditional questions:
What if it were an unwrapped heart
Right from the slavish start?
What if its core were soft not hard?
What if it embarks on largest arks?
What if rap reveres the currents of King’s dream?
Channels the rivers of America’s dream stream?
What if that’s what it breathes and bleeds?
What if we need to ink it into our creeds?
Need to sing its poems into our Odysseys?
So it too can return home to its Penelopes.
Maybe we need its unseen visions
Like Odysseus needed Tiresias
And like King needed Jesus.
Cuz rap’s a nomad enlightening the lands
Tree of life black every hue rattled
By its solar alma dura
From the concrete jungles to la casa de la luna:
It blends ascents toward vaunted peaks
With descents beneath conscious streets.
See, I dive into rap’s marrow stock
Dig, it’s my rag and bone shop.
So hell yeah it’s full of rags and bones
Shady like Hades so it has soul,
So much soul it overflows
Cuz it’s known rivers, grown deep
And not knowing me you could know me.
Learn and explore my soulful currents
By observing raps flows and disturbances
What if it could help us learn to grieve?
Help heal the wounds burning internally eternally?
What if its strong tonic were truer than
Fine wine, bomb chronic, and juice and gin?
What if it could shake and bake you
Back into earthen clay to remake you?
What if it could bend your tree of life
Along the arc of justice over time?
What if it begins as unwanted grit
Trapped in a mantle of darkness within
A shell, and through slow devotion
Pearls grow in from those deep oceans?
Pried open their beauty blesses our skin,
The grit now covered in sublime rhythms
Manifesting divine wisdoms;
Refined over time the jewels shine on
The priceless light of a daimon
So bright got the cosmos sayin right on
Big bang your beats while we rhyme on!
You ever burned with the warmth of Mahatma Ghandi?
You ever heard the heart of Brotha Ali?
“A man may see how this world goes with no eyes
Blind in the eye so I see you with my heart open wide.”
Who is rapping on the door in the dark?
Is it somebody who wants to do us harm?
No, no it is three strange angels
Open the door and be thankful
Rap is a secret that not all understand
But many blues bears and jazz cats can;
Its lovers grasp its heartfelt beat
And “whoever’s not killed for love is dead meat.”
As coffins rest on coffins in worldwide fields of war
Mos Def cries and Funerals March
And Immortal Technique blasts a Third World manifesto
Like Talib Kweli’s Ballad of the Black Gold
And rap dances with the devil, it is true,
But also with gods, and I hope you do too.
A chorus of laments rages cries and rap knells
Landmarks left behind like mines and shrapnel
The ruins, the unexploded
Bombs
Bombs
Bombs
The unfinished sentences of war
Dot
Dot
Dot
So Tupac held the ashy hand of the Lord of death
Walked the road of children of fire obsessed with it
Gravitas in his gait because he carried graves
His art a refusal of gravity and his own grave
Until its embrace created his fate as an image graven
Crafted rap rosaries that grew in concrete vases
Prayed for shade and havens over raw street beats
And chased chaste Hail Mary: Dear mama save me!
Rage gave way to wailing gave way to graceful sleep.
So what if we call raps prayers and blessings?
Poems of our daughters and sons confessing
What they feel needs raising, holding, protecting
Wishing they knew how it feels to be free
Like Nina Simone – like you and me:
Rap is grateful to what comes
Amazingly faithful to other drums
Incredible fidelity to the same mother
Indelible fidelity to the same sun.
Interview Part 2:
What musician, visual artist or writer would you like to do a TED Talk on and why?
I would love to do a TED talk on the contemporary writer Walter Mosley because he is new to me and I am loving being held under the sway of his genius. I am reading some of his works (Rose Gold, Little Green, Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned, etc), one of which I am also teaching and, though I do not know that much about him, I feel like I know him through his characters. Through his style, themes, and characters, such as Socrates Fortlow and Easy Rawlins, he fires my imagination and takes my wonder on walkabouts, while also stirring and discharging the sacred outlaw and deep outrage within me. As an illustration of this sway his works have over me and which I would like to share, I am currently working on an essay and also a song about Socrates Fortlow. Mosley’s references to historical and literary events and figures would provide amazing material to analyze in a TED talk, as would the screenplays he has helped turn into films (e.g., Devil in a Blue Dress). Additionally, from what I gather about political and social thinking, I think it is worthy of sharing and discussing. There is so much food for thought and soul food in the works I have encountered that a TED talk would offer an impetus to eat more of what he’s serving up and to crystallize what is currently cooking as a result of his food.
Sitting in front of the Lofts Gallery, after the opening of the art show,
I heard the sounds of skateboards.
They reminded me of an old train, leaving the station slowly,
making the unmistakable sound of tracks
before getting into full speed ahead.
Observing from a close distance,
the alley was taken over by both kids and older riders
They resembled billboards on wheels:
Monster hats, Vans shoes and Pharmacy Board Shop T-shirts.
I walked a little closer to the action.
Some are smiling, others cruising,
the youngsters studying the movements of the seasoned riders;
they all have stress-free faces,
as if this is the most important time of their lives.
The beats from a DJ table bounce off the walls,
the cold concrete of the alley a stage to perform on.
They were aware that people watched them as if they were a different culture,
and they don’t care; they have their own language and style
and the skateboarders enjoy the freedom and friendship of their lifestyle.
As more curious people gathered to observe,
the experienced riders surfed the pavement in a crouching position,
gaining speed to perform a trick;
others rode their Maple wood boards, creating the angular momentum
as natural as breathing, while the observers’ faces lit up with joy.
The boards in the gallery were awesome to observe: they were motionless, lifeless,
the real action happening outside, at least this time,
where the riders show their art and knowledge of the principles that rule their game.
I wonder if they know they are actually using the science of motion
while riding their fancy four-wheel boards.
Through every bruise and battle scar,
after each nasty fall,
the skateboarders are the center of gravity
that keep this lifestyle alive.
(Dedicated to my friends Larissa Nickel and Amanda Johnson for their amazing job putting together Hell on Wheels.)
Edwin R. Vásquez
Read more AV Arts BLOG Press about the Hell On Wheels show at the Artists Lofts Gallery in downtown Lancaster. Article 1 & Article 2.
Join the conversation and write in with comments and discussion.
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