Hope to see you at Jardín Cebú next Wednsday night! I’ll be participating in this event!
If 
Category: Oaxaca
“Woman Crossing A River in Oaxaca, A Sketch”
I’m so honored to have one of my poems included in the inaugural issue of WOUNWAPI, A Journal of Oglala Lakota College in South Dakota as an Okhólaya (friend) of the community. Thank you Céline Demol (and William Wordsworth!) for providing the inspiration for this poem
Poetry at the Post: Seeing Green in Oaxaca
The Ivy Green
BY CHARLES DICKENS
Oh, a dainty plant is the Ivy green,
That creepeth o’er ruins old!
Of right choice food are his meals, I ween,
In his cell so lone and cold.
The wall must be crumbled, the stone decayed,
To pleasure his dainty whim:
And the mouldering dust that years have made
Is a merry meal for him.
Creeping where no life is seen,
A rare old plant is the Ivy green…
August 2015
…And nations have scattered been;
But the stout old Ivy shall never fade,
From its hale and hearty green.
The brave old plant, in its lonely days,
Shall fatten upon the past:
For the stateliest building man can raise,
Is the Ivy’s food at last.
Creeping on, where time has been,
A rare old plant is the Ivy green.
Poetry at the Post: Seeing Violet in Oaxaca
The Violet
BY JANE TAYLOR
Down in a green and shady bed,
A modest violet grew,
Its stalk was bent, it hung its head,
As if to hide from view.
August 2015
And yet it was a lovely flower,
Its colours bright and fair;
It might have graced a rosy bower,
Instead of hiding there,
August 2015
Poetry at the Post: La Conquista, Evangelization & “The Conqueror Worm”
The Conqueror Worm
BY EDGAR ALLAN POE
…The curtain, a funeral pall,
Comes down with the rush of a storm,
While the angels, all pallid and wan,
Uprising, unveiling, affirm
That the play is the tragedy, “Man,”
And its hero, the Conqueror Worm.
I’ve been thinking about the Spanish Conquest, the “christianizing” of the New World and Edgar Allen Poe—a poet held dear by many writers in Mexico. A curious thing—but perhaps because of his Gothic and macabre style.
Poetry at the Post: The Olmec Colossus Heads—Which One Is Your Favorite?
The New Colossus
BY EMMA LAZARUS
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
August 4, 2015:
@Benito Juárez Autonomous University of Oaxaca
This week in art history, we’re taking a look at the colossus Olmec heads.
So far, 17 have been discovered. My favorite is No. 9.
Not only did I learn about the colossus heads today but now I know where the lines “Give me your tired, your poor/,Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,…” engraved on the pedestal of The Statue of Liberty came from. Emma Lazarus!
Poetry at the Post: Reading “Kind of Blue” in Oaxaca
Kind of Blue
BY LYNN POWELL
Not Delft or
delphinium, not Wedgewood
among the knickknacks, not wide-eyed chicory
evangelizing in the devil strip—
San Pablo Cultural Center
July 2015
not the long-legged hunger
of a heron or the peacock’s
iridescent id—
Photo courtesy of Felix Potuit
Poetry at the Post: Why I’ve Taken to Wearing Aprons
THE FLORAL APRON by Marilyn Chin
The woman wore a floral apron around her neck,
that woman from my mother’s village
with a sharp cleaver in her hand.
She said, “What shall we cook tonight?
I did not grow up with the cultural heritage of aprons. The only time I can recall my mother wearing an apron was on Thanksgiving Day. For her, that apron was a small symbol of protest. Moms did not have days off. She had to work while the rest of the family crowded around the TV set to watch the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.
I must admit. She had a point. None of us ever offered to help.
It was in Oaxaca that I rediscovered the apron. So beautifully crafted, the aprons of Oaxaca are omnipresent. I’ve come to understand their utility. When a woman puts on her apron, she is saying to the world, “Ok, now I’m getting ready to do some important work.” Yes, that’s why I’ve taken to wearing aprons. They assert a division in the day’s labor.
Want to know more about the aprons of Oaxaca? You can read about Martha, an apron maker from San Miguel del Valle, Oaxaca here.
Poetry at the Post: #NaPoWriMo Day 20—Just The Facts
Just the Facts (a found poem) by Alice-Catherine Jennings
Texas changed nationality three times between 1821 and 1836.
In September 1995, the French nuclear weapon tests on the Mururoa atoll were launched.
Fairfield Porter was born in 1907 in Hubbard Woods, Illinois.
The Texas Revolution lasted only about six months. The plural of English words are generally formed by the addition of the suffix -s or –es (laws, taxes) but there are exceptions (e.g. children, halves, mice, sons-in-law, and bison).
The Worker-Peasant-Student coalition of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec (COCEI) emerged in 1973 and by 1980 was strong enough to ally itself with the Communist Party and run one of its leaders for mayor of Oaxaca’s second largest city, Juchitan.
As a young artist, Donald Judd was impressed by the paintings of Barnett Newman, Clifford Still, Mark Rothko, and Jackson Pollock.
A book with no edition number or name on its title page is usually a first edition.
Maximilian, the only Emperor of the Second Mexican Empire, and his wife, Carlotta, arrived in Mexico in June 1864.
Donald Judd declared in 1993, that material, space, and color were “the three main aspects of visual art.”
Vorrei prenotare un posto sul treno delle dodici per… means I’d like to reserve a seat on the 12 0’clock train to…in Italian.
Poetry at the Post: Finding Salmon in El Centro
It’s Day 17 of NAPOWRIMO and today’s prompt is to try to write a “social media”-style poem. We were to raid FB, Twitter and blah blah blah. I started with a line from a FB post but then found inspiration reading Octavio Paz.
Finding Salmon in El Centro by Alice-Catherine Jennings
We are in the city without
four rivers, larger than three
yards square, but not endless
like a galaxy. Salmon swim
in the waters of time. We await
their arrival in streets, busses
taxis, pigeon coops, and catacombs,
in the fish markets near Merced,
where time ceases to flow
and so do the four rivers
.
Alice-Catherine 