Catching Up--Book and Reunion--Amid Pre-Macondo Jitters

I'm resigned to being a lazy blogger. This summer has been so packed with activities and tasks, and I've been in and out of town so much that I have not kept this blog up the way I had hoped. I have nothing but the highest respect for those people who blog daily. I can't even seem to manage weekly, which is what I was hoping for originally.

Part of what has made this summer a madhouse has been all the attention my new book has been getting--a very good thing from my point of view. Interviews and readings take time, and when placed in an already crowded schedule, they will squeeze out things like updating a blog. But aside from being important to sales of the book, they are just plain great fun. Here's a link to a radio interview on KCUR, Kansas City' NPR station.

I also did something I've never done before. I went back to Manhattan, Kansas, for my high school reunion. I had been out of touch with my graduating class. They couldn't find me, and when I would leave my contact information with the high school (as I did several times), it never made its way to those organizing reunions. Finally, an old friend from high school found me on the internet and reconnected me with my high school class. (Thanks big time, Bill!)

Manhattan High School (Old that we attended on right)

Konza Prairie, the landscape surrounding Manhattan, KS
(c) Bill Curnutte

I don't know that I expected much out of the reunion. I wanted to see people again that I had known when we were very young, and that was about it. What was so surprising was the instant sense of connection with these folks I hadn't seen for decades. And my own teary sentimentality when Norman Byers, our class vice president, led us in the school anthem! We toured the old school, and when we walked into the auditorium where I had performed so often with many of these same classmates, it almost felt as if I ought to be walking up onto the stage to sing and whirl with Pops Choir or walk with exaggerated hip swings (that always embarrassed me), pig in arms, downstage singing Moonbeam McSwine's part in Li'l Abner. Very eerie sense of deja vu!

It was terrific fun, though, to reconnect with so many classmates, who have turned into very successful--but more importantly, truly nice--people. It's very odd but very satisfying to feel this sense of connection to these people who have not been a part of my life for so many years but who are nonetheless important to me, though I had not realized it. Now, we're planning the next reunion in five years and trying to stay in touch in the meantime. Go, MHS Class of 1964!

Part of why things have been so hectic lately is that I'm trying to take care of everything that needs doing before taking off to San Antonio and the Macondo Workshop next week. Very exciting! I've been fortunate enough to get into the Famosa workshop with Ruth Behar and Marjorie Agosín, Casa/Hearth/Diaspora. (My husband's incredibly jealous since he knows Behar's and Agosín's work from his own work in Jewish studies!) They've given us some interesting preparatory work, and the manuscripts from the other workshop members are widely varied in style and universally fascinating.

I'm looking forward to seeing the fabulous Sandra Cisneros (founder of Macondo) again and other friends, Francisco Aragón and Ellen Placey Wadey, as well as people I only know from email or from their work, such as John Olivares Espinoza, Margo Chavez-Charles, Rachel Jennings, Levi Romero, Vincent Toro, and Richard Blanco. I'm nervous, of course. I sent in drafts of poems I'm working on, as requested, not finished work. I hope that in the workshop I'll get a better handle on this book I'm writing. It seems as if I'm writing in two very different styles--and each is a departure from my usual style. I don't know at this point if I'm breaking important new ground for myself or wandering down dead-end roads stylistically.

So back to trying to get everything taken care of before I leave, especially getting all the content for Tercera Pagina to Tina Landis for the Latino Writers Collective blog. We're growing so--with new members all the time. It's wonderful to see an organization that used to just be five or six of us about to hit 50 members in number and grow beyond that.

I'll try to get an entry up soon after I return from Macondo about that experience. Until then, read and write and be happy!

The Past and More Poetry (What Else?)

I had an e-mail from one of those classmate/reunion websites today about one of the girls I went to high school with--Manhattan, KS, High School. It’s been very odd, but after many years of having no contact with anyone I went to high school with, in the past year I’ve wound up back in touch with three of them, two girls in the class before me and a guy from my class who I dated in my junior year. That’s been very interesting, seeing how we’ve all changed with the years. Now, I hear about Jeanie, but not in any way that I can let her know how to contact me. I knew her better than the other two girls since she was in my class and we were in most of the same activities. I find myself wondering how her life has turned out.

I’m probably trying to get away from all the things I need to do. I need to do press releases and a million other things for Tercera Página, the Latino Writers Collective’s third annual reading series—and I will; I’ve just been distracted by writing major grants for LWC and for The Writers Place and other things like that. I also need to decide what poem I’m going to read for Palabra Pura’s Special Edition: “One Poem Festival” at the Jazz Showcase in Chicago. It’s an AWP off-site event that Francisco Aragón is curating.

I’ve talked with wonderful, supportive husband, Ben, about it. He says I have two choices—go with a poem that’s good with audiences or go with an “AWP poem.” I ask, “What’s an AWP poem?” (Can you tell I’m just not sophisticated, even after all these years?) He says, “It’s a poem that gets pulled out to impress people with your literariness.” Well, that makes it easy! I don’t have any of those. I took a different road from that one a long time ago when I decided I wanted my work to be accessible to any reasonably literate reader. So I’ll probably be a bust as far as AWP is concerned. Francisco’s another matter—he has higher standards than that, I believe.

I would really like to read a poem that I think is one of my best, but it’s also one of my longest. I’m not like my friend, Joe, who writes 15-page poems sometimes. Long for me is 3-4 pages. But I have never read this poem because I don’t think long poems go over as well with audiences—it’s too hard to keep it all in your head while you’re listening—and this poem deserves full concentration. So once again, I see, I’ve decided not to read “Considering Oceans.”

I’ve got about 500 poems, so this could be a long process. I’ll put it in my unconscious while I work on Tercera Página, which will run from March 4-May 15 and feature a student performance of a cultural piece with original poetry, drama, dance, and music, Gloria Vando headlining a reading with LWC members, Sandra Cisneros in both a public reading at the Central Library and an event with students at the Plaza Library, all culminating with the launch of the LWC fiction anthology, which is one of those things taking extra time and attention right now.

To work, Linda! Adelante!