By Ishmael von Heidrick-Barnes
Buddha’s head
lying broken
spilling roadway
For 4 days I passed
the noble prince
stuck in the spokes of dharma’s spinning wheel … [Read more…]
San Diego City Works Press, Sunshine/Noir II: Writing from San Diego and Tijuana
November 1st Deadline Approaching
By Jim Miller
San Diego City Works Press is still accepting submissions for Sunshine/Noir II until November 1st. In particular we are looking for creative non-fiction pieces about underrepresented communities in San Diego and generally uncovered topics with regard to life in our region. We are also looking for good fiction, poetry, and artwork that runs against the grain of San Diego’s official story.
SDCWP is run by a 100% non-profit collective and is the only small literary press in San Diego that focuses primarily on the publication of local writers with an emphasis on our region that moves beyond the postcard version of our reality. In an era where commercial forces and hegemonic instrumentality are drowning out what remains of literary culture, we have persisted against the odds. We invite all interested parties to be a part of our beautifully useless endeavor.
To celebrate our tenth anniversary, we are putting together a second edition of our first anthology, Sunshine/Noir II. All local writers are encouraged to submit work for consideration. [Read more…]
America’s First Banned Book and the Battle for the Soul of the Country
By Jim Miller
It’s Banned Books Week and what better way to kick it off than with a salute to America’s first banned book: Thomas Morton’s New English Canaan published in 1637? New English Canaan is a three-volume affair containing Morton’s sympathetic observations about Native Americans along with a celebration of the beauty of the natural world and a fierce satire of the Puritans.
While some scholars point to other books such as John Eliot’s The Christian Commonwealth (written in the late 1640s) or William Pynchon’s The Meritorious Price of Our Redemption (1650) as the first books to be banned by the Puritans for theological or historical reasons, Morton’s New English Canaan precedes both of these texts and the conflict surrounding it is far more important and illustrative with regard to the political and cultural history of the United States.
Indeed, Morton’s book was banned because it told his side in one of the pivotal battles for the cultural soul of the New World. Morton, a perpetual thorn in the side of the great Puritan patriarch William Bradford, represented the untamable “other” of colonial America. When Morton set up his rival colony of Merry Mount in close proximity to Bradford’s Plymouth Plantation and invited the Indians and escaped indentured servants to join him, all hell broke loose. [Read more…]
“Not Far From Normal”: Book Release and Party, Friday September 19th
A compelling history of everyday life on the wild side of San Diego
By Jim Miller
This year’s San Diego City Works Press release is Tamara Johnson’s Not Far From Normal, a book that takes a unique look at our city. Just steps away from sponsored fun runs, endurance challenges, and ultra-marathons, in Johnson’s book San Diego’s hidden residents play games of survival side-by-side with official city events. However one feels about the rise of dark tourism, it has never been necessary to travel far to experience either the dangerous or the exotic.
Part poetry, part photo essay by Rachael Wenban, part field guide, Not Far From Normal relates the secret history of San Diego’s parks and missions as told by their current inhabitants. From the crash of PSA Flight#182 to the “I don’t like Mondays” school shooting and other dark episodes that don’t make it into San Diego’s official story, this book is a compelling history of everyday life on the wild side of Southern California. [Read more…]
Geo-Poetic Spaces: Dresden
By Ishmael von Heidrick-Barnes
If you believe in the god of war
go to Dresden
where charred faces
still look anxiously up at clouds
If you can wash your hands in fountains
where women and children
sought refuge from the firestorm of incendiary bombs
only to boil in water … [Read more…]
Bay Area Poets and Musicians to Share Talents on Behalf of Refugee Children
Logan Heights Restaurateur to Host Flor y Canto and Future Community Events
By Brent E. Beltrán
Flor y canto. Flower and song. Poetry. Music. Love.
This Saturday afternoon Mark Lane of Poppas’s Fresh Fish in Logan Heights is going to help share some musical and literary love. The parking lot of his small restaurant will be the site of the 3rd annual Flor y Canto where poets and musicians will share their words on behalf of the border refugee children.
Mark Lane was thrust into the immigrant rights spotlight after calling for a boycott of Murrieta, California and taking in a refugee family from Guatemala. I interviewed him recently about the hate and threats he faced from those wanting to send refugee families back to their country of origin to face possible death. [Read more…]
Geo-Poetic Spaces: Broken Tracks
By Ishmael von Heidrick-Barnes
No trains
arrive Gate 17 Grunewald Station
A red and white gate flung open
exposes splattered stones
Nameless platform
Of dates, places, numbers
Sorrow is a spike
that crumbles buildings … [Read more…]
Video Pick: Charles Bukowski Uncensored (and Animated)
“If you can’t write the next line, you’re dead…”
Why Read? In Defense of Uselessness
By Jim Miller
While I still deeply love my chosen profession of teaching after twenty-five years of work at various colleges with the last seventeen of those at San Diego City College, it’s hard not to notice the constant drumbeat of critics casting doubt on the value of my life’s work in the humanities.
Whether they be corporate education reformers bent on imposing a business model on colleges or techno-boosters with a zeal to toss all that I hold dear into the dustbin of history, there is a long line of naysayers.
As David Masciotra recently noted in “Pulling the Plug on English Departments” in The Daily Beast, “The armies of soft philistinism are on the march and eager to ditch traditional literature instruction in favor of more utilitarian approaches . . . It is easy to observe the sad and sickly decline of American intellectual life, through the cultural and institutional lowering of standards, when prestigious publications promote the defense, if not the celebration, of lower standards.” [Read more…]
War Weary
By Jay Powell
Weary.
That’s what they say we are.
The chicken hawk sabre rattlers
Are yellin’ at Obama ‘cause
He won’t put real boots on the ground
But they won’t say exactly that cause they know we are
(war) weary. [Read more…]
Geo-Poetic Spaces: Coming Back to Germany
By Ishmael von Heidrick-Barnes
I come back to Germany
because of flower boxes on balconies
bread baked fresh mornings
dogs traveling on trains
I come back to Germany
because she still reads newspapers
awakens with church bells
closes up shop on Sundays … [Read more…]
Naomi Klein: ‘Our Economic Model Is at War with Life on Earth’
New video trailer previews thesis of anticipated new book by Canadian writer and activist
By Jon Queally / Common Dreams
The book’s title is not elusive: ‘This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate
Due for release in September, the anticipated new work by Canadian journalist, activist and public intellectual Naomi Klein has now been previewed in a video trailer that appears to lay out its main themes and central argument.
“In December of 2012, a complex systems scientists walked up to the podium at the American Geophysics Union to present a paper,” the narrator of the video—Klein herself—says as footage begins of urban high rise developments and burnt out croplands. [Read more…]
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