Slammers
Just a few news items here in there from the outside of El Paso World. The National Poetry Slam 2010 finished up. One article covering this event says that the political poems grew wearsime on him:
But it's important when tackling a subject that's been done over and over, to have a sharp angle. Tell a story, hone a narrow focus to your rant, or just feature such amazing writing and precise delivery that it's impossible for your poem to get lost in the cacophony.
The team from Albuquerque exemplified this brilliantly. For a couple of their group poems, they tackled Chicano issues head-on. First, they performed a duet about growing up surrounded by Chicano gangs made up of former friends and classmates, and the conflicts that the gangs created within communities, families, and souls. It was tightly focused, very well written, and beautifully performed.
Gilb and Urrea in Barcelona Review
We gave you link to Dagoberto Gilb's flash fiction the other day. On that online publication,the Barcelona Review, there are several other Chicano writers including. Luis Alberto Urrea has a piece called "White Girl": 2 Short was a tagger from down around 24th St. He hung with the Locos de Veinte set, though he freelanced as much as he banged. His tag was a cloudy blue/silver goth “II-SHT” and it went out on freight trains and trucks all over the fucking place. His tag was, like, sailing through Nebraska or some shit like that. Out there, famous, large." READ MORE.
There an essay by Gilb called the "Hexigon of Conquest":
"I didn't like books when I was young. Or, better said, I didn't play much with books and they didn't play much in my life. I played baseball and football and shot hoops when I could find one. I was good, one of the two who always picked sides on all elementary school teams. I lived in that dirty house in the neighborhood, the one where the yard wasn't mowed or edged, bushes overgrown, the neighborhood where I would learn, especially from other kids' parents, that divorced and Mexican were words that were dirty too and that kept me from having friends in neat houses.
Then a new boy from another state moved in near enough when I was around 12. My new friend wasn't athletic. He never talked about sports. I didn't care because at least I got to go over to his house, which was the dirtiest of them all, on a street with a traffic light, a house that was always for sale or rent. They rented." READ MORE.
What do to if you book unintentionally is classified as chic lit
Check out this article on Chick Lit by Diane Meier when, t her suprise, finds her novel identified as "chick lit": "Let me suggest that Chick Lit is what we used to call the "Beach Book." And that it is its own genre, like mysteries or sci-fi; interesting to a specific audience primarily because of the nature and form of the genre itself. Some good stuff, some bad, no doubt, as in all genre writing, you come across an Ed McBain every now and then." READ MORE.
Inside The New Yorker
Recently Dagoberto Gilb's stories were in The New Yorker, again. So you may be wondering what goes on behind close doors at this magazine. Check out this interview "Inside the New Yorker" with copy editor Mary Norris.
Bueno more news in a little while, I need to drink my coffee.
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