No fooling, today is the start of National Poetry Month. Me, I think we need poetry 24/7/365.
Siddhartha Mitter's radio piece today about Yusef Komunyakaa made me think of one of my favorite poets whose work was also deeply shaped by the Vietnam War: Pedro Pietri, the Lower East Side's holy fool.
You can hear him here and here. And thinking about archives, I pulled up an old issue of The Portable Lower East Side, a long-gone and very missed magazine from the 1980s, and found this:
Rumors about Blank Walls and World War
(excerpt)
I swear to god the english I speak
Was learned in a week late at night
I write in perfect Spanish BUT SINCE
The typewriter was manufcatured in
The U.S.A. it never comes out that way
So don't get on my case or try to erase
My poetry off the face of the earth
Because on my birth certificate it says
I wasn't born here or there or anywhere
Within walking distance from times square
Location of United Nations wet dreams
And it seems there is a romance going on
Between the living & the dead are ahead!
It was really too much cheap alcohol
That ended the dinosaurs career in show
Business during the silent movie generation
At war with every country but Skid Road
To keep the General Public's mind off para
Psychology--the only subject I didn't fail
In elementary school where they teach you
The price of rice in Afghanistan and beans
In Alaska & snowSuits in tropical psycho wards!
This can be true or false or false & true
It has nothing at al to do with history OR
Hypnosis--If your liver doesn't like you
Drinking water can also give you cirrhosis!
***
Pull out your favorite poet and read some out loud. It'll make your day better, I promise.
[Out-of-focus 2000 Senate campaign poster via El Puerto Rican Embassy]
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