Go visit a museum and tell me what you see, who is represented? Who is represented disproportionately? Or, better yet, go to any museum of your choice via the internet and count how many artists of color are represented. Below is a poetic “review” by Sesshu Foster which he wrote after a visit to the U.C. L. A. Hammer Museum in Los Angeles with his mother.

review of “made in l.a.” at the ucla hammer museum

it’s okay that the artists are all white, even the nonwhite artists (2?) are kind of white

it’s okay that the curators are all white, it’s

okay that the l.a. reflected in this show is like the l.a. in robert altman’s “shortcuts” which is a strange all-white l.a. Read More >

Henry Miller Memorial Library announces “Speech is Not Free! 50th Anniversary: Tropic of Cancer Obscenity Trial”

Friday, November 7th at Coagula Curatorial Gallery in Los Angeles
Henry Miller is responsible for — to quote scholar James Decker — “the free speech that we now take for granted in literature.” It began fifty years ago when Miller’s novel “Tropic of Cancer” was deemed not obscene by the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Henry Miller Memorial Library in Big Sur and its literary magazine Ping-Pong, will be throwing a party at the Coagula Curatorial Gallery in Los Angeles to honor this landmark event while ruefully acknowledging that free speech is once again under siege.

“Speech is Not Free! 50th Anniversary of the Tropic of Cancer Obscenity Trial” will celebrate this historic win for free speech by bringing together writers, poets, and authors who will read or display a piece of art/prose/poem/song that was banned and that effected them in a transformative way. Participants will also read or sing an original piece. Read More >

Dear Reader,

Let me begin with a meditation: speech is not free, someone has paid the tab for you. This year we mark the 50^th anniversary of the 1964 overturning by the Supreme Court of an earlier ruling which found the Tropic of Cancer, by Henry Miller to be obscene. Henry says:

It may be that we are doomed, that there is no hope for us, any of us, but if that is so then let us set up a last agonizing, bloodcurdling howl, a screech of defiance, a war whoop! (Tropic of Cancer) Read More >

Ping-Pong, the journal of art and literature published by the Henry Miller Memorial Library, is pleased to announce the winner of its second annual poetry contest, Mark Lamoureux. His poem, “Summerhenge, Winterhenge,” was chosen by judge, David Shapiro from among many entries. His poem will be featured in the upcoming issue of Ping-Pong set for release in October 2014. “Spaceship Bodhisattva” is Lamoureux’s poem from the 2011 issue of Ping-Pong. Read More >

Best cheese I’ve ever eaten is in the Allgäu in the German Alps. We hiked up to the top of the mountain and stayed here:

You can either take a gondola to the top or hike in. Most folks hike from outpost to outpost.

Each night we fell asleep to the sound of cowbells and rain. Read More >

On Tuesday we had dinner at the legendary restaurant, Jules Verne, located inside the Eiffel Tower. The view, made even more beautiful by a sudden rainstorm and double rainbow, is better than the food–which though palatable, certainly did not equal the amount paid for quality, though the bread, wine, and company were fabulous. And the little shovel spoons are now our family crest:

You really can’t beat it for the view and the romance. And remember, if at no other time in your life, in Paris, at least, you gotta rock the red lipstick:

Read More >

Begins with a sunset on the Pont Marie next to our pied-à-terre in the Île Saint-Louis, one of two natural islands in Paris.

The next evening we invited some folks over for a small fête to kick of the week of events planned for the Henry Miller Memorial Library’s Aller Retour Paris literary festival. Naturally this involved much wine, bread and cheese. The calm before the storm:

Pont Marie Gang at Sunset (not featured, our photographer and pal: Debi Lorenc)

I wanted to only eat bread, cheese and butter the whole time in Paris, but after two days, I had to add some roughage. That’s all I’m saying. I made everyone go out to the bridge at sunset where we drank German sekt (sorry France) and ate petite madeleine from Combray and talked about Proust, yes, I am serious. Reading the new translation of Swann’s Way right now. Read More >

Part of the brilliance of Kim Addonizio’s poetry resides in its tuna can lid cut to the wrist of reality: there is truth here which does not kill, but makes one bleed a bit, only you don’t know you’re bleeding until you see the drops staining your white blouse.

When asked to submit the 10 most influential books on my writing, Addonizio’s poetry sat at the top.  She is not only an American treasure in the realm of poetry, she’s also a generous advocate to young poets. Her popular online poetry workshop is generative and intimate. She opens her home to legendary poetry salons in the tradition of the greatest writers throughout history, she is, in a word: wunderschön. Read More >

If my husband’s head were a suitcase I’d put it on the front porch and phone Good Will, storehouse of all second-hand goods and include my blue dancing shoes with heels in want of repair. I don’t need them to dance alone in my living room with the curtains drawn to Hitsville U.K., to Fisherman’s Blues, to Ode to Joy like a trash-can ballerina all thump of toes on hardwood floor and limbs akimbo. Read More >

I translated the poems that make up Black Tulips: The Selected Poems of José María Hinojosa (University of New Orleans Press, 2012).This Ping-Pong folio*  is inspired by several of Hinojosa’s relatively early poems, poems largely made out of questions. The question is a central trope in general in the work of Hinojosa. His poetry is a kind that is speculative and imaginative, with a language that grows increasingly richer, symbolic, and dense. The act of wondering fills his work, wondering about the world, about love, and finally about the present and future of the country he loves. Though his politics could not be further from my own, being the first translator of Hinojosa into English, becoming his voice in this language for the first time, was a great pleasure and a great responsibility. There was a great injustice in erasing such a gifted, significant poet. “Lost, but now found,” writes Jonathan Cohen, translator and poet. I can only hope he stays found for a very long time- Mark Statman

*Each year Ping-Pong magazine has a folio where we invite responses to various poems in translation. This year we will feature Alexander Blok.

Write your own poetic response to the following questions posed in this poem (in Spanish and English) by José María Hinojosa.  Read More >