More Haiku for President Obama

you don't ask or tell
reform of health a victory?
i still have cancer
--Paul Zaic

way to go, big guy
hang tough on corporate monsters
care for the children
--Terry Ansbro

In a bright spring
clear sky
clean path ahead
--Judy Halebsky

don't let them shame you
you are sun and rain and flesh
like us, your people
--Vanessa Villareal

Haiku to President Obama

At our table at AWP, we asked visitors to write Haiku postcards to President Obama. It was (and still is) an opportunity to let him hear the voices of poets and writers and all those who have the ability to imagine a world that is better.

Despite my best intentions, I was too exhausted at the end of each day to post during the event. Here are some of my favorite Haiku from AWP. I hope to post more soon. If you're interested in writing a Haiku postcard to the president, please email me.

asked "how long" -
the general's hands spread
wider
-Barry George

Promises burn wide.
My health diminishes you,
You of your questions.
- McKenzie S.

Health care flashing on
cherry blossoms unfold now
rose flushed with vigor
- Joanie Mackowski

You aren't much better
cause you're still beholden to
capitalism

- Lauren Eggert-Crowe

Photo of the Week: Stephen Kuusisto

This feature highlights a different photo each week from the 2 Split This Rock Festivals. For more photos from the last festival, check out Split This Rock's Flickr.



Featured poet Stephen Kuusisto reads at the 2008 Split This Rock Poetry Festival

MLK National Memorial

This month of April marks the 42nd anniversary of the death of Dr. King and we are commemorating his life and work by creating a memorial in our nation's capital. The Washington, DC, Martin Luther King, Jr., National Memorial will honor his life and contributions to the world through non violent social change.

Build the Dream.org has put together this micro-site to help get the message out - there are videos, photos, banners, and even a web toolbar that, when used, donates money to the creation of the memorial:

http://mlkmemorialnews.org

After many years of fund raising, the memorial is only $14 million away from its $120 million goal. Check out the site to see how you can help build the dream.

Split This Rock Poem-of-the-Week: John Murillo

Enter the Dragon

.....Los Angeles, California, 1976


For me, the movie starts with a black man
Leaping into an orbit of badges, tiny moons

Catching the sheen of his perfect black afro.
Arc kicks, karate chops, and thirty cops

On their backs. It starts with the swagger,
The cool lean into the leather front seat

Of the black and white he takes off in.
Deep hallelujahs of moviegoers drown

Out the wah wah guitar. Salt & butter
High-fives, Right on, brother! And Daddy

Glowing so bright he can light the screen
All by himself. This is how it goes down.

Friday night and my father drives us
Home from the late show, two heroes

Cadillacking across King Boulevard.
In the car’s dark cab, we jab and clutch,

Jim Kelly and Bruce Lee with popcorn
Breath, and almost miss the lights flashing

In the cracked side mirror. I know what’s
Under the seat, but when the uniforms

Approach from the rear quarter panel,
When the fat one leans so far into my father’s

Window I can smell his long day’s work,
When my father—this John Henry of a man—

Hides his hammer, doesn’t buck, tucks away
His baritone, license and registration shaking as if

Showing a bathroom pass to a grade school
Principal, I learn the difference between cinema

And city, between the moviehouse cheers
Of old men and the silence that gets us home.

-John Murillo

From Up Jump the Boogie (Cypher Books, 2010). Used by permission.


John Murillo is the current Jay C. and Ruth Halls Poetry Fellow at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing. A graduate of New York University's MFA program in creative writing, he has also received fellowships from Cave Canem, the New York Times, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts. He is a two-time Larry Neal Writers Award winner, a former instructor with DCWritersCorps, and the author of the poetry collection, Up Jump the Boogie.

Murillo appeared on the panel Aqui Estamos: A Sampling of Poetry from the Inaugural Acentos Poetry Festival during Split This Rock Poetry Festival: Poems of Provocation & Witness 2010.

Please feel free to forward Split This Rock Poem-of-the-Week widely. We just ask you to include all of the information in this email, including this request. Thanks!

Split This Rock
www.splitthisrock.org
info@splitthisrock.org
202-787-5210

Poem-of-the-Week: Dan Vera

Judicial Temperament

Thurgood whispers in Sonia's ears

You know they said the same things about me?
Master two languages, graduate at the top
They still sneer and drawl
about how 'qualified' you are."

Si, asi siempre es. she sighs.

The only quality the senators want is a mirror on the bench.

I await the sounds of Sotomayor
Rolling her Rs through oral arguments
Putting the Latin tenses in all the right places
Ruffling the feathers of the old birds
who learned their pronunciation second hand.

Inter rusticos
In forma pauperis
In flagrante delicto.

-Dan Vera


Used by permission.

Dan Vera is the author of a book of poems, The Space Between Our Danger and Delight (Beothuk Books, 2008). Poems of his have appeared in Delaware Poetry Review, The Amistad, Konch, and the anthologies DC Poets Against the War and Shaping Sanctuary. He is co-founder and co-publisher of Vrzhu Press, managing editor of the gay culture journal White Crane, founder of the Brookland Area Writers & Artists (BAWA), and co-hosts the monthly BAWA reading series.

Vera appeared on the panel Gay and Lesbian Poetry in the 40th Year Since Stonewall: History, Craft, Equality during Split This Rock Poetry Festival: Poems of Provocation & Witness 2010.

Please feel free to forward Split This Rock Poem-of-the-Week widely. We just ask you to include all of the information in this email, including this request. Thanks!

Split This Rock
www.splitthisrock.org
info@splitthisrock.org
202-787-5210

We're off to AWP!

Split This Rock will be hangin' at AWP, the annual mash-up of Associated Writers and Writing Programs, taking over the Colorado Convention Center in Denver this week.

If you'll be there, check us out at the following spots:

Come say Hi and write a haiku post card to President Obama at Split This Rock's table at the bookfair. We'll be at Table #I21. (That's the letter "I," followed by the number 21.) You know the good man needs to hear fro...m you!

Then check out the Split This Rock panel, "Don't You Hear This Hammer Ring? Socially Engaged Poetry in the Age of Obama," Saturday, April 10, 9-10:15 am, Colorado Convention Center, Street Level, 103-105. Discussing the current state of poetry of provocation and witness will be 2008 featured poet Naomi Ayala, John Murillo, and Split This Rock Co-Directors Sarah Browning and Melissa Tuckey.

Sarah will also be on an encore of a panel that was part of Split This Rock 2010, "The War Is Not Over: Writing About Iraq and the Case of the Mutanabbi Street Coalition," organized by Persis Karim. This panel takes place on Thursday, April 8, at the more civilized hour of 4:30-5:45 pm, Mineral Hall, Hyatt Regency Denver, 3rd Floor. Other panelists are Beau Beausoleil, 2010 featured poet Sinan Antoon, and Evelyn So.

And another reprised panel from Split This Rock:

Event Title: Birth and the Politics of Motherhood in Poetry
Event Participants: Melisa ‘Misha’ Cahnmann-Taylor, Alicia Ostriker, Beth Ann Fennelly, Diana Garcia
Scheduled Day: Thursday, April 8
Scheduled Time: 1:30 PM to 2:45 PM
Scheduled Room: 205 - CCC

You can check out the entire AWP schedule here: http://www.awpwriter.org/conference/2010sched.php

We'll be blogging from the conference, including posting some of our favorite haikus written to President Obama each day, so keep checking back.