Poetry reading

Last Sunday the 22nd of Feb was the reading for Barbara and Patrick Rosal at 2100 Grand. Unfortunately, we arrived late because the SO had to visit and chat with the parental units. The parental units had offerred two kinds of Marie Calendar's pies, one chocolate and the other a lemon meringue. Who can say "No"?

Patrick is a slam poet from New York and the part I saw was exciting. I specially liked his "Kundiman" poem which hopefully is included in his latest book. I was ready to shell out the big bucks to get a poetry book, but Patrick did not bring any. Next time, he needs to so that he can deduct the expenses for the trip in his 1040 tax forms.

For the following, I am not discussing Patrick because as I said previously, I only heard two of his poems.

The interesting thing about slam poetry to me is the rhythm. Many of the current slam poets usually cater to the rhythm to such an extent that even the words become a slave to the all encompassing rhythm. I have heard slam poets who seemed to have harvested the dictionaries of rhyming just so that they could find words that end in "-tion." Sometimes, the alliteration(?) works, sometimes it does not.

Another aspect of slam poetry that I have detected is the use of the "I" as protagonist (Ooops, time for work. To be continued).

(Lunch time the next day) Continuation. So, I was discussing slam poetry. I look at slam poetry and liken it to the movement of the beat poets. It will define the poetry that is written by a generation. I am wistful to a certain extent that my poetry does not belong to that style, but then again, I have never belonged in a certain sense to anything. Perhaps, it is appropriate that my poetry and photography will not belong to styles.

I do believe however that there is a new generation of Pin@y artists who are defining the golden age of Pin@ys in America. As I previously called them, these New Pin@ys are the children of immigrants who have had a chance to go to college and obtain their graduate degrees. It is only with the development of an intellectual class does a culture attain the ability to document and record its achievements. The alternative is backbreaking and near impossible archaeology.

As the SO wrote in her blog, we all ended up drinking some beer at a bar in downtown Oakland. These situations are interesting for me because social events sometimes makes me hide. It's hard to try and probe people for their interests and life. It's a good thing that Patrick's friends are Pinoys so we ended up discussing Filipino food and the various Filiopino restaurants around San Francisco.

We'll be heading on to New York sometime in April. Hope we'll get to see Patrick and the other folks in NY.