Curbstone Press -- A Literary Press for our Times

Curbstone Press has been doing it for 30 years – creating this country’s most progressive, far-sighted, passionate, and vital literature. With the motto, “Poetry, like bread, is for everyone” (taken from one of Roque Dalton’s most well-known poems), Curbstone has published luminaries of the engaged word like Martin Espada, Marnie Mueller, Claribel Alegria, Nguyen Ba Chung, Roberto Sosa, Agness Bushell, Lorraine Lopez, and many others – including an impressive roster of Latino writers from the United States and Latin America.

Of my ten published works, five were done by Curbstone Press (including three poetry books, a children’s book, and a memoir). That’s why this weekend I was around the Willimantic, Connecticut area for the 30th Anniversary of the press, with events at Real Art Ways in Hartford, CT; Eastern Connecticut State University; the University of Connecticut at Storrs; and the Willimantic public schools, and other venues.

Highlighting the celebration was a fiesta at ECSU on Sunday that included a reading of some 25 Curbstone writers (who with great restraint, out of respect more than anything else, more or less stayed within the two-minute reading limit per poet – almost unheard of in poetry readings). Curbstone founders – and the heart and soul of the press – are Alexander “Sandy” Taylor and his long-time partner, Judith Doyle. Sandy told the group that Judy knows everything there is to know about publishing, and he knows the rest.

Together they’ve sustained a strikingly revolutionary press in a time when progressive institutions, bookstores, and organizations seem to be pushed to the wayside (in Los Angeles. we recently lost one of the most important socially-vital bookstores with the closing of the Midnight Special).

Special honors that day went to Breyten Breytenbach, one of South Africa’s most important authors; Sam Hamill, well-known poet, translator, and editor – and the spark behind the International Poets against the War movement; Lucy Anne Hurston, niece of Zora Neale Hurston, who recently published an impressive study of her aunt’s life and work; and Robert Meeropol, son of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, and head of the Rosenberg Fund for Children.

I had the pleasure of having dinner with Sam Hamill Saturday evening. He is presently working on a November 5 global action of Poets against the War during President Bush’s visit to Argentina to meet with heads of state of most countries in the Americas. I told him Tia Chucha’s Café Cultural would love to do a reading that day as part of this international mobilization. Mr. Hamill is one of this county’s most important voices for poetry as a sane, peaceful and just response to the present world’s dangers and uncertainties. He is someone who has sacrificed much to keep poetry at the heart of what matters in this country.

The next three days, I’ll be doing talks, readings, and writing workshops at Windham High School – which I have done before, since at least 1991 when Curbstone Press published my poetry collection, The Concrete River.

This month, Curbstone, along with Rattle Magazine, produced my latest book, My Nature is Hunger: New & Selected Poems, 1989-2004. With meaning and purpose, big ideas and poetic vision, blood and song, Sandy and Judy have battled book by book, event by event, to bring great literature to the world.

I’m deeply honored to be part of Sandy’s and Judy’s great endeavor – to be a life-time Curbstonista.

Responsibility and Accountability

President Bush on Tuesday, September 13, took responsibility for part of the second disaster – the lack of a timely and comprehensive federal response to the first disaster of Hurricane Katrina. I’m glad to see this. More politicians and bureaucrats should stand up and be held accountable.

Unfortunately, accountability may be the missing ingredient in this batch of cookies. If Bush is responsible, he should also take the consequences. People died that didn’t have to die as a direct result of the late and erratic rescue efforts. Not only was Bush on vacation as word of Katrina’s impending landfall was declared, so was Vice-President Cheney, Defense Secretary Rumsfield, and Secretary of State Rice (how dumb is it to have the administration’s major decision makers out at the same time). And none apparently cut short their vacations – except after public and media pressure became too uncomfortable to ignore.

Proprietors of a residential nursing home for the elderly have been arrested for possible negligent homicide in the deaths of close to 40 people. Okay. But far greater negligence can be firmly placed at the feet of Bush and his cronies. This was nothing short of negligent homicide – considering they had full warning and enough images of dead, stranded, and desperate people to get them to move (which they did, although still in exasperating spurts, and after it was too late).

If we are to be truly free and truly honest, legal proceedings should begin at once in this matter. Why even President Clinton was raked through the coals, including in a costly impeachment trial, for a far lesser – even if stupid and incomprehensible – misuse of power.

Public interest lawyers – not just those out to get the ‘money” – should do their duty to file the proper papers and begin this process. The Congress should step up to the level of the ire of most Americans and carry out their own impeachment proceedings.

How many more lies and levels of incompetence can we tolerate?

Serious lessons cannot be learned without a serious demand. The government must never again drop the ball when it comes to taking care of the poor, the weakened, and the needy. This is not a call for a dependent social welfare society. This is the legitimate call for the government to work tirelessly for all of the people, not just the rich and powerful.

Any other administration – Republican or Democrat – should be put on notice: We will not tolerate lame excuses and tired platitudes when it comes to a viable plan to use all available resources to save everyone when disaster strikes (including a complete preparedness before they occur). Moreover, we may as well include the daily disasters due to economic shifts and social policies that have made more people poor, with fewer options and resources, and not much means to pull out of the mire.

Remember, this is the administration that flubbed the 9/11 attack – ignoring good intelligence and taking up the bad. This is the same gang that lied to justify a costly and deadly war against Iraq – which, it turns out, was never part of the terrorist attacks and had no weapons of mass destruction (the main reasons given for sacrificing many of our sons and daughters, and countless Iraqi citizens, to invade).

Remember, this is the same administration that has made poverty more prevalent than at any time since the 1950s. That has gutted our schools and destroyed teaching morale to the detriment of our children, especially those in the inner city and poor rural communities. And that has made a mockery of environmental protections.

This is the administration that for the first time in our history helped place the words “voter fraud,” “torture,” and “criminal negligence” next to news items about the United States of America (even if many of us have long known such things have long existed here).

We may not be prepared as a nation to carry out our full responsibilities during this crisis, but at least it must be brought to the table. Those in power – not just the inane bureaucrats like former FEMA director Michael Brown – should be held accountable and removed.

That’s what any decent society would do. Let’s see how decent and thorough we can become as we try to get to the business of good, honest, and fair governance.

Time for Straight Talk, Straight Answers

“Don’t play the blame game.” That’s the Republicans new mantra. That’s their way of sidetracking the obvious complicity of the Bush Administration in this government’s abysmal response to Hurricane Katrina’s destructive swathe through the Gulf Coast.

Bush has even called for a major investigation – which wastes more tax dollars, since no one has the decency to stand up and say they made mistakes. The government would rather waste time, energy, and money (ours, not theirs) to see if those mistakes can be unearthed by those who weren’t even there, or buried under the mountain of information that is generated in such investigations (remember the 9/11 report, which articulated clear negligence on the part of US intelligence agencies and the Bush Administration, although no one faced prosecution or serious accountability).

The American people, however, know what happened (remember Lincoln’s adage – “you can fool all the people some of the time, you can fool some of the people all the time, but you can’t fool all the people all the time”).

We know that FEMA was cut 44 percent from its proposed budget earlier this year. We know that millions in levee repairs in New Orleans were routed to the Iraq War and other Bush priorities (for example, an island of 50 people in Alaska received more than $500 million to construct a bridge, although these people already have ferries to transport them).

We know that federal officials denied or failed to respond to assistance from other cities and relief agencies (Chicago, for example, had truckloads of food, supplies, equipment, and manpower ready to go, but were not given the okay). We know that people were routed into the Superdome and the Convention Center without a plan to get them supplies, facilities, or protection (there were reports of suicides, people beaten and killed, a child raped and murdered, babies with slit throats, and more – although most of these have yet to be substantiated).

We know that Bush – after weeks of vacation – attended photo-op events in Southern California during the worse of the storm’s assault – and Condoleeza Rice was seen shopping in New York City during her vacation until called back to Washington DC after about a week (only to make a statement that the Bush Administration did not hate black people, as if this alone can assuage the reality of what we saw).

We know that countries like Venezuela and Cuba – long attacked by the government and the media as enemies of “American freedom” – were prepared to send doctors, oil, equipment, and funds, yet the Bush Administration has still not allowed this to happen (although people on the Gulf Coast badly need doctors – people died after the storm because of lack of doctors).

I can go on and on – we can get these stories and more on the daily reports from news sources (some reporters have awakened and righteously challenged the government’s inept response and tired excuses).

We don’t need any more investigations – unless it’s to seriously lay bare what actually happened, where the flaws existed, who’s responsible, and what affirmative steps will be taken to guarantee this will never happen again.

Something the people of the Gulf Coast and the rest of the country have long deserved. A straight story. True accountability. Real changes.

Yeah, right.

While stories of looting, rapes, and beatings were oft repeated (under such distress, some people go crazy, some decide that people’s lives are more important than property, and, some – mind you, this was still a minority – just don’t give a damn), other stories told of heroic acts: a six-year-old leading six other children younger than him (including a baby in his arms), all holding hands, among evacuees lost after rescue teams placed them on a highway; a man who used a leaking aluminum boat to save 200 people; how others, including strangers, united in teams at a second-floor of a school to get food and supplies until they could be saved; how millions of people, probably without much means themselves, offered their homes, their cars, their time, and money to immediately help those in the disaster zones; how cooperation, caring, and real planning can and has always worked when most needed.

Take Cuba again – last year Hurricane Ivan threatened to destroy a major portion of the country and kill tens of thousands. Through careful planning and social cooperation, 1.5 million people were evacuated to higher ground. No lives were lost when Ivan finally hit.

We deserve at least this much – with much more resources at our disposal.

Capitalism is at the root of the madness we’re seeing: Where police are forced to shoot and ward off looters, and letting food rot, instead of opening up the stores and handing them to the people who need it. Where those with means were allowed to leave New Orleans, leaving those who didn’t have means to fend for themselves. Where buses that have been used to transport tens of thousands to Houston’s Astrodome and other locations were unavailable for the poor before the storm hit. And where close to $60 billion dollars has been allocated so far by the government, when only millions were required to prepare New Orleans and most of the Gulf Coast for the inevitable hurricanes everyone predicted.

Yes, now the government, corporations, cities, other countries, relief agencies, churches, and people with very little to begin with, are providing aid in an amazing outpouring of immense magnitude.

But what about before the storms hit? Before another 9/11? When people most need the help not to be poor, neglected, and abandoned?

It’s time to ask the truly hard questions. It’s time to clarify the possible and powerful ways to go beyond the needs of a few rich capitalists who dictate who lives and dies in this country. The fact is – most of those people didn’t have to die. The fact is it’s within our power to do something about it. The fact is capitalism is the biggest block to true human freedom, protection, and well-being on earth. If we learn anything at all, we should learn that we, the people, organized, conscious, and imaginative, can do better.

Every Hour of Every Day

Hurricane Katrina’s destruction of much of the Gulf Coast, particularly in New Orleans, is heart-rending and too tragic for words. My prayers go out to all the people of this great city, and cities like Biloxi and Gulfport, Mississippi and other stricken areas.

To help, I’ve donated the profits of my poetry/music CD, “My Name’s Not Rodriguez,” from sales at CD Baby.com to relief efforts. Other efforts on my part will also be considered.

I was supposed to be in New Orleans in November – a trip I’m sure will not happen. Of course, the scope of the disaster renders such a concern to dust. The people, the people, they are what matters – and we need to do more to make sure they are safe, healthy, and given adequate resources to rebuild.

However, I have to emphatically say – much of this tragedy could have been averted, something we’ve learned from far too many other “natural” disasters.

The chaos, floating bodies, lack of facilities, looting, stranded people, and more is not just the result of Mother Nature. Government bodies, while also doing some heroic labors, also failed.

One example: People were told to evacuate before Katrina hit New Orleans (it had already tore up parts of Florida). Apparently close to 80 percent of the people in that city did. However, many who were left behind were those who couldn’t leave: They were the poorest, those without cars or money for gas, buses or trains. The majority of these people were African Americans. They are the main ones crammed into the Superdome and the Convention Center, most of the dead and the homeless.

Yes, many of them have been “looting,” some even shooting at rescuers. But let me tell you, if food, medical supplies, water, toilets, and other necessities become nonexistent, I’d probably do the same (besides most of the people in New Orleans are not “looting”).

In the long run, who cares about Wal-Mart or the other stores being broken into? How can we give more priority to inanimate products than people who are dying, starving, and becoming more desperate by the hour? I saw rescue efforts abandoned by law enforcement and National Guard personnel to “stop the looters.” Who’s giving the message that products and things are more important than people?

Unfortunately, we are.

There were even instances of photo captions on the Internet and newspapers of black people said to be ‘looting” while white people doing the same thing were said to be “finding.” Come on!

It’s like the US military making sure the oilfields and corporate offices were secured in Baghdad and other parts of Iraq while museums and whole neighborhoods were allowed to be destroyed and/or looted. We protect the capitalism system at all costs – even at the costs of our lives and our rational minds.

Here are some questions: Why didn’t the government evacuate the poor people knowing that Katrina was going to devastate New Orleans (this was common knowledge way before the hurricane hit)? It would have averted the madness we’re seeing today – and the death.

Why did the government drastically cut FEMA and other disaster relief programs in states across the country, but, in particularly, around the Gulf Coast where engineers and others have known hurricanes could devastate the area at any time? The levees that broke in New Orleans were no surprise to those who have been warning about this for decades.

Why did President Bush wait almost three days before responding to the disaster that was unfolding on every TV, radio, and newspaper around the country? Then when he did, he even had to admit the results were sporadic and inadequate.

I’ll tell you why: Because Republicans and their Democrat cronies made policy decisions and budget cuts – even in the face of expert warning – to fuel a disastrous war and to maintain the narrow interests of their corporate-sponsors.

Someone has to be held accountable.

Nature is nature – it is bountiful and destructive. Human beings are human beings – we can do courageous, amazing things with technology, our hearts, and our minds, yet we can also fly in the face of reality and destroy each other more efficiently than nature itself can do.

In the end the poor pay the price (look at what happened when the Tsunami hit Southeast Asia). These aren’t just God-driven disasters; these are also within the purview of policy makers and so-called leaders. Don’t blame God for that – blame the people who decided war and profits were more important than the well-being of all the people.

Unfortunately, they make these decisions every hour of every day.