Bunches, like grapes, of news

Super quick notes... because I keep forgetting to post.

San Francisco International Poetry Festival
I received the kindest email from San Francisco Poet Laureate Jack Hirschman last week, who organizes the San Francisco International Poetry Festival. He invited me to be a reader for the festival, which is unbelievable, and just plain stunning. Thank you, Jack. I so look forward to meeting everyone there, to celebrating poetry in San Francisco, this July 23-26, to representing the Philippines and the U.S. dually, among all these gracious veteran and international poets. He's inviting me based on the poem which appeared in APR, and I get to be the first non-bay area poet to represent the U.S!

Central Valley California Book Tour
Daniel and I spent spring break (last week) in California (where he still is, and I'm no longer) running up and down the central valley on his California book tour for Unending Rooms, which is going into its second printing. We've been to Fresno, Porterville, Visalia, Hayward, and more, and everyone has been so kind, welcoming and supportive. Thank you. Thank you especially to Professors Teresa Tarazi and Lee Herrick for organizing "CHACON3," a reading between Daniel, me, and our brother Kenneth--our first family trio reading. Also, thanks, Lee, for letting me visit your class. Your students are so articulate and conscious. I wish I'd gotten the chance to read their poems. For all the juicy details, Daniel's writing about his tour experience on his blog.

Callaloo's Texas Writers Conference
What a treat! Thank you to Dr. Charles Rowell, editor at Callaloo, for accepting two excerpts of my poem, Blood, Sister (first published in APR) for the most recent issue of the journal. Thank you also for allowing us to participate at the Callaloo conference, chock full to the brim of writers-- a conference entirely of its own kind-- where I had the pleasure of listening to great authors like Ed Hirsch, Rolando Hinojosa-Smith, Texas Poet Laureate (and new friend) Larry Thomas, Michael Collins, Shay Youngblood, Sehba Sarwar, Christine Granados...I could go on. The conference was that spectacular, uplifiting, that dynamic. I can still see an image from Shay Youngblood's reading, her character unbuttoning her top button, the tension of that act within the heated emotional situation. It took place from March 2-4 at College Station, Texas A&M University, and though we only were able to attend the latter two days, it was equivalent to a year's worth of readings. The Callaloo staff was so impressive, notably Casey Brown and Brook Hodges--like clockwork. They taught me, simply through their practice, how a really well-made event is run.

American Poetry Review
Editor Elizabeth Scanlon, at the American Poetry Review, was kind enough to include my poem Blood, Sister, in its entirety in the most recent issue. She even put my name on the cover, and my poem on the first two pages! It's also available here, on the posted current issue of their website. It's such a beautiful journal-- to be included among my heroes is such an honor. I can't believe I'm in the same journal as Sherman Alexie (you can read his poem Gentrification online here), Paisley Rekdal (whose poem Intimacy is here), Albert Goldbarth, Rita Dove, Stanley Moss and Tony Hoagland, among other incredible poets. More later on the issue itself--these poems, man, these poems... whoo!.

BorderSenses Submissions and Event
BorderSenses is happy to c0-sponsor, along with EPPL and MCAD, a joint reading between UTEP alum Anthony Seidman and Juarez poet Edgar Rincon Luna this Friday, March March 27 at the downtown El Paso Public Library (501 N. Oregon), 6:30pm. A reception follows the event, and the readings will be kick-started by local poet and musician Freddy Guttierez.

Also, BorderSenses literary magazine has extended its call for submissions for our next issue (due in out in May). Please see our website for further event and submission details.

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Arthur Sze's "The Gingko Light"

Arthur Sze's poem "The Gingko Light," published in Field magazine and featured today on poems.com. It's amazing. From one silence and one stillness, it fragments into overhwelming pains, moments and stories, only to fall back into that first silence newly, heavily. Read it here.

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CR Review, Grant and Travel Plans, and Snow

Ellyn Ruthstrom posted a review of the 2007 fall/winter Colorado Review issue, in which my first nonfiction essay "The Falls We Take" appeared. Thanks to impeccable editor Stephanie G'Schwind again for including me in the issue, which is one of the finest journals I've ever received in the mail, let alone been included in, as well as for telling us about the review (see here).

Ruthstrom was kind enough to write:

And even when I went back to "The Falls We Take" knowing its intent, I was still caught up by the blurring of time and space (which I find fiction usually
does a better job of) and Sasha Pimentel Chacon's emotive storytelling. Her
nonlinear tale keeps circling back on itself, allowing the examples of three
very different falls to push her metaphor into many different shapes. The
epiphany Chacon reaches from her experiences of rock climbing can resonate
deeply for many. "But if I fall, if I yield to the temptation of just letting
go, then for a moment I can live in the space outside of myself, which must be
better than the terrors I carry inside."

In a few days, once we finish finals and grading our students' papers, Daniel and I are off to California. We're happy to run through L.A., Fresno, San Francisco, and hopefully make it through a mini-vacation to Mexico before coming back to El Paso. He and I both have great teaching schedules next semester, so we should have the opportunity to be more productive.

I'm also directing a grant through the El Paso Museums and Cultural Affairs Department, written with BorderSenses publisher Amit Ghosh, in which we seek to collect stories and other literary artifacts of this region and "publish" it through multimedia, workshops, and most excitingly, a community-painted mural. We've an idea of the space for the mural, but haven't gotten official word. This project is being curated by muralist Francisco Delgado, known in El Paso for his murals in the all-important Segundo Barrio. The art to the left is Delgado's piece titled "El Plan." We're lucky to have such an accomplished and conscious artist working with us.

Today, because this is El Paso, the step, the passage, the place of transition where anything can happen, it was foggy, then windy, then it snowed, then the weather turned so pleasant, it was so sunny that the white house across the street from our apartment was indistinguishable from the sky, save for its red roofline.

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Walk Out Empty

This morning, while Daniel was on his chair writing, the sun hitting his face and the edges of his laptop, I felt the need for croissant. So, after calling multiple bakeries in El Paso only to find out that no, there is no french bakery near my house (despite my hopes) and that no, bakeries in my zip code aren't open even at 7am, I went to Albertsons. That croissant soon became a need for Arabic bread, warm with cheese, however.

When we lived in Saudi, my father would start our weekend coming home from the corner shop, his hands open with bread and salty goat cheese fresh from the clay oven. I remember the delicious sogginess of it, the cheese thick on my tongue.

I found a package of mass-manufactured flat bread easily, and overpriced goat cheese, but the picture on the cover turned my croissant-turned-Arabic breakfast-want into a gyro-want. I went around and around the store, making circles of my want, searching for the innards of a gyro. But there weren't any to be found. No sauce, no meat-- I wasn't expecting a whole roast, at least those pre-packaged symmetrical lamb slices--but even those were nowhere to be found. I walked around, over and over, thinking maybe this time, no, okay, maybe now?, scrutinizing each lined package, each cold and dry row. There were no Arabic foods at the store, a massive grocery store.

We know that we can re-enter memory, our personal histories, through food: we revel in the texture of it, the taste, and the smell--which can bring a ghost home after tens of years. Arabic food is as much a part of my soul's stomach as Filipino food (I lived in Saudi the first few years of my life and then again as a teenager), my need for it this morning not just nostalgic, but fundamental. It is the food of my father. Though my father is Filipino, he fed me with these tastes, gave them to me. I became a child, and then a woman to these foods.

Food, the fineness of it, is essential. How else do we make ourselves intimate with these cultures which are a part of us, but which we are separated from, other than to make love with them with our own bodies, our throats and stomachs, the most inside parts of us? I can cook Filipino food. My mother taught me over many years, just the two of us in her kitchen. (Except for the dinuguan I failed at the other week-- I hadn't realized how quickly blood burns, how sudden a black skein can form as the rest of the liquid quickly curdles). But Arabic food, I'm an incompetent cook for. And nothing, nothing at the grocery store.

Of course political me, I got angrier and angrier at the missingness of it, its missingness inherently making it "the other." I thought of Kazim Ali's letter, posted on Oliver de la Paz's blog, the recycling of poetry manuscripts confused as a bomb. I thought of The Other, remembered my students' confused faces as I stalked the chalboard, discussing Orientalism yesterday. At the specialty frozen foods aisle, there were a few boxes each of German food, Polish food, Jewish food, Vegan food, and yet, nothing Arabic. I though of how easily liberals who would scoff at being called racist can make jokes of the middle east, of systematic anti-Arab sentiment in this country, at how funny yes, but true the Harold and (non-Arabic, but close enough in the eyes of an orientalist) Kumar sketch was when Kumar turns, and the woman in the airplane aisle behind him sees his dark skin, his dark hair, becomes terrified.

Of course too, if the Albertsons of "79902, America" doesn't have Arabic food, or Filipino food, it doesn't mean they are racist. We can make claims that their not including of these cultures is a latent form in and of itself, but they are a corporation, and their decisions are based on fiscal need, not emotional need. But it still strikes me still, simmers in my empty stomach, my thick tongue, how in this country, a city so big can still have a major grocery store from a major grocery chain that is still so monocultured.

At least I'm lucky. We live close to Mexico. For this reason, there are nopales y que, tripe and chorizo at this store, parts of the animal and parts of the plant that my historically Spanish-conquered heart loves too.

But, with a view of the bridge and the Mexican flag from "79902, America," even these foods are still in the specialty section.

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Daniel's book listed as one of Kansas City Star's most notable books of the year

Daniel's been getting some nice (and well-deserved) press recently for his new collection of short stories, Unending Rooms. Published as the winner of the Hudson Prize (Black Lawrence Press), it was just short-listed as one of Kansas City Star's top ten short story collections of the year.

Click here for Black Lawrence's press about it. And here for the Kansas City Star article.

The panelist who chose the book, Linda Rodriguez, writes:

Unending Rooms, by Daniel Chacón. Down and dirty Chicano stories combine with Borges-like meta-fiction.Unending Rooms, by Daniel Chacón. Down and dirty Chicano stories combine with Borges-like meta-fiction.

There's also an article by Ramon Renteria at El Paso Times (see article: "Author Lauded for Inventive Storytelling"), where you can listen to Daniel read one of my favorite short stories, "The Magic Duck," told from the perspective of a duck who sometimes doesn't always think like a duck.

Unending Rooms is, of course, available on Amazon. Be the first to review it.

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Looking for Racist Colonial Quotes

All,
This week my class is reading M. Butterfly, and I'd love to include some "fun" racist quotes to drive the Orientalist's views home to my students. Do you all have any good conquistador passages about the Asian man or woman? I'd like for them to see how othering, how higly sexualized their idea of our "orient" is.

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The American Poetry Review

I'm pretty excited. This week, I received a post office-forwarded letter from Editor Elizabeth Scanlon at The American Poetry Review, accepting my poem "Blood, Sister" for publication.

Whoot! Whoot!
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We Torch The Village

We Torch the Village, an eclectic student group at the University of Texas at El Paso, is putting together a completely brand new event for a brand new class at the Creative Writing Department: Poetics and Performance (taught by Daniel). They're an impressive group of students as literary activists-- check out their myspace site here-- full of sound and language, witty, and it looks like, a little disturbed. Which always makes for a great night. They were kind of enough to feature me as a reader along with rising young poet Roberto Santos for their symphony of poetry, music, and pyromania (metaphorical or physical? who knows) this Wednesday, November 19 at 5:30pm. Downtown Library, El Paso, TX.

I'll be reading nonfiction, I think. Though I'm a little weary as I've never read my nonfiction publicly. There's a safety to the forwardness of words in a journal, but now I have to admit to everything in person. Spill the wine and take that girl...

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Juan Felipe Herrera, Stella Pope Duarte & Daniel Chacon

It's been a big year for our BorderSenses contributors, who have all recently won three prestigious book awards! Congratulations to Juan Felipe Herrera, who just won the PEN USA 2008 Literary Award for his collection of poems and essays "187 Reasons Mexicanos Can't Cross the Border." His poem "Walk In Empty" was featured in our last issue of BorderSenses, volume 14.

And congratulations to Stella Pope Duarte, who won the Chicano/Latino Literary Prize (University of California, Irvine) for her collection of short stories "Women Who Live in Coffee Shops." Her book was chosen by judge Sheila Ortiz-Taylor. Duarte's story "Vicki's Thirteen," from the winning collection, was first published in BorderSenses volume 14.

Also, congratulations to Daniel Chacón, whose newest collection of stories, "Unending Rooms," won the 2007 Hudson Prize. He'll be reading from "Unending Rooms" this Friday, November 11 at 7:00pm, UTEP Student Union, Templeton Suite, 3rd floor. He'll also be doing another reading and book signing at Barnes and Nobles (Sunland Park) on Saturday, November 22 at 2:00pm. His short stories "The City in Which He Imagined" and "Page 55" from the collection were first featured in BorderSenses volumes 14 and 13, respectively. Please join us at Daniel Chacón's events and in celebrating all of our contributors' successes. Also please note that our new thematic call for submissions is up at www.bordersenses.com, so submit your poems, stories, essays and art! We look forward to hearing from you.

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Part of The Dishonest Mailman Series

This Friday, October 24, I'm lucky enough to be doing a poetry reading with two stellar poets: Carmen Gimenéz Smith and Bobby Byrd.

Some of you know Carmen from her work as the publisher of Noemi Press. A graduate of the Iowa's Writing Workshop, she's now an Assistant Professor in creative writing at NMSU. She is the author of Odalisque in Pieces, a book of poems forthcoming in 2009 from University of Arizona Press, and her chapbook, Cassanova Variations, is forthcoming in 2008 with Dos Press. Carmen is traveling to this reading from Las Cruces, so if we can provide her with a healthy audience to reward her travel, that would be really nice.


Bobby Byrd is a long-time figure in the El Paso poetry community. Along with his wife, Lee Merrill Byrd, Bobby is the co-founder of Cincos Puntos Press. Among a prolific range of poetry books, his most recent collection of poems White Panties, Dead Friends and Other Bits & Pieces of Love came out in 2006. He's a recipient of the Lannan Fellowship for Cultural Freedom. Please see Bobby's blog here.

Our reading is sponsored by the Department of Creative Writing at UTEP, as part of their "The Dishonest Postman" Reading Series. I'llbe reading new work, and poems from my forthcoming book.

This event is free and open to the public, and I hope that you guys carve out some time to attend for some local flair, and spice, and a lot of poetry. What kind of night, after all, is a night without poetry?

The reading starts at 5:30 pm at The Percolator (217 N. Stanton Street, El Paso, TX), also home of The Barbed Wire Reading Series.

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A big thanks to my good friend Tim Z., who pointed this out to me. On the off-chance, along with Sergio Troncosco (an El Paso native, Premio Aztlan Southwest Book award-winner and author of the wildly popular The Last Tortilla), I'm a directory "face" for this month's Poets and Writers online directory.

Check it out here.

And my full Poets and Writers directory listing here.

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