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devorah major's Blog
October 2, 2009
- I was recently invited to join this collective of engaged poets. (How can one resist joining a revolutionary poets brigade?) They have a number of actions planned starting with two readings. The first one, held last Friday was wonderful. Poets included myself, Alejandro Murguia, Sarah Menafee, Neeli Cherkovski, Agneta Falk, Arthur Sheridan, Rosemary Manno, Carla Badillo Coronado, ...
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October 1, 2009
- Last night I went to see Toni Morrison. It had been decades since I had seen her, she had a new book which I knew I was going to read. She is a woman who fully lives her life and even if the questions posed, or discussion presented does not fully engage me, I know Morrison will say something that will make me think. She’s wide and funny and down to earth, always real, always ...
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November 14, 2008
- Yesterday I finally finished the next chapter in the novella I am writing. This chapter like many sat with its beginning words held between my teeth, carried in my armpit, running through my belly, recounted at night before I fell asleep so it would be there waiting for me the next time I cleared the space in both my life and my head to move the story forward once again. Now this ...
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November 11, 2008
- It has been several presidential elections since I conceded to vote for evil, the lesser of two evils that is, a capitulation in the face of fear. I just decided one day that that was an absurd notion. My grandmother after all was one who would say to someone who proclaimed that they were “only playing the devil’s advocate” that the devil didn’t need an advocate. I was clear ...
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November 11, 2008
- I grew up in a home where mostly jazz was washed the walls of our flat., jazz without vocals, without words, with loads of bop but no ditty. That and what was to me then a stream of dull talk radio voices. I had no idea what radio Pacifica was although I believe my parents had made some noises about peace and news. In other words, for a child, boring on top of boring. There was no ...
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July 4, 2008
- July 4th is always problematic for me. Yes, I know there is also Louis Armstrong to remember and celebrate, and Ted Joans too. And Thomas Jefferson died on this day, a day his children by Sally Hemmings could celebrated as the day of their legal emancipation from father’s slave to free. So what to celebrate of America and its birthing. It is more possible in the USA, than in many other ...
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June 29, 2008
- We women who came of age during the Black Power Movement, the Peace Movement, the Free Speech Movement, and yes the Feminist Movement continue to move in a circle that is, almost always, far different from most of our mothers. We were and are more independent, involved in a community reaching further than the local school or religious sanctuary, demanding a different type of relationship ...
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June 25, 2008
- “If exile were not a terrible experience, it would be a literary genre.” So begins Christina Peri Rossi in her prologue to her moving book of poetry State of Exile, translated by Marilyn Buck and released last month by City Lights Publishing (http://citylights.com/). State of Exile fell into my hands because of the illness of David Meltzer. He was scheduled to read Marilyn Buck’s ...
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June 13, 2008
- It was the summer of 1866. Congress with much rancor and many protests passed the 13th amendment. Frederick Douglass, an abolitionist and outspoken supporter of women’s rights had campaigned long and hard for the amendment. He worked with anyone to forward his agenda of justice and opportunity for all. "I would unite with anybody to do right and with nobody to do wrong," he would ...
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June 4, 2008
- “If you live with hope you’re dancing to a terrible tune.” My sister of time and family, if not shared parentage, is reading me a line of graffiti she sees scrawled on the wall as she rides Marti down Atlanta streets into the hood where hope all too often, when found at all, is encased in a neon glow looking almost tawdry in open sunlight, a certain house, an abandoned pawn shop, a ...
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May 21, 2008
- A poet and a friend- his passing hit so many communities hard. It was so unexpected. He was older, but not close to old. His health was always problematic, but no one expected that he would be gone in a blink of an eye. His work as poet, as teacher, as editor, as community activist helped to improve the lives of many. His passing caused a small tidal wave.When I first met him I was in ...
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April 28, 2008
- Last week I went to the release party for Left Curve magazine #32. In a crowded City Lights Bookstore a number of readers read fiction, poetry and non-fiction to an attentive and appreciative audience. Left Curve is making an important political and literary contribution to the magazine arena. To quote them “Left Curve is an artist-produced journal that addresses the problem(s) of ...
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April 21, 2008
- When poets die their words are their monuments. The songs they wove over their decades, few, or many, become the maps of their lives. And in those words, we who are still on this human path might find some guidance, some solace, some vision, some love. In their still breathing rhythms out of daring, anger, passion and truth we can forever find a glow in who they were, in what, despite their ...
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April 1, 2008
- My agent wishes I would be monogamous, asks me to choose the one writing bed I will sleep in. She doesn’t care what languages fill my dreams, just wants the pages that flow shaped in one direction able to be directed and sold in a clear, direct, effective way. Poetry or fiction, choose a mate. Science Fiction or Literary Fiction, Magic Realism or Speculative Fiction, make a choice. I am ...
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March 26, 2008
