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April 21: “For today's prompt, take the phrase "According to (blank)," replace the blank with a word or phrase, make the new phrase the title of your poem, and then, write the poem. Example titles might be: "According to Bob," "According to these instructions," "According to the government," "According to the sun," etc. “

I’ve noticed my “poetry” has shape shifted a bit in recent days and I’m not sure if I like the form it’s taking as free verse flirts with prose. Maybe it’s a matter of available time to think and compose—boundaries which hours or minutes impose. To the extent I can get close to a finish product, I will. Otherwise, at least the last few efforts are definitely works in progress….

According To Steve Jobs
By Bill Kirk

We are now poised on the launch pad
To the future of information accessibility.
App control is here,
Right in the palms of our hands.

Just think.
Adding “folders” technology to your phone
Will increase the number of apps
At your finger tips to over two thousand.
And did you know, there is now the potential
To imbed ten ads for you to wade through
Every thirty minutes while app surfing?

I can hardly wait.

We’ve come a long way
From crank phones and party lines.
But, doesn’t it make you wonder
Who or what is in the evolutionary driver seat?
Is technology evolving to meet our needs?
Or, instead, is human evolution
Being driven to keep up with technological change?

Never mind being tall and good looking
As a foot in the door of success.
Stilus-shaped pointer fingers and thumbs
May soon become the most sought after
Physical attributes
As the true indicators of human progress.
Then, again, maybe all we need to do
Is grow longer finger nails.

Who knows? Nail salons for men
May be just around the corner.

Eeeee!! You're looking at my first printed draft of the new Canterwood Crest book! (I know it's blurry, but I didn't want to, you know, give away any plot secrets just yet...) YAY!! Sure, it's a mess and needs several edits and about 5,000 more words, but it's a draft! Woo hoo! I had old light blue paper, so I printed it on that and had fun editing on something that wasn't boring, old white paper. I love the sight of a new draft.

I celebrated by deciding to buy myself a new phone when I turn in the completed manuscript later in the summer. I've been desperate to have WiFi on my phone since I'm a serial e-mail checker, so I'm leaning toward a BlackBerry Pearl or the new iPhone releasing in July. Anyone have a BlackBerry Pearl? Like it? I've had my phone for a couple of years and it's time for a change.

Give me an update on your project status! Who's working on revisions? Or drafting? Share!

Annecy Báez. My Daughter’s Eyes and Other Stories. Willimantic CT: 2007.

Such a tightly knit story, I wonder what leads Annecy Báez to her subtitle for her 2007 “My Daughter’s Eyes and Other Stories”? Maybe a woman's life is an assemblage of chapters that, put together, eventually form a coherent body, but one at a time, each event is what it is.

Covering the period between 1972 when the narrator, Mia, is thirteen, and 2000, when Mia’s own daughter is thirteen and a half, seventeen stories trace her life as Mia stumbles her way to sexuality and coming of age, loving her child’s father, and watching her own daughter approach the age when Mia’s life bent its way.

Little Mia has no strong reason to resist the impassioned entreaties of teenaged lothario, Pito. But for at least one story, Mia doesn’t yield to her own curiosity nor Pito’s sales pitch. A few years later, Mia and her mother suffer a huge public blowout over a pair of sexy shoes for Mia’s 15th birthday. Báez begins to weave a cyclic theme here suggested in the title, the world as seen by the daughter through her mother’s eyes. Vice versa can prove as devastating to reader comfort with such intimate looks into this girl's growing up. The mother genuinely fears red shoes will lead to a daughter’s downfall to sins of the flesh. Much of her fear grows from frenzied coital flashbacks competing for the mother’s attention while she’s coming to terms with her daughter’s emergence. The dissonance between the daughter’s hopeful innocence and the heat of the mother's recent passion grows so tremendous, the woman faints. This story closes with a dapper Samaritan closing in on mother and her lithe daughter.

I tell a more lurid version, perhaps it’s the male reader of me. Annecy Báez develops the story of the women in Mia’s family with more subtlety, and a deft woman’s touch. These are the types of stories little girls should read as cautionary tales for certain inevitabilities of their next few years development as women. These are the types of stories little boys should read to walk away with keener insight into the way girls think. Some lessons here would be excellent preparation for the hurdles of courtship rituals. Then there are the assholes. Mix in the efforts of a good class discussion, and reading My Daughter’s Eyes might be one of the best reading experiences in a middle school or high school kid’s so-called life.

Báez’ compelling collection ends on a hopeful note, thankfully. Parental and sexual abuse permeate the story and there’s a suggestion of a ceaseless pattern and ritualized ignorance. But by 2000, a mother has learned her lessons. Her choices have been her choices; leave it to the reader to say they were bad ones. This mother has determined to deal levelheaded with her daughter, aware that a mother’s past need not define the changes a daughter must go through. This mother welcomes such changes, not shuns them. At only 176 pages, some readers will want to read it twice to let some of the points sink in.

My Daughter’s Eyes and Other Stories won the 2007 Marmol Award for First Fiction. Publication of this work, and a cash advance against royalties, recognize Annecy Báez’ accomplishment in joining previous winners include Sylvia Torti - The Scorpion's Tail, 2005, 2004: Mary Helen Lagasse - The Fifth Sun; 2003: Carla Trujillo - What Night Brings; 2002: Lorraine Lopez - Soy La Avon Lady and Other Stories. Marmol did not have a 2006 winner.


Sun., Jan. 13, 2008 2:30 pm
Griots in the Gallery: Aztec Stories
Experience the world of the Mexica/Aztecs through poetry, oral tradition stories, and ballads. Storyteller Michael Heralda shares the history, language, foods, and arts from an indigenous perspective. His performance is enhanced by traditional instruments made by hand, including Mayan Bubalek Gourd Water Drums and numerous flutes, shakers, and rattles,
offering plenty of opportunities for audience participation.

New Review in El Paso paper.
La Bloga friend, poet and critic Rigoberto Gonzalez reviews Grove Press' new release of Francisco Goldman's political title, The bishop's murder. Gonzalez concludes in his 1/6/08 El Paso Times review:

Goldman's skillful and energetic prose gives this exhausting real-life narrative a necessary push. The supplementary sources such as the index, chronology of events and "dramatis personae" are essential for keeping track of the multiple threads explored in this confounding investigation.

"The Art of Political Murder" is also the art of investigative reporting. Goldman works hard to examine even the smallest of details that contributed to this high-profile case, which became a defining moment in reconnecting a wartorn country to its long-threatened notion of justice.