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As Groucho sang, "I have come just to say I must be going." Compays, personal needs require that I take a new role with La Bloga, one where I will post as time and circumstances allow. I would still love to hear about your novel, poetry joint, your visual art, and I hope to continue to offer occasional interviews and personal rants. But the frequency will have to be much less often, at least for the near future. You can always contact me through my site: lisaalvarado.net, and [email protected]., and I hope you do.

I am hugely humbled and grateful for the chance to share my scribbling, my POV, to interview and review awe-inspiring work. La Bloga has given me a way to be up close and personal with the likes of Martin Espada, Demtria Martinez, Achy Obejas, Margo Tamez, Luis Rodriguez, and a galaxy of writers and artists. Although I hope to be here in a different way, you will be continue to be regaled, illuminated, challenged, entertained and delightfully provoked with the writing of : Annette Leal Mattern Viva Liz Vega! tatiana de la tierra Olga Garcia Echeverria Daniel Olivas Rene Colato Lainez Lydia Gil Manuel Ramos Ann Hagman Cardinal msedano.

I'd like to end this post with some quotes about that which I love best:
A poet can survive everything but a misprint. ~ Oscar Wilde

Poetry is not a profession, it is a destiny. ~ Mikhail Dudan

Poetry is all that is worth remembering in life. ~ William Hazlitt

Poetry is a mirror which makes beautiful that which is distorted. ~ Percy Shelley

My favorite poem is the one that starts 'Thirty days hath September” because it actually tells you something. ~ Groucho Marx

Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world. ~ Percy Byshe Shelley

We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for. ~ from Dead Poet's Society

A poet's autobiography is his poetry. Anything else is just a footnote. ~ Yevgeny Yevtushenko

Hasta Pronto, Lisa Alvarado

For M

It's about peace in the body.

The little miracle of how we undo each other as we make love.

And undone, we let go for a sliver of time

the days of disappointment.

Burdens and betrayals knotting nerve and sinew and bone

dissolve in the O of our mouths.

Arms around each other.

Circle of skin.

We breathe together,

simple and clear.

Stillness in your smile, my smile.

Stillness and then laughter.

Prayer

I need to lie on cool, wet ground;

so the earth can sing to me.

If I am small, and still,

the grass will chant its secrets.

I feel hollow and lost.

I need green to fill me, to feed me.

I am sick of the taste of compromise;

of work for money only.

I am empty from worry

and my fear of losing you.

I need the touch of bark,

and the arms of trees.

I need to climb to fruit and flowers,

and trust I will not fall.

My prayer books

are crumbled and dry.

No church will hold me.

I look to ritual,

unadorned and simple.

I ask the Woman who is everywhere,

Heal me.

Lisa Alvarado

Your humble writer this week was blessed had the task of trying to fill the shoes of Johanny Vazquez, at this month's Palabra Pura. La Divina is in Puerto Rico where I'm sure she's enjoying family and holding court. In a bedrock venue of Chicago's Mexican community, Decima Musa, Palabra Pura offered  two dynamic poets, and the pre-show conversation was a lively, full-bodied discussion on female aesthetics and female presence on stage. The evening resonated with work that puts flesh on the bone, that breathes a sense of everyday spirituality and working-class nobility into their work. 

Naomi Ayala is the author of This Side of Early (Curbstone Press, 2008) and Wild Animals on the Moon (Curbstone Press, 1997). Her third collection of poems is forthcoming from Bilingual Review Press in 2009. Ayala’s work has appeared in numerous journals and has been anthologized in Seeds of Fire: Contemporary Poems from the Other USA (Smokestack Books/U.K., 2008), Boriquén to Diasporican: Puerto Rican Poetry from Aboriginal Times to the New Millennium (University of Massachusetts Press, 2007), The Wind Shifts: New Latino Poetry (University of Arizona Press, 2007), and Latino Boom: An Anthology of U.S. Latino Literature (Longman, 2005). Ayala works as an education consultant (with a specialty in curriculum design and development), a translator, and teacher, and is currently serving as the Director of Development for Fiesta DC.

From Consortium, about This Side of Early...These poems straddle two landscapes—contrasting the imprints of gentrification with the supernal, come by way of the woods. Ayala’s poems deconstruct the political world of man, offer hope through a compelling, lyrical spiritual intimacy, and bridge the gap between the two with words full of ecological intensity. Her deep connections with the working class combine with a love of the land to offer us lilt and dream, revelation and foretelling. Many of the "seeings" she brings us walk the edge of cultural resilience, where the illusion we see of the outside world speaks to us most when we turn within.

Diana Pando is a megaphone for Latinos in the arts. She has been Managing Director of Teatro Vista, Interim Managing Director for Teatro Luna, and worked with Luna Negra Dance Theatre and DeLaTorre Fine Arts. Through Teatro Vista she has been able to initiate dialogue between communities and arts groups resulting in youth outreach programs in the Back of the Yards neighborhood and increased Latino theatre in Little Village. She is one of the founding members of Proyecto Latina, a collaborative between Teatro Luna and Tianguis Bookstore and former contributing writer for Dinero Magazine. She has contributed writing to Teatro Luna's critically acclaimed show MACHOS, Lunaticas, collaborated with artist Luis DeLaTorre and maintains a blog called Art Botanas for Latinos in the arts.

She is a member of the Latina Leadership Council for the Chicago Foundation for Women. This October she will be the featured reader at Proyecto Latina hosted at RadioArte. Currently, she works with the Community Media Workshop helping nonprofits tell their stories. She is a lifelong resident of the Bridgeport neighborhood where she resides with artist Luis DeLaTorre and their dog Cometa