This is the first poem I wrote for the 2014 August Poetry Postcard Fest. It was inspired by a renewed plunge into Carla Bley‘s landmark album Escalator Over The Hill. (Audio. Pdf.) If you listen to the record, you’ll have more context. Gato in this poem would be Gato Barbieri. I have been using lines from Denise Levertov as epigraphs this year.
471. Killing Gato
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We need to learn from Fujitaro and see the gardens that can grow from our wastelands, from the Pacific trash heap to the City of Seattle dump to the logged former forestland to the filled in estuaries of rivers like the Duwamish that make the Port of Seattle or Marshlands that make Baltimore’s inner harbor to the sprawl of LA and suburbs around all cities in this country to the merciless businesses of insurance and pharmaceuticals and lobbying and media (social, in particular) and AI and bottled water and so on.
A workshop for poets interested in making the most out of the summer Poetry Postcard Fest and the end of fest daysong, day-long writing ritual,
Writing poetry in a time of crisis, Ukraine, postcards.”War tries to destroy culture because culture sustains identity and memory. Literature is not only a victim of war, it is an instrument of survival, resistance, witnessing – and, sometimes, welcome refuge…”
I got that 3 or 6 record classic recording, with everything from Carla Bley’s carnival arrangements to wild sax and even saccharine linda ronstadt i think filling in….! dig it