Sunday, June 17, 2012
3:00 pm until 5:00 pm
East Side Cultural Center
2266 International Blvd.
Oakland CA
Join Us as we Celebrate the East Bay Book Launch of Marilyn Buck’s Inside/ Out: Selected Poems.
Readers Include: Maisha Quint, Maria Poblet and Elana Levy
Additional book launches will be held in NYC, Philadelphia, LA, Chicago, Austin, Albuquerque, Kentucky, as well as the Green Arcade on June 6th and at Modern Times on June 27th in San Francisco and. Details will be posted as we learn them.
Info on the book and online orders at: citylights.com
City Lights will publish this wonderful, very substantial selection of Marilyn Buck’s poetry on May 15. The first book launch event takes place the next evening, May 16, at City Lights Bookstore, featuring David Meltzer (who wrote the preface) and others TBA.
Additional book launches will be held in NYC, Philadelphia, LA, Chicago, Austin, Albuquerque, Kentucky, Oakland and elsewhere, as well as at Modern Times and the Green Arcade in San Francisco. Details will be posted here as we learn them.
This afternoon I recorded my set for East by Southeast, Austin, TX’ annual public access television poetry showcase. This year I chose to honor Marilyn with my performance. I read two poems by others that have appeared here, “Catch” by Alexis Pauline Gumbs, and “Red Poppy for Marilyn” by Jewelle Gomez. I read two of Marilyn’s poems, “Undocumented”, both in English as it appeared in Monthly Review and in Spanish (“Indocumentada”) as translated by Puerto Rico’s Claridad, and “To the Woman Standing Behind Me in Line Who AsksMe How Long This Black History Month Is Going to Last”, as seen in March 1998′s Sojourner. Finally, I read two of my own poems, “For Poets Who Die in Mid-Life”, dedicated to Marilyn and to other recently passed poets, including the inimitable poet-journalist John Ross, and “Egypt-Land”, previously seen in The Rag Blog, a celebration of the current freedom struggles in the MidEast that I would have loved to have shared with my sister-poet.
It felt great to remember Marilyn in this way and to share her poetry, and the poems of others who loved her, with a wide audience. The show, airing in May, will be shown many times during the coming year.
The March 31, 2011 deadline for an Austin Poetry Society annual awards contest honoring Marilyn Buck is soon approaching. Bay Area poet Maria Poblet will be judging this contest. See the earlier posts here on this topic for details!
With all of the wonderful poems appearing here, we are hoping for some excellent entries in this contest (first prize is $100).
… have been reprinted in the new issue of California Prison Focus, (Number 36 Winter 2011) a big issue with many great articles. Marilyn’s articles are:
These articles complement the lead article on “The Social Psychology of Isolation” by Craig Haney, not to mention many shorter reports on current cases and struggles.
I only became aware of Marilyn after watching a DVD of the history of the Black Panthers. I started corresponding with her in early 2007 and would like to think we became friends. She was generous in her critique of my poetry. In “Autobiographi” she said:
“warmakers
wait for its prisoners to die
or go crazy
or simply wither away into insignificance”
Marilyn may have died but as long as there are people whose first concern is justice and respect for each other she will never wither away. This is a poem I wrote for her. In her modest way she stated that she didn’t think she measured up to my picture of her.
two million mostly black and brown
expensive in lives
expensive in dollars
overcrowded
slow genocide
who knows if you did
any of what empire accused
but when the average murderer
serves seven years inside
your eighty year sentence
is clearly unjust
three women living in a whitewashed concrete
cage built for one
no room
no property
no space
stored like lost baggage
the casual cruelty of male violence
keeps your female body in line
watching you in the shower
on the toilet
patting your body familiarly
for weapons of mass destruction
missing the missiles of your words
targeting you
expecting you
to cringe as a controlled victim
you must have scared them
Texas white girl
hanging with the brothers
looking for justice
looking for human rights
looking for women’s equality
you must have scared them
after sixteen years inside
they locked you in a hole in a hole
September 11 terrorism
a paranoid police state
will never celebrate you
they cannot force you
to cut out your own tongue
by Larry Kerschner, peacepoet at gmail.com americansovereigntymovement.wordpress.com
You’ve gone past us now.
beloved comrade:
north american revolutionary
and political prisoner
My sister and friend of these 40 years,
it’s over
Marilyn Buck gone
through the wire
out into the last whirlwind.
So begins “The Blue Afterwards: Mourning for Marilyn,” a beautifully moving essay of mourning/remembrance/and reflection by Felix Shafer, longtime activist and friend of Marilyn Buck.
Readers/writers say:
What a beautifully touching memorial tribute to Marilyn!!!
i read it last night and was quite moved by the insights and your really authentic feeling for her life as a woman and revolutionary.
– Jack Hirschman, former poet laureate San Francisco
I felt many things as I made way through it; from exhilaration about what has been accomplished thus far to sadness about what has not; anger at our enemy and pride in being the enemy; sadness for those who have transitioned and deep, deep grief for the loss of this one of our most valuable warriors. You succeeded in evoking her spirit and I could feel and hear her as you described her many attributes …
– Curtis J. Austin, historian, professor, author of, “Up Against the Wall: Violence in the Making and Unmaking of the Black Panther Party”
It is quite something. I feel your very personal love for her and also appreciate your ability to contextualize her in the struggles of her time, so many of which she was a part of. Sometimes your writing literally lifts itself off the page–so beautiful …
– Margaret Randall, writer and poet
Shafer’s incomparable meditation on Marilyn Buck is both illuminating and passionately astute to her heroic project of her uniquely engaged, compassionate, and creative politics.
– David Meltzer, poet and teacher
Felix Shafer’s biographical sketch is so much more than just that, his critical analysis of Marilyn’s Buck liberation trajectory adds unknown historical data, with a clear and impassioned eye towards showing us her brilliance and grace. This is a must read to begin to learn about Marilyn and her enormous legacy.
– Susan Rosenberg, former political prisoner & author of “An American Radical: Political Prisoner In My Own Country” due out in March 2011
“The blue afterwards” can be found at marilynbuck.com.
