Heriberto Yepez has shut down his English language blog, The Tijuana Bible of Poetics which is a damn shame, as it was one of the very best. It never got the readership it deserved – its best days saw a little over 50 visitors. One can speculate as to why that might be, but I’m more interested/concerned about the larger implications. U.S. poetry over the next century is going to increasingly experience influences coming up directly from the south & Yepez is a terrific commentator on the interactions between these two worlds. Happily, the site’s archives are still available – and still worth reading. Yepez’ Spanish language blog, Border Blogger2, continues. I only wish that my high school Spanish wasn’t so pathetic (or so long ago) – I used Alta Vista’s Babel Fish translation tool on Yepez’ most recent post & it translated Coca Cola as Cocaine Tail.

 

 

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I got several responses to my mention of the murder of Rachel Corrie in Gaza last month. There is an excellent article on the impact of her life & death on the people whose home she attempted to save & on the group with which she was working in The Stranger, which I take it must be a weekly newspaper in Seattle.

 

 

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David Bromige has solved the mystery of who read in the one event at the Berkeley Poetry Conference that appears not to have been captured on tape. It was Bromige, Ken Irby, James Koller & David Schaff. Schaff published two books that I’m aware of, The Ladder from Dariel Press in 1967, printed by Graham Mackintosh, and Moon by Day, published by Don Allen’s Four Seasons Foundation in 1971. I’ve said before that the 1970s proved an especially difficult time for younger poets in the New American tradition & Schaff is a good example of a gifted fellow who appears to have completely vanished.

 

 

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The question I asked in Friday’s blog as to whether Andrew Zitcer’s spoken portion of his text would stand out against the electronic backing tracks when broadcast on WXPN Sunday night was answered with a resounding Yes. In fact, the engineer mixed the backing tracks down so far that they didn’t have nearly the impressive impact on the air that they did in the Writers House Arts Café when the show was recorded a week ago Monday.