HOT OFF THE PRESS!

Ceremonies of the Spirit,

love poems sensual and celestial,

available from http://www.wendybrownbaez.com/

Hi from Altered Estherics

Join us for Edgy, experimental, improvisational, culturally expansive, socially relevant, politically charged, entertaining, provocative chutzpah

Patrick's Cabaret
3010 Minnehaha Ave Minneapolis
03 & 04 October 2008
8:00 PM
http://www.patrickscabaret.org/

Featuring an Eclectic evening of:
Laura Littleford: an excerpt of "Romeo and Juliet in Winnipeg"
"Night Visions" by John Gustav-Wrathall
Wendy Brown-Baez: "Hitch-hiking the Cosmos"
Joan Calof reading and/or singing poems from her chapbook, The Lyrical Curmudgeon. There will be a sing-along.
and Music by the Witherspoon TrioMore
Wendy Brown-Baez takes you into her vibrant, colorful world with sensual imagery, elegant rhythms and poignant stories. Traveling from Mexico to the Middle East, from homelessness to hope, from infatuation to grief, she voices the relentless pursuit of the human spirit for connection and joy.

"… That’s what Wendy does, she connects us with words and wraps us in the safety of a shawl so we can fall in love with poetry once again."- Gary Glazner, Founder of the Alzheimer’s Poetry Project

"An iconoclast by nature, Wendy Brown(-Baez) defies classification. But she has been called a performance poet, which is an apt description....Mark States of Poetry Express says people adored her the last time she performed at Priya, convincing him to feature her again....She works the room with maximum theatrically, drawing those who are transfixed on the drama before them into her vivid, vibrant world." ----Natasha Nargis, East Bay Express

Poetry as a Spiritual Practice

Poetry as a Spiritual Practice: An Interview with Wendy Brown-Báez
by Gaia Richards
excerpt from the September 2008 issue Edge Life Magazine
Wendy, you are a Bardic poet who portrays her craft as a spiritual practice. Will you elaborate?
Wendy Brown-Báez: I am a storyteller from the Bardic tradition and I'm offering my stories so that you can see that you have a story to tell, also, within you. A Bard was a person that went from village to village and told poems as a way of passing along information, news and gossip. A Bard preserved the legends and myths, as well. I want to bring poetry to people who are not experienced in listening to poetry and so, it should be easy to understand. Some of the poems that I do are not about me. They are about other people who may not have a voice or they are about my witnessing of situations that are difficult.

Such as?
WBB: For examples, I have a poem about a suicide bomber, about a pregnant woman in Baghdad, about a beggar woman in Mexico:
"The old woman paused in front of us / hardly more than a corpse / fingers of bone cupped open / the palm a bowl of destitution"

God does work through people.... One of the things I find appealing about you is, well, your affect, the way you dress, your style.
WBB: I was part of a workshop called "Earthwalks for Health" and we would spend weekends with the indigenous people of New Mexico, learning their spiritual traditions. One time we were taught about how to listen to the river speak to us. After Sam died, I went to the Monastery of Christ in the Desert for Thanksgiving. I walked to the Chama River where I'd throw his ashes to see if the river would speak to me.

The River said, "Take the pieces of your life and put them together." It was the first intimation I had that there is some meaning to all that had happened to me, the commune, Michael's death (my partner), Sam's death (my son), and my desire to help others.

Poetry, my poems, are my own unique expression and I use my body, not just my voice. I embody the poems. When I start to rehearse a poem, I ask, "How does this poem want to be presented?" I let the poem tell me how to dress, how to move and use certain gestures and intonations. For example, in Beggar Woman, I wear a typical Oaxacan apron and rebozo. By contrast, I dance a little when I recite "We came to listen to miramba music..."

I set up an altar and light candles after each poem and dedicate them to individuals, other poets, or peoples who are living through intense situations, such as the children of Afghanistan. This way, I create a beautiful and meaningful stage setting and it is a kind of prayer. After my last performance at Banfill-Locke, the audience came up to the altar to see the photos and to continue a dialogue with me and it was very moving to me, very special.

The last thing I want to say is that I believe anyone can write and share their story and that stories connect us to each other. My slogan is "You don't have to be a writer, just a willingness to find your own words." For me, writing is one of the ways I stay connected to the Divine, listening to the still voice within, and performing is letting that Voice speak out loud so I can be connected to others.

For more information on Wendy Brown-Báez, please visit http://www.wendybrownbaez.com/
Gaia Richards is a freelance writer, resident yogi at the Midtown Global Market and astrologer. Her website is http://www.satnamcity.com/

This is not a poem

Sometimes the world is achingly beautiful.

We are crammed in the bus, just crammed, and the night air is sulky and sweet, summer winding its way around our throats, a silken caress to soften our scowls.

While waiting at the bus stop, I notice the neighbor sitting in his lawn chair drinking a beer and listening to music and you can just feel his happiness radiating out to the street, kicked back on a Friday evening.

The Latina girls giggle on the bus in their tank tops, red and orange and green, and the black girls get on with their bangley earrings and gold sandals, while the bus lurches through the dusk falling on us like a tide of good wishes.

People on the bus are glued to their cell phones. Like the people who talk to themselves in Central Park in New York City, sitting on the benches with nowhere to go, unable to imagine getting out of the city or away from the voices in their heads. We all have voices in our heads these days.

And a man wearing a grey jacket with thinning hair gets on the bus, trailing a scent of cigarette smoke and bitterness. At first I am not listening but then I can’t help it, his voice is low but intrusive. He is saying, Where is God in all this mess? There is no God, look at the way he lets us suffer. If I met God, I would spit on him, I been suffering for 30 years, can’t eat what I want, go where I want. I have no life, just pain, man. What more can God do to me, huh? Only thing else he can do is kill me, and I wish he would and just get it over with, man. And I can’t tell if he is talking to the man slouched in his seat across the aisle or just into the air of the bus. The dark-skinned man in his dirty t-shirt and broken sneakers whose bowed back told his tale of woe, says, Where the love, man? Can’t you give us some love? and reaches out a hand to shake his.

The blonde couple across from me with the chubby, bouncy baby ring the bell. It’s my stop, too, and we get up to get off. I almost turn to the man and say, Look, God came to see you today. Look at that man shaking your hand and that baby giving her smiles away for nothing. That’s God, man. Wake up. But I don’t.

I climb down the steps of the bus and think about how God once deserted me and how it almost killed me. But didn’t. And I walk away to a party where I know no one but will have a swell time anyway, just happy those days are over. And I think, I sure hope that man finds out someday that he was wrong.

Ashes in the Rio Chama

“I close my eyes, and think of water.” –James Wright

I close my eyes and think of
water. Water flowing crystal
clean, the brook, the forest
gilded in daybreak, serene

Water from an icy spring high in
the Spanish mountains, the road
as heated as a griddle
as we wound our way down

to supper and a bottle of wine. Water
carried away my son, or what was
left of his mortal remains, my hand,
my hindsight too blackened

to know what I was doing in this
humble ritual. The river is flowing,
I sang into the immaculate silence of our
mourning circle. Kaddish suddenly

understood, the need to weave praise or leave
the earth to its wretched toil. I was thirsty
for a sprinkle of water on my brow
from the holy font scummed with marbled

green by the church door. I think of water,
flowering in womb-warmth to be re-
born, the salty return
to innocence if I could but believe

Jugar con fuego, bilingual poetry event

Jugar con fuego:
a celebration of Spanish Poetry
Jugar con fuego,
una celebración de la poesía española

The students of El Colegio Charter School and poet Wendy Brown-Baez invite you to Jugar con fuego, a bilingual poetry performance, featuring their original poems as well as works by famous poets. We welcome you to celebrate the rich heritage of Spanish poetry as we play with words and build bridges between the past and the future. We will interweave Spanish and English translations as we present poems in a vivid dramatic way.

Los estudiantes de El Colegio Charter School and poet Wendy Brown-Baez les invitan por Jugar con fuego, un espectaculo de poesia bilingüe donde presentarán sus propios poemas originales, así como la poesía de las poetas famosos. Les damos una bienvenida para celebrar la herencia rica de poesía española mientra jugamos con las palabras y construimos los puentes entre el pasado y el futuro. Entretejeremos traducciones españolas e inglesas mientra presentamos poemas de una manera viva y dramatica.

Thursday May 29th at 7:00 PM
at El Colegio’s Theater
4137 Center for Independent Artists
Bloomington Ave S, Minneapolis
free, gratis

Funds for this activity are provided by the COMPAS Community Action Program through a grant from the McKnight Foundation .

I had the great fortune to perform poetry in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico

this January as part of La Noche Verde slide show presentation

for the opening of new paintings by Lena Bartula

at Isla Cuale Cultural Center, hosted by Sol y Luna Galleries.

To be informed about the foremost contemporary Mexican, North and South American painters, sculptors, and photographers, represented by Alejandro Baez at Galeria Sol y Luna
in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico :
check out this blog: http://www.solylunapv.blogspot.com/

The dogs laughed.

The dogs laughed. The moon danced. The garden wound around her lovely neck singing of summer roses and river water. She wanted to hold this one moment forever. She wanted to be a child again for one more day, time stretching away, infinite and full of promise. She wanted to pretend her life had not yet happened. The roses were yellow with pink tips and pink with golden tips, but in the moonlight they shimmered like glistening silver bells. They had names but she didn’t know what they were. Their fragrance was sweeter when she rubbed the petals on her face. The dogs had found a place to rest on her feet. She reached down to scratch their silky ears, protected, regal. The moon found blue silk stockings to wear. The garden was drenched in dew and moonlight. She wanted the stars to sparkle on her fingers. She wanted the river to whisper secrets. The dogs settled their heads on their paws, listening, obedient to her command. She felt the garden embrace her as though she were a sculpture made of marble, a stone goddess in a temple, unmoving, silent. The moon disappeared. The night gave itself to the dawn, a cup of liquid gold spilling across the sky. She still had made no decision. She breathed in roses and the dogs stood up and stretched and yawned. She was no longer alone. The gardener came down the path, whistling. “Buenas dias, Señora,” he tipped his hat. Her dress was damp with dew. She wiped the sudden tears with the edge of her shawl and whistled to the dogs to follow her home.