My Other Sister and I talk poetry and journalism (in San Diego)
My other sister and I walk through Chicano Park in Chicano Park, Barrio Logan, San Diego Prompted Shutterstock.ai image
Check out Dan Grossman’s book Mindfucking Roundabouts of Carmel, Indiana
MY OTHER SISTER AND I TALK POETRY AND JOURNALISM (IN SAN DIEGO)
INDY CORRESPONDENT: My name is Dan Grossman. I'm here with my other sister.
MY OTHER SISTER: Hi, Dan. Hey. How's it going?
INDY CORRESPONDENT: Hi all. We're actually in San Diego. So we took a little trip down to Barrio Logan, which is south of San Diego downtown. It’s where you’ll find Chicano Park. You'll find there the largest collection of outdoor murals in the United States, and murals of people like Frida Kahlo of Mexican history, world history, Diego Rivera, Che Guevara, various Mexican revolutionaries. All under the Coronado Bridge ramps. Sometimes you'll see even muralists painting the girders holding up the overpass. But on this day, three were guys hanging around wearing leather chaps with their motorcycles. There was a woman wearing a hazmat suit of dubious issue and signs warning people not to step on the grass because of parvovirus.
MY OTHER SISTER: There were kids playing in the playground, adults mingling on the tables. Community gathering. Today we saw a quinceañera, which is a coming-of-age ceremony for a girl in Latin American cultures, taking place.
Panoramic image collage of Chicano Park and environs Photos by Dan Grossman
INDY CORRESPONDENT: And we went to a great cafe called Por Vida, where you'll find several depictions of Frida Kahlo, one in mural form and one in a painting form. One is inside, a painting, one is outside, a mosaic. As I often say, if I had a dollar for every Frida portrait in San Diego, I’d be a millionaire. And we started talking about creativity and poetry and journalism. (I had the Mazapan Latte, my crack, and you had your Spicy Jamaica Lemonade.) I mean, we're talking about poetry too, and you're trying to guide me away from poetry, into journalism, right?
MY OTHER SISTER: Oh my gosh, I don't have to guide you from poetry to journalism. I'm here, your pesky sister and I was saying—wondering out loud—because I feel comfortable doing so in front of you, and I didn't know that I'd wind up on your blog. But I think I told you, you can tell me my exact words, because I saw you, I want to let you know that what I was wondering about was, is poetry your process and is journalism your delivery? Because here it is. For me, I find journalism straightforward. Journalism, well, yours is always scattered, I guess, with poetic moments that is based in fact, in reality, and I think journalism speaks to me, right? Poetry, on the other hand, may speak to me, especially when it has a liner track. So maybe I'm just talking about liner notes.
INDY CORRESPONDENT: “People are people, so why should it be, why should we get along so awfully?” (These are the lyrics of a song by the British synth band Depeche Mode.)
MY OTHER SISTER: I'm rewriting history here, that's right, but I feel like you are so super talented as a journalist, and given that I'm more receptive to journalism and that I am trying to make sense of the world we're living in right now, at this moment in history, we need all of the journalists on deck on board to deliver facts and not musings, Dan.
INDY CORRESPONDENT: You said and I quote:.”There's no win in pure creative expression. Apply your goddamn creativity to anything else but poetry, please.”
OTHER SISTER: To your billions of listeners out there, I want them to know that I do have a creative and artistic background and that I'm part of creative communities, and I'm going to be ostracized for telling you to follow journalism instead of poetry.
INDY CORRESPONDENT: Well, I mean, everybody has their opinion. I know a lot of people who don't follow poetry and are turned off by poetry. But there are poems that speak to me and to speak to me and speak to me about the current moment, even though they weren't written in the current moment. For example, one of my favorite poems about politics, about America, is one by Robert Lowell called “For the Union Dead,” and he talks about a particular statue in Boston, and it is a Civil War statue of Colonel Shaw and his men, and it is in downtown Boston when the city is facing urban renewal and all these wonderful buildings being torn down and parking garages going up. He talks about the advertising of his moment, the early 1960s. He talks about an advert for a Mosler safe on a Boston Street, “the rock of ages” that survived the atomic bomb at Hiroshima that is emblematic of the era’s bad taste but I should just get to the crux of it, because you could talk about this poem for ages, hours, how it is both timely and timeless in a way that a newspaper article could never be. You could have a seminar on it, but these are the last two stanzas:
Colonel Shaw
is riding on his bubble,
he waits
for the blessèd break.
The Aquarium is gone. Everywhere,
giant finned cars nose forward like fish;
a savage servility
slides by on grease.
INDY CORRESPONDENT: I think of that savage servility when it comes to what’s going on right now in Washington D.C. The phrase reminds me of this: certain religious groups around the country use this phrase “servant leadership” which is just as oxymoronic as “savage servility” but without the multiple layers of meaning, to describe their leadership style. I will not discuss that leadership style in the wake of political developments that I will not discuss here, One day I would like to write a poem about the concept of servant leadership and expose its contradictions. Not just because I like to play around with words. I really love writing poems because it's like, you're, you're kind of letting your hand, like touch the page with a pen letting a certain magic happen, and it’s not, as Bob Dylan would say Sigfried and Roy magic or the kind of dimestore pun useful for day-to-day journalism, as I was happy to do employ as an editor with NUVO.
MY OTHER SISTER: I think back and there have been poets who I've loved, I've loved much of your poetry, but I am just, I think, going back to that conversation, I am just really scared for the future of journalism. I think that I hope the nation recognizes what an asset they call the fourth estate.
INDY CORRESPONDENT: Journalism is taking on the chin right now, right?
MY OTHER SISTER: I think there are so many different ways to step up to the call.
INDY CORRESPONDENT: Well, you know, it's a pretty crowded market out there, so it’s hard to get anything published whether poetry or prose these days, let alone get paid… Journalists might just be going the way of poets. And as I try to do both I find myself flushed down the toilet twice, as it were.
MY OTHER SISTER: Now that I will forever be known as a poetry hater, I want everyone to know that I'm not. Do you want to hear about the most recent poetic moment in my life and your past? I think you went to sleep earlier than we did [My other sister and our parents.]. Yeah, we were all in the room, and the end of Farm Aid was on, and Willie Nelson came on. And Mom and Dad, Mom just turned 85 and that's like a few years older. And mom asked, How old is Willie Nelson? I told her he must be 90. I was like, Yeah, mom and dad, they're still there. They're on that stage and whatnot, but Willie Nelson sang a song called “Last Leaf” and it was so touching, and I saw Mom and Dad both touched by his delivery of the song of being the last leaf of the tree, and it was hard to not recognize that as poetry. And sometimes it takes art to speak deeply to those who are not creative, creatives, I suppose. And so I do recognize the importance of art and continuing to support the arts and continuing to translate in artistic forms to not artists as well. And sometimes poetry can seem very obscure, but in the right moment, keep writing poetry. Dan, I think it’ll reach the right people. We just need to find somebody to write the soundtrack.
INDY CORRESPONDENT: Well, on that note, my other sister, I think that does it for tonight.
MY OTHER SISTER: Where do people send hate mail?
INDY CORRESPONDENT: Oh, they can go to my Facebook page or dan@indycorrespondent.org
MY OTHER SISTER: Well, keeping the poetry. Dan, you shine.
INDY CORRESPONDENT: Oh, thank you. My other sister and you shine too.
MY OTHER SISTER: Keep writing about roundabouts.
INDY CORRESPONDENT: That's right, certain roundabouts in a certain town in Indiana.
MY OTHER SISTER: As we end this roundabout conversation we bid all your readers adieu..
