The College of Santa Fe, and More

Hello, and sorry for the hiatus. So much to report about and comment on--it's been a very tumultuous month. Of course, in the forefront of my mind is the impending closing of the College of Santa Fe, where I have been a full time faculty member since 2003. As you may know, the college has declared a financial emergency and faculty and staff received letters telling us that the college will close on May 15th. In addition, staff members have been reduced to 3/4 time at 3/4 salary. Faculty members' salaries have been cut anywhere from 12% to 70%, perhaps more. In the meantime, Representative Luciano Varela has introduced House Bill 577 in the New Mexico Legislature which would approve state acquisition of the college. Though the bill has made it through the House and is winding its way through Senate Committees, there is no guarantee, in this economic climate, that the Senate will approve it.

These are hard times on campus, with student, faculty, and staff morale low. Each student must plan a new future, and graduating seniors have one enormous cloud hanging over their commencement. Even so, the CSF community (including some amazing groups of students) have organized very, very effectively to lobby for the bill at the legislature. We receive email and text message alerts; the college provides van service to the Roundhouse from campus; hundreds of email messages, letters and phone calls have been send to legislators.

Below is one of the versions of the letter I have sent to legislators, with which I'll end this entry. If you'd like to support the CSF effort, please contact your New Mexico legislators to urge them to save CSF for all the reasons I explain below. Thank you.

March 5, 2009

Dear Members of the Senate Education Committee:

I write to urge you to argue passionately for state acquisition of the College of Santa Fe. My parents are alumnae (1956 and 1972) of the college and I am Associate Prof. of English & Creative Writing at CSF. In addition, I am currently the Poet Laureate of the city of Santa Fe and CSF has enthusiastically supported my work as the city’s poet.

This is my sixth year on the faculty of the College of Santa Fe. My department, the Creative Writing and Literature Program, is consistently ranked as one of the top three undergraduate writing programs in the U.S. Often, we are ranked first because of our rigorous paradigm and the successful performance of our graduating majors in the working and writing worlds. Our department is also distinctive because of our faculty—five award-winning, nationally recognized writers who are actively publishing. This is rare for an undergraduate creative writing program.


My father and mother, both graduates of CSF, devoted a total of 55 years as teachers in the Santa Fe Public Schools. They were accomplished teachers and coaches for SFPS and are currently engaged in a wide range of community service programs. In their footsteps, I have also undertaken a career in teaching and also (as Poet Laureate and Artistic Director of the non-profit Littleglobe, Inc.) have dedicated myself to art and public service.

The seeds for our careers and lives were either sparked, supported and/or nurtured by the College of Santa Fe, its staff, administration and faculty. And there are hundreds of us (as you know) who have been thus influenced by the college.

I know the acquisition may seem like a matter of money in a dire economic climate. But it is much more. The state has a unique opportunity to acquire a college campus in the middle of the city of Santa Fe—no small matter if only considering the real estate. Much more importantly, the state has the opportunity to create and promote a state educational institution with distinct possibilities for being a nationally ranked arts and liberal arts school. When the economic crisis passes, this will have seemed like an incredibly visionary and wise decision.

Sincerely,

Valerie Martínez
Associate Prof. of English & Creative Writing, CSF
Santa Fe Poet Laureate

Lines & Circles Project

To your left, see a photo of the Quintana/Gallegos family working on their family piece for the Lines and Circles project. The exhibition of family "works," created by three generations of 13 Santa Fe families, will premiere in Santa Fe in early 2010. The Quintana/Gallegos family is finishing a quilt begun by their (now passed) mother, grandmother, and great grandmother.

AWP Conference in Chicago

Hello All--

Just returned from the AWP (Associated Writing Programs) Conference in Chicago where I moderated the Sibling Rivalries Panel (see description in last blog). The room was packed, with a standing room only crowd. My fellow panelists: Danny Solis, Jill Battson, and Jasmine Cuffee, were terrific and we were able to begin a very crucial dialogue about the situation of contemporary American poetry and the tensions between the academic/literary and spoken word/slam communities. Panelists and audience members talked about issues of inclusiveness, exclusiveness, rigor, audience, race, and socio-economics , pushing the discussion past the usual platititudes. Clearly, the popularity of the session and the brimming discussion (we had to cut people off at the end, having run out of time) signals the necessity of engaging in this important dialogue further. Many audience members asked us to return, next year, to continue the discussion. Thanks to Danny, Jill, and Jasmine for a great session.

Also, the animated version of my poem, "Bowl," premiered at the conference, with the other animated poems in the second series of Poetry Everwhere (PBS/UWM/Poetry Foundation). Check it out on YouTube!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEBLfZrPydI

Literary, Spoken Word, Slam and Public Poetry

I have been thinking a lot, these days, about literary, spoken word, slam and public poetry. Next month, in Chicago, I'm chairing a panel at the Associated Writing Programs (AWP) conference. Its title is "Sibling Rivalries: Written and Spoken Word Poetry and the Literary Tug-of-War." I share the panel with Danny Solis, Thomas Sayers Ellis, Jill Battson, Shelle Sanchez, and Jasmine Cuffee. As writers and teachers, we represent a broad range of poetry and poetics and will talk about whether the seemingly deep divides between American poetry "camps" are real, imagined, necessary, divisive, etc. This issue is important to me because, as a teacher (and as Poet Laureate), I work with adults, college students, high school students, middle schools students, and younger writers. I have known dozens of high school students drawn to poetry because of spoken word/slam groups and projects. I have met quieter "non-performing" high school poets who feel alienated by the "popularity" of slam poetry. I have met literary poets who embrace the best of the spoken word/slam movement. I have talked to literary poets who have nothing but disdain for spoken word/slam poetry.

This presents a dilemma as I feel responsible to every writer I encounter/teach; I want to bring each to a deeper love for poetry any way I can. This means that I must embrace the range of American poetries as much as possible. I have a simple policy, then--to remind myself that no kind of poetry is exclusively good or bad. There is some pretty bad haiku out there. Ditto for slam poetry. Ditto for "literary" and experimental poetry. On the other hand, I've read, heard, or experienced wonderful, meaningful poetry of every kind, And I believe that good writers can come from any one of these "movements" or camps.

It's true--there are standards for different kinds of poetry that belong to that "style." I accept the fact that slam poetry must be "a performance." And, it should be good. This doesn't apply, really, to a literary reading (though good readers are appreciated). But I do hold both kinds of poetry to the same, higher standard (here's where my bias shows)--both kinds of poems must be exciting on the level of language and both kinds of poems must be layered and thematically complex. That's all.

Stay tuned for thoughts on public poetry and occasional poetry (like inauguration poems)--an issue I'm navigating right now as Santa Fe Poet Laureate.

Poem

AUREOLE

The child removes the brass plate,
the harness around her ears.
The play is done. Her part,
scribbles on index cards, scattered
on the wooden, back stage floor.
Round makeup mirrors
with their white bulbs,
halo after halo, blowing out.

Circlet of gold, thousand-petaled
lotus at the head, light rounding
the dark curls of the sage
who rolls her lips and tongue
into the trees.

Despite the sheet, the plastic amulet,
she did feel something surge up
playing Aura of Rome—
through femur, belly and skull.
Will she know? Whether legend,
earth aspiring, tug of sun—
these magnets of heaven.

Valerie Martinez, from World to World, University of Arizona Press, 2004.

One More Santa Fe Poem for 2008

Wishing all of you the most wonderful of holidays as we near the end of 2008. Here's a poem that celebrates what is distinctly and characteristically beautiful about Santa Fe in this season.

FOLLOW ME

Who hasn’t driven north, up and over La Bajada Hill, in dark December, to see the lights of Santa Fe unfurled: colcha, snowflake, electric mosaic? And who hasn’t walked the evening streets just to trace the silhouettes of walkways, houses and hotels, counting farolitos? Hasn’t driven past the Christmas tree lot on Rodeo Road just to get a whiff of pine, fir, and spruce through the dashboard heating ducts? Hasn’t heard the downtown sound of cathedral bells swallowed up in snow wafting like wafers onto roofs and wrought iron and woolen elbows? Hasn’t looked up from St. Michael’s Drive to the Sangres to search for the snow-covered horse’s head, test of visitor and native? Hasn’t found a kitchen off San Ildefonso Road, complete with grandmother, to down a half-dozen biscochitos and sip a cup of chocolate? Hasn’t kneaded the dough for pastelitos, sufganyot, or caramelized sugar for a batch of Indian bread pudding? And who hasn’t received a free cup of homemade cocoa or hot cider on Christmas Eve from the residents on or around Canyon Road? Hasn’t walked the ice-milked sidewalks of Water Street and found themselves flat on their back with some stranger helping them up, saying “Whoa--you went down like a ton of adobe bricks!” Who hasn’t left town for the heart-bending drums and dances at Santo Domingo then driven back to mark the little pines on the I-25 median decorated by some anonymous group of daredevils who brave this vehicular death-trap to tinsel-line trees? Has not seen the living room and kiva fireplace adorned with advent calendar, Menorah, bear fetish and ceramic Santa Claus? Hasn’t feasted on turkey with piñon and green chile stuffing, red chile mashed potatoes, tortillas on the side? And who hasn’t followed their grandmother and mother during las posadas, lugging a wooden crèche from house to house, the holy family looking for a place to stay, setting it down on the porch then driving away? And the dry colds so cold you want to drench them, and the stars so up close you want to lick them, and the carolers with runny noses at your door singing so off-key in two languages you want to hug-smother them? He who hasn’t; she who has not, they who never have but are looking for a place to stay on some bone-cold Santa Fe night--follow me; this is the place; this way is the way.

Valerie Martinez © 2008

Georgia O'Keeffe Writings by Women

As promised, below are some of the wonderful writings of women who participated in the November 18th workshop at the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum. The workshop, entitled "The Art of Self-Image" asked writers to choose a photographic portrait of O'Keeffe (in the current exhibition) and create an imagined dialogue between the photographer and the painter. Then, writers wrote a letter to O'Keeffe about themselves. Featured here, a poem from photographer Todd Webb's imagined perspective, by Deborah Casillas; dialogues by Barbara Rockman, Robyn Hunt and Lyric Kali, and an excerpt from her letter to O'Keeffe by Anna Katherine. Here are some of the Santa Fe women writers who might be your friends and neighbors. Thanks to all. VM

Deborah Casillas

Photograph of O’Keeffe
Todd Webb: Twilight Canyon

It’s the light I want to capture, a white shaft that splits
the canyon wall, following the curve, the sinuous swoop
and hang of stone.

She steps deliberately, another shadow, the way
she disappears into the landscape of her own paintings,
present but unseen, part of the muted cliffs,
the creased hills, the stark branches of a blackened tree.

She knows I’m here, always watching; both of us sealed
into the silence. I photograph silvered water and cliff face,
the rocks’ texture, shallow pools threaded through sand.
Integration is what I care about, skin of body,
skin of stone and stream, intermingled.

Will she be disappointed that I’ve captured her like this?
Unidentifiable, turned away. Not the iconic,
recognized woman, her sharp eyes watching you.

A portrait with a hidden subject. Landscape dominates,
a play of rain-streaked stone and still water. Does she see
her own face as she stares down, finding in the imprecise
reflection of the stream what she won’t find in my print—
the lined features of her face?

Or will she be pleased instead, knowing my camera
at her back captures the essence of what draws us
to this canyon—the quality of solitude, the towering
weather-pitted walls, the shifting patterns of the land.

* * *
Barbara Rockman
From photo of O’Keefe’s hands draped around the skull of a horse, 1931

Letter from Alfred Stieglitz to Georgia O’Keefe

Your hands were made for teeth
for bite and grit to fill cavities
to caress the chasm where the tongue might live
soft-tipped and calloused
head lamps in caverns
probing dark pools
your arced wrists
are easy with blanched bone
numbering rungs of vertebrae
look how you forgive the flayed flesh
love what was stolen by heat yours
are the arms of heat
ravenous fists released to death
yours are the hands of my lust
my absent caress

Letter from Georgia O’Keefe to Alfred Stieglitz

Be calm, Alfred. No,
I am a plain woman. I rinse dishes,
pull weeds and unleash the dogs on dirt trails.
I sleep in a narrow bed. I rise early.
These are hands that sometimes hold brushes and mix paint,
apply color and decipher the sky. With these hands
I scratch my head at the improbable.
I twist them under my breasts in sleep.
Fisted against my stomach they fly
from my body in dream. Hands
at the tips of wings, Alfred.

How you splayed my fingers,
insisted I caress the absent forelock,
empty sockets, each stone molar, each
shadowy cuspid, imagining a long rough tongue.
Alfred, I want nothing of death.
These (I admit, elegant) hands
cup seeds, cut back Echinacea,
snip herbs for the sauce. They tug knotted shirts
from a basket, shake them into light,
clamp them to the line with bleached pins.
What can a man know of women’s hands?

Green hills, habitat of red-stained
barns, blackberry bramble,
cornfield and lake. I left
gilt eagles spread patriotic
over black frames, black-
shuttered white clapboard,
the brass knockers.
I slammed a door.

This is a ruined, ragged land.
Skies so big they creep into bed with you at night.
With pen rather than paint I escaped
tidiness, entered fracture, remains,
aspen, mesa and arroyo.

I have a cynical, faithless bent and yet
I seek the girl hidden
in fern beds, lichen-licked,
moss logs so damp black they dissolved
beneath her, as you moisten a raw crevice.

Might we be sisters
in fingering the juncture
of suction and flourish?
of absence and arousal?

* * *

Anna Katherine:

"What is left after years of scouring,
that is our truth, hard and simple."

* * *
Robyn Hunt

The Rock from Eliot Porter
(a conversation between John Loengard and Georgia O’Keeffe, photographer and model)

Georgia, can you feel how the oval cuts a hole in your hand? How the pulse
of the black against your white skin is where the eye goes? You in your drape
of night even in daylight. You are headless here and nowhere but in the still
breath of your outstretched hand, one hand. The other is hidden in your coal
cloak, a soldier’s disguise. I find light just below your heart where one silver
‘x’ of ribbing adorns your narrow wrist exposed.

Are you clutching or holding? Motioning someone to come and witness this
oval stone, this perfect flint? You say a friend gave you this medal? And he
was also a photographer who bent to lift the gift, knowing you would hold it
long and softly ‘til it became a part of you, cleft of your left hand. Bride
in the night diving into the smooth nest. Arresting. You are.

Silly man, it is not a rock but a treasure that Eliot brought. He picked it
from the moving river of the white place like a small fish with no tail.
He knew it spoke, knew it was the shape of pelvic hollows that I know.
You say stretch my left hand open and place this stone squarely there?
Where shall I put my other hand and how long will I have to stand still?

Only a rock, black iris. I am wearing my fanciest frock but it is going to get hot
in here. Do you think it will take very long? Buttoned up. I am. Not much light
in here. But the stone fits so nicely above the long web of fingers, mine. Shine.
Look at the shine. The opposite of dark. I press this rock to my forehead against
headache. Medicine quiet, this Porter rock, no longer wet from the river
but tight in his case until it arrived. “For my steady Pa,” he said to me,
“for your windowsill menagerie.”

No hole in my hand. No, never. Taut. Present. And what shall we have
for lunch when we’re done?

* * *
Lyric Kali:

Ansel Adam's view:
Superimposed over a blue-lit sky
I know the exact color and hue
Her smile is gentle yet shrewd
Her affection apparent by slant of eye
A burst of giggle-laughs threaten
She holds herself close to warmth
Black hat duo--knows (a secret)

Georgia's view:
You caught us having one of our moments
My sass makes Orville shy
I delight in knowing how to bring out his quiet joy
The threads that connect us, you almost caught
in color, on black and white
It must have been the light
Or your wandering eye