Executive producers Terrence Malick and Robert Redford turn to poetry in their collaborative venture, Laura Dunn’s documentary, The Unforeseen. The film, which debuted at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival, covers Austin, Texas environmental politics via interviews with environmentalists, real estate developers, a vocal local community, and everyone’s favorite ex-governor of Texas, while peppering excerpts of Wendell Berry reading his poem “Santa Clara Valley” throughout. The poem provides a reflective continuity to the film, making sense, at times, of what is a bitter and emotional battle for the area of Barton Springs in Austin, a battle begun in the '70s and continuing through the '90s.

An excerpt from Berry’s poem captures the main arc of the film:

In Robert Altman's seminal film, Nashville, a third-party candidate named Hal Philip Walker is running for president on a ticket known as The Replacement Party. "I'm for doing some replacing," he says of the bureaucracy in Washington.

Feliz Cinco de Mayo

First let me start with a brief description of this day. Being of Mexican heritage, I’ve had to explain it on a regular basis. So, I thought I’d just give a quick rambling, if only to say: This day is not just about margaritas and tortilla chips (although I find nothing wrong with either of those things and hope to partake in both shortly).

The first thing that I find myself reminding people of is this: Cinco de Mayo is NOT Mexico's Independence Day (which is actually September 16th or midnight of the 15th depending one what you’re reading). Instead, it is in celebration of the day, May 5th, 1862, when 4,000 members of the Mexican Militia defeated 8,000 members of the French army in the town of Puebla. (Napoleon wanted to take over and install Maximilian as ruler of Mexico).

Concerned that there’s too much violence in children’s movies, TV, video games and online? Maybe the problem is there’s not enough.

From The Annotated Mother Goose, eds. William S. Baring-Gould & Ceil Baring-Gould, Bramhall House, 1962:

“…in 1952 Geoffrey Handley-Taylor of Manchester, England, published a brief biography of the literature of nursery rhyme reform in which he wrote that:

“The average collection of 200 traditional nursery rhymes contains approximately 100 rhymes which personify all that is glorious and ideal for the child. Unfortunately, the remaining 100 rhymes harbour unsavoury elements. The incidents listed below occur in the average collection and may be accepted as a reasonably conservative estimate based on a general survey of this type of literature.

"8 allusions to murder (unclassified),
2 cases of choking to death,
1 case of death by devouring,
1 case of cutting a human being in half,
1 case of decapitation,
1 case of death by squeezing,
1 case of death by shrivelling,
1 case of death by starvation,
1 case of boiling to death,
1 case of death by hanging,
1 case of death by drowning,
4 cases of killing domestic animals,
1 case of body snatching,
21 cases of death (unclassified),
7 cases relating to the severing of limbs,
1 case of the desire to have a limb severed,
2 cases of self-inflicted injury,
4 cases relating to the breaking of limbs,
1 allusion to a bleeding heart,
1 case of devouring human flesh,
5 threats of death,
1 case of kidnapping,
12 cases of torment and cruelty to human beings and animals,
8 cases of whipping and lashing,
3 allusions to blood,
14 cases of stealing and general dishonesty,
15 allusions to maimed human beings and animals
1 allusion to undertakers,
2 allusions to graves,
23 cases of physical violence (unclassified),
1 case of lunacy,
16 allusions to misery and sorrow,
1 case of drunkenness,
4 cases of cursing,
1 allusion to marriage as a form of death,
1 case of scorning the blind,
1 case of scorning prayer,
9 cases of children being lost or abandoned,
2 cases of house burning,
9 allusions to poverty and want,
5 allusions to quarrelling,
2 cases of unlawful imprisonment,
2 cases of racial discrimination.

“Expressions of fear, weeping, moans of anguish, biting, pain and evidence of supreme selfishness may be found in almost every other page.”

I grew up going to the track. Well, that’s a slight exaggeration. My stepfather—a writer and a wonderful human—likes to bet on the horses. Every time I go back to Sonoma, my hometown, he and I take at least one day to drive up to OTB and lose a little money. I lose. He wins. So, it’s only fitting that I’m thinking about him today as the Kentucky Derby gets underway and I still need to get my bets in before post. Mostly, on the drive to the races we end up talking about language and poetry in one way, shape, or form. These long drives up Warm Springs Road to Bennett Valley and back has done very serious things to my brain. For starters, it has linked horses and poetry forever.

I will come out and say it. I’ve been thinking about you constantly. Please don’t tell anyone about this. This is just between me and you, OK? I’ve been meaning to say this for a very long time, for an eternity, actually. I want you. I mean, I want you to want me. Please don’t laugh at my insolence and desperation. I can see you giggling already. Even across time zones, I can hear you howling. Is my nudity so ridiculous? I cannot keep this terse and cute, sweetie. I must go on babbling because “Orders are always short and brief, and every master is monosyllabic to his slaves, whereas supplications and lamentations are lengthy,” so wrote Demetrius.

As haughty slaves, poets are no strangers to supplications and lamentations, since they must bow, defer, accede and give in constantly, they must 1) Refer for judgment or consideration 2) Put before 3) Yield to the control of another 4) Hand over formally 5) Refer to another person for decision or judgment 6) Yield to another's wish or opinion 7) Accept or undergo, often unwillingly 8) Make an application as for a job or funding 9) Make over as a return 10) Accept as inevitable. It sucks to submit, I know, and I've been on both ends of these undignified transactions. More than a decade ago, I received a letter from one miffed submitter [click on image to enlarge]:

For many Latino (and non-Latino) poets, Jimmy Santiago Baca is a hero of sorts. With a long sordid history of pulling himself out and up from the mire, Baca has traversed the poetic world as both a rogue and a wayward leader. Still, I am often surprised that he is not as well known as he should be. With his first poems published in Mother Jones and lauded by Denise Levertov while Baca was still in prison in the 70s (he spent 6 years in prison on drug possession, read his book, A Place to Stand), he has since made a life and a living out of writing. Based in New Mexico and spending the majority of his time writing and running workshops in prisons, in schools, and in the community, Baca has become an epic figure in Mexican American poetry. His book, Spring Poems Along the Rio Grande (New Directions, 2007) is a quieter Baca, an older, less angry Baca. Full of ruminations and reflections on his life along the bosque, this is a book meant to be read in the sage bushes without the noises of the city tuning out the birds. Two days ago, I pulled it off my shelf since first reading it when it came out last year, and thought I’d give it a shout out. I suppose I needed its quietude and whisper.

"I have never done any teaching. I don't think I know enough about anything to do any teaching. I've done all sorts of odd jobs. My weirdest was raking up gold dust off the floor when I was messenger in a gold place on 47th Street. We had to do it with a broom like in Grimm's fairy tales, and sort the gold dust out of the ordinary dirt. I only lasted there about three weeks. Then I did things like being a waitress, and odd jobs all the time."