JUDY WOODRUFF: Tonight's Brief But Spectacular
comes from poet Tongo Eisen-Martin.
Born and raised in San Francisco, Eisen-Martin's
writing offers a critique of the city's rapid
gentrification.
The California Book Award winner's latest
collection of poems is called "Heaven Is All
Goodbyes."
His story is part of Canvas, our ongoing series
on art and culture.
TONGO EISEN-MARTIN, Poet: I was born and raised
in San Francisco, in an interesting time of
transition, a time when the -- really the
corporatocracy was ascending.
In a way, the streets still kind of belonged
to us. Institutions still belong to us. It
felt like we had the keys to the buildings.
Along the way, it all got bought up, and now
I'm just in a city that's a strange and permanent
occupation, in which even the wealthy seem
to be incarcerated.
To walk down the street in the Bay Area is
really to walk through a dystopia. In one
sense, it feels or it has the facade of all
this kind of aesthetic, even human evolution,
but, really, you have people bouncing superfluous
conversation to superfluous conversation,
bouncing meal to meal, and the rest of us
bouncing tent to tent, a bunch of condos and
tent cities.
This poem is titled "The Course of Meal."
Apparently, two months in San Francisco wasn't
there in the first place. This dream requires
more condemned Africans or, put another way,
state violence rises down, or still life is
just getting warmed up, or army life is looking
for a new church, and ignored all other suggestions,
or folktale writers have not made up their
minds as to who is going to be their friends.
And this is the worst downtown yet. And I
have borrowed a cigarette everywhere. I have
taken many a walk to the back of a bus that
led on out the back of a storyteller's prison
sentence, then on out the back of slave scars,
but this is my comeback face.
I left my watch on the public bathroom sink
and took the toilet with me, threw it at the
first bus I saw eating single mothers half-alive.
It flew through the bus line number, then
on out the front of the white house, that,
hopefully, you find comfort downtown. But,
if not, we brought you enough cigarette filters
to make a decent winter coat.
My role in the Bay Area, besides hanging on
for dear life, is to do what I can to transform
culture, from one that facilitates domination
of oppressed people to one that facilitates
resistance.
I taught in prisons, youth homeless shelters,
youth group homes, even youth psych wards,
everywhere our conditions are most wretched.
A lot of what I actually pull into my craft,
a lot of strategies, I actually pull from
other disciplines of art, looking at John
Coltrane, looking at a Jimi Hendrix, trying
to figure out what made them tick.
Playing with ideas, playing with patterns
of logic does kind of stand outside of time
and doesn't require the same cultural landmarks
for anybody to engage your ideas and engage
your words.
So, in that way, a poet's craft lasts a long,
long time.
My name is Tongo Eisen-Martin, and this is
my Brief But Spectacular take on poetry as
revolution.
JUDY WOODRUFF: And you can find more Brief
But Spectacular pieces on our Web site at
PBS.org/NewsHour/Brief.
