Tony Barnstone reads his poems at Writer's Day May 3, Photo by Joe Calatrello
U.C. Berkeley Ph. D graduate and American poet Tony Barnstone read his poems in the lecture hall of Building 12 May 3. The event marked the end of the Writers’s Day retreat, a three-day occasion in which poets, creative-fiction and non-fiction writers attended workshops, heard speeches and shared their work.
Mt. SAC English Professor and Writer’s Day coordinator, John Brantingham introduced Barnstone.
“He’s not only a poet in his own right, but those of you who have been in my classroom have read ‘The Golem of LA,’” Brantingham said. “A couple of you have, and he’s also an amazing translator. He translates several languages, especially Chinese.”
Barnstone, 47, an English professor at Whittier College, stood behind a wooden podium next to two of his books on display: “Sad Jazz” and “The Golem of Los Angeles.” He began by reading four poems from his most recent book, “The Tarot of Creativity.” Each poem, like tarot cards, contained a reversed counterpart that carried a different meaning.
Barnstone opened with “The Fool Upright”:
“The way she broke the pomegranate heart, the way she sucked the bloody juice with passion. Her way of leaving men for men to start again might teach a wise man caution, but caution’s not my passion, passion is, and I don’t have to tell how you how she left, at least the man she dropped me for got his band ending too, bastard.”
The audience of about 30 Mt. SAC student writers laughed.
Illustrating a lascivious sex scene in “Rota Fortuna” (The Wheel of Fortune), Barnstone read a third tarot card poem:
“First I’m on top, and then she is, and the way an amber rod rubbed with can fur attracts a feather so connected in love play we spark and flare and kiss until the facts assert themselves, voltaic pile of zinc and copper. Bodies are just batteries, and batteries run out.”
Barnstone’s second set of readings was from his book, “Tongue of War,” based on 15 years of research on WWII. He stood with short, dark brown hair and brown eyes, as he took on the character of a WWII veteran from “At the Retirement Home.”
Barnstone spoke with a Southern accent as he portrayed a man who survived The Bataan Death March, a process where U.S. soldiers were captured in the Philippines and forced to march to prison camps, Barnstone said. Soldiers who refused were bayoneted, ran over by war tanks or had their heads cut off with Samurai swords.
“I’ve had both knees replaced,” Barnstone read. “I got a steel pin in my hip. I don’t hear you so good, but I’m not stupid son. How would you feel surviving The Bataan Death March, no food for days, no water? And the ones who fell behind were bayoneted where they lay, and now you’re marching off to death.”
Barnstone read “My Father Dancing” next, a poem which integrated the character of himself in the beginning, his father midway through, and himself at the end.
“I’m standing naked in the bathroom now, watching the little bulge above my crotch where nests the peaking duck, the carrion crow, pizza and puttanesca bulge, Barnstone read. “I watch you little human bulge, unsightly blubber. I hate you little Hitler blotch, angel of death.”
After the audience broke out in laughter, Barnstone chuckled before continuing reading:
“And do a thousand crunches nightly to punish you, take that and that.”
Barnstone read his last poem from “The Golem of Los Angeles” a free verse piece, “Psalm of Snow,” set at the Mount Shasta region and the Sacramento River. Then, he ended by reading “The Miniature Vedas,” three line poems, quotes people said to him.
“One good thing about divorce she [Barnstone’s ex-wife] said, ‘I get to stop being a character in your damn poems.”
After Barnstone’s readings, he answered students’ questions about the process of writing poetry. Barnstone discussed perfectionism, “getting into the zone,” editing, writing poem titles, and writing from the unconscious mind.
“The main thing is to stay connected with your gut or your dream consciousness, so that it doesn’t matter how powerful your conscious critical faculty is; you can still write powerfully out of the unconscious.”
-Wendy Rubick
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