Q & A with Summer Festival Sponsor Jim Moreno and San Diego Writers Festival
SDWF: Please tell us about the inspiration behind your collection of poetry Dancing in Dissent.
JM: Over a period of time, I found myself becoming more alarmed about racism and war that never seemed to go away. Dancing in Dissent: Poetry For Activism is a spoken word march against racism and war.
SDWF: How did you come to be a poet?
JM: I played the guitar for many years and wrote songs for the guitar when I was at the University of Florida as a junior and senior. But the poems started to come to me in my mid-forties. I was participating in a 3–day Kumeyaay ceremony when an elder from Mexico gave a beautiful eulogy about a young Kumeyaay man who had died in a car crash coming back from Sun Dance in North Dakota. I walked outside and organized his words into a poem. I had a friend of mine who was an artist in calligraphy write the poem. I put that in a frame and gave it to the boy’s father. Then the poems started to come to me in dreams, in flashes of insight, or in response to injustice.
SDWF: What’s the last great book/play/poem you read?
JM: I’m just finishing May Sarton’s Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaid Singing. I also think Joe Milosch’s book Homeplate Was The Heart has wonderful short stories. Chris Vannoy’s All There Is is a must read. And, oh yes, anything by Steve Kowit is amazing. I also think if you’re a beginning or seasoned poet, read John Fox’s Poetic Medicine or Karla Kordero’s How To Pull Apart the Earth. Amazing writers all. Great storytellers. Steve would warn against the difficult poem, the esoteric writer. He believed the more transparent we are, the more lucid we can be with the pen the better the poem. I was his student for 30 years.
SDWF: Would you be willing to share one of your poems with us?
JM: Of course. I’ve just finished working on Conscience of the Congress: John R. Lewis. This is about 10 drafts including taking it to my critique group and getting feedback.
“Conscience of the Congress: John R. Lewis”
Those who make peaceful revolution impossible
will make violent revolution inevitable.
John F. Kennedy, 35th President of the United States
Incluso si pudiera no puedo describir la curación
de este encuentro,
aunque,
aunque.
Even if I could I could not describe
the healing of this encounter…
even if…
even if…
The boy from Troy was sent a bus ticket
to Selma— from the preacher of the dream—
so freedom could not be denied,
so freedom would not be denied.
They called him, Boy Preacher, cause he
took care of chickens in his momma’s
back yard, preaching that some of those
chicks laid rotten eggs like some fowl in
Congress, who couldn’t fill the dream preacher’s
shoes. No sir, aint close to fillin‘ his shoes.
Boy Preacher grew to be a man, mirrored the
message of the preacher who had a dream
that black children and white children
would play together in the village of peace.
The music in the message of We Shall Overcome:
We Shall Overcome,
We Shall Overcome Someday….
Boy Preacher grew up to stand up, to speak out;
a hammer for justice all over this land, the hammer of
Justice, the hammer of Freedom, the hammer of Love between
my brothers and my sisters, all over this land, mmmmm.
The blood he shed from the Bull cracker’s club
breaking his skull on the Edmund Pettis bridge
fills the pen of freedom to write those words,
write words of freedom, all in red.
Boy Preacher, lying in your coffin as the Conscience of Congress,
a teacher, like his mentor Dr. I Have a Dream, Teaching to speak up,
teaching to speak out with love for one another, to create a world
with a living wage, with a green clean economy for the seventh
generation to come, the seventh generation to come.
You taught like your teacher Boy Preacher grown old,
that hate’s too great a burden to bear, so when the 70
year old father brought his full grown son to your office in
D.C. to tell you he was with the Klan that beat you that
night in Rock Hill Carolina, beat you and the white man, that
he came to apologize for the beating that almost killed
you, so many racist years on the borders of Emmit Till’s
cold-blooded execution.
Will you forgive me, the father asked, almost in a whisper,
his son weeping…the old man breathless, wept too.
I accept your apology…I forgive you— he said carefully―
tears of three grown men, confluent currents of healing
love—polarities closed―healing replacing hate with compassion,
rivers to waterfalls moistening moccasins of peace.
Three grown men fell into dream,
I was born near a river-in a little tent-
Oh, and just like the river- I been runnin‘ ever since-
it’s been a long time comin‘- but a change is gonna come.
Oh yes it is—
Dream…dream becoming script where
forgiveness is the sound of a changing rain:
Boy Preacher to Congressman of Conscience,
burning cross racist to father of repentance,
grateful son, witness to the magic of the man
who wrote laws of equality for every one
in the truth of his own blood.
In the truth of His eternal Love.
Incluso si pudiera no puedo describir la curación
de este encuentro,
aunque…
aunque.
Even if I could I could not describe
the healing of this encounter…
even if…
even if…
Jim Moreno, Summer 2020
You can find Jim at jimpoet.com, jimmorenopoetryclasses.com, jimpoet@hotmail.com, and on Instagram and Facebook under Jim Moreno.
Jim was interviewed in the fall of 2020 by Mid City Community Music, one of the places where he teaches. Here’s the link to that interview:
https://www.facebook.com/midcitycommunitymusic/videos/1435881843279590/
SDWF: Thanks, Jim!
