A Poetry Moment

Here we are, the year nearly finished, and we still do not have a new poet laureate -- O my captain! Did our resident poets not see the tiny item about the search in the Mercury News? Did they have trouble with the nomination guidelines, which only considers poets who’ve published a non-vanity book that contains 48 pages or more (huh?), a CD (what?), or 20 or more poems in “established” publications? Maybe we should just let Jack Hirschman pull a Bloomberg and continue his two-year reign. He’s certainly done a fine job, what with the biennial International Poetry Festival that started in 2007 and the fest’s interim events, the second of which is today’s San Francisco International Poetry Festival — Vietnamese Poets of the Diaspora. Attending is award-winning poet and S.F. State teacher Truong Tran (perhaps our next laureate, hint) as well as five other Vietnamese-American poets, all of whom excel in areas beyond free verse. Linh Dinh’s collection of stories Blood and Soap got picked by the Village Voice as one of the best books of 2004; Mong-Lan moonlights as a painter, photographer, and Argentine tango dancer; and lê thi diem thúy’s 2004 novel, The Gangster We Are All Looking For, is required reading on many college campuses -- she’s also a acclaimed performance artist.

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• Truong Tran
• Linh Tran
• Alan Hightman
• Jack Hirschman
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Music features jazz vocalist Linh Tran with guitarist Alan Hightman, among others.
Sat., Nov. 8, 7 p.m., 2008