Margaret Randall

SPAIN'S GREAT UNTRANSLATED - Panel with Margaret Randall, Ignacio Martinez de Pison, Anne McLean, and Javier Aparicio

Margaret Randall — 2013-10-04T13:33:00Z

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Book launching and poetry reading: THE RHIZOME AS A FIELD OF BROKEN BONES, Wings Press, San Antonio, Texas

Margaret Randall — 2013-04-18T02:33:00Z

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Presentacion del libro TESTIGO DE PIEDRA por Margaret Randall, traduccion de Maria Vazquez Valdez - Presentation of the book STONES WITNESS by Margaret Randall, translation by Maria Vazquez Valdez

Margaret Randall — 2013-04-08T19:36:00Z

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LANZAMIENTO DEL LIBRO: COMO SI LA SILLA VACIA / AS IF THE EMPTY CHAIR, Ediciones La Cabra

Margaret Randall — 2013-04-03T11:19:00Z

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FEATURED POET, ALONG WITH GREAT MUSIC, SUNDAY CHATTER (formerly Church of Beethoven)

Margaret Randall — 2013-03-17T16:36:00Z

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CHE ON MY MIND

Margaret Randall — 2013-02-25T23:25:33Z

Ernesto Che Guevara occupies a place in our emotional iconography unsurpassed by anyone with the exception of Buddha, Mohammed, Marx, Mary or Jesus of Nazareth. Still contemporary—his death at thirty-nine isn't yet half a century behind us—he is a figure revered in equal measure by both convinced revolutionaries and apolitical youth at the farthest reaches of our planet. All see in him a symbol of nonconformity and resistance. And, like so many humans we've embalmed in myth, scholars and those who don't think past the image, devotees and detractors alike, tend to ignore a more nuanced view of the man. I am old enough to remember the world in which he lived. I was part of that world, and it remains a part of me. This won't be a political or economic treatise, except where that sort of analysis strengthens my observations. It is a poet's reminiscence of an era, and of the figure that best exemplifies that era. These musings may also help us rethink revolutionary change, and how a reexamination of history may point to more productive ways of achieving that change. This is the story of how Che haunts me. I call it Che On My Mind, mimicking the old Hoagy Carmichael and Stewart Gorrell tune Georgia on My Mind. It's that spirit and wandering rhythm I wish to evoke: moving in one direction and then another, exploring this texture or that, giving free rein to memory and to a consciousness Che helped to shape. In these notes I want to remember that Guevara was first and foremost extraordinarily human. He felt the pain of others deeply, and was subversive to every social hypocrisy, every greed-based corporate crime and mean-spirited exploitation. Without doubt, the quality he embodied that made him beloved by millions was his unerring capacity to be who he said he was. In Che, words and actions were one. What he did was consistent with what he said. In a world in which corporate crime, governmental sleight of hand, and the deterioration of moral values are every day more evident and endemic, the man's principles shine. Because the energy of his internationalism burns as hot now as when he was alive, Che's image moves beyond easy metaphor. His myth has remained alive in disparate cultures. That myth, however, has been woven by friend and foe alike. Che's image, words, values, intentions, and his successes and failures have all been shaped to symbolize that which he most deeply abhorred as well as that for which he died . . .

MORE THAN THINGS: Essays

Margaret Randall — 2013-02-25T23:21:33Z

Things

“No ideas but in things” —William Carlos Williams

The wooden apple If I cup my palm around this wooden apple, my flesh knows a heft just a bit too light, a texture not moist or juicy enough. Not the life of living fruit but the history of art, of making things. Who recognized the raw possibility, held the chunk of local pine, whittled the navel of its stem, the indentation of seeds and marks along the edges of the cut? Imagined teeth bit desire along those edges, going all the way back to the Garden. One side is sliced and faintly browned, the absence of skin welcoming the tarnish of air. The outer, rounded, side is stained deep red and shows small blemishes, the fate of all picked fruit. I can still feel Elaine de Kooning's exuberant fingers placing this object in my hand and my own fingers curving around it, how it felt that day more than half a century ago. “Isn't it perfect” was never a question, but recognition of another woman's skill, the Appalachian artist from whom she'd purchased an entire bowl: orange, lemon, banana, plum. The watermelon was a wedge of course, all the better to display its range of color, succulence of pulp and seed. “Pick one,” Elaine urged. I followed the pull of instinct, straight to the apple. I knew there was something special about that sculptured fruit, and something special in my friend's generosity. Each its own voice. A working artist was telling a young woman still trying to find her space and rhythm that she too could choose a life of creativity. It would be easier and harder than I knew. The wooden apple quickly took up residence everywhere I lived. It would stay with me through rejections, early publications, and the eventual discovery of my own voice, along my long journey into art. Last night I dreamed of Cape Cod houses standing proud on broken granite cliffs, wooden shingles against a battering wind. Second-floor windowpanes set in small frames gleamed flushed blue and pale green, like those contact lenses fabricated to change the color of a person's eyes. Elaine looks at me from wherever it is she now wields a paintbrush. She laughs. Each time I hold this apple I am holding artistic flight dismissed as craft, what that has meant and means everywhere, for women in particular. Anonymous was a woman is still a bitter truth. Men's philosophical treatises versus women's diaries and recipes. Personal versus public, the body versus a world stage, tireless implication that what she does is lesser, what he does always more. When I hold the wooden apple I am holding Elaine's encouragement of my own life in art, my memory of her in me. I am holding a tangible object that speaks to me of creativity. The air I breathe. A need that grows on the inside of my skin.

Participation in the annual poetry festival, Granada, Nicaragua

Margaret Randall — 2013-02-24T13:17:00Z

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VALENTINE'S DAY EROTICA - Poetry Reading

Margaret Randall — 2013-02-14T20:19:00Z

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COMO SI LA SILLA VACIA / AS IF THE EMPTY CHAIR

Margaret Randall — 2013-01-12T11:51:17Z

Do I Get Out of Bed This Morning?

Memory moves across a map

like the lines in a face

spread and deepen,

souring testimony

to the smile gone,

the unheard laughter

and cheek offered up

for a kiss that will not come.

Skin fades imperceptibly,

its colors hesitate

unsure if they will cling to heat

or sink to the pale pulse

of resignation.

Do I get out of bed this morning

yet again? Do I wash my face?

Do I speak?