First Blog

To all my camaradas, homies, poets in the trenches, all you light seekers, all you suckas and hipsters in Fresno Station; Mini-Apples, Sandy-ego, and beoynd: welcome to my blog!

I have been contemplating doing this for a while, and now that I have finally initiated the damn thing, I come to notice a few things when creating my profile. 1.) This is the first time I had named specific Raza organizations that I had, at one time, belonged to. These organizations (MEChA and Brown Berets) were quite intstrumental in my poetry. I gained a love for justice and being a soldado in the movement gave me the courage to speak to the community in a grass roots fashion. Though my politics (if you wish to call it that) has evolved, or I think an awareness based on continous change has affected me profoundly. For example, if we stand in one place, without movement, without agenda, without any attachments to community or race, or culture, we are changing. Not reacting is change. Reaction of course is change. I am changed even as I write this, everything is everything is everything.

And what do my ties to Raza organizations have to with any of this; those organizations changed me and those organizations have changed. One of my longtime mentors, the poet Juan Felipe Herrera was asked in an interview, "what needs to change in gaining support of poetry by Chicano/Latino circles?" He responded by saying that maybe its the message not the means of delivery that has to change. Maybe we have to start talking, evaluating, experiencing our art, music, language, culture, poetry, etc. differently?

Through this blog, I hope to express my views on such questions and would encourage my readership to engage me in dialogue. Thank you for participating as a reader and thinker.


peace,


michael medrano