Ishle!
Ishle Park rocked the muthafriggin’ house! MJM and Jason invited me at the last minute to see her read and sign books at Galeria De La Raza. She read maybe 8 poems of astounding beauty and literary zest and even sang a few Korean folk songs which worked with the poems instead of sounding like an I’m-the-evening’s-entertainment-so-I-can-do-what-I-want indulgence. The crowd there heavily drew from the sponsoring organizations, The Kearny Street Workshop and Locas Arts, revealing the considerable depth and power of the Asian-American arts community in San Francisco, something I knew existed but didn’t now to that impressive extent.
Man, I need to get back to writing poems.