"Well, I've heard that he's been real broken up since his mother died, y'know. I heard that last night he just kept ordering drinks he wasn't drinking and food he wasn't eating. It's just like he craves this nourishment but he can't take it in."

Miguel Algarín is known as one of the founders of the Nuyorican Poets Café (a famed venue in New York city for poetry, prose, drama, music, and a breeding ground for what would become Slam poetry that began in the living room of his Manhattan apartment). He holds the status of Professor Emeritus for his more than thirty years as a teacher of Shakespeare, Creative Writing, and United States Ethnic Literature. He's published more than ten books of poetry, edited several anthologies, written for television and theater, and received the American Book Award as a writer and editor.
On a July night during the 2006 Summer Writing Program at Naropa University, however, Anne Waldman is explaining him to me as hurt, wounded from a hard life that the recent death of his mother has only further complicated. She's doing this in the knowledge that he is getting to me. She's not saying it but she knows I want to punch him and, of course, neither or us really want that (even if I do). He hasn't been sober since he arrived in Boulder and shows no sign of letting up, he's annoying me, he's being macho; in short, he's acting like one of my uncles, a stereotypical Latino man sizing me up every second that I'm in his presence. The previous night I sit near him at the Corner Bar. He stares at me hard. I cough and he angrily asks, "What, are you sick?" I scratch my arm and this bothers him, he asks, "What's wrong with you arm?" He speaks to me in a less than charming, abrasive, you ain't shit tone that growing up in Mexican family has made me all too familiar with, then he hits me in the arm, hard; I just stare at him as hard I can stare at someone I can't do anything with. He smiles and laughs.

I didn't come to Naropa to deal with this macho bullshit. I left Chicago Heights, IL (my ghettoized hometown) and moved to progressive Boulder, Colorado to get away from men who drank and spent their nights claiming superiority over each other, but the Summer Writing Program at Naropa is a different world altogether from Boulder or Chicago Heights and the fourth and final week of this summer in particular takes the astronomical nature of this microuniverse to an entirely different level: Mr. Algarín is teaching alongside the legendary Sonia Sanchez and Amiri Baraka.

The Summer Writing Program is the foundation upon which the Writing and Poetics program at Naropa University was founded on by Waldman and Allen Ginsberg in 1974. It's legacy is reflected in the pages of it's annual magazine, Bombay Gin literature journal, and the plethora of luminaries it's given rise to, supported, and harvested (Jim Carroll, Diane di Prima, Akilah Oliver, and Harryette Mullen to name a few). Algarín and Baraka and poets of their ilk (including their infamous and troubled contemporary Miguel Piñero) have taught sporadically in the program since it's infancy while Sanchez made her first appearance in 2003 but has returned to teach each summer since.

I've been given the assignment and opportunity to be Amiri Baraka's faculty assistant while he is here in Boulder; the affinity felt between Algarín and Baraka is something I can understand as he is charming man with a sweet disposition, hardly the type of person that you'd suspect of being under attack from the Anti-Defamation League (see the controversy over the 9/11 themed Somebody Blew Up America). Along with Baraka comes the opportunity to see him interact with Miguel and Sonia and, as an aspiring poet, it's an opportunity I embrace.

In the presence of such greatness and history any young person like myself with an ounce of sense about him knows to stand-by and observe and that's just what I do. From the beginning things are chaotic: Sonia and Amiri are to arrive from Philadelphia and Newark respectively at the same time, but Mr. Baraka has not shown up. We find out later that he's been booked onto a later flight and meanwhile Sam Wall (Ms. Sanchez's faculty assistant) and myself are to pick up performance artist Karen Volkman, who's angry at a school and faculty assistant that have failed to retrieve her. I try to explain to her that she'll be riding in the same car as Sonia Sanchez and possibly Amiri Baraka. I can tell her by her tone she doesn't know who they are and she doesn't care. Fortunately, as we settle on picking Baraka up later and ride towards their hotel, Sonia's peaceful spirit and no nonsense activist demeanor calm Volkman down. She recounts how she was recently arrested as a part of Grannies for Peace for trespassing when the group attempted to enlist in the U.S. Army with the declaration "Take us, not our grandchildren."

Indeed, Sanchez is an attractive yet intimidating force, attractive because of her openness and caring nature and intimidating because of the power of her perception. She has published more than twelve books of poetry, was nominated for an NAACP Image and National Book Critics Circle Award, and has received the American Book Award, but on this day she's indirectly teaching me what to shop for. She can see right through me and she knows I'm observing what she buys from the Wild Oats down the street from her hotel as Sam and I accompany her and Volkman to buy provisions for the week. Perhaps this is why she asks if I can find her brand of mouth rinse in the dental aisle. Everything is organic and fresh with Ms. Sanchez, who decides against the green bananas and looks for mangos and strawberries instead. She will later give me a package of her two-for-one strawberries along with a bag full of groceries she'll claim she cannot eat. She'll speak to an auditorium full of students later on the importance of demanding peace in this lifetime and how that peace extends to the body. "Just think about what you're putting in your body when you're drinking that beer tonight," she'll say.

This is in sharp contrast to Mr. Baraka, however, whom I go to pick up at Denver International Airport later that night with my friend Tim. He is a sharply dressed man in his seventies, former poet laureate of New Jersey, once a sergeant in the United States Air Force, an Obie and American Book Award winner, accomplished poet and playwright, and a former Muslim spiritual leader turn Third World Marxist infamous enough to be featured in conservative writer and activist David Horowitz's The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America. I introduce myself and he asks me what my ethnicity is and where I am from. I say, "My parents are from Mexico, but I was born and raised in Chicago." He asks, "Are there a lot of Latinos in Chicago?" We get into the car and he smoothly says, "Hey man, let's stop at a store and get some beer." It's wonderment for me to see this man, such an influence on my work, such a thorn in the side in many an academic and political establishment--in fact, he'll tell me later that he was never paid the stipend that came with the position of Poet Laureate after the controversy over Somebody Blew Up America--walk around Safeway seeking beer and chips. In stark contrast to Sanchez, I will, in fact, not see him put anything in his body besides beer and chips the entire week I am in his presence, not even the water I bring everyday before the start of his class.

To observe each of these forces alone is one thing but to see them together is something else completely. As contemporaries they seldom if ever find the reverence in each other that this program of aspiring writers is gushing to give them. I bring my friend Leslie to see Sonia read, guaranteeing her that it will be a spiritual and inspirational experience. Sonia tears through calls for unity and peace, and the tragic story of a young girl sold by her mother to a drug dealer for crack. Her energy and power pierce through the audience bringing nearly everyone to tears, including Leslie, who later thanks Sonia for her reading and me for bringing her. I am surprised, however, later that night when I ask Miguel and Amiri what they thought of the reading. "What did you think?" Amiri asks. "I thought she was amazing. She definitely tore through the audience and got to us," I reply sheepishly because his tone seems to ask me where I stand more than what I think. "What did you all think?" I ask. "I think it was a typical later Sonia reading," Algarín replies. Baraka agrees and with that the subject was dropped. This is not to say that jealousy existed in these men towards this woman, but rather a lack of astonishment at something they've seen many times before and that they may not agree with.

This is not to say that Baraka and Sanchez share dissimilar political or social views; they do agree on many things. What's strike me most about them is the difference in their style of approach. "I'm glad you have the opportunity to work him," Sonia says to me in her room at the Boulder Quality Inn. I'm there to collect my black hoodie from her; I lent it to her to bear an overly air conditioned Dolan's Bar (along with adopting a macrobiotic diet, she is not a fan of air conditioning). I recount to her how fascinating I find the differences between her and her close contemporaries and she says to me, "It's good for you to see these different styles because not everybody does it the same way." She always speaks to me in a tone that is stern and understanding. I take the hoodie back and start to call my Sonia Sanchez hoodie.

Speaking to those different styles it's important to note that her visit to Dolan's is in the afternoon and is only taking place at the behest of Waldman, Baraka, Algarín and the like. Sonia drinks water and tries to rest whenever she can. Baraka and Algarín however are two people the 24 year old in me cannot keep up with. Whether it's late night readings at the Laughing Goat or excursions to the Corner Bar on some nights I pass them off onto other people (I have class in the morning) and just about anyone is happy to oblige. Some nights, however, I keep up with them and it pays off. I'm sitting with them at the corner bar with Anne Waldman and a host of aspiring writers (members of Illiterate Magazine amongst) when I notice Anne Waldman coming back and forth between our table and the Catacombs bar in the basement of the building. She tells us that Richie Havens is playing a set downstairs and he wants to meet Amiri and we need to get down there, so we do. It's amazing to even imagine standing six feet away from Richie Havens in room that's about 50 square feet with these people, or to imagine Baraka and him exchanging a cool handshake without too much affection, let alone experiencing being a young man with little credit to my name standing in such milieu of historical significance.

I see Sonia for the last time at the weekly SWP book signing where her eyes penetrate me and she asks about my state of mind in a way that states she knows more about me than she'll say, she tells me to stay safe, and signs my copy of Does Your House Have Lions? with the inscription "Things will get better." I avoid Algarín for the most part except when Amiri will ask me to lead him the location of the classroom that Miguel has drunkenly forgot. Amiri gives me a copy of each of the chapbooks he's been selling for my birthday, and the last time I see him Tim and myself will be taking him to the airport. He is recognized by an African-American man in his forties wearing an LAPD shirt who remembers seeing Baraka speak on English Literature's debt to Irish Literature; he mentions it before walking away. As Amiri shakes our hands and bids us farewell, we see the man again speaking to another about just meeting Amiri and when he last saw him spoke; indeed we are reminded his reputation is much larger and infamous than his charming demeanor and sweet smile would imply.

(C) 2006 luis h. valadez