Author Archives | Margaret Randall
Margaret Randall (1936) was born in New York City but grew up in Albuquerque and lived half of her adult life in Mexico, Cuba, and Nicaragua. When she returned to the U.S. in 1984 she was ordered deported under the U.S. Immigration and Nationality's McCarran-Walter Act. The government alleged that her writings, "went against the good order and happiness of the United States." She won her case in 1989.
She is a local poet who reads nationally and internationally. Among her recent books of poetry are My Town, As If The Empty Chair / Como Si La Silla Vacia, and The Rhizome As A Field of Broken Bones, all from Wings Press, San Antonio, Texas. A feminist poet's reminiscence of Che Guevara, Che On My Mind, is just out from Duke University Press, a new collection of essays, More Than Things, is out from The University of Nebraska Press, and Daughter of Lady Jaguar Shark, a single long-poem with 15 photographs, is now available from Wings. Her most recent poetry collection is About Little Charlie Lindbergh (also from Wings Press).
Randall resides in Albuquerque with her partner, the painter Barbara Byers, and travels widely to read and lecture. You can find out more about Margaret, her writings and upcoming readings at, www.margaretrandall.org.
Life, or death, goes on: More than public will needed for gun control
Although a variety of opinion polls show 90% of Americans favor at least some measure of gun control, and although President Obama has made sincere pleas for changes to our retrograde laws, change proved impossible. When the US Senate voted on expanding background checks for gun sales—the only amendment left standing among the many introduced—neither Democrats nor Republicans were able to provide the 60 votes necessary to avoid a filibuster. US democracy doesn’t mean the will of the people. It means the vast majority of our elected officials consider their jobs first and public opinion a distant second...
Continue reading...Syncretism for the twenty-first century: Some notes from Mexico
12. April 2013
The word syncretism generally describes a blending of two disparate, often antagonistic, elements. One dominates, but sensitive observation easily unearths the other. The conquered culture remains, often in powerful ways.
Continue reading...Weekly Poem: Preface
08. April 2013
Nineteen-thirty-six: I hurried as always
but was late. Eight centuries
or ten thousand years,
my small story fixed to my back.
Food came weighed and wrapped,
shelter engorged, surplus.
My own, my own, my own
was a mantra I could sing
in any season.
I could be who I was
and also anyone else...
Poetry’s voice
03. April 2013
Poetry-lovers here would have been astonished at the 9th annual Festival internacional de Poesía in Granada, Nicaragua that took place from February 17 through 24 of this year.
Continue reading...Greed and hypocrisy: Ingredients of a foolproof recipe for violence
26. March 2013
Here in the United States, I would argue that the single most influential idea fueling extreme violence is greed. The profit motive. It is every bottom line.
Continue reading...Shaping My Words
24. March 2013
We have reached a moment in human evolution that foretells an uncertain future at best, and a future that in palpable ways is already here. It is a future that shows its voracious fangs and seems to mock our attempts to pursue a course that favors a culture of life over one of death.
Continue reading...
18. April 2013
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