via californiapoetics.org

“The impertinent squalls of one squeezebox vies against another in ambling pick-ups. The rattle of dice and spoons. The one cafe allows a patron to pour from his own bottle.”

Perhaps, my imagination is running wild to conjecture that this patron is pouring coffee from a bottle of cold brew in this cafe. But, that’s what language allows – rapid race of ones thought. Here, again, a poet – previously,  inaugural poet, Richard Blanco, was excerpted on this page for his use of cafe -uses the culture of the cafe within the everyday conversation.

The importance, in my opinion of this usage, is the acknowledgement of how pervasive the culture of the cafe/coffee is. My readers, it is far beyond the liquid, its the space, the people and the minutest of actions that inspires and formulates a documentation of its experience extending to a poetic form just as this. A form, that within its literary circumference has garnered a National Book Critics Circle Award for poetry.

Congratulations to language, culture and to one who bound them both. Mr. D.A. Powell. cde