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“All street life to a certain extent starts fair // Sometimes with a spiritual memory even,” reads Tongo Eisen-Martin from his poem “Kick Drum Only” in this virtual reading with poet, activist, and icon Sonia Sanchez celebrating the ninetieth anniversary of the Woodberry Poetry Room at Harvard University.
“To walk down the streets in the Bay Area is really to walk through a dystopia,” says San Francisco poet laureate Tongo Eisen-Martin about the rapid gentrification of his native city as he discusses how poetry serves as a tool for revolution in this installment of PBS NewsHour’s “Brief But Spectacular” series.
“Heaven becomes our street’s shoulders…” In this video, Tongo Eisen-Martin reads a selection of poems at San Francisco State University’s Poetry Center. His second poetry collection, Heaven Is All Goodbyes (City Lights Publishers, 2017), is featured in Page One in the September/October 2017 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
