Wilfred Owen once said, “The true poets must be truthful.” If ever I have been in the presence of true poets, it has been at an Angry Brown Poets performance. This quadruplet not only speaks truth, but also surpasses the realm of daily thought with profound sagacity.
The Angry Brown Poets are James M. Aranda, Manuel Gonzalez, Colleen Gorman and Carlos Mart°n, who each bring invaluable contributions to the group’s popularity in Albuquerque’s poetry circle. As member Manuel Gonzalez said, “Separately, we are four different people, but when we come together, we fit together perfectly.”
This puzzle-piece analogy could not provide a better description for the group in terms of the enchantment they create onstage.
What started out as “drunken ramblings” by members five years ago soon became an insatiable need to express themselves through their writings. Each member’s burning love of poetry was ignited through different experiences, yet they share something perpetual in itself: a fire that would breathe of their current success; a fire that is fed through individual words and emotions.
The group foretold of this prosperity then, but it wasn’t until eight months ago when things really started going. The original three members, Aranda, Gonzalez and Mart°n, began doing street poetry downtown and around the Nob Hill area. They earned their first gig during a street performance near Kelly’s Brew Pub where they were shooed away for rousing the customers. Fortunately, a man from the Reptilian Lounge at the Riverside Theatre overheard the commotion and took an interest in the group, inviting them to be a part of the lounge’s variety show. Then, during a reading at coffee house Java Joe’s last September, they met newest addition, Colleen. She was urged to join the group shortly thereafter and the three men agree that they are “infinitely better because of her.” According to Aranda, prior to Gorman’s entrance, they were “just a big ball of testosterone with too much machismo.”
Since Gorman’s arrival, the group has found the last piece of the puzzle. With regular performances in and around town, the group has become a part of ’Burque’s best. The members were even invited by Beloit College in Wisconsin to perform as part of its Latino Week last November. The trio said it was an episode that it could talk about forever, being that Beloit is a place so culturally different from their native land of Nuevo Mexico. Hmmm … makes you wonder what four poets could do in a town of 35,000 in a mere weekend.
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In addition to live performances, the group also went to work on recording a full-length CD compilation of their favorite works. Members also commit their time to volunteer work within the community, holding creative writing workshops at public schools and youth detention centers. For the group, it is important to “let kids know that there are other ways to express themselves besides negativity.”
Its commendable efforts, however, are not the only things that make this group noteworthy. The members paint verbal masterpieces using things as primitive as a pen and paper, and when they speak these words aloud, the listener has no choice but to suffer through a lasting impression. To give you a better idea of how much pulchritude resides in their intuitions, Aranda writes, “Therein lies the solution to curing a dying society … It’s losing everything until we can all see each other for what we really are … human beings,” while Mart°n writes “1502, cavr¢n — that’s how long my family’s been here.” Gorman says that life is process, not substance and Gonzalez has a helpful bit of advice: “Don’t be a pendejo, be a poet.”
As Gorman says in one of her poems, “We desire to inspire a revolution … a revolution of creation and motivation.” Yet, if you ask them what their purpose is — the thing that keeps them doing what they do — they’ll tell you it’s about “revealing the truth to people through brutally honest reflections of self.”
Not only are the Angry Brown Poets truth-seekers, they are truth speakers. And they speak the truth quite well. For more information about The Angry Brown Poets and other poetry shows, go to www.abqpoetryslam.org.
