Does anyone have a book of mine called Junior College which
is not available here?
Maybe someone brought it from home.
You don't have it at home.
Hmm.
[LAUGHTER]
I'm quite hurt now.
[LAUGHTER]
OK.
This is a poem called "The Effects of Abstract Art."
And I changed the name but it actually
the name is Ernie in life but it changes to Charlie.
And the first Chicano artist is this guy named Ernie Palomino
from Fresno, California.
They think he's the first Chicano artist.
And I'll explain that maybe later a little later.
But I have to explain the poem before I even read it
because he was a very fine artist.
He would be able to-- he was able to capture
the world as a Dutch painter would, very exact, detailed,
it looked like life.
Some would call it realism.
And then he discovered cubist art.
"Charlie, our one hope, called the Chucos from Braley Street
to line up.
Chucos are like pachucos.
Since half had been in--
since half had been in road camp shackled and such,
they followed his orders, and had their faces
drawn in charcoal.
These thugs went away smiling at their portraits
and Charlie too went away.
Three months later he was in Paris,
Fresno still stamped on his furrowed brow
and dripping farm water behind his ears.
Charlie walked on snow, and ate bread, and cheese in Paris.
He drank coffee at outdoor cafes and accordion homelessness
[AUDIO OUT] its dull mirror of ice.
And suddenly in a heated--
heat-less room, he was going abstract.
The chair's no longer chairs, but buckled
wood and jets of timber.
He painted a Nazi with a boot for a head,
and a cathedral leaning in an atomic wind.
The river thawed from hot human tears.
The fish drank that brew and hopped on
to the dinner plates."
That's Picasso there.
"This according to Charlie's suddenly twisted cubist art.
Back in Fresno after three months,
he showed the Chucos, the pachucos his new art.
The crooked lines.
The negative space, and every face beautifully out of whack.
Man, the Chucos couldn't understand this.
Charlie drawing so good just months before
and now the eyes of farmers dripping like eggs.
[LAUGHTER]
Man, was Charlie a wino now?
A myopic young man?
Had existentialism weakened his blood?
My uncle looked over at Charlie's fingers.
Poor guy, no telling when a train ran them over."
[CHUCKLES]
[LAUGHTER]
[APPLAUSE]
OK.
Yeah.
And so when Ernie Palomino came back from Paris,
he discovered cubist art and so he thought he was really cool.
And he showed my dad like what he was doing.
I said, man, Ernie, you got worse.
And he thought, of course, he's supposed to get
better as time went along.
[LAUGHTER]