** This pre-election special evening is focused on globalism and current political crises, with featured speakers Michael Brownstein, visiting from New York with his astounding new book WORLD ON FIRE (Open City Books, 2002), and renowned activist writer Starhawk, whose latest book WEBS OF POWER: NOTES FROM THE GLOBAL UPRISING (New Society Publishers, 2002) is making waves. The program will also include several other guest writers from throughout the Bay Area.

** This event is being organized on short notice, so PLEASE FORWARD THIS NOTICE to your lists and friends, and help spread the word. Look for color posters thruout the area, emails, websites, local print media, etc. However we can get the word out.

MICHAEL BROWNSTEIN is a novelist and poet whose most recent book attempts to step past disabling encounters with the present political circumstances we all find ourselves in. He has made numerous public appearances in past months, including the international conference on globalism in South Africa. With his latest book, Brownstein has created a new form combining poetry, personal narrative, and social analysis. Anthem, manifesto, and call to arms, WORLD ON FIRE asks the reader to face world upheaval without fear, thereby transforming disaster into opportunity and allowing the space for the creation of a new life. This impassioned work tries to help find ways to

"Erase the vision which has trashed this planet."

STARHAWK is a committed global justice activist and organizer. She is a veteran of progressive movements for over thirty years, from anti-war to anti-nukes, is a highly influential voice in the revival of earth-based spirituality and Goddess religion, and has brought many innovative techniques of spirituality and magic to her political work.

Her latest book is WEBS OF POWER: NOTES FROM THE GLOBAL UPRISING (New Society Publishers, 2002), a dramatic account from the front lines of the global justice movement as it migrated from Seattle in November 1999 to Prague, then Brazil, Quebec City, and Genoa. As well as reporting the actions on the street, WEBS OF POWER includes a privileged glimpse behind the scenes, too, at the fierce discussion of the issues, strategies, and tactics of an always-evolving social movement. The book is also a personal vision of what an alternative future might look and feel like beyond the version offered up to us by the promoters of corporate globalization--a unique contribution to our understanding of one of the most pivotal struggles of our time. Her website is: http://www.starhawk.org

** Other writers: LITAL LEVY is a doctoral student of Arabic and Hebrew at UC Berkeley. This past summer she traveled thruout the Middle East, including to Baghdad, where she was the first in her family to visit Iraq since 1951. SARAH MENEFEE is a poet (The Blood About the Heart, et al) and long-time activist whose work in both directions is often focused on the lives of homeless and impoverished people. Questions of justice, compassion, and possibilities of active engagement and response recall nearly abandoned purposes of literary art. CAMILLE ROY is a poet and writer (Craquer, Cheap Speech, Swarm, et al) and founding co-editor of Narrativity (http://www.sfsu.edu/~poetry/narrativity). She lived in Iraq for several years as a child (Arabic was her first language) and has been posting personal reflections and memories of Iraq along with running political commentary on http://blogs.salon.com/0001600/. SHAHI SADAT, a young Afghani poet who writes in Pashto, Dari (Farsi), Urdu, German, and English (From the Breath of Life to the Sigh of Death). He is a student in international relations at San Francisco State University and one of over 40,000 Afghani refugees living in the Bay Area.

** FOR FURTHER INFORMATION: tel 415-338-2227, or 415-338-3401
The Poetry Center's Fall 2002 program schedule is posted at http://www.sfsu.edu/~poetry

More on Starhawk's WEBS OF POWER:

"Since the anti-WTO protests in Seattle, a dispersed and diverse global movement has better understood itself in the mirror of Starhawk's writings. Her essays consistently, and miraculously, combine how-to practicality with poetry and inspiration. She presents the best face of social justice and dares us to live up to it."
--Naomi Klein, author of
Fences and Windows: dispatches from the front lines of the globalization debate

"The grave danger we are in--of enslavement, worldwide, by the insatiably greedy--is so complex only a witch could fully comprehend, analyze, and write a spell to get us out of it. I am serious. Enter Starhawk (thank Goddess!) and Webs of Power. This book tells us all we need to know about the chasm gaping at our feet. Visionary ropes are thrown in the hope that we will have sense and soul enough to swing ourselves across. --A must and soonest read.
--Alice Walker, author of Anything We Love Can Be Saved and The Color Purple

More on Michael Brownstein's WORLD ON FIRE:

"Michael Brownstein has written an epic, visionary, kaleidoscopic treatise/poem that, amazingly, attempts to make sense of and show a way through he rich madness of our time. The work is entirely unique, for the scope and audacity of the effort, and the beauty in its delivery. Partly wail of pain, partly an ode to nature and the human spirit, partly a last-ditch effort to consciously click back to a sustainable pathway, this book will leave the reader simultaneously exhausted, enlightened, depressed, and exhilarated. I strongly recommend it."
--Jerry Mander, author of In the Absence of the Sacred,
and President, International Forum on Globalization

"One of the most eloquent recent poetic works to cover the downsides of 'progress' and to cry out for a counterpunch against the manipulations of empire."
--Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)

"Bold and ambitious, World on Fire engages the great issues of the day, mixing the personal with the political, demanding attention be paid, continuing in the great tradition of Whitman, Ginsberg, and Pound. Here's a howl for the twenty-first century."
--Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation

"Michael Brownstein's text (combination Jeremiah, Milton, Blake, and sci-fi horror movie) is either the last possible book--or else a blueprint for the first real revolution since the Neolithic."
--Hakim Bey, author of T.A.Z.: The Temporary Autonomous Zone

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Steve Dickison, Director
The Poetry Center & American Poetry Archives
San Francisco State University
1600 Holloway Avenue ~ San Francisco CA 94132
~ vox 415-338-3401 ~ fax 415-338-0966
http://www.sfsu.edu/~poetry
~ ~ ~

Lâ taltazim hâlatan, walâkin
durn bî-llayâly kamâ tadûwru

Don't cling to one state
turn with the Nights,
as they turn

~Maqâmat al-Hamadhâni (tenth century; tr Stefania Pandolfo)

~ ~ ~

Bring all the art and
science of the world, and
baffle and humble it with
one spear of grass.

~Walt Whitman's notebook