Vox Populi
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Joan E. Bauer: The Visionary, the Provocateur
If, like me, you lived through the civil rights movement,
the antiwar movement, you can never discard hope.
— Historian & urban theorist Mike Davis (1946-2022)
~
Mike Davis grew up Catholic, bullied by rednecks
in Fontana, a place he later called, with affection,
that ‘junkyard of dreams.’
His world view shifted after reading Hiroshima.
He worked as a meat cutter & truck driver,
organized anti-war rallies & turned his rejected
dissertation into the landmark City of Quartz
with a staccato, take-no-prisoners style.
On first reading Davis, I was gobsmacked
by his writing about drought, wildfire,
‘earthquake apocalypse.’
I grew up in LA with the smog so thick
it made your eyes sting & you forgot
all about the San Gabriel Mountains.
I recognized my California.
We’re passengers on a runaway train—
Then books about greed & hubris,
the velocity of social change,
the world’s tragic mega-slum cities,
‘dumping grounds’ for the unskilled
& the unprotected—
The car bomb is the poor man’s air force
Brilliant with a ferocious work ethic. Curious
about everything. For years, Davis urged
students to visit, dive into research
in his garage’s filing cabinets, saying:
The light is always on.
~~~~~
Copyright 2024 Joan E. Bauer
Joan E. Bauer is the author of three full-length poetry collections, Fig Season (Turning Point, 2023), The Camera Artist (Turning Point, 2021), and The Almost Sound of Drowning (Main Street Rag, 2008). Recent work has appeared in Paterson Literary Review, Slipstream and Chiron Review. She divides her time between Venice, CA and Pittsburgh, PA where she co-curates the Hemingway’s Summer Poetry Series with Kristofer Collins.
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“The light is always on.”
Powerful.
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What a remarkable poem about an incredible man who made his life work striving to better conditions for all of us. And how beautifully the quirkiness of Los Angeles is captured in these words.
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Thanks, Mandy. I agree.
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Many poems on Vox Populi turn me instantly to the joy of their lyricism; they make me sing, write a poem on who knows what, dance metaphorically. Instead, this poem takes me back to roots as an anti-war protester and Holocaust historian, keeping alight memories of a justice hero, Mike Davis. There is room under the tent of poetry for both kinds.
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Thank you so much, Michael, for your kind and generous words about my work. You have been such a friend and supporter of my poetry over the years. And thank you, as always, for all you do for poetry, and community. – Jb
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Oh yes, I recognize my Southern California too, Orange and Riverside Counties where the smog deadens colors and hides mountains–although in Riverside, they showed through the veil. What a powerful poem, and as you say, dear Vox, “eschewing the subjective.”
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And I am back in a childhood of stinging eyes, raw lungs, unable to see the mountains above Pasadena. Powerful, true.
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Such muscle in that poem!
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There is something indispensable about Joan Bauer to our experience, a truthful countercultural rendition I value in lieu of our half-stories about who and what we are.
I am grateful to lift up my eyes and see by her light.
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Thanks, Sean. Joan is doing something completely different than other contemporary American poets. She eschews the subjective and the lyrical and uses the craft of poetry to present history. Let’s keep in mind that the Greeks praised the muse of history beside the muses of lyric poetry, dance and music.
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