BRANDON CESMAT: ON DREAMING EUREKA
(Perigee Volume II, Issue I; Summer 2004)
BY ROBERT JUDGE WOERHEIDE
Some people talk about giving back to the world—talk about helping others improve their lives, talk about encouraging society
to examine the difficult issues and face up to them, talk about teaching and inspiring—others actually do it. Brandon Cesmat is
one of the latter. A poet and professor gifted with a flare for the unusual, and a warm personality to match, Cesmat is quickly
winning over the hearts of students, writers, and audiences in San Diego County and beyond. The author of two books, Ice
Drum (which earned the San Diego Book Award) and his latest, Driven into the Shade (since initially publishing this article, it
has won the 2003 San Diego Book Award--announced May 22, 2004). It was after reading Driven into the Shade that I met
with Cesmat in his Cal State University San Marcos (CSUSM) office to discuss poetry, politics, and everything in between.
But the story doesn’t start there. One week earlier—after enjoying a lecture on his work with Classroom of Poets (a collection
of poetry written by elementary, junior high, and high school students, which he edited)—I picked up a copy of Driven into
the Shade along with several, glowing articles from half a dozen San Diego press sources. It was then I became reacquainted
with Cesmat, a professor I’d had for both a film and a creative writing course during my undergraduate career at CSUSM.
I left his office an hour or two after arriving, absolutely brimming with energy and anticipation. You see, Brandon Cesmat has
good karma. And our conversation—a joyful exchange of views on art, politics, and a mutual love of film—could have filled
three issues of Perigee.
A week later, after digesting Driven into the Shade and producing a few works of my own as a result, I returned to interview
him officially this time. Our pending discussion of Southern California life was appropriate, considering I had just mounted the
hundreds of steps required to reach any building on campus, and was sweating more than a little in the early spring heat.
Brandon Cesmat knows all about the duality of Southern California, a place where expectations and reality rarely coincide.
This duality can be most easily understood when considering the relationship between light and shadow; Driven into the Shade
is all about that shadow and that light, about breaking expectations and examining truths.
“I’m very interested in light and the associations that we have with it,” Cesmat tells me, as I wipe the remaining sweat from
my brow and shift into a more comfortable position. He elaborates based on his experience with film: “I know what it looks
like when you have no shadow, it’s what we call ‘flat.’ I’m interested in the texture which … varies depending on where (the
subject and audience) are. It seems to me that there is a false dichotomy between shadow and light—and I just want to work
a little more in concord with the two.”
Driven into the Shade does a wonderful job examining this false dichotomy, as it chronicles the experiences of a boy
becoming a man in Southern California. The work is both tender and challenging. “I hope that a lot of the narrators (in Driven
into the Shade) are two sided. It’s something hard for me too learn: I think I watched too much melodrama as a kid … so
then when I got out into the world things didn’t match up with History class or Sunday School. So I had to try to reconcile
what I was seeing with what I believed.”
What he saw was the reality of Southern California—often, unfortunately, marred by hypocrisy and struggles over culture and
family. But how is this struggle so often misrepresented or ignored in art? In a movie by John Singleton, Cesmat explained,
“They wanted to retouch the skies of LA ‘cause he shot on a smoggy day.
“We advertise for horse property,” he continued, “yet we’ve decimated the trail system—decimated an historic trail system.
We talk about … how our families are important yet we construct neighborhoods far from areas of employment so parents
are spending two hours in their cars rather than together (with their children). We have family values but yet we live in a state
where we just passed bond measures that are going to be basically a $20,000 birth tax for every child born. California is only
la-la land if you’re oblivious. Otherwise it’s this incredible battleground where cultures and families are just tearing each other
apart because they think they’ve come to ‘Eureka.’ Rather than seeing what’s here, we’re just making it over as fast as we
can.”
These aren’t terrible difficult to recognize: commuting, environmental manipulation, hasty bond measures. But there’s more
here, and Cesmat knows it.
“I look out my window and I see a line on the hill, and it’s water being pulled out of the San Luis Rey River to go to the cities
of Vista and Escondido. Now, that water violates a federal treaty. Rather than return this water—which is high quality
because it’s low salinity—rather than return it to the tribes to whom it really belongs the federal government pays fines to the
tribes.
“So the cities of Escondido and Vista continue to grow. Well, that’s not their water to grow with. So in essence you have the
federal government subsidizing this, and then we have people complaining about taxes so we get a tax cut. Then what do we
do? During the time I’ve taught here, we’ve increased the writing classes by ten students. Middle class families are crying for
tax cuts, but do they realize that they’re compromising the education of their children when they do so? And raising fees
simultaneously—so you’re getting less for more. There’s a total disconnect in Southern California between the lives we live
and the cost of (those lives)—but everybody says the weather’s great and they’re happy. So I guess I want to turn up the
shadows a little bit, because I think the shadows, I hope (they) will bring us back to some balance.
Simultaneously, Brandon Cesmat is working with students in San Diego County to develop the talent for poetry he sees as
naturally inherent to youth. “All these things that we’re doing with poetry, children do very naturally when they’re young. If
we find them doing wonderful things with language, and make them aware of it, then they will do it for all of their lives.”
Classroom of Poets showcases work from these students, along with some from teachers and essays on the role of poetry in
the classroom. It is an ambitious and heartwarming work for which a second edition is in the works.
Inevitably, one must be prepared to defend such activities in the classroom. In today’s increasingly competitive educational
environment—where filling in bubbles on scantrons supercedes other less measurable activities—Cesmat is ready for the
challenge.
“Poetry literally means to create. Students that learn how to create with language will be the people who write the most
convincing proposals, they’ll be the people who make the most persuasive arguments in court, they’ll be the people that tell
the best stories at dinner.”
Cesmat’s poetic work doesn’t end in the classroom, as noble as that endeavor is. He recognizes the legitimate role poetry
plays in the larger context of society. In a day and age where men and women are dying in another country to defend
America’s concepts of freedom, poetry has a part to play.
“In terms of cutting and running, I’ve never seen anybody run so fast as the people defending the war.” His statement cuts to
the quick. “I think people assume poets are touchy-feely. The poets were against the war not because they thought it would
be wrong to kill somebody, but because the president couldn’t possibly own his words, and he can’t own his words now.”
Cesmat sees this poetic response to the Iraq invasion not as something to be coddled or stroked, not to be overemphasized as
some philanthropic act of courage. He sees it as a fact of life: “If we look at the history of poets … they’ve got a
responsibility to speak the truth. I think that poets are going to have to eloquently speak the truth. When there is so much lying
going on that’s the only option they have.
“While we are confronted with … this kind of laziness, this kind of sloth—while we’re confronted with this total ineptitude on
the national level, (we must) not forget that right underneath our noses the astonishing things of life are happening. By paying
tribute to them, that’s a great act of rebellion.”
Although his words would raise hackles on most cable channel news shows, his poetry doesn’t waste time standing on a soap
box. Like any good poet, he is able to blend larger, more divisive issues into his work by enveloping them within the truths of
everyday humanity. In what he calls the astonishing things of life. He does this most expertly by rooting his poems in images.
“I’m an imagist. I’ve always been interested in the visual organization of the poem on the page. I attempt to make poems
movies that play in the mind of the reader—at least I hope that’s what happens. I hope that they see and hear things, and that
if I choose the right things for them to see and hear then they’ll also be a little closer to the emotions that those things had for
me too.”
It is easy to understand why images play an important role in Cesmat’s work when one remembers his expertise in, and love
for, film. “Film can do wonderful things, but it’s really all a variation on what happens in our mind. Even our visual techniques
are variations on our dreams,” he points out.
Music plays another important role for Cesmat, who is part of a group called Drought Buoy (with Gunnar Biggs and Terry
Sprague), who perform poetry in conjunction with music and modern dance. Cesmat elaborates on the role of music for
poetry: “We put a lot of power on words—and words are great—but they are only one part of the ceremony. The visual and
the aural are important too.” But he cautions, “There is a danger here, and the danger is that the music simply be a backdrop
for the words. I think it should definitely be more interplay.”
In this interplay, by encouraging the audience to cross over to another plane of thinking, Cesmat has discovered a new kind of
freedom. It is something he sees evidence of in other forms of art, like the musical form Jazz. “We talk a lot about (freedom).
It’s really hard to listen to some really orchestrated music and then go listen to Jazz. There’s a dichotomy there, that Jazz is
so much freer and it comes from an oppressed population.” As I ponder this, he jabs, “And we don’t know anything about
freedom: somebody starts screwing around with the national anthem and we have a fit.” It’s a valid point.
Why is it, I wonder, that people have such a hard time connecting with a true sense of freedom, with truth? Cesmat is quick
to explain that, based on his experiences with poets of all ages, adults are handicapped for such thinking. “Children don’t
know about the bottom line yet. So many times adults are so concerned with the bottom line that they will step over the truth.”
I ask him if poetry is a means to that truth, a magic pill. “There are a number of ways to arrive at the truth. Writing good
poetry is one of them. But you could just as easily write a dishonest poem. That’s why kings employ artists. That’s why
Mexico made Octavia Paz the bastard Indian—so they could keep him chasing his tail, and he says as much, so they could
keep him down.”
But there is truth in the honest innocence of children. “We need to be ready for children to tell us the truth in their poems
because … we haven’t acculturated them into the nuances of being an adult. (Occasionally I do) see children being
dishonest,” he admits, “I don’t want to be romantic about it.”
Previously Cesmat has made distinctions about personal discourse verses a more accessible, reader discourse in poetry.
Carrying my own bias, I ask him toward which he considers his own writing prone. “Because I’m lonely,” he answers coolly,
“I’ll always aspire to the accessible.”
It brings to mind a poem from Driven into the Shade which seems a direct address to the reader, “River Murmur.” Cesmat
explains it is actually more of a love poem to his ideal reader. “I did (“River Murmur”) in a Slam one time and I didn’t realize
that one of the judges was … a nine year old boy. And he said ‘Ew! A three!’ And he was absolutely right: I had kind of a
love poem, and I had no desire to come on erotically to a nine year old boy. That’s the way he was taking it, he was taking it
the way I meant it but not to him.”
Unfortunate Slam incidences aside, “River Murmur” stands as an intimate exchange between writer and reader. “In order to
reach the many you’ve got to be honest to the person who’s right in front of you, and be clear. Then other people will see the
way in. That’s one of the reasons people don’t write. Because if they wrote honestly about themselves then everybody would
have that way in. There’s a lot of risk.”
“Poems are like houses,” he says, “you want to get as many people inside them as you can. I think images are doors and
windows, and every time you’re trying to give the reader something that was honest at that time, you’re trying to say ‘Here,
come inside, come inside.’”
Brandon Cesmat’s philosophy extends beyond the technical aspects of writing poetry. Performance is, to him, not simply a
kind of sharing but an actual publication. “Often times when something is read … it is something that other people need to
hear. And they will remember it forever, and carry those images away with them. Whether someone carries that image with
them for the rest of their life because they read it or because they heard it, it does not matter. All that matters is that twenty or
thirty years down the line they still remember it. That’s publishing.”
It is clearly a modern extension of the oral tradition, which has impacted and inspired so many writers. Cesmat confirms this
when he says, “A lot of the people who were very influential in my life, in terms of literature, did not write. They were people
… willing to spend time with me and talk with me. And what I learned from them is that they were publishing. I would say
‘oh, you should get this down in a book.’ And they always had this funny look on their face. It took me a while to read that
look, eventually (understanding), ‘Why would it be any better? Why would that be more significant? I’m telling you this right
now, and that’s why it’s important.’ And they were the true spoken word artists.”
So it is no wonder that Driven into the Shade contains so many levels to be explored and appreciated, so many delicate facets
to be admired, heard, sung. Cesmat’s connection with truth, with the shaded reality of Southern California, and with aural
honesty, make his poetry invaluable to anyone who reads it. Driven into the Shade is an intimate portrait, set in a particular
locale, but its universality cannot be overstated. This does not cheapen it. Rather, this serves as testament to the fact that the
poems within serve a purpose greater than the poet himself could have intended. A fact revealed even in the creation of the
book itself.
“I didn’t construct the order,” he explains, “John Peterson put out the ultimate order. Now, a little secret here, in “Shadow
Around the Ring,” I’m the father—but I decided to write it from a child’s perspective. John Peterson thought (it belonged in
the beginning, At Home, section) and I liked what he did.
“That’s the other interesting thing about the book: people see the poems differently than (I did). And it has been a joy to work
with John. You operate as a writer, alone a lot. To find somebody that’s willing to reflect back to you, you can’t really put a
price on that. I was pleased he made me see my work in a new way, which I didn’t think was possible—I thought I’d been
over this stuff.”
With five works in “various states of disrepair,” Brandon Cesmat is sure to produce more poetry that will take on a life of its
own. As if this weren’t enough, he has a screenplay developing (which he describes as a roman à clef), and also works
regularly with fiction.
Brandon Cesmat’s work is worthy of attention and demonstrates a remarkable capacity to entertain and enlighten. As he
continues to write and perform, he sends out tributaries of artistic energy—irrigation for a parched land whose shadows
illuminate, and whose poets speak the truth.