POETRY – NOVELS – MEMOIR – HISTORY
POETRY
YOGA SUTRAS OF FIDEL CASTRO, 2014
REVOLUTIONARY ALCHEMY, 2012
ANCIENT AMERICAN POETS, 2005
SCORCHED BIRTH, 2004
COLUMBUS IN THE BAY OF PIGS, 1991
DECADE, THE 1990s, 1987
TIDAL NEWS, 1982
COSMIC ATHLETICS, 1980
RIDE THE WIND, 1979
SPRING RITUAL, 1978
INSURRECTION/RESURRECTION, 1975
COMMU 1, 1971
CHANGE/TEARS, 1967
NOVELS
THE OUTLAWS OF MAROON, 2019
THE CO-OP CONSPIRACY, 2014
MEMOIR
MEMORIES OF DROP CITY, 2007
HISTORY
INDIGENOUS PEOPLES DAY, 2017
FOR ALL THE PEOPLE, 2009, 2012
HISTORY OF COLLECTIVITY IN THE SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA, 1982
HISTORY OF WORK COOPERATION IN AMERICA, 1980
SOME REVIEW OF MY BOOKS
The Outlaws of Maroon, a novel
An adult novel about the world of children. In McCarthy-era New York City, fourth graders find a forgotten room in the foundations of a building, where they struggle to live their dreams. As the cold war of 1950s America envelops their school, the become radicalized.
Review by Donovan’s Bookshelf: http://donovansliteraryservices.com/may-2020-issue.html
“… Indeed, this is a story of 1950s Cold War America and how a group of children face the lies of grownups during McCarthyism and the threat of development that will take away the forest and their special place. They become radicalized in the process of absorbing adult changes, messages, and challenges. As police searches, confrontations, and danger from the adult world spills into the special dreams and refuges they’ve created, children and adults alike are changed by a myriad of forces, from developers to political undercurrents of repression and control. Reflections on these changing conditions are nicely woven into the story, which probes personal motivation and changing perspectives… John Curl’s literary novel is highly recommended reading for all adults. Because it embraces the perspectives and lives of children and adults alike, juxtaposing them against the backdrop of evolving social and political changes, a depth and attention to detail is cultivated that keeps readers engaged with the different age groups, competing forces, and changing perspectives that influence them all. Curl’s ability to weave escalating threats and violence into a complex series of interchanges between adults and between children alike creates a remarkably astute atmosphere designed to keep readers of all ages involved until the surprising crescendo of a battle for justice over competing dreams of Maroon’s future. “
“A well-crafted tale with a retro style.” — Kirkus Review
Homeward Press, 2019. Paperback 302pp. ISBN 978-0-938392-04-0; Ebook ISBN 978-0-938392-07-1
LISTEN to the AUDIOBOOK of The Outlaws of Maroon HERE.
Here is a video of myself introducing the novel, produced by filmmaker Jai Jai Noire, and audios of three brief sections, read by Dan Fedoranko. Here you can read Chapter One.
INDIGENOUS PEOPLES DAY
Handbook for Activists & Documentary History
Curated by John Curl
IPD Press, 2017 ISBN-13: 978-1539952213
“This book is a treasure, a collective project of both oral and documentary history of a quarter of a century organizing, which continues. Every activist and engaged teacher will find the Berkeley Indigenous Peoples Day book indispensable.”
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, author of An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States.
“Reading this book is like multi-tasking reviewing the past, evaluating the present and planning and plotting for the future. Let this book serve you as you move forward to building a movement of resistance. After you read it, share it with your family and friends. It could change our world!”
Nina Serrano, poet, KPFA radio producer, and participant in the first Indigenous Peoples Day
“This is the first authentic history of Indigenous Peoples Day, a detailed history by those who lived it, and an invaluable “how-to” handbook for other communities who want to do the same. It is a must-read for all indigenous activists.”
Nanette Deetz (Dakota, Cherokee) poet, writer, journalist with Bay Area News Group, Native News Online, and Tribal Business Journal.
In 1992 Berkeley, California became the first city in the world to officially celebrate October 12 as Indigenous Peoples Day. This book is for people everywhere who want to know more about Indigenous Peoples Day, where it came from, what it’s all about, and who want to celebrate Indigenous peoples day in your part of the world. This is both a documentary history and an oral history, a compilation of how we did it, and a practical manual or guidebook of sorts, with some cautionary tales.
Other U.S. cities and states have since joined, including Seattle, Minneapolis, Denver, Phoenix, Santa Cruz, Sebastopol, Nevada City, Madison, Richmond (CA), Vermont, and Alaska. Indigenous Peoples Day is also celebrated in numerous communities by groups, organizations, schools, tribes, and friends. Indigenous Peoples Day is a fast growing movement. In addition, South Dakota celebrates Native American Day and Hawaii now honors the Polynesian explorers.
2017 marks the 25th anniversary of the first Berkeley Indigenous Peoples Day, and the 525th anniversary of the European invasion of the Americas, 1492-2017.
The Co-op Conspiracy, a novel
Homeward Press, 2014. ISBN 978-14999750607
“Though John Curl’s latest novel, The Co-op Conspiracy, is disguised as a work of literary fiction, it cleverly manages to further open the perception of readers on the greater reality behind the booming and complex social movement known simply as “cooperatives.” Curl raises his protest sign and navigates his readers through a Southwestern narrative that is not only entertaining, it’s essential. Through well-layered characters like Zelia, Tochtli, Claire, Jesse, Keechee, Hector and tons more, Curl hammers and refines a universal truth on the well-worked anvil of social justice and social economics. With a growing sense of dire purpose and conviction, readers experience the struggles of these working class youth who are submerged in economic plight, who struggle to land stable work, who face constant adversity, who shake their fist at an overpowering system that aims to oppress—these are important youths who are also down-trodden by a sect of a military industrial complex that seeks to commandeer Dzil Na’oodilii, a mountain in New Mexico that is sacred to Navajos.
Of the many cooperatives mentioned throughout the novel’s pages, the Orphan Mountain Defense Committee—a co-op that includes hundreds of diverse people of all hues—strives to stomp out the political oppression spewing from the dark forces of the massive greed machine. Will these characters prevail? Not telling. Check out the book and soak in a work of fiction that reads very close to reality. The Co-op Conspiracy is a fast-paced read, one that is quite empowering and inspiring. Readers will shake their fist at a shade of corruption that is all too believable. And the novel’s intimate closing of two lovers will make readers raise their clenched fists in solidarity.”
Tony R. Rodriguez, Examiner.com
http://www.examiner.com/review/be-very-aware-of-the-co-op-conspiracy
Yoga Sutras of Fidel Castro
2nd edition. 138 pages: Homeward Press, 2014. ISBN 13: 978-1501031991
“This little book of poems is marvelous, just marvelous. Don’t ask me to explain it or what it means. Just go with the flow. If you love Cuba, revolution and Yoga you will swim off to that wonderful space that is poetry. It is a short vacation to where all the planetary mess and contradictions are resolved and there is just the infinite cosmos of your mind…heavenly and inspiring.” Nina Serrano
“An absolutely remarkable, wonderful amazing book. I felt high in the most conscious & clear way imaginable after reading it, I just lay there for a while in its afterglow. I’ve never encountered anything like it.” Sarah Menefee
REVOLUTIONARY ALCHEMY
collected poems 1967-2012
Foreword by Jack Hirschman
364 pages, Homeward Press, 2012 ISBN-13-978-0615704142
“I think I can say a few words about what makes American poetry tick (or be ticked off), and by way of that indicate the importance of this book and John Curl in the pantheon of revolutionary poets… it is “transform, transform” that John Curl is forever sounding and resounding with his depth charges… We’re talking about transforming a society totally in which process poetry serves as a beaconing forward. Curl’s signature achievement linguistically, it seems to me, is to have developed a language where lines of images often are contrary to one another and that friction or opposition does more than ‘surrealize’ the lines (Curl knows the techniques of all the avant-garde poetry movements of the 20th century)—what he is writing is often a poetry of dialectical motion itself. The singular intent behind John’s writing is to actualize in poetry the urgent need for working-class consciousness,… and Curl succeeds in so many poems and in so many imaginings in this book that one realizes that Revolutionary Alchemy is a book of major importance. John Curl… has earned a place—with this book of poems—among the foremost revolutionary American poets since the end of WW2.” Jack Hirschman
FOR ALL THE PEOPLE
Uncovering the Hidden History of Cooperation, Cooperative Movements, and Communalism in America
Second expanded edition, 2012
With a new foreword by ISHMAEL REED
Including a new chapter:
Food For People, Not For Profit
The Attack on the Bay Area People’s Food System and the Minneapolis Co-op War:
Crises in the Food Revolution of the 1970s
PM Press ISBN 978-1-60486-582-0 • 6X9 • Paperback • 592 pages • US History
“It is indeed inspiring, in the face of all the misguided praise of ‘the market,’ to be reminded by John Curl’s book of the noble history of cooperative work in the United States.”
—Howard Zinn, author of A People’s History of the United States
“Curl surveys all, and explains much…Get this book and read it, Curl will do you good.”
—Paul Buhle, author of Robin Hood: People’s Outlaw and Forest Hero
“John Curl has done it again with a vital look at America’s great history of communalism and co-ops. ”
—Harvey Wasserman, author of Solartopia!
“Curl blends the three strands of his historical narrative with aplomb… For historians, Curl’s book is a must; for young women and men considering the idea of starting a business they own and manage; and for the philosophers among us.”
—Frank T. Adams, coauthor of Putting Democracy to Work
MEMORIES OF DROP CITY
The first hippie commune of the 1960s
and the Summer of Love
a memoir
iUniverse, 2007, 262 pages, ISBN: 0-595-42343-4
“John Curl’s characters in Memories of Drop City aspire to be ‘100 years’ ahead of the rest of us, but Curl shows, through his highly crafted and brilliant novelistic memoir, that they often succumb to the same social flaws as the rest of us. This might be the most balanced memoir or novel yet published about the Sixties.”
— Ishmael Reed, National Book Award nominee
“With this compelling evocation and portrayal of breathing people, John Curl unpacks the boxed lunch myth of America’s alternative lifestyle Sixties, and restores the day to day flavor of a deeply fabled era still key to understanding the way we live (and don’t live) now.”
—Al Young, poet laureate of California, emeritus
ANCIENT AMERICAN POETS
translations from Nahuatl, Yucatec Maya, and Quechua
with biographies of the poets
Homeward Press 2021
A survey of ancient indigenous poetry focused on three pre-conquest American Indian poets.
The Flower Songs by Nezahualcoyotl (Nahuatl)
The Songs of Dzitbalche by Ah Bam (Yucatec Maya)
The Sacred Hymns of the Situa by Pachacutec (Quechua)
With commentaries on the lives and times of the poets. Each poem is presented in its original language and in translation.
SCORCHED BIRTH
Poetry. ISBN: 0-9759934-3-7
“Discover the electricity in language, unmask the mind, follow
the unbroken spirit through content and conflict in John Curl’s latest
book Scorched Birth. A Master Poet who uses language in a
remarkable, innovative way, he gives us information on contradictions
in the evolving state of human consciousness. The tensile lines of these poems are a strong loom holding the strength of an interwoven theme of Social Justice making deliberate
design through the poet’s understanding of actions and attitudes.
John Curl shows us the undersides of clouds and cultures but
also shows immutable order in chaos. He can, in a single poem, give at
least 15 ways of changing personal, social, political darkness,
including purification by fire. Though some are seemingly surreal,
strange and new, your intellect tells you each line is someone’s reality
at the core. Many poets and a wide following of readers have long loved
John Curl’s work for his content and craftsmanship discovering, as in
the prose of Jack Kerouac, the sudden haiku and haiku sequences
within the longer work. An example (in John Curl’s poem Green Tree
Frogs Sing): “….A swallowtail butterfly flutters past the row of
prisoners, hands wired behind their backs…..” Images flash from “broken egg shell” bodies of War dead to “how much light there is in darkness….” In some poems, the poet asks
questions we can believe birds and forests understand.
My personal favorite for sheer love of imagery is “Green Flowers
Drizzle Down.” Through jaguar eyes the poet looks at history, ending his book
with a Mayan/Spanish Epic permeated with deep respect for nature,
waters, salmon, centuries of passionate life. Throughout the book, his
unique lines glisten with gold, coin of words fall from his pages into
your hands to become your personal treasure. You find yourself more
wealthy and wise than you were before you chose it to read, moved,
disturbed, awakened, yet fulfilled, rich with pleasure.”
– Mary Rudge, author of Water Planet
COLUMBUS IN THE BAY OF PIGS
Homeward Press, 1991 ISBN 0-938392-10-7
A poem about the Indigenous Resistance to the very beginning of the Conquest of the Americas.
“Pages of truth that brought sadness to my heart. It will be hard for me to live each day without quoting from this book.” Dennis Banks
“A must reading in the step beyond 1992. Those who do not wish to open wider the Indigenous Circle of life will be washed away into the past.” Tony Gonzales
DECADE: THE 1990s
HISTORY OF COLLECTIVITY IN THE SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA
COSMIC ATHLETICS
RIDE THE WIND
SPRING RITUAL
O COLUMBIA & THE SAN FRANCISCO GENERAL STRIKE
COMMU 1
https://johncurl.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/COMMU-1-cover-2-scaled-1-232×300.jpg
CHANGE/TEARS
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