By Donald H. Harrison
SAN DIEGO – Not all the books on sale at Comic-Con are graphic novels or comic books. Adam Greenfield, under auspices of the Puna Press, is selling a book of poetry, Regarding the Monkey.
Greenfield is a San Diegan who makes his day-to-day living helping people record podcasts – he brings his equipment to their homes or places of business. He also has a podcast of his own, “Gutter Talk,” which is about trends in the comic book industry, focusing on the people who write, draw, and create them. Here is a link to his website.
Born in Maryland, Greenfield said he was raised by an Orthodox father and a Conservative mother whose differences concerning religion prompted his brother to have not one, but two bar mitzvahs, according to each parent’s preferences.
For a part of his life, Greenfield said that he turned away from religion, but since moving to San Diego about 11 years ago has become more interested in exploring his Jewish roots.
Rather than Jewish topics, Greenfield prefers to write about social causes, hoping he can stir people’s consciences. He and his publisher Ted Washington gave permission to San Diego Jewish World to publish “National Anthem” below, with Greenfield saying it is one of his favorite works. Dealing with such topics as racism and immigration, it was written during the 1990s during the time of the Gulf War, but, Greenfield notes, “it still applies today.”
National Anthem
I live in a country
set up for all to be a part of
once you fill out
the necessary paperwork
and a background check is complete
and you learn the language
and you leave your own
at the door.
I live in a country
with leaders who don’t listen
leaders who bastardize their own
leaders who ignore who
chose them as leaders.
I live in a country
still writhing in racial disarray
still burning crosses
in white robes
on the lawns of those
of a different shade of skin
even though their basic composition
is still the same.
I live in a country
where religion will get you killed
and where my god
can beat up your god
and where faith pushers
are just as dangerous
as the faith they push.
I live in a country
an overweight country
full of heart attacks
borne of stress and grief
and fast food diets
where you can have it your way
just as long as it doesn’t
interfere with mine.
I live in a country
where I can sue you
if you look at me wrong
or step on a crack
where you can hurt my mother
where I don’t have to take
responsibility for my own actions.
I live in a country
of skewed priorities
where lines are individualized
where we use words like
majority and minority
when it comes to gender and race
especially the human race.
I live in a country
that makes it hard to even live
where I’m told if I don’t like it
I can leave
as opposed to
what can be done
to make it better.
I live in a country
that works against
my personal beliefs and convictions
and where the moral code
is indecipherable.
I live in a country
a country in which
we all have a job to do
a task so enormous
so devastatingly dangerous
that we all must work as one,
yet all I hear
all I see
all I read
is my country ‘tis of thee
sweet land of indignity
of thee I will defend
to keep the likes of you out.
–© Adam Greenfield
Not all of Greenfield’s poems are so angry, he told me. He also gave San Diego Jewish World permission to publish a poem that will appear in a forthcoming volume. The poem is titled “The Life and Death of Natural Love.”
The Life and Death of Natural Love
She occupies
the space in the sky
where the sun and moon should be
every day rising
above my horizon
then setting on a turbulent sea
teeming underneath
with a churning desire
to leave the harsh past behind
to be of serene
and self-possessed surface
to be of sound body and mind
but every wave
is a skeleton-filled grave
breaking hard on her rocky shores
scattering bones
among precious stones
a heart shipwrecked on her seafloor.
— © Adam Greenfield
Greenfield recited poems as tremendous crowds pushed their way down the aisle on which the Puna Press is located in the cavernous downstairs exhibition hall at the San Diego Convention Center.
It would have been amazing if any of the casual passersby could hear him as he recited, so loud is the din created when people by the tens of thousands are so packed together that they often must walk sideways to avoid colliding with people coming from the other direction.
But if you stood close to the Puna table and concentrated, you could hear Greenfield distinctly.
The Puna booth is located in a section of the exhibition hall reserved for “Small Press,” that is, independent boutique publishers who don’t have large press runs, but often are among the avante-garde of the industry. Whenever I go to Comic-Con, I like to head to this area first, and then keep returning during the five-day affair, which started on Wednesday night, July 17, and ends on Sunday, July 21.
Washington, the publisher, told me that he wrote a book called Untitled, which he decided to self-publish. In two days, he said, he sold out the initial 50 copies. That prompted him about 25 years ago to develop a business of publishing works by mostly unknown artists. Two of the earliest titles were More and Less, he recalled. He said Puna Press doesn’t have one particular area of interest, but instead is “artist- and writer-driven.”