Poetry and Music Presentation in San Francisco

“Portrait of an Unknown Ancestor”
An Armenian Poetry and Music Presentation

Poetry reading by James Baloian accompanied by Live music with Max Baloian and Friends.

A first Edition, signed copy of Jimmy’s new book

“Portrait of an Unknown Ancestor” will be for sale.

Sunday, November 13, 2016 - 1:00pm

275 Olympia Way, San Francisco, CA

Phone 415.661.1142|info@stjohnarmenianchurch.com

James Baloian: IN THE SAN JOAQUIN

The warm tropical winds have finally
pushed a high pressure system
over the valley, and suddenly
the idleness of February and March

becomes a fury of Aries

blowing fire in each Ant

to catch up for the late cloudy weather;

Weeding, spraying, planting, tying and picking,,
irrigating, tractoring

the Ghost of the Bear
finally awakens
bumps his head
in the dark cave,
and each morning
through his transcendental cave,
feels the eye of the Sun
wake earlier,

and hears the birds

singing their songs
in the black/blue
and the Suncoming North 

the smells of Orange blossoms
in the cool evening and mornings

release her scent to the Earth

and by afternoon

lay still and yellow

curling below the shade

of the leaves

a small ball

of green, the eye hidden

in the leaf for December

and I wonder if I want to wake,
and go out into the world of working hands,
and faces that speak in the dust
and growing of roots and the fingers
of green brushing the windows
of lighthouses
looking out with a singular eye
the voice of Josha
on the lips of the Horn.

James Baloian

This poem has appeared in the Winter-Spring 1987 issue of Graham House Review

James Baloian: The Armenian

(for Charles C. Baloian)

The last number is the first
and the curve in the straight line
is only a river that runs from a desert

I would name that river
but by nature it leads to the sea
I would enter from the backside of the mountain
and look at the city of Palu
to watch it operate

Multicolored scarves and vegetable markets
where the dee/eyed Armenians close
over a day’s work
Streets with dancing to invisible music

Below the shadow of the mountain
stone arches crown the river Euphrates
It is the beginning of time

I have not yet been born

2/

I am 90 and die
on a hospital bed in America
My teeth gone/bones for skin

I cannot see
I speak with my organs
They know me well
Many shadows come to my bed
I smell each with my fingers

Have I come so far
that silence is my fate?
Have I encouraged history so much
I listen only with instinct?

The quiet feet of questions
tend the growing and the young
The anxious eyes and dreams
prepare the tradition
Whatever buried returns
and comes again

Knee deep in the river
the words are readand revealed

I become the future

James Baloian: Arriving in the New World

Like empty shoes
Words
Gestures of a blindman
In the face of a mirror


The Earth trembles over
Your orphan blues, I see clearly
Through a broken glass


Outside the earth is barren
Your fingers dig the graves of young roots
Hives of honey...
Choke of nightmare sweat


Tomorrow the city stumbles
With population
And law
The thin shadow through a green visage
Of winter
The future pitched with each step


I see you oldman
Closing the dark
With invisible breath
You hidden like a treasure
Naked


Landing barefoot in the New World.


James C. Baloin
From The Ararat Papers, 1979



Գալուստ Նոր Աշխարհ

Դատարկ կօշիկներու նման
Բառեր
Կոյրի շարժուձեւեր
Հայելիի դէմ


Աշխարհ կը դողայ                                                                  
Որբի քու ողբէդ, յստակ կը տեսնեմ                                       
Կոտրած բաժակի մը մէջէն                                                        


Դուրսը հողը ամուլ է                                                                   
Մատներդ կը բորեն մատաղ արմատներու շիրիմները      
Մեղրի փեթակներ...                                                                     
Կը խեղդուին մղձաւանջի քրտինքէն


Վաղը քաղաքը կը սայթաքի
Բնակչութեամբ
Եւ օրէնքով
Դալար դէմքին ընդմէջէն նիհար ստուերը
Ձմեռին
Ապառնին մղուած ամէն մէկ քայլին


Կը տեսնեմ քեզ ծերուկ
Անտեսանելի շունչով
Կը փակես մութը
Պահուած գանձի նման                           
Մերկ


Բոպիկ ոտք կը դնես Նոր Աշխարհ.




...............................................Ճէյմս Պալոյեան
1979
Թարգմանեց՝ Թաթուլ Սոնենց

A book and its author: James Baloian and The Ararat Papers

Published by Ararat Press (AGBU) in 1979, this thin volume is filled with powerful poems about the author and his family's life in San Joaquim Valley, California. 

James Baloian: Journey/To Dickran

Years drift like ships
in a wind they cannot control
Our last meeting pulses
from the shallows of a darkened room
balances on the tip
of my tongue

My feet look for a way back
into that world where we began
slowly among childhood's
to measure how close our lives
haunted the same streets in different cities
our alphabets and dreams rooted
in the whitened wrinkles of Ararat
or traced into the dust of the San Joaquin

where we stopped the hands of the clock
at sunset and rolled out of our shadows
awakening the lost voices
of ancestors in a land
that was not ours to understand

Here among vineyards of green wisdom
we found their forgotten names

one by one
becoming our own


James Baloian. This poem has appeared in Ship of Fools.

James Baloian: Rose

Born in the season of rivers
Her heart burns
but is never consumed
Her eyes go on for miles
over white mountains and blue deserts
leaving only a blur
of twilight where a star
in an open field
prepares to be born


James Baloian

James Baloian: Maps

There are maps
the body looks for
where it begins
to keep secrets,
false names.
The hands curl into stones,
sleep alone under the dust
of darkened roads.
At these moments --
the body inhales itself.
Fear stands in the mirror,
teeth white as the moon.
Nightly, shadows
knock at the window
until the window opens
to let them in.


James Baloian. This poem has appeared in Mid-American Poetry Review.

James Baloian: Kingdom Come

Words bring no satisfaction
to a kingdom where space
has forgotten its name and season.
My fingers stick on the smoky windows
of a tired sky. The doors to each city
tighten their mouths into a zero.

I speak two languages:
one is the language of the stomach,
a vacant room that laments
in public like a tarnished statue.
The second sings the invisible poetry
of the homeland. Finally, I find
myself like a spider: content
with the darkness of corners.

I dream of wild, sweet fields
where stars twist into the milky dust of the cosmos,
and my poems lift like seeds
from the aprons of Armenian women,
pushing home; their hands red with dark earth.


James Baloian. This poem has appeared in Antioch Review.

James Baloian: Homeless

The roads all came back
bringing with them
the gray weather of old coats
A flammable moon
wrinkles the landscape
into blacks and whites
Winter wanders in
on the breath of an empty page

From an old photograph
I listen to a black man
play the clarinet to crows
silhouetted into musical notes
between telephone wires
My feet turn the earth
as I try to keep my head
from the wind's inevitable noose.


James Baloian. This poem has appeared in Ship of Fools.

JAMES BALOIAN: The Armenian

for Garabed Baloian

The last number is the first
And the curve in the straight line
Is only a river that runs from a desert

I would name that river
But by nature it leads to the sea
I would enter from north
And climb the backside
Of Mesrob’s mountain
To watch the city of Palu operate

Multicolored scarves and vegetable markets
Awaken indestructibly among stars
To measure the space between breaths
Streets dance with the music of work
Out of the mouth of the mountain
Stone arches crown the Euphrates
It is the beginning of time

I have not yet been born


ARMENIAN TOWN: poetry by Paul Aloojian, James Baloian, Y. Stephan Bulbulian, Ronald Dzerigian, Michael Krekorian, Brenda Najimian-Magarity. Foreword by Dickran Kouymjian, copyright 2001 by the William Saroyan Society

James Baloian

Baloian is an Armenian/American poet who has been writing, teaching, and performing his poetry for the last 45 years. His poems have appeared nationally and internationally in journals, magazines and anthologies. His poems have been published in: The Reporter, Antioch Review, Carolina Quarterly, Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, Rockford Review, Ararat, Rain City Review, Sonora Review, Papyrus, Midwest Quarterly, Midwest Poetry Review, Cold Mountain Review, Mid-American Poetry Review, Small Pond Magazine, Americas Review, West Wind Review, Caroline Review, Red Cedar Review, Minnesota Review, Ship of Fools, Northwest Poetry Review, and others.

Baloian has published three books of poems and two chapbooks. His poems have also been included in seven anthologies, most currently in two new anthologies titled How Much Earth and Armenian Town in 2001. In 1997 Baloian's poetry was selected by the Anthology of Magazine Verse Yearbook of American Poetry. Baloian was a farmer for twenty-five years in the San Joaquin valley in Central California; he now resides in El Granada, CA.

James Baloian: Fresno Indian

I lived underground during the 1950’s
in the wake of my father’s habitual
and unknown rage to weave himself
through the stagnant air creating an alphabet
of icicles from the eave of his wooden
tongue—
He struggled in web of private conversations
and kept us silent with threats and abandonment—
orphaned to invisibility where dreams
survive
on the urgency of boredom.
…..And being 10 years old I would slip
like a lizard into a pool of shadows
finding a pathway from his dark window
down the yellowy fragrance of a lemon
tree
studded with thorns
and into my grandmother’s backyard garden
where imaginary winds dusted with sunlight
lingered beneath a veil of star-faced jasmine—
I listened to the growing of things
whose boundaries opened into wilderness
where the city stopped and farmland
spilled like ink over the landscape for
miles
Screen doors swung easy like clockwork
in a trusting wind which seemed strange
on a planet where nightly
blue-collared fathers knee-deep in backyards
dug bomb-shelters after work and on
weekends
with nightmare delusions of reddened skies
swallowed by mushroomed clouds
Families struggled sinking
silently into a lifetime of expectations
Their other selves left to keep appearances
ran for discovery from this grand illusion
of green lawns and a perfect death
No one really slept
buried up to their necks in schedules and
telephones
watching children disappear into a blank
margin
of no return…….across an outfield of
timeless summers
forged with long hours and hunched
backs
looking for work and the American grail
even on Sundays before dinners in coppertinted
rooms
tanned by the oily seasoning of garlic and
lamb
where windows hung like portraits of
hunger
from far away lands
At 13 I heard schoolmates point in slow
motion
at the Armenian in me and the invisibility
that was visible
in a Kingdom where dreams survive on
long tables of diplomacy
and reality speaks from the splintered lips
of baseball bats
threatening the heroes of this poem
to bleach their dark skins white
They called Armenians, “Fresno Indians,”
with our hollowed eyes and eagle-beaked
noses
but my grandmother said
they called us, “Starving black Armenians….
first.”
Those whose promises
promised nothing
in a land that genocided its natives
with no reservation
We were no strangers to genocide
Fugitives of dust
We blurred into borders and brown-faced
hills
to wait like grass for winter’s first rain
We survived the delirium of previous lives
as if some god had forgotten us
and ordered our children to bleed
and our earth bitten and bled
by tooth and nail……
We breathed life without a cry
our skins emerging from an undergrowth
of syllables
unfold from the simple grace all miracles
grow
…….The ranches I knew as a boy have
turned to salt
and winter like my grandmother’s unbunned
white hair
haunts the ruins of broken mirrors
in empty stations looking for the river
back to eden
praying a melody on the green side of
childhood….
She assumes what is necessary for the moment
to shape what remains after death
And who once having lived
a life on the edge
sits at an empty table
Her hands drink a headful of bad dreams
and everything that she was before
commands the wind
to sing in Armenian

ARMENIAN TOWN: poetry by Paul Aloojian, James Baloian, Y. Stephan Bulbulian, Ronald Dzerigian, Michael Krekorian, Brenda Najimian-Magarity. Foreword by Dickran Kouymjian, copyright 2001 by the William Saroyan Society.