ANTHOLOGIST HELPS KICK OFF FRESNO COUNTY’S SESQUICENTENNIAL
Jim Guy The Fresno Bee
Fresno Bee (California)
March 24, 2006 Friday
Final Edition
Author celebrates Valley’s voices
When writer Gerald Haslam published “Many Californias,” an anthology
of California writers, he drew fire from a critic at the San Francisco
Chronicle because much of the work was by Fresno poets.
The critic argued that there should be more representation for other
California poets from cities such as Berkeley.
Haslam was quick to challenge the critic. What poets had Berkeley
produced in the past 40 years, Haslam asked, that can stand up to
the work of Valley poets? Haslam says the critic had the grace to
concede the point.
Haslam, a widely published author himself, spoke about “Fresno of the
Mind” on Thursday night in downtown Fresno to help kick off the first
event in the Fresno County Sesquicentennial, a yearlong celebration
of Fresno County’s 150th year. Books by Haslam include “The Great
Central Valley: California’s Heartland,” “Working Man’s Blues” and
“Coming of Age in California.”
Much as crops from all over the world have flourished here, Haslam
credits a diversity of people with hardworking roots for making the
written word blossom in the Valley.
He traces much of that back to William Saroyan, who was first to
acknowledge the complexity of society taking shape here in the early
part of the the 20th century through stories like “70,000 Assyrians,”
about an Armenian boy getting a haircut and a history lesson from
the victim of another diaspora.
Longtime California State University, Fresno, professor Philip Levine
is credited by Haslam for carrying on the tradition through nonelitist
poetry that pays homage to the everyday person.
“He put himself through school while wearing a shirt with his name
on it,” Haslam said. “He understood poverty. He understood diversity.”
Haslam cites “Death of a Hog,” a seemingly simple poem about a boy’s
coming of age as he helps slaughter a hog, as evidence of that.
“I think it’s possible that no one has done more to invent the
‘Fresno of the Mind’ than Levine,” he said.
Modern heirs of the tradition, Haslam says, include the prolific
author Gary Soto and historian/polemicist Victor Davis Hanson. The
two may have very different points of view, but that’s part of the
diversity, too.