Arroyo Suite: Poems from Highland Park, California

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We lived in Highland Park, a unique Los Angeles neighborhood, for three decades. It is where our beautiful daughter grew up and went to school. The district is centered around the Arroyo Seco, a sycamore shaded valley dotted with historic structures and home to the Arroyo Arts Collective. (I participated in their wonderful annual studio tour for several years.)

I wrote a series of poems about the area, and, more especially, my relationship to it at that particular time in my life. Mid-young adulthood has its particular joys and challenges. Going to poetry groups and being encouraged to “express emotions” can, well, you will see. img307img308img309img310img306img304

Highland Park, I understand from my readings on the Internet, quite different now. It is undergoing an inevitable discovery and gentrification. I, too, am different. There are landmarks of continuity, but the only real constant is change.

I created the little booklet reproduced here for sale at a student outdoor event at Barnsdall Art Park, where I took uninstructed drawing and painting classes (shared models) in the late 1980s and early 1990s. I did paste-ups and ran off sheets at the photocopy store. Then I cut them in half and stapled them. The first batch was signed and numbered. The one I copied was from a small second batch I ran off to accompany a similar little book with poems about Hollywood Boulevard, Franklin, and the Ivanhoe suburb. The cover is on blue cover stock. The rest is on white copy paper, and the whole thing has actually held up pretty well.

I decided to share it here in case it gets lost. If you find a copy of this, you have something rare (okay, not everything rare has any value, but, at least you know a little more about it now). I don’t think there were more than 20 in the numbered batch, and at least one was taken apart for display on a bulletin board somewhere (I heard.)

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Noir

She steps

out of the

fog that

hangs around

until noon

every day

this time

of year, furtive,

turning to

see if he

is still following,

the one who

knows about

the stain on

her best coat,

the one she

left under

Santa Monica

Pier.

By RHaworth (Roger W Haworth) (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons