Voices de la Luna

Sandra Cisneros Talks about Poetry

 The Voices de la Luna first annual fundraising dinner with poetry, wine, and classic jazz was held on Sunday 23 may 2010 from 5-8 PM at Borbon St. Seafood Kitchen. Mr. Mori Bagheri, the owner of the restaurant has generously provided the place including food and services for the evening. The approved capacity of the restaurant is 110 people plus the waiters and a bartender. After two months of preparation and hard work by the Event ad-hoc committee and the coordinator, Mrs. Anne Parker, the event was staged in the  hastily completed restaurant. Because the kitchen was not ready, Mr. Bagheri catered the food brought from Bourbon Street Café twelve miles away, the wine for the entire night was donated by Becker Vineyards.
                It’s hard to believe a poetry event attracts a standing only audience. Even though the organizers did not accept any more guests from ten days before the event, the list of registered and paid guests exceeded 132 people.
To satisfy the legal limit of the establishment, a list of twenty people mainly volunteers and organizers was prepared to be excluded from sitting dinner with the commitment to feed these people shortly after the conclusion of the event.
We had several outstanding speakers and poets including Marian Haddad, Marian Aitches, Richard Becker, and Josie Mixon, and Bryce Milligan who sang two beautiful lyrical songs while playing guitar, and Bert Roberts who sang, played his own music with harmonica and guitar. However the highlight of the evening belonged to Sandra Cisneros who brought the audience to their feet when he spoke of the importance of poetry and arts  in the community and emphasized the people need to be nourished by the beauty of arts. She introduced a Macondo poet, Pablo Miguel Martinez who read several fantastic poems.
It’s hard to believe the amount of work that went into the staging of the event. However the flood of the emails and calls flowing in from the participants shortly thereafter produced a deep sense of satisfaction for all of us who nervously were counting the minutes before and during the event worrying how many things could go wrong.
The editors of the magazine would like to thank the members of the board of directors, the board of advisors, and the ad hoc committee for supporting, sponsoring, and participating in the Voices annual event. We are pleased to inform our readers and supporters that the event was overwhelmingly successful to raise much needed fund to safeguard the publication of the magazine in the four formats.