March 5
EVENT
Alberto Blanco
Poet José Emilio Pacheco writes in the introduction to Alberto Blanco’s Dawn of the Senses: Selected Poems, published by City Lights Books in 1994, that the latter’s poetry “speaks of a world far beyond languages and borders.” San Francisco poet Michael McClure describes Blanco’s work as inhabiting “both the world and the universe of imagination.” At this event Blanco will be reading from his newest volume of poetry, A Cage of Transparent Words, published by Bitter Oleander Press. (Nathan Baker)
2:30 p.m., free
Poetry Center
Humanities Bldg., room 512
San Francisco State University
1600 Halloway, SF
(415) 338-2227
www.sfsu.edu/~poetry
FILM
Black Snake Moan
A welcome shot of lightning in this otherwise sleepy winter, Hustle and Flow director Craig Brewer’s latest, Black Snake Moan, has guts. Try a manic parallel story line featuring nymphomaniac Rae (Christina Ricci) and spurned blues player Sam (Samuel L. Jackson), screaming toward self-destruction. Rae’s been left behind by her Iraq-bound boyfriend (Justin Timberlake), and Sam’s lost his wife to his brother. Which is to say, they got the blues. The characters are sure to offend, but though Black Snake Moan is exploitative and ridiculous, it’s not cheap. (Max Goldberg)
In Bay Area theaters