Rebel Asylum

      
The story goes that when I was only three weeks old, a large hulk of a man held me in the palm of his hand and crooned into the shell of my ear - "Amber Tamblyn Tambo Amblin Nibbatam Yambo Stibby Lippula Joybaby Boppity Am"With this seminal delivery of the alliterative word, this legendary poet charged up my tiny synapses to grasp the purest nature of poetry. I would come to know this man as one of my mentors, and a very close family friend. In his much anticipated visits from the Bay area, he would sit down on the couch in my parents' living room, and read poems aloud to us about the plight of the homeless. His face crumpled and cracked towards the page of his conquering and powerful words. His voice shook the inner walls of my body like a bird-nest built in the Notre Dame bell-tower.- - his soft, silver hair riding the dark dance of his rough mouth, animal style - - no, wolf style. He was beyond a visual masterpiece in this moment, and all my senses rose to his occasion. This was Jack Hirschman - - Poet, Radical, Proletarian, Visionary, Controversial, Artist, Hero and Friend. It was a moment not unusual, in that the Tamblyn household was used to having bonfire gatherings filled with artists of all walks of life. What made these moment stand out for me was the response I had to hearing something not only so strong, but something I could actually understand, for the first time…a cognition of the human condition - - Civil rights - Human rights and Matters of the Heart. I was further nurtured at the breast of my formal education - - a K through 8 public school called SMASH, where I was guided by the steady hand and watchful tutelage of my 5 th grade teacher, Laurel Schmidt. She was an extraordinary educator who guarded the gates of literature with an icy gaze. Woe to those who would be mediocre! I rapidly reached for a pen and spent four years spewing out poem upon poem, reading with friends and filling the school's yearly anthologies with my ramblings, one of which was a Hirschman-wannabe poem (an homage really, to Jack), "Kill Me So Much." This poem was my first to be published, at age 12, in the San Francisco magazine CUPS, via Jack's help. It is also the beginning poem in my first book of poems, published by Simon & Schuster, Free Stallion. I self published my first two books of poetry, with the help of my mom and Kinkos. Thanks Kinko's!! The first one was published at age 14, called "Of The Dawn" and the second, "Plenty Of Ships", was self published at age 17. But back to SMASH. Dear old SMASH. SMASH was a Mecca for the arts. When I was not performing in school plays, I was hearing a community of poets read in our weekend coffee houses. Philomene Long Thomas, Frankie Rios, and my beloved Wanda Coleman. It was her wild-woman passion and dramatic delivery which spanked me to howl for women's plights and women's rights. In the bestiary of the poetic world that surrounded my life, I also had the opportunity to sit at the feet of the Lion who is Michael McClure acclaimed Beat Poet and inspirer to the Doors' Jim Morrison. I heard a recording of his amazing poems from his Ghost Tantras and the ferocious anthropomorphic rhythm of roars which he offered to the caged beasts at the San Francisco Zoo. He engaged the lions in a poetic call and response that will never again be equaled. When I read my poems to him. he gave me the nod of his silvered mane. "Keep going," he said. "Keep going." So I continued. I wrote poems about my most intimate and expansive experiences. Poetry was the only way to debate, analyze and nurture my already explosive imagination. My fondest fantasy is to let the readers of my poems draw their own conclusions about what I have experienced, what I have embraced, enjoyed, or endured…or whether I have even experienced them at all. To me, the beauty of poetry is in the ear and the heart of the beholder. The poems in Free Stallion are a time-line of my adolescent years in Hollywood leading to where I now stand as a young woman. For me, the book is filled with a desire for honest and authentic self-discovery in a world where your worth is often measured by the shape of your body and the height of your success. I think my poems are a departure from that very obsession that binds us as women. It is the only way for me to fully convey the person I feel I truly am. You see me smiling in magazines, but through this endeavor, which I offer with not a small amount of humility, you get to see clear through to my heart.

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NEW BOOK COMING IN '08!