Occupy the Wooden Spoon

The Critical Flame | January-February 2012

2012-01-26T20:16:00.001-05:00

Daniel E. Pritchard on James Baldwin's The Cross of Redemption
"The Cross of Redemption is not a starting point. If you have not read James Baldwin already, I urge you to procure a copy of Notes of a Native Son and Go Tell it on the Mountain. They are canonical American texts. Stop what you're doing. Read them, right now."

Henry Gould on Ben Mazer and John Beer
"Ben Mazer and John Beer reveal a substantial debt to Ashbery — combined with the influence of an earlier poet, lurking behind both as he does behind Ashbery: that is, yes, Eliot, old Possum himself."

Katherine Evans Pritchard on David Szalay's Spring
"Szalay's great achievement in Spring is his portrayal of the awkward, reticent, regretful, silent moments of human relationships. As Katherine and her estranged husband part ways, Szalay is able to express the sense of loss and emptiness in his portrayal of the very silence between them"

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Speechless: Beckett's Trilogy

2012-01-21T18:16:00.001-05:00

My wife has a cool job, and because of her job I was at a dinner where I had the chance to hear critic Christopher Ricks and poet J Allyn Rosser debate Beckett's trilogy of novels Molloy, Malone Dies, and The Unnamable. Of course then I had to go read them, and got the nice Grove Press volume for Christmas. My friend the poet and editor Stephen Sturgeon holds the same view of Beckett criticism as Derrida; namely, that almost all criticism of Beckett, and particularly of The Trilogy, is woefully insufficient. Certainly this blog post isn't going to fill that void.

I still have 75 pages of The Unnamable to finish. The Trilogy begs for a response though, and I want to write up my thoughts now, in case I lose them or I don't ever finish (it's possible). Enjoy, or don't enjoy, hate even, as you will. In the third book, the unnamed speaker says:

All these Murphys, Malloys, and Malones do not fool me. They have made me waste my time, suffer for nothing, speak of them when, in order to stop speaking, I should have spoken of me and of me alone… I thought I was right in enlisting these sufferers of my pains. I was wrong. They never suffered my pains, their pains are nothing, compared to mine, a mere tittle of mine, the tittle I thought I could put from me, in order to witness it.

This cannot be read except as being written in the authorial voice, or at least as being intentionally formulated as the authorial voice. Critics are very good at finding the echo of Beckett's life in his writing—the death of his mother, his depression, etc. This third volume appears to be a blending of direct autobiographical confession with fictional pretense, revising the meaning and interpretation of the first two volumes fairly drastically. These novels are not hermetic. They are contiguous with the author and the world. Are they even novels in that case?

Beckett obsessed / struggled with the idea of language constructing the self—here, Beckett appears to have formulated a process of grief within the confines of that paradigm of language-constructed identity.

The speech he wants to silence is pain. Perhaps it is memory—each central character in the Trilogy seems to combat their own memories. No matter what the cause might be (his mother's death is often cited). He writes that he should have been talking about "me alone", as in his own solitude rather than of just himself and not others; but silence seems to require witness as well, objectification through speech-construction. Beckett desires the silence of pain, but only speech can transform his grief. He is groping blindly for the correct formulation. We see the same formulation in Molloy, where Moran is sent out to seek Molloy. He's not sure what will happen, not sure of Molloy's description, not sure that the mission is real, and ultimately frustrated.

Beckett seems to use frustration—uncertainty in speech—to formulate silence. Beckett once said, “All writing is a sin against speechlessness. Trying to find a form for that silence.” What is unsaid but implied, and essentially unknowable, is as close to an actual form of silence as one can produce in literature. But in the passage above we see the author frustrated. The proxies aren't enough. The silence he makes in their works is not enough. And I have a feeling that the rest of The Unnamable ultimately won't be enough either, but we'll see about that.

Damn the Man: Fotoshop, by Adobé

2012-01-14T11:14:00.001-05:00

"Living" at $7 / Hour

2012-01-03T15:05:00.001-05:00

Faulkner's Hot Toddy Recipe

2011-12-29T19:00:00.000-05:00

“Pappy”

Take one heavy glass tumbler. Fill approximately half full with Heaven Hill bourbon (the Jack Daniel’s was reserved for Pappy’s ailments).

Add one tablespoon of sugar. Squeeze 1/2 lemon and drop into glass. Stir until sugar dissolves. Fill glass with boiling water. Serve with potholder to protect patient’s hands from the hot glass.

Pappy always made a small ceremony out of serving his Hot Toddy, bringing it upstairs on a silver tray and admonishing his patient to drink it quickly, before it cooled off. It never failed.

(Courtesy of Maud Newton)

Reviving the Wampanoag Language

2011-12-29T09:40:00.001-05:00

A very cool Boston Review interview with documentary filmmaker Anne Makepeace on her new film about the revivial of the Wampanoag language:

Jessie told me recently that she discovered that the word used to translate graves, as in graves where coffins go, literally translates as ‘the place that enables you to travel.’ I just thought that was astonishing. And for example, the word for hell, and those Wampanoag translating the Bible into Wampanoag would be scratching their heads because they didn’t have a concept for hell. “How can we create a word that describes it?” And the word that they did create literally translates as “the house of people with empty heads,” because the Wampanoag believed that the soul resided in the head. What could be more hellish than a house full of soulless people? One of these revelations that’s in the film is the word for “to lose your land,” nupanasham, which literally means “to fall down off your feet.”

Defending the Bookstore: Knockout Blow

2011-12-18T17:21:00.000-05:00

You should be reading Scott Esposito's blog Conversational Reading. He's been on fire pointing out great authors and stories about the literary world. But right now I'd like to direct you to Chad Post's defense of the bookstore against a recent Slate article by Farhad Manjoo that, as Chad writes, “has seemingly pissed off everyone I know.”

Manjoo essentially believes that brick-and-mortar stores are inefficient and, therefore, not worth the effort of saving. I disagree. You're undoubtedly shocked to hear that. It's more than just the unquantifiably important element of culture-building. The benefit of Amazon's discount pricing is also not at all clear. I don't think Amazon saves most consumers any money. Let's use an example to compare.

I'd like to buy Nobel Prize–winner Tomas Transtromer's The Great Enigma (New Directions). The list price, the price I would pay in most bookstores, is $17.95. Amazon offers a discount of 32%, listing the book at $12.21. Now I have to pay shipping. Part and parcel of online shopping. I want the book as soon as I can get it (we're talking efficiency here). The earliest I can receive this book from Amazon is two days, a wait of two days longer than walking into my local bookstore. Surely, you'll say, the savings are still worth the wait. (Don't call me Shirley.) For the privilege of waiting those two extra days, I pay $17.98 in shipping, which brings the total to $30.19 at Amazon.

At The Harvard Bookstore, alternately, the book just costs $17.95 if I go pick it up today. Shipping is optional. But let's look at delivery options, to be fair. The Harvard Bookstore will deliver any book that's in stock to my house the very same day for $5.00, or send it by mail (1-2 days) for $3.50. If the book isn't in stock, the store will order it to arrive the next day for free. That brings my total to $22.95 at most, with shipping, at the “inefficient” brick-and-mortar store.

So I get the book more quickly and more cheaply from my local bookstore than from Amazon. Where is all that much-touted efficiency? Real-live community, literary events, in-person recommendations, and the bookstore saved me $7.24 plus 1-2 days of waiting. Manjoo's argument gets a whammy.

Sorry Farhad!

Empathy, Mediocrity, and Race

2011-12-14T23:00:00.004-05:00

At The Atlantic, Ta-Nehisi Coates responds to a recent piece at Forbes in which the author claims that, given the burdens of poverty and racism, they would have gotten out. Coates sort of shakes his head at the guy:

This basic extension of empathy is one of the great barriers in understanding race in this country. I do not mean a soft, flattering, hand-holding empathy. I mean a muscular empathy rooted in curiosity. If you really want to understand slaves, slave masters, poor black kids, poor white kids, rich people of colors, whoever, it is essential that you first come to grips with the disturbing facts of your own mediocrity. The first rule is this — You are not extraordinary. It's all fine and good to declare that you would have freed your slaves. But it's much more interesting to assume that you wouldn't and then ask “Why?”

This isn't limited to race, though it may be the most imposing barrier to understanding. The need for heroic empathy extends to all facets of life. It takes no amount of character to demonize the poor, the sick, the unlucky, and dismiss them out of hand by declaring I would have done better. If you can so easily pass judgement, it's a sign that you do not understand.

We are not so different from each other. People fear and judge alike, are propped up or undone by chance, believe things that others say of them, misunderstand themselves, run short of energy or will. People do all they can to succeed and have is snatched away from them; for some there are more opportunities to come, for others there are not, and that is the gamble of being born.

Those who hastily dismiss these truths want control, which is human too. Not just free will. They want to tic the boxes, fill the requirements, work hard and sacrifice, and be rewarded. Feel that recompense is fair and right, and convince themselves that it's also the truth. Refuse to admit. Prefer not to.

Amazon and the Economics of National Failure

2011-12-13T11:01:00.000-05:00

At The Atlantic, yet another account of Amazon's insides. It's not pretty. This sort of thing is standard practice across all industries though. It's the devaluation of the American economy. They cut costs by cutting worker pay to offer lower prices and increase profit margins and, particularly, market share. In reality though, companies are creating their own worst competition in the form of downward pricing pressures by firing workers and cutting worker pay, thus lowering consumer demand. We're in a downward spiral, and here's how on Seattle Amazon worker explains it:

In Nevada, warehouse workers were getting $5.15 an hour and people had to work 12-hour shifts, five days a week. Mandated overtime pay didn't start until after 40 hours of a workweek. So when production lulled people were sent home or told not to come in the following day to shave costs. These were the new models. This was the future.

Shaving overtime by sending people home mid-shift, or giving them "the next few days off," was the practice in Seattle too, but in Nevada there was no velvet glove, no nod to personal identity. Workers there were herded through long security lines and body searched on their way in and out before they could clock in. The ventilation was terrible and they got fired for the slightest complaint-at least these were the reports.

Some managers who had been sent out to these warehouses and had expressed concerns were fired. So were the managers who cast doubt on Bezos' plan for mechanization. A few of them wrote a heartfelt letter to Jeff one night, and that was the end.

Everywhere we saw the movement of a new plan, something I was told Bezos and his upper echelon developed sequestered away in a wooded camp. Bezos apparently had a weakness for coded project names and, according to several of the longtime workers this one was originally, "Project Fargo." But some of Bezos' closest team had seen problems and voiced them. They, too, were fired.

When in doubt, eliminate anyone with a conscience. Consumer demand is the problem today, and it's not being addressed in the private sector at all. You just cannot increase consumer demand by lowering consumer wages and firing people.

Happy Birthday, Emily Dickinson

2011-12-10T09:58:00.001-05:00

Happy Birthday today to Emily Dickinson. One of my favorite poets, a radical Christian skeptic who converted church hymns to devastating, introspective poems.

The Boston Police cleared out Dewey Square last night (no injuries reported, 46 arrested) putting the movement on the verge of something major—dissipation or metamorphosis—whether they're ready or not. In the revolutionary era, people of all classes came together for regular general assemblies at the Old South Meeting House. These meetings built a diverse community around an idea. The occupations created a similar community, across class and ideology, and the strength of community is what makes OWS formidable. Can it thrive without the camps? With the physical spaces removed, can the citizenry still regain control of this democracy?

My life closed twice before its close—
It yet remains to see
If Immortality unveil
A third event to me

So huge, so hopeless to conceive
As these that twice befell.
Parting is all we know of heaven,
And all we need of hell.

Why I like poet John Kinsella

2011-12-09T17:04:00.001-05:00

The Guardian reports:

TS Eliot himself worked for Lloyds Bank, but John Kinsella has now become the second poet to withdraw from the prize set up in Eliot’s name in protest at its sponsorship by an investment firm.

Kinsella, winner of a host of poetry awards in his native Australia and author of more than 30 books, said this morning that he supported the British poet Alice Oswald in her decision to pull out of the TS Eliot prize over its newly-brokered sponsorship by investment management firm Aurum Funds. He has informed the Poetry Book Society, which administers the prize, that he is withdrawing his collection Armour from the running for the £15,000 award.

“I am grateful to Alice Oswald for bringing the sponsorship of the TS Eliot Prize to my attention,” said Kinsella in a statement released by his publisher. “I regret that I must do this at a particularly difficult time for the Poetry Book Society but the business of Aurum does not sit with my personal politics and ethics. I am grateful to everyone at the PBS for all they have done to promote my work and that of poetry in general.”

Patrick Dunagan on Aaron Shurin

2011-11-22T07:55:00.001-05:00

In the new issue of The Critical Flame, poet and critic Patrick Dunagan reviews Aaron Shurin's new collection of prose poems, Citizen (City Lights, 2011):

Citizen marks Aaron Shurin's return to the prose poem after fifteen years. His previous verse collection, Involuntary Lyrics, was a re-warping of the woof (as Robert Duncan would put it) found in end words of Shakespeare's sonnets. Between these, Shurin took a turn towards memoir with the collection King of Shadows. San Francisco serves as the predominant setting for many of Shurin's prose sketches in that collection, as it does in Citizen. This is no surprise. Shurin has lived in the city since 1974, and in many ways his life is inextricably woven into that of the area as a whole, as his poem “City of Men” and Unbound: A Book of Aids indicate. Like Robert Duncan, one of his assured mentors, Shurin is a poet of place, and Citizen reflects the attendant responsibilities such a relationship entails.

Read the rest of Dunagan's review here.

Occupy UC Davis: Robert Hass

2011-11-21T22:23:00.001-05:00

At the New York Times, acclaimed poet Robert Hass describes his experience at the UC Davis demonstrations:

At that moment the deputies in the cordon surged forward and, using their clubs as battering rams, began to hammer at the bodies of the line of students. It was stunning to see. They swung hard into their chests and bellies. Particularly shocking to me — it must be a generational reaction — was that they assaulted both the young men and the young women with the same indiscriminate force. If the students turned away, they pounded their ribs. If they turned further away to escape, they hit them on their spines.

Undermining the Occupation: Memo

2011-11-19T11:35:00.001-05:00

If they're worried, then it's working:

A well-known Washington lobbying firm with links to the financial industry has proposed an $850,000 plan to take on Occupy Wall Street and politicians who might express sympathy for the protests, according to a memo obtained by the MSNBC program “Up w/ Chris Hayes.”The proposal was written on the letterhead of the lobbying firm Clark Lytle Geduldig & Cranford and addressed to one of CLGC’s clients, the American Bankers Association.CLGC’s memo proposes that the ABA pay CLGC $850,000 to conduct “opposition research” on Occupy Wall Street in order to construct “negative narratives” about the protests and allied politicians. The memo also asserts that Democratic victories in 2012 would be detrimental for Wall Street and targets specific races in which it says Wall Street would benefit by electing Republicans instead.According to the memo, if Democrats embrace OWS, “This would mean more than just short-term political discomfort for Wall Street … It has the potential to have very long-lasting political, policy and financial impacts on the companies in the center of the bullseye.”

They should really be more careful with these memos. Particularly with the Anonymous collective involved. It's just fueling the fire and painting a bulls eye on their back. Another interesting note:

The CLGC memo raises another issue that it says should be of concern to the financial industry — that OWS might find common cause with the Tea Party.

Now we're talking. Those on the ground with the Tea Party—assuming they have not been too affected by the antagonistic mainstream media depiction of OWS—should feel sympathy with the anger and disaffection of the Occupiers, and the sense that this Democracy is beholden to powerful monied interests. After all, who are the elites at whom the Tea Party are so angry? OWS is camped out at the doorstep of those elites right now. Ignore the party posturing: there is a common cause. Change is there for the grasping, if only people have the will, and only if they put aside the divisions that empower Wall Street and their cronies in both parties.

Mind you, if the economic system worked—if we were closing in on full employment, particularly—the Occupation and the Tea Party would both dissolve. Memo to Wall Street: solve the jobs crisis, end the protests.

Also, I hear that 75,000 big-bank employees are being laid off this week. I wonder if they still think the jobless in this country are lazy freeloaders. Maybe that view is a gross exaggeration of how most bank employees really feel. It is a very different perspective tho standing in the unemployment line with all those factory workers, laborers, office workers, recent veterans, and teachers. Anyhow, I'm sure they will be welcome in the movement.

“The World is Too Much with Us” by William Wordsworth

2011-11-18T15:19:00.001-05:00

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon,
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers,
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.—Great God! I’d rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.

Mark Noonan reviews “Arise and Go!”

2011-11-17T18:49:00.001-05:00

In the new issue of The Critical Flame, we have a CF first: Irish poet, critic, and musician Mark Noonan (who read at U35 this year) reviews Arise and Go! the new album of poetry and folk music by Stephen James Smith and Enda Reilly:

It is difficult to situate the album in relation to other work. It does not have many close neighbors in popular culture, or even in popular subcultures. It could have a great deal in common with rap, but doesn't. Rather, the album sounds like what it is: one person delivering a poem in speech while the other sings. There's a relationship between the two, especially in how Smith runs ahead of and behind the sung text, but Smith is freer than an emcee in his relation to the timing of the music, not needing to work primarily within the rhythm. If there is an elephant in the room, it might be William Shatner's album, Has Been. That's how far you have to go to find a popular reference point. Put another way: more is held in common with Shatner's experiment than with hip-hop. But while the rhythmic drive and integration of rap is largely missing, so is the half-ironic kitsch of Shatner. The relationship between poetry and music in Arise and Go! is both strange and familiar. Its strength is enhanced by the simplicity of the performances' production — a simplicity that's completely context-appropriate for Irish traditional music, where modesty has great currency.

Listen to a bit of the album here on YouTube:

Scott Esposito on Sergio Chejfec

2011-11-17T08:04:00.001-05:00

In the November / December issue of The Critical Flame—which has indeed finally appeared—Quarterly Conversation editor and critic Scott Esposito looks at Sergio Chejfec through the lens of Sebald. He discovers striking similarities, or affinities, between the two:

Curiosity for the mundane, of course, is a common enough quality in a writer. What distinguishes Sebald and Chejfec is how thoroughly they wed mundanities with defamiliarization, and its handmaiden, the uncanny. Sebald repeatedly demonstrates that the camera is an ideal tool for this: representations of everyday life that are at once realistic and unrealistic. Able to pause what we normally see in motion, photographs peel back motion's invisible mask, showing us familiar things in unfamiliar ways. "I always have the feeling with photographs," Sebald wrote, "that they exert a pull on the viewer and in this entirely enormous manner draw him out, so to speak, from the real world into an unreal world." Chejfec likewise shows things that are only glimpsed on the margins of experience, when the mind has wandered far from the motion of normal human life. It is this speed that he at one point terms "the lethargic scale of banal discoveries." Chejfec's perspective is like our view when, looking at The Ambassadors, our eyes slip to the skull at the bottom of the painting.

I highly recommend you check it out, along with the rest of the new issue.

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love OWS

2011-11-15T08:30:00.000-05:00

“Occupy Wall Street was always about something much bigger than a movement against big banks and modern finance. It's about providing a forum for people to show how tired they are not just of Wall Street, but everything. This is a visceral, impassioned, deep-seated rejection of the entire direction of our society, a refusal to take even one more step forward into the shallow commercial abyss of phoniness, short-term calculation, withered idealism and intellectual bankruptcy that American mass society has become. If there is such a thing as going on strike from one's own culture, this is it. And by being so broad in scope and so elemental in its motivation, it's flown over the heads of many on both the right and the left.”

—Matt Tiabbi, Rolling Stone

Charging Submissions: A Debate

2011-11-11T18:22:00.001-05:00

The CLMP listserve recently hosted a lengthy and sometimes heated debate between the editors of various literary journals over the question of charging a fee for submissions [note: Canteen Magazine removed their transcript of this debate due to complaints by the editors]. The discussion ranges from ethical quandries to business model failures to the internet economy and the providing a valuable service theory. I'm not at all sure how I feel about this. Let's think it through a bit.

Probably there are more journals being published in America than its literary readership can really support. The internet has put downward pressure on the value of content. It has thrown standards of quality and practices of filtering into question. There is an aftertaste of postmodern skepticism there as well. Literary activity—particularly poetry, I think—seems to have become more participatory than spectatorial over the past few decades, meaning that there are way more people writing, and those writers are also the primary audience for these literary journals. So there has been a growth in the number of writers, but not in audience; it's just that a larger percentage of that audience is writing. Which means that the number of journals has increased because of greater supply*, but they've each reduced the market share of the others.

* Notice I'm ignoring quality. Assume that's a fixed rate within the submission quantity: more submissions, more publishable work. Editors out there are laughing at this, I'm sure. The thought makes me glad I am not a literary editor.

Economic investment as one filter in a time of content overabundance and economic scarcity? Makes a vicious kind of sense, I suppose. I don't believe, as one editor claimed in the thread, in the “vanity publishing” charge—many important writers funded their early publications, or had them funded. It's foolish to believe that the fat-and-happy mid-Twentieth Century was the standard for an artistic existence. Artists have traditionally required patrons (or an inheritance—or, before the 1950s, a non-academic job) to survive. Art is the noblest form of vanity, anyhow.

I guess my thought is: if there is a desire to have a gateway of this sort, why not become a membership organization? Only members can submit their work. In return they get a subscription to the journal, an email newsletter, members only area of the web site, a large annual symposium? (Dare I say: Members Only jackets?) This is basically the Nineteenth Century subscription system, but it could definitely work. Several like-minded journals in a region could even get together under one membership organization—New York City alone could probably have a dozen of them. Each journal increases their market share, if marginally, by combining theirs with some others.

This at least breaks the mean, poor, degenerative Hobbesian equilibrium currently in place, in which all-against-all translates to Epic Fail.

U35: September and November Recordings

2011-11-10T23:59:00.001-05:00

Two long overdue sets of audio from the past two editions of U35!

U35: November 8, 2011
Kent Leatham, Hannah Baker-Siroty, and Jim Cronin

Kent Leatham

Kent was born and raised in Steinbeck Country, California. He received his BA in poetry from Pacific Lutheran University and an MFA in poetry from Emerson College. He serves as senior poetry editor for Black Lawrence Press, and has had more than three dozen poems and translations published in journals such as Zoland, Artifice, Poets & Artists, and The Bellevue Literary Review, as well as having his work appear on buses in Seattle and in the Harvard Museum of Natural History. (Download the MP3)

Hannah Baker-Siroty

Hannah has writing degrees from University of Wisconsin, Madison and Sarah Lawrence College. She has been awarded fellowships from The Vermont Studio Center and Writers' Room of Boston, and teaches writing at Pine Manor College. She is hoping to find a publisher for first book of poems, Odd of the Ordinary. She currently lives in Arlington, MA and is working on a book of poems about Vice-Presidents. (Download the MP3)

Jim Cronin

Jim focuses his creative efforts primarily on poetry, but makes a living as a journalist and editor. He lives and works in the Boston area and is an active member of writing workshops as well as organizations dedicated to environmental advocacy. His poems, feature news articles and essays have been published in the Boston Globe and Globe Magazine, Lyrical Somerville, Fox Chase Review and elsewhere. He is the founding poetry editor of the White Whale Review, an online literary journal, and is currently a guest editor for Amethyst Arsenic, another online magazine of poetry and art. (Download the MP3)

U35: September 13, 2011
Sean Campbell, Sarah Sweeney, and Matt Summers

Sean Campbell

Sean Campbell came to Boston from Mahopac New York, to attend college at Emerson. He has worked with various publishers including MIT Press and Pearson. He's had poems published in BU's Clarion magazine and American Drivel Review, and has a poem accepted in Boston Review. (Download the MP3)

Sarah Sweeney

Sarah Sweeney's poetry and nonfiction has appeared in Quarterly West, PANK, Cream City Review, Barrelhouse, Tar River Poetry, and others. She received an MFA from Emerson College an write for the Harvard Gazette. Visit her online at Sarah-Sweeney.com. (Download the MP3)

Matt Summers

Matt Summers lives in Boston with his wife and dog. His poems have appeared in The Notre Dame Review, Silk Road Review, The South Carolina Review, The American Poetry Journal, and on ThievesJargon.com. (Download the MP3)

Tomorrow: U35 Poetry Reading!

2011-11-07T18:21:00.000-05:00

Kent Leatham, Hannah Baker-Siroty, and Jim Cronin
The Marliave · 10 Bosworth Street
Boston, MA (MBTA to Park Street)

U35 is a bi-monthly reading series for poets under the age of thirty five. Conceived as a space for greater community as well as diversity of voice and vision, U35 was selected as one of 2010's ten best event series by the Boston Globe. On Tuesday, November 8th we are pleased to host Kent Leatham, Hannah Baker-Siroty, and Jim Cronin.

Kent Leatham was born and raised in Steinbeck Country, California. He received his BA in poetryfrom Pacific Lutheran University and an MFA in poetry from Emerson College. He serves as senior poetry editor for Black Lawrence Press, and has had more than three dozen poems and translations published in journals such as Zoland, Artifice, Poets & Artists, and The Bellevue Literary Review, as well as having his work appear on buses in Seattle and in the Harvard Museum of Natural History.

Hannah Baker-Siroty has writing degrees from University of Wisconsin, Madison and Sarah Lawrence College. She has been awarded fellowships from The Vermont Studio Center and Writers' Room of Boston, and teaches writing at Pine Manor College. She is hoping to find a publisher for first book of poems, Odd of the Ordinary. She currently lives in Arlington, MA and is working on a book of poems about Vice-Presidents.

Jim Cronin focuses his creative efforts primarily on poetry, but makes a living as a journalist and editor. He lives and works in the Boston area and is an active member of writing workshops as well as organizations dedicated to environmental advocacy. His poems, feature news articles and essays have been published in the Boston Globe and Globe Magazine, Lyrical Somerville, Fox Chase Review and elsewhere. He is the founding poetry editor of the White Whale Review, an online literary journal, and is currently a guest editor for Amethyst Arsenic, another online magazine of poetry and art.

Nostalgia: Random Repetition or Vile Narcissism?

2011-11-06T13:41:00.000-05:00

At Grantland, culturkritic Chuck Klosterman explores nostalgia, asking: “What if nostalgia has less to do with our own lives than we superficially assume? What if the feeling we like to call ‘nostalgia’ is simply the byproduct of accidental repetition?”

It’s a fine bit of insight. People project meaning and value onto the things they manage to remember, even if it’s only remembered because of random exposure. Repeated exposure one of the standard techniques of mass marketing, after all, (“five dollar foot long,” anyone?) and you can always count on marketers to understand emotional manipulation. Trust me.

Klosterman uses one song from Ozzy Osbourne's Bark at the Moon—an album I am semi-embarrassed to say I also owned—as his main example:

The song sounds better than logic dictates because I (once) put in enough time to “get” everything it potentially offers. Maybe it's not that we're overrating our memories; maybe it's that we're underrating the import of prolonged exposure. Maybe things don't become meaningful unless we're willing to repeat our interaction with whatever that “thing” truly is.

I think his analysis holds for most popular culture consumption. Of course, a key analog to the projection of meaning onto random exposure is the denial of randomness. We don’t want to believe that our emotional reactions are baseless and crude, or that our tastes have been shaped by arbitrary exposure or, even worse, by manipulative brand marketing strategies. It can cause a defensive backlash and a lot of silly rationalization, a la Klosterman's Pearl Jam example. At that point, nostalgia based in repetition can be extremely annoying. Still, mostly harmless.

Klosterman also argues that the greater variety of choices provided by the internet will hamper the reproduction of nostalgia down the line. I’m not as sure. If VH1 doesn’t do an I Can Has Cheeze Burger retrospective special on millennial internet memes in the next decade, we might be in the clear. The act of collective memory is a powerful social reinforcement. It almost doesn’t matter what the original experience or media is.

However, I think Klosterman’s definition of nostalgia is too narrow for the purpose of addressing the current concerns. He defines it first as the pleasure of remembering a formative experience. In that form, the past is accurately remembered, for the most part, but with rose-colored glasses. His other definition is an enjoyment based in prolonged exposure and subsequent appreciation of media. Both of these are accurate, but I don’t think they reflect the roots of today's nervousness over culture-wide nostalgia, including politics. We’re experiencing a different sort of broad-based nostalgia right now, one that is not about the songs we loved as teenagers.

In the 2006 film This is England, a young boy named Shaun falls in with racist, nationalist skinheads* in working-class northern England. Shaun’s dad has been killed in the Falklands War, and he’s vulnerable to any kind of father figure willing to step in there. The skinheads in this film display a type of real-world nostalgia that is grounded not in pleasure, but in angst and fear: England is in decline in 1983, a poorly-run former empire fighting pointless wars with small nations to prove that it still has some martial prowess, while ignoring domestic problems such as high unemployment, collapsing infrastructure, and sluggish economic growth.

* The skinhead movement began in the 1960s as a youth culture of working-class solidarity that took its early cues from mod, Caribbean immigrant, and African American R&B culture. Racist factions emerged and became notorious, but a strong apolitical or admirably political subculture of skinheads persists.

Situation sounds vaguely familiar, no? Nostalgia was a variety of melancholy in its early incarnation, a medically-diagnosed longing for home most often found in mercenaries and seafarers. (Our familiar term homesickness is a translation from the Greek.) It is no accident that nostalgia was first diagnosed in foreign-born soldiers on the battlefield. Who could be less secure? The skinheads in This is England are reacting to a dramatic urban demographic shift and to their increased socio-economic insecurity. Idealizing the past, the nation, and home, is a symptom of their tenuous situation. In the U.S. today you can see this happening, quite publicly, throughout the spectrum of class and politics.

Klosterman pinpoints the way that one form of nostalgia is the human animal’s reaction to repetition, and is right to say that it’s nothing to be bothered about. Ironically singing along to Sir Mix-A-Lot is not going to corrupt our fundamental values and institutions, nor challenge our better angels with fear-fuelled violent urges. The darker version—the human animal’s negative reaction to change and insecurity—might be worth our concern though.

Occupy This Coloring Book

2011-11-03T19:55:00.002-04:00

Occupy the Workforce

2011-10-24T11:18:00.001-04:00

DFW will not stand for this Strunk & White bullsh*t

2011-10-21T18:40:00.000-04:00

This tidbit of artistic frustration is selected from a fax to the editors at Harper's Magazine from David Foster Wallace (via the Huffington Post):

The deal is this. You’re welcome to this for READINGS if you wish. What I’d ask is that you (or Ms. Rosenbush, whom I respect but fear) not copyedit this like a freshman essay. Idiosyncracies of ital, punctuation, and syntax ("stuff," "lightbulb" as one word, "i.e."/"e.g." without commas after, the colon 4 words after ellipses at the end, etc.) need to be stetted. (A big reason for this is that I want to preserve an oralish, out-loud feel to the remarks so as to protect me from people’s ire at stuff that isn’t expanded on more; for you, the big reason is that I’m not especially psyched to have this run at all, much less to take a blue-skyed 75-degree afternoon futzing with it to bring it into line with your specs, and you should feel obliged and borderline guilty, and I will find a way to harm you or cause you suffering* if you fuck with the mechanics of this piece.)

* (It may take years for the oportunity to arise. I'm very patient. Think of me as a spider with a phenomenal emotional memory. Ask Charis.)

We have all been there, amiright?

Occupy this 30-second spot

2011-10-19T19:34:00.001-04:00

Bukowski on Censorship

2011-10-18T22:00:00.000-04:00

From a letter to a library that banned one of his books:

Censorship is the tool of those who have the need to hide actualities from themselves and from others. Their fear is only their inability to face what is real, and I can’t vent any anger against them. I only feel this appalling sadness. Somewhere, in their upbringing, they were shielded against the total facts of our existence. They were only taught to look one way when many ways exist.

Occupy the Infiltration

2011-10-17T10:00:00.000-04:00

Gawker highlights a bored professional security freelancer who “infiltrated” the Occupy Wall Street movement. I put that word in quotes, you'll note. #OWS is a self-described inclusive activist community. Meaning that anyone can join. Including members of the NYPD and FBI. It did not require James Bond–like skills to infiltrate them. It didn't even require Napolean Dynamite skills. It mostly required a Twitter account, clicking Follow, and then going to Liberty Square one time to join the mailing list. And…that's about it. Well done, Cody Banks.

Occupy Citibank

2011-10-16T14:44:00.003-04:00

I have so many questions about this, but there appears to be very little verified information available. Gather News has conflicting accounts of the incident and the intent of the activists. CBS News reports, “Two dozen people were arrested at a Citibank branch when they refused a manager's request to leave. Most were detained for trespassing. Five others were arrested for wearing masks.” The altercation between the police and the woman claiming to be a Citibank customer at the end of the video is borderline avant garde in its strangeness.

Also: Arrested for wearing masks? Is this along the lines of yelling “Fire!” in a crowded theater?

Occupy Bipartisanship

2011-10-13T09:31:00.000-04:00

On Glyn Maxwell's One Thousand Nights and Counting

2011-10-12T18:38:00.000-04:00

Hey I reviewed Glyn Maxwell's new selected edition of poems at Idiom:

Glyn Maxwell is a poet of music; of the rhythm, the line, and the poem as spoken word. This is not only a point of pride for the writer but also the primary distinction of his work. Maxwell’s technical prowess has been praised in major publications by the likes of William Logan, Adam Kirsch, and Langdon Hammer. He carries a charge passed down by his mentor Derek Walcott as well as Thom Gunn, Richard Wilbur, and Joseph Brodsky. Befitting such a pedigree, his collections have been shortlisted for the Whitbread, Forward, and T.S. Eliot Awards.

He has not, however, won any of those prizes — nor would he be placed in the pantheon with those forebears. A talent for form and music is not enough on its own. Thom Gunn was lightly praised for years before hitting late upon content that lent itself to the strict, wry strength of his poetics. Maxwell’s technê is still searching for that perfect inspiration. He arrives at the gates of poetry with all this craftsman’s skill, his place nowhere to be found.

Like it? Yeah it's alright. Check out the rest: http://idiommag.com/2011/10/what%E2%80%99s-past-is-poetry-the-reaches-and-limits-of-glyn-maxwell/

Occupy the NYT Editorial Pages

2011-10-09T11:44:00.001-04:00

Today The New York Times editors threw their support behind the Occupation:

The country needs a shift in the emphasis of public policy from protecting the banks to fostering full employment, including public spending for job creation and development of a strong, long-term strategy to increase domestic manufacturing.

It is not the job of the protesters to draft legislation. That’s the job of the nation’s leaders, and if they had been doing it all along there might not be a need for these marches and rallies. Because they have not, the public airing of grievances is a legitimate and important end in itself. It is also the first line of defense against a return to the Wall Street ways that plunged the nation into an economic crisis from which it has yet to emerge.

Full employment is something I'm a little bit familiar with, since my work with the Boston Review Forum, "Back to Full Employment," from earlier in the year. It inlcudes a lead essay from economist Robert Pollin and responses from James K. Galbraith, Ruy Teixiera, and Eileen Appelbaum, who offers a startling piece of anecdotal insight into today's economic problems:

Asked if employees’ wages rise with productivity, a mid-size business owner answered, “I Make it. I take it.”

No wonder unemployment remains critical while profit margins set high-water marks each quarter. We need a sea-change in values, that's for sure.

Occupy the Daily Show

2011-10-06T11:30:00.000-04:00

Tranströmer Wins Nobel

2011-10-06T09:50:00.003-04:00

Congratulations to Swedish poet Tomas Tranströmer, winner of the 2011 Nobel Prize for Literature! Always nice to see a poet win the award. Here is an excerpt from Katie Peterson's review of Tranströmer's collected poems, from Boston Review:

Tranströmer, a psychotherapist as well as a poet, remains one of Sweden’s most widely translated and discussed living poets. His shortest poems are his most characteristic, and they may be his best. He has perfected a particular kind of epiphanic lyric, often in quatrains, in which nature is the active, energizing subject, and the self (if the self is present at all) is the object. Off-kilter and mystical, many of these poems approach the surreal and have an American parallel with Emily Dickinson’s slant of light: “There’s a tree walking around in the rain, / it rushes past us in the pouring grey. / It has an errand. It gathers life / out of the rain like a blackbird in an orchard” (from “The Tree and the Sky”).

Occupy My Thoughts on Community

2011-10-05T20:06:00.001-04:00

At CNN, Douglass Rushkoff writes: "Like the spokesmen for Arab dictators feigning bewilderment over protesters' demands, mainstream television news reporters finally training their attention on the growing Occupy Wall Street protest movement seem determined to cast it as the random, silly blather of an ungrateful and lazy generation of weirdos. They couldn't be more wrong and, as time will tell, may eventually be forced to accept the inevitability of their own obsolescence."

Professional media assessments of #OccupyWallSt tend to be singularly focused on the whimsical / ironic tone, subculture appearance, and crowdsource philosophy. Especially on the Left. And actually, it has been a lot uglier on the Left. The New Republic's Alex Klein even seemed to use latent homophobia to belittle the activists, describing one as “a waifish blue-eyed grad-student with expressive wrists," and another "in skinny jeans skipping by with a violin case" as a Yankees gear–clad bystander hoped for violence. The juxtaposition was unsettling, even in a piece that went out of its way to slight the occupation—Klein's report dedicated as many column inches to random angry passers-by as it did to any of the activists. Not altogether a surprise though, considering the uneven history of left-leaning media in America.

Outside the media, it is primarily the lack of planning, leadership, and well-defined demands that creates the most skepticism among otherwise sympathetic viewers. During a discussion of the Occupation's merits on Facebook, for example, one older man said: “It sounds very much like some of what we did in the 60s-70s. It helped bring about lasting changes in American mores (and it was a hell of a lot of fun), but was considerably less successful in the political goals many of us had. And that was with very specific demands, and very good planning. We managed to replace Johnson with Nixon, and the US war remained as bloody as it had been for another five years. The movement faded pretty quickly when the war, and the threat of the draft, ended.”

Let's for a moment put aside the question of goals, and focus instead on means and conditions. From the 1960s through the early 21st Century, local protests relied on professional media to gain notoriety and spread the message. Otherwise, what was local remained local. Media then had absolute power of confirmation or of obfuscation. I saw this first hand in protests against the War in Iraq, 2002-2003. Every media source reported a different number of activists present at marches and rallies. The reports focused then, as they do now, on trifling surface characterizations of the activists. The power of the movement was successfully dissolved. Marches with thousands of people were mere local annoyances. By filtering information, they were able to designate the sources of authority and undermine the movement.

Over the past two decades the pace of the news cycle has also dramatically increased, making long-term movements more difficult. What happens today leaves little lasting effect unless it somehow recurs. Even large-scale events—such as the Rodney King riots in 1992 or the Kentucky mine collapse in 2010—are pushed into a space of quasi-oblivion. It is not that the events are forgotten entirely (a localized community will fiercely remember them), but events are drained of whatever essence of living history was contained in their memory. They lose the ability to stir emotions.

The advent of various new media has changed this situation in two ways.

First, there is the capacity for universal filming. The catchphrase of #Anonymous, “Expect us,” is indicative of a culture where constant amateur surveillance is run of the mill. “Us” is the internet, crowdsourced public identity. It is the cultural SuperEgo / Id. Ignorance of this has ushered the downfall of more than a few public figures. (Which is just absurd. You're a public figure. It's like people who pick their nose in the car: we can all see you.) This is a new guiding rule of our culture: expect surveillance. Expect that someone is filming. It's not big brother, it's your little nephew.

Second, community is released from locality. As I write this I see on Twitter that the #OccupySeattle protesters are being arrested and denied their right to a phone call. This report came from a person I've never met, who is 3000 miles away. I click retweet and that same message goes out to my 400 followers. They might do the same now on their smart phones, laptops, or iPads. In minutes, that message reaches millions of people, and professional mainstream media had no part in it. There is no media filter in this community to confer authority or funnel disinformation.

Not only that: like all good communities, the internet is consistent and dialogical. I always have access to it. Always. Most people usually do. Many people often do. And unlike radio or TV, I can have a dialog over the internet. I've only made it down to #OccupyBoston at Dewey Park one time, but I am in ongoing dialog with that community. The physical camp is only the visible tip of a vast network. I think this is the most difficult point for older people, who are not as accustomed to the internet. The community exists wherever I have access, and for as long as the dialog continues.

This means that almost any act can be filmed and shared by the internet community, and that act can recur over and over far from its locus. Civil disobedience has greater potential to effect change today than it did even five years ago, never mind fifty years ago.

#OccupyWallSt happens every day. The events of the occupation happen again and again. Mainstream media is unnecessary (though, undoubtedly, it is still a powerful force). Whether this means the occupation will translate into positive change, or policy changes, is another question. But the fatal practical weaknesses of past movements no longer apply.

Occupy Dissent: 5 Things They Got Right

2011-10-04T08:30:00.000-04:00

Dissent Magazine has a piece on five things that #OccupyWallSt got right, from choosing their target well to escalating at the right moment. Nice to see some analysis that isn't completely befuddled by the inverted organizational structure. Also worth highlighting: "#OccupyWallStreet has accomplished a great deal in the past week and a half, with virtually no resources."

Missing from this is the savvy use of social media. In the 1960s the mimeograph was the tool for organization and dissemination of outsider ideas—social media is the mimeograph on HDH and Jolt Cola. But the authorities are smart enough to undermine new techniques, just as they've effectively neutered the olde-timey one-day protest march. Eventually, though, they'll use social media against the movement. Evgeny Morozov writes, in his new essay at Boston Review:

There are already companies collecting the information that law enforcement agencies want: they need only reach out and take it while those companies continue aggregating and analyzing, secure in the knowledge that users never read the terms of service.

The message might be: digital is the activist's best tool, but back it all up in analog. Just in case.

Occupy Fox News

2011-10-03T16:43:00.002-04:00

Occupy the Brooklyn Bridge

2011-10-03T08:16:00.000-04:00

Saturday in New York the #OccupyWallSt protesters marched across the Brooklyn Bridge.

Several protesters have report that high-ranking police on the scene (marked by white shirts) were ahead of the march itself and actually led activists onto the street. Police allege that they warned protesters specifically not to block traffic before marching. The following standoff was streamed live online. The crowd was trapped on the bridge by the orange netting of the police, and 700-plus activists were arrested one by one for blocking traffic and disorderly conduct.

The NY Times “City Room” blog reported on the march and subsequent arrests at length. The following image has been circulating, speculating that NY Times editorial and/or the NYPD influenced the reporting of this event in order to manipulate public response.

Andy Newman, the City Room Bureau Chief, responded to these implications via email: “At every point yesterday as the story unfolded, we offered the most complete account we could of a large and chaotic scene that could not be grasped by any one person. The earlier version had almost no input from the police. The later version reflected the accounts of the police, protesters and of course our reporters at the scene. The later version, read in its entirety (not just the one highighted [sic] sentence in that photo), reflected the various perspectives much more thoroughly. The final version of the piece was more thorough still.”

Unlike some previous conflicting reports between the occupation and the police, video evidence has not surfaced to support the claim that protesters were misled by the police. Any video that does come to light would likely be difficult to corroborate in any case, given the circumstances.

Fun fact: the largest mass arrest in U.S. history was at the May Day protests in Washington, DC, May 1–3, 1971. Twelve thousand protesters were arrested for blocking traffic at major intersections and across bridges.

#OccupyWallSt First "Official" Release

2011-10-02T12:46:00.003-04:00

This was unanimously voted on by all members of Occupy Wall Street last night, around 8pm, Sept 29. It is our first official document for release. We have three more underway, that will likely be released in the upcoming days: 1) A declaration of demands. 2) Principles of Solidarity 3) Documentation on how to form your own Direct Democracy Occupation Group. This is a living document. you can receive an official press copy of the latest version by emailing c2anycga@gmail.com.

Declaration of the Occupation of New York City

As we gather together in solidarity to express a feeling of mass injustice, we must not lose sight of what brought us together. We write so that all people who feel wronged by the corporate forces of the world can know that we are your allies.

As one people, united, we acknowledge the reality: that the future of the human race requires the cooperation of its members; that our system must protect our rights, and upon corruption of that system, it is up to the individuals to protect their own rights, and those of their neighbors; that a democratic government derives its just power from the people, but corporations do not seek consent to extract wealth from the people and the Earth; and that no true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic power. We come to you at a time when corporations, which place profit over people, self-interest over justice, and oppression over equality, run our governments. We have peaceably assembled here, as is our right, to let these facts be known.

They have taken our houses through an illegal foreclosure process, despite not having the original mortgage.

They have taken bailouts from taxpayers with impunity, and continue to give Executives exorbitant bonuses.

They have perpetuated inequality and discrimination in the workplace based on age, the color of one’s skin, sex, gender identity and sexual orientation.

They have poisoned the food supply through negligence, and undermined the farming system through monopolization.

They have profited off of the torture, confinement, and cruel treatment of countless nonhuman animals, and actively hide these practices.

They have continuously sought to strip employees of the right to negotiate for better pay and safer working conditions.

They have held students hostage with tens of thousands of dollars of debt on education, which is itself a human right.

They have consistently outsourced labor and used that outsourcing as leverage to cut workers’ healthcare and pay.

They have influenced the courts to achieve the same rights as people, with none of the culpability or responsibility.

They have spent millions of dollars on legal teams that look for ways to get them out of contracts in regards to health insurance.

They have sold our privacy as a commodity.

They have used the military and police force to prevent freedom of the press.

They have deliberately declined to recall faulty products endangering lives in pursuit of profit.

They determine economic policy, despite the catastrophic failures their policies have produced and continue to produce.

They have donated large sums of money to politicians supposed to be regulating them.

They continue to block alternate forms of energy to keep us dependent on oil.

They continue to block generic forms of medicine that could save people’s lives in order to protect investments that have already turned a substantive profit.

They have purposely covered up oil spills, accidents, faulty bookkeeping, and inactive ingredients in pursuit of profit.

They purposefully keep people misinformed and fearful through their control of the media.

They have accepted private contracts to murder prisoners even when presented with serious doubts about their guilt.

They have perpetuated colonialism at home and abroad.

They have participated in the torture and murder of innocent civilians overseas.

They continue to create weapons of mass destruction in order to receive government contracts.*

To the people of the world,

We, the New York City General Assembly occupying Wall Street in Liberty Square, urge you to assert your power.

Exercise your right to peaceably assemble; occupy public space; create a process to address the problems we face, and generate solutions accessible to everyone.

To all communities that take action and form groups in the spirit of direct democracy, we offer support, documentation, and all of the resources at our disposal.

Join us and make your voices heard!

*These grievances are not all-inclusive.

----

Hat-tip, DangerousMinds.net

Ailbhe Darcy in the Irish Times

2011-09-01T12:14:00.000-04:00

In the Irish Times this weekend, Borbála Faragó reviewed Critical Flame contributor / friend Ailbhe Darcy’s debut collection, Imaginary Menagerie (Bloodaxe Books, 64pp, £8.95):

Darcy's Imaginary Menagerie is a quirky and fresh debut collection that invites the reader into the intriguing inner world of the poet. Often enigmatic and ambiguous, but never self-absorbed or pointless, these poems create a refined metaphorical nexus where imagination plays the solo part. There are self-reflective poems that consider the poetic psyche with great ironic tenderness, such as The Mornings You Turn into a Grub , which compares the self to a “scrambled egg omelette . . . with a soft and runny interior . . . pure egg, all the way through”, or the brilliant Mrs Edgeway , which looks at a woman searching for her body’s map of consciousness: “I trace the veins, / try to find some thing of substance”.

Darcy is also a keen observer of the world around her: many of her poems comment on the widespread political violence to which we are all witnesses in the media on a daily basis and query humanity’s growing indifference. The sophisticated Animal Biscuits describes the infamous photograph of the abuse of Iraqi prisoners and castigates the soldiers for “behaving as animals, violently absent from / your own photograph”. Darcy is a remarkable poet who combines a lithe metaphorical imagination with an enviable social sensitivity.

U35: Campbell, Sweeney, & Summers

2011-08-30T09:05:00.001-04:00

Tuesday, September 13 @ 7:00 pm

Sean Campbell, Sarah Sweeney, and Matt Summers
The Marliave · 10 Bosworth Street
Boston, MA (MBTA to Park Street)

U35 is a bi-monthly reading series for poets under the age of thirty five. Conceived as a space for greater community as well as diversity of voice and vision, U35 was selected as one of 2010's ten best event series by the Boston Globe. On Tuesday, July 12th we are pleased to host Sean Campbell, Sarah Sweeney, and Matt Summers.

Sean Campbell came to Boston from Mahopac New York, to attend college at Emerson. He has worked with various publishers including MIT Press and Pearson. He's had poems published in BU's Clarion magazine and American Drivel Review, and has a poem accepted in Boston Review.

Sarah Sweeney's poetry and nonfiction has appeared in Quarterly West, PANK, Cream City Review, Barrelhouse, Tar River Poetry, and others. She received an MFA from Emerson College an write for the Harvard Gazette. Visit her online at Sarah-Sweeney.com.

Originally from Tacoma, Matt Summers lives in Boston with his wife and dog. His poems have appeared in The Notre Dame Review, Silk Road Review, The South Carolina Review, The American Poetry Journal, and on ThievesJargon.com.

Avant Garde Poetics and the Radical Right

2011-07-28T12:47:00.000-04:00

I've touched on this before, but David Micah Greenberg does the hard work at Boston Review:

“Within any poem, how its substance is oriented toward the field of action is not predetermined and forms the core of its politics. At stake within each poem is how consciousness may be enlisted toward action…For some experimental poets, the aggressively apolitical in substance and practice is identical to political engagement…The left’s poetry is not always positioned to create space for experiences different from their own, to present or at least evoke the feeling of the differential texture of social experience, in order to counter those who would obliterate reality and human life when they do not serve them.”

Kill the Best-Seller List

2011-07-05T21:04:00.002-04:00

“The best-seller list functions, in essence, as a restraint of trade, a visible hand that crushes the life out of the literary marketplace. If one were to magically eliminate every form of the list, in print and online, as well as all those best-seller tables in Barnes & Noble, what would happen? People would spend more time browsing a bookstore’s stock, they would skim a page or two of various interesting-looking titles, and eventually they would plunk down their twenty dollars. In short, they would actively engage with a greater portion of our literary culture. Customers might even discuss their tastes with the shop’s owner or staff, who would actually recommend a few appropriate titles. Friends, neighbors, and colleagues might also suggest beloved novels, biographies, and poetry collections.” — Michael Dirda, Bookforum

Tumblr

2011-06-14T10:20:00.001-04:00

Though I'll still post here from time to time, I've started a Tumblr account. Lack of time plus dissatisfaction with Twitter's space constraints: http://dpritchard.tumblr.com/

Elite like an NFL Quarterback

2011-05-26T13:52:00.002-04:00

Sweet couch.

The Oxford something or other interviews ~~the great and powerful Oz!~~ the English language's finest living poet, Geoffrey Hill. Here is a snippet:

You have famously defended the right of art to be ‘difficult’: would you therefore defend the right of poetry to be elitist?

We have to define what we mean by elitist: considerable confusion will arise unless we can get clear in our heads what ‘elitist’ means. If ‘elitist’ means belonging to some threatened hierarchy of the intelligence then I think that the poet has an obligation to attune her poetry in that direction. There is a largely unknown order of human beings who believe in that impossible thing: intrinsic value. One must work as if intrinsic value were a reality, even though I myself know no way of demonstrating its real existence.

Listen: Ailbhe Darcy and Mark Noonan at U35

2011-05-23T22:24:00.002-04:00

Ailbhe Darcy has published poems in Ireland, Britain and the US, and writes critically for a number of publications including The Critical Flame, The Stinging Fly, and Verbal. She recently appeared as part of the prestigious Poetry Ireland Introductions Series. She has a BA in English and French, an MA in publishing and an MSc in development studies, the last of which took her to Zambia to study community media. She has just embarked on a PhD in contemporary poetry at the University of Notre Dame. With Clodagh Moynan, she co-edits Moloch, an online journal of new Irish art and writing.

Mark Thomas Noonan is a poet, playwright, and musician from Ireland, now living in Atlanta, Georgia. Mark's plays have been produced in Dublin, Cork, and New York, and his poetry and other writing have appeared in numerous journals. He recently completed an MA in Ethnomusicology from University College Cork and now works for an independent folk music label.

The Dark Place

2011-05-23T19:58:00.001-04:00

from Alternet: I want you to know that the fundamentalist political movement is the beginning of a cultural revolution that will take our nation to a very dark place. You have to understand that this has been methodically planned and is being carried out with the utmost vigilance. In accordance with their worldview, my old friends do not in the least care about what you think. They are against democracy, and they are seeking to end the rule of the majority in our great country.

Daniel Bosch on Daisy Fried's “Torment”

2011-05-20T08:00:00.005-04:00

From the May/June issue of The Critical Flame:

“At seven pages, ‘Torment’ is longer and more complicated than many American poems published these days. I want you to read it anyway, maybe because this is so. For ‘Torment’ is also clearer and more direct than much of the verse we see in contemporary magazines. It does not induce meaning under the pretense that it has none. The implications of ‘Torment’ follow logically, almost simply, from its words and sentences and verse paragraphs. Though its language is loaded, morally, Fried has distanced her poem from the kind of poem-of-moral-instruction that has been one popular template for American poets working since the 1970s. I hope without expectation that an acute appraisal of ‘Torment’ might lead to a robust questioning of that moral template, and that perhaps we might even set it aside.”

Read Daisy Fried's poem "Torment" here.

Laura Healy reads Bolaño for U35 at Mass Poetry

2011-05-19T08:00:00.000-04:00

Got all that? Laura Healy, whose translations of Roberto Bolaño's poetry is published by New Directions, reads from her newly-translated work, which will be published in the fall.

James Stotts on Stephen Sturgeon

2011-05-18T11:29:00.002-04:00

From the May/June issue of The Critical Flame:

‘Schools of poetry, though, are political parties, and Sturgeon’s political gesture is a wink, not flagellation. It is antihegemonical, which is to say, Socratic. In key moments he offers critique: “I do not know the proper tone to take”, we are told in “The Confabulators.” This is surely the alpha and omega of John Ashbery’s prosody, an almost singular concern with register over all other modes of communication. Sturgeon also nods to the tired avant garde: “Just forge my autograph to this warrant / and assume my attendance at the birth.” This is as swift a dispatch of Kenneth Goldsmith’s “uncreativity” as I have seen, and by itself earns Sturgeon a special place in my heart. The banal poet’s wet dream is to be given the credit for the profundities his or her work has no relation to, but to take none of responsibility — ego ad infitum. Sturgeon is quietly stepping out of the shadow of today’s clowns with his ironic asides. He is taking responsibility, but not taking a stand.’

Hilary Plum on Naming and Character in Fiction

2011-05-17T10:32:00.000-04:00

A passage to chew over, from the May/June issue of The Critical Flame:

[The characters in “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love”] name one another, as Mel and Nick and Laura name Teresa “Terri.” [In Noy Holland's story] the horse is Goose, but Pa has also been “goose,” and so has the baby. The girl has no other name than Cricket, which it seems Pa has given her — not as one names a child, but more intimately, as one nicknames a child. The horse is named for his sounds (his voice?), which are like a goose, and yet, Cricket thinks, not. Ma, Pa, and baby are never named otherwise. The world of the story is drawn this closely around the speaker: we are not formally introduced.

The prominence of names in the world as we know it has been replaced by a naming system internal to the story, names as experienced by the speaker. The girl “Cricket” has effectively forgotten her own name and it is never revealed to us. The animals’ names are of the same order as at least some of the human characters’ — “Cricket” becomes a human name; Goose is the name of a horse, but has been, at various times, also a name for Pa and for baby. Holland’s approach to introduction is distinctly different from Carver’s; in this story names carefully disorient as much as they orient the reader. “Rooster, Pollard, Cricket, Goose” investigates the act of naming itself, its power both to familiarize and distance, to be both prize of and weapon against intimacy.

Read the rest at The Critical Flame (www.criticalflame.org)

James Byrne reads for U35 at the Mass Poetry Festival

2011-05-17T08:00:00.000-04:00

The Critical Flame :: May/June 2011

2011-05-16T07:00:00.000-04:00

ON FICTION

Daniel Green on the Fiction of John Hawkes

“By both articulating a commitment to ‘experimental fiction’ and putting into practice a coherent conception of what such fiction should do, John Hawkes established himself as perhaps the most important experimental writer in the postwar period, perhaps in all of American literature.”

Hilary Plum on Introductions and Character in Fiction

“Fiction introduces a reader (let’s note her as a real body) to a fictive body (character) via a fictive introducer (narrator); the only other body, the writer’s, has departed the scene. An examination of the differences among Stein’s, Carver’s, and Holland’s methods of naming and embodying characters in these three stories may shed light on all that occurs when narrator, character, and reader encounter one another in a work of fiction.”

ON VERSE

James Stotts on Stephen Sturgeon's Trees of the Twentieth Century

“More impressive than his mastered shifting tones and multilayered critiques, though, are his images, which are legion and are allowed to stand by themselves (in other words, ‘What does it mean when things / present themselves; it means, it means that we have seen them; that’s over. That’s over.’) His metaphors, more often than not held together in tension like kite string, pair the profane with the sublime”

Daniel Bosch on Daisy Fried's “Torment”

“At seven pages, ‘Torment’ is longer and more complicated than many American poems published these days. I want you to read it anyway, maybe because this is so. For ‘Torment’ is also clearer and more direct than much of the verse we see in contemporary magazines. It does not induce meaning under the pretense that it has none. The implications of ‘Torment’ follow logically, almost simply, from its words and sentences and verse paragraphs. Though its language is loaded, morally, Fried has distanced her poem from the kind of poem-of-moral-instruction that has been one popular template for American poets working since the 1970s. I hope without expectation that an acute appraisal of ‘Torment’ might lead to a robust questioning of that moral template, and that perhaps we might even set it aside.”

“Our first dance is not going to exist”

2011-05-13T23:10:00.002-04:00

From the comment stream at Jezebel (via TBG) on why people tend to marry partners of the same political persuasion:

‘I'm not someone who enjoys having a spirited debate with the opposition in the bedroom. Basically, my politics are founded on the ideas that women are people, poor people are people, gays are citizens entitled to citizen's rights (like marriage), immigrants are not dissolving our White People social fabric, education and health care should be free and excellent, war is not the answer to “honey, where did I leave my oil?”, and the environment is not a massive roll of toilet paper on which we should wipe our collective asses.

‘If someone disagrees with any or all of that, I am not going to get naked for them or invite them to meet my hippie parents. I don't care if they're a Libertarian, a Republican, or a Morflaxx from the Planet Zoob. Hate the poor? Think my womb should have “PROPERTY OF U.S. CONGRESS” stamped on it? Want to continually bomb the Middle East because you've heard they hate “freedom”? Then we are not going to lock eyes over dinner and decide to give this crazy thing called love a chance. Our first dance is not going to be to Ben Folds' “The Luckiest.” Our first dance is not going to exist. I am going to be too busy happily fucking a guy who has read The Second Sex and knows how to operate a vacuum cleaner.’

TBG and I recently realized that the defining feature of our friend group — it dawned on us at one of our famous cocktail parties, actually — is that they are all feminists. They believe women are fully-formed multifaceted human beings who function in our culture beyond subordination and sexuality. Those that don't, don't stick around.

U35 Poetry: Ailbhe Darcy and Mark Noonan

2011-05-11T12:30:00.000-04:00

Thursday, May 12th @ 8:00 pm
The Marliave, Downtown Crossing [map]

Ailbhe Darcy has published poems in Ireland, Britain and the US, and writes critically for a number of publications including The Critical Flame, The Stinging Fly, and Verbal. She recently appeared as part of the prestigious Poetry Ireland Introductions Series. She has a BA in English and French, an MA in publishing and an MSc in development studies, the last of which took her to Zambia to study community media. She has just embarked on a PhD in contemporary poetry at the University of Notre Dame. With Clodagh Moynan, she co-edits Moloch, an online journal of new Irish art and writing.

Mark Thomas Noonan is a poet, playwright, and musician from Ireland, now living in Atlanta, Georgia. Mark's plays have been produced in Dublin, Cork, and New York, and his poetry and other writing have appeared in numerous journals. He recently completed an MA in Ethnomusicology from University College Cork and now works for an independent folk music label.

“Geological Time” by Nora Delaney

2011-04-20T12:41:00.005-04:00

from Dark Sky Magazine

Black walnut, green ash, and silver maple
stipple the ridge of the river. It cedes,
gradually, to the shore — no shoring up
the riparian zone with riprap, rock
armour, shot rock; no finger in the dike.

The sentinel trees dream of limestone caves:
silica, flint, silt, chert, clay, sand, calcite –
stone scored with more than human history.
. . .

Read the rest: http://darkskymagazine.com/magazines/nora-delaney/

Hear Nora read at U35:

Nora Delaney is a poet, translator, and an editor at The Pen and Anvil Press. Her work has appeared in The Critical Flame, Jacket, Little Star, and elsewhere. She is currently working toward her doctorate at the Editorial Institute of Boston University.

Helen Adams Read/Sings

2011-04-18T15:01:00.001-04:00

Susan Stewart @ Boston Review

2011-04-16T11:54:00.000-04:00

Today's National Poetry Month Boston Review poem of the day is Susan Stewart's beautiful “Piano Music for a Silent Movie”:

The gossips whisper their reproaches—
was it my fault I was too young for the war?

A muddy rain spoils every picnic‚
but the fields are thirsty‚ the farmers are poor.

My talent lies in kissing and pretending‚
and climbing barefoot up a trellis in the dark.

The neighbors are sharpening their pitchforks‚
though no one dares to tell us. In the park

I found her note pinned to a linden‚
her hair ribbon snagged in a pine

—All the world worries a lover
when all the world seems like a sign. . . .

Read the rest: http://bostonreview.net/NPM/susan_stewart.php

And keep checking the Boston Review site for more daily poems, multimedia, interviews, essasys and more in celebration of poetry month!

Dean Young, Have a Heart!

2011-04-15T12:11:00.000-04:00

That's right folks, Dean Young found a heart donor! I hear that the surgery is through and he is in good condition.

Hurling: World's 2nd-Greatest Sport (behind baseball)

2011-04-14T17:05:00.000-04:00

Imagine you're sprinting down a 160-yard field. As you run, you balance a tiny ball—small as a hockey puck, hard as a baseball—on the end of your stick, as in lacrosse. Except where the lacrosse stick has a woven pocket, your stick has a flat, wooden blade, and where lacrosse requires protective gear you wear neither pads nor gloves. Now imagine that your opponents are waving these same axe-like cudgels. They are coming at you from all sides, hoping to hook you from behind or block you from the front. You race down the gigantic field while considering your options. You could pass to a teammate, either with a slap of the bare hand or with a kick. No one is open, though, so you prepare to take a shot—never mind that you're still 100 yards out from the goal. You lean back and swing hard, like a baseball player at bat, feeling the satisfying reverb in your arms as you connect with the ball. — Slate

Tóibín on Beckett: Happy Birthday, Sam!

2011-04-14T11:47:00.000-04:00

At The New York Review of Books, Colm Tóibín writes: “Beckett was interested in consciousness as a form of comedy close to tragedy and logic as a crime, its perpetrators to be punished by offering them infinite numbers of absurd logical conclusions. He loved the tension in cogito ergo sum and took a dim view of the connecting word, the ergo in the equation. Cogitating was the nightmare from which his characters were trying to awake. Being was a sour trick played on them by some force with which they are trying desperately not to reckon. Beckett produced infinite amounts of comedy about the business of thinking as boring, invalid, and quite unnecessary. His characters did not need to think in order to be, or be in order to think. They knew they existed because of the odd habits and deep discomforts of their bodies. I itch therefore I am.”

I must read more Beckett. Where to begin?

Courage and Sacrifice

2011-04-14T09:46:00.000-04:00

“The fact is, their vision is less about reducing the deficit than it is about changing the basic social compact in America. As Ronald Reagan’s own budget director said, there’s nothing ‘serious’ or ‘courageous’ about this plan. There’s nothing serious about a plan that claims to reduce the deficit by spending a trillion dollars on tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires. There’s nothing courageous about asking for sacrifice from those who can least afford it and don’t have any clout on Capitol Hill. And this is not a vision of the America I know.”

Ben Mazer @ Boston Review

2011-04-13T14:24:00.000-04:00

Today at Boston Review is Ben Mazer's poem “The Exile,” which appears in the current issue of the magazine and is collected in his recent book POEMS. We also have an audio recording of the poet reading his work right in the BR offices, check it out.

I was handled by the handler’s handler
someone (I know who) had sent me to.
A mountain zephyr blew the sunlight cold.
I read the little village paper backwards
and nibbled at my ham. Coffee is birth.
I was surprised to see how things had changed
since I first dreamed I came here long ago. . . .

Read the rest (and listen to the recording) at the BR Web site.

Ron “Iron Man” Silliman

2011-04-09T16:06:00.002-04:00

At the newly re-designed Poetry Foundation website (it's gorgeous, you should look; one wishes for an endowment as they have for everyone if it would bring such elegance to the web), Kenneth Goldsmith writes about Silliman's blog: “Ron Silliman was the Cal Ripken, Jr. of the poetry blogosphere. He was a good player, but more important, he consistently showed up for every game. And by getting up and making the donuts each morning he enacted the Long Tail theory of the web, moving so far out in front of the other poetry bloggers that he, by default, assumed the power position he came to have. In truth, he didn’t deserve it, but got it because no one else had the wherewithal to do the work. In his heyday, his output was remarkable. While he often got things wrong — very wrong — one couldn’t help but admire the effort it took to do what he did.”

For probably a year of regularly reading Ron's blog, I had no idea that he had been involved in Language, or that he was a poet of any repute. It was clear that he had his pet interests, of course: avant garde poetics, the San Francisco renaissance, being active against “quietism”. (I once emailed Ron to ask what that term meant, and he responded. I still don't know, despite reading post upon post about the quietists and myself being labeled so, which is like being called a Communist by Glen Beck: you just can't take it seriously. As Silliman retires, Beck is dismissed: what does that say? Nothing probably.) I knew that if he linked to my blog, it got hits; so, people must be reading him. And he is indeed the locus of so much poetry culture on the web that even those who hate everything he wrote were discussing his opinions. “Kingmaker” is too strong a term, but he was important for the debates he instigated. That he was established in the poetry world other than his blog was, for a long time, unclear — in that regard, Goldsmith is probably correct: most people who know Ron know his blog first.

Not irregularly, I disagreed with Ron's opinions on poetry and the merits of certain poets. The conceptual architecture of a work does not, for me, give it inherent value. My guess is that Ron and I would actually agree on many ethical principles, but we differ wildly on poetic practice. The anti-humanistic throttle of contemporary experimental poetry drives me a bit mad. How can you claim an ethical standpoint (which is what undermining hegemony is about), particularly regarding aesthetic approaches, while at once dismissing / attacking the validity of the human person, believing the person to be a dismembered, ephemeral construction? If so, why does the hegemony that controls the masses without their knowledge, and me as a "quietist", not also control an avant poet — Charles Berstein, for example? Something doesn't jib there. Or maybe I just don't feel the messiah trope.

Anyhow, I think Goldsmith is being hard on the man. I've been reading the Campbell biography of James Baldwin that levels a similar criticism of his involvement in the civil rights movement: it took away from his art. Just as Gerard Manly Hopkins should not have been a priest, and Pound should not have been a fascist. Goldsmith has us discern (he never says it) that Ron should not have been a blogger. I'm not so sure. Being a priest was as much who GMH was as being a poet; the two cannot be separated, though they seem to contradict. Blogging was part and parcel of the nature of Ron's person and of the historical moment. He wrote the blog. He did a lot to get poetry and criticism, especially experimental stuff, out to readers. He wrote The Alphabet. He edited Language. He's interested in Project Runway (I guess). These aren't discreet interests, settings, or threads to untwist. They exist as historical, malleable, and whole in the person who unifies the always contradictory elements of any personality.

Timothy Donnelly and Maureen McLane: Part 2

2011-04-07T15:14:00.002-04:00

In Part 2 of their interview, Maureen McLane asks Boston Review Poetry Editor Timothy Donnelly, “What does poetry do for you‚ to you‚ that other modes of art-making don’t?” In the course of his reply, Timothy says:

“All of what I claim here as being what distinguishes poetry from other modes might end up being truest of relatively conventional poetry—poetry not only written in lines but attentive to the shifts in sound and sense that happen over a line break‚ poetry attentive to its musicality‚ poetry that makes use of rhythm as a means of further distinguishing poetic language from language more inclined to evanesce‚ as a means of binding it together‚ setting lines into relation‚ and acting upon the reader’s mind and even body by creating a sense of rhythmic expectation‚ which itself is like a state of vigilance‚ really. This is to say poetry that sometimes still gets referred to as ‘well-made‚’ and sometimes disparagingly‚ as if to suggest that it’s analogous to a stately bourgeois residence‚ or that it’s cleverly built but not inhabited‚ or that it’s blindly obedient to convention rather than thoughtfully pursuing what those conventions were able to accomplish so effectively.”

Looking for Part 1? You can get it Right Here.

What will happen. . .

2011-04-06T21:25:00.002-04:00

George Kalogeris @ Slate!

2011-04-05T21:50:00.000-04:00

This week's poem of the week at Slate is “Odysseus Seeing Laertes” by George Kalogeris!

It's getting dark, and he's still in the yard. By now
She'd be stewing over the steamy kátsaróles
She has to reheat but glad that he's finally home.

He's inspecting his favorite tree, the sour quince.
All day he's been hacking away at carcasses
Of frozen chickens, piled up on his chopping block . . .

Read the rest of the poem at Slate.

Gregory Pardlo for Boston Review

2011-04-05T13:31:00.000-04:00

Read his poem “Palling Around” at the Boston Review website!

Timothy Donnelly and Maureen McLane

2011-04-04T20:41:00.000-04:00

Over at the Boston Review National Poetry Month celebration, Maureen McLane interviews Poetry Editor Timothy Donnelly (published today is the first of two parts). Timothy says: “when writing, I may start out with some particular impulse or thought or idea, but as soon as I start to articulate it I find myself aware of other shades of meaning that my phrasing might suggest, and certain of them I will cultivate, and others that seem to me of less value I will try to weed out. The same goes for sound. A certain music will begin to reveal itself, assert itself, and my phrasing will want to participate in it. Again, some of the emerging notes or rhythms I will cultivate; others that seem to me less fitting or interesting I will rework. So that (at least in most cases) the writing of a poem is initiated by the articulation of a relatively vague idea or impulse, and the implications that emanate from that articulation in tandem with its sonic properties will guide the next articulation. What writing a poem demands, for me, is a constant attentiveness to the potentiality of meaning and the particularity of sound.”

Read the rest at the BR site

“Majestic Interlude” by Brett Fletcher Lauer

2011-04-03T13:00:00.001-04:00

The rainy season is a league away traveling
at the speed of an era. The cloud formation
does not dissolve as I remove my eyes

from my palms. I can no longer walk the distance.
Insects congeal beneath my skin in order
to rest. I think of a number between one and ten

and a ditch to place my body in, shallow
enough to fill—a single spade of gravel
to cover my mouth, and one for each eye. . . .

Read the rest at the Boston Review website!

Brett Fletcher Lauer is managing director of the Poetry Society of America and poetry editor of A Public Space. His poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Bomb, Harper’s Magazine, jubilat, and elsewhere.

Poetry in Crisis?

2011-04-03T08:48:00.000-04:00

At Open Letters Monthly, Joseph Wood writes: ‘While creative writing in American literature has always had camps, movements (and the prerequisite back-biting and bickering), I believe our current poetic climate is so conflicted and contentious that we have done away with talking about poems on their own organic terms. Let it be clear: I am not arguing for a return to New Criticism nor do I believe in the overtly easy-blame game of it’s the fault of those fucking universities. We live in the 21st century. What’s the point of asking to return to “the good old days” when those days would have excluded the likes of me — a working class, oddly educated, and peculiarly read writer with gaping holes in my canonical knowledge? I’m suggesting that while it is important to attend to our own academic reputations and political and aesthetic convictions, it is more important that we honor the imagination by not solely treating the poem against a singular interpretive mechanism. Poems can arrive from disparate and conflicting sources — should we not discuss how those poetic sources interact as a kinesthetic presence in our lives? Furthermore, can we believe that poems have the potential to matter to all kinds of human beings without “pandering” to the lowest common denominator? For if we fall further and further into the world of literature departments and literary criticism, we fall into a world whose axis spins, according to literary scholar Stephen Cohen, on “career-making” and “professional politics” by participating in “a self-perpetuating cycle of exaggerations, misrecognitions, and demonization”.’

“A Storm” by Laura Kasischke

2011-04-02T13:39:00.004-04:00

In a white car‚ while
wearing a white gown‚ over
bridges and mountains‚ down
into valleys
in springtime‚ or

the ocean’s frozen over.

No. A beast with a tail made of weather
knocking a third of the stars out of heaven. . . .

Read the rest at the Boston Review #NPM celebration!

--

About the poet: Laura Kasischke’s thirteen books include Space, in Chains, a collection of poems, and The Raising: A Novel. She teaches at the University of Michigan.

National Poetry Month

2011-04-01T16:53:00.000-04:00

It's National Poetry Month! (That's #NPM for you kids on the Twitter.)

Over at the Boston Review website, we've organized a Poetry Month spectacular the likes of which ye hath never seen. There's going to be a new poem published every day for the month of April, video or audio recordings of many poets reading their work, as well as interviews, essays, and other “prosetry.” Featured poets include Rae Armantrout (whose poem “At Least” kicks off the celebration), John Ashbery, Ange Mlinko, Gregory Pardlo, Anselm Berrigan, Harmony Holiday, Harold Bloom, and more. That's in addition to our regular poetry content from the issue (poems, essays, reviews, etc.). Bookmark the BR site folks. It's going to be NPM HQ.

In addition to that, Boston Review is donating 20% off all subscription revenue for the month of April to the Massachusetts Poetry Festival. The festival takes place May 13–14th in Salem, with educational programs for students; poetry readings, workshops, and slams; local food and music; as well as a small press and magazine fair. This year's headliners are Brian Turner, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, and Jericho Brown. When you subscribe or give a gift sub in the month of April, you support two great poetry institutions: Boston Review and the Mass Poetry Festival!

Popeye (a.k.a Jordan Knight)

2011-03-31T06:55:00.002-04:00

That's right. Jordan Knight of New Kids on the Block.

From the Boston Phoenix slideshow history of American graffiti. Read about how street art developed and stayed different in Boston: "In other places, a lot of people were more into the hip-hop scene. Here, most of us were listening to hardcore and going to shows at the Rat."

Two Poems: Ferry and Hecht

2011-03-29T12:27:00.000-04:00

Slate is featuring a poem of the week by David Ferry, "Soul." And Poetry Daily is featuring "A Hill" by Anthony Hecht today. On antoher totally unrelated note, I thought you would like this video:

UK Rapper vs Private Health Care

2011-03-27T12:22:00.001-04:00

Mark Strand @ Boston Review

2011-03-23T16:30:00.003-04:00

Boston Review has a portfolio of prose poems by Mark Strand, along with a brief commentary by Nicholas Christopher. Look for a new chapbook by Strand from Monk Books. Christopher writes, "The most alluring qualities in Strand’s early lyrics—clean lines, taut narratives, and carefully framed mise-en-scènes—also mark his most recent poems, which, with a deepened pathos and heightened polish, work over a good deal more of life lived, sights seen, women loved, children grown, friends dead or dying, and the author’s own mortality. The breadth has widened, but the timbre remains distinct; the earliest and most recent poems mirror one another, sometimes uncannily so."

Sturgeon Reviewed @ Big Other

2011-03-21T16:50:00.001-04:00

Amber Sparks at Big Other writes: "Sturgeon’s book was a surprise in the best possible way. I sat down to read it and realized immediately that I was staring at a small selection of serious talent. Sturgeon’s Trees is much more than a debut. It is a revelation, an entirely new thing, and at the same time feels a bit like coming home. That’s because Sturgeon’s voice is part prophet, part fierce cynic — a synthesis of Blake and Eliot, with a bit of Stevens in there as well. These poems are difficult, nourishing examinations of perception, of memory, of culture, of love, of connection and loss and disillusionment."

Listen to the recording of Sturgeon reading in January at U35
(it's free, you just have to Tweet or Facebook about it):

STEPHEN STURGEON @ U35

Interview with Stephen Sturgeon at Dark Sky

2011-03-17T07:35:00.001-04:00

An interview at Dark Sky between Stephen Sturgeon and Ted Powers.

TP: You quote Wyndham Lewis in the beginning of the collection: “There is a point beyond which we must hold people responsible for accidents:”. Where do you see that point being? Does that threshold exist in your poems?

SS: Both of the epigraphs to this book, the one from Thomas Hobbes and the other from Wyndham Lewis, are about “accidents.”

One way to start talking about this is to quote from that essay by W. K. Wimsatt from the 50s, “The Intentional Fallacy.” It begins with a series of propositions about the relevance and importance of an artist’s intentions to the viewing and interpretation of an artwork, and the first proposition starts, “A poem does not come into existence by accident. The words of a poem, as Professor Stoll has remarked, come out of a head, not out of a hat.” I like to think Wimsatt was being disingenuous when he wrote that, because the statement does not at all line up with how poems frequently get written, and if Wimsatt thought it true, I find it hard to pair with his good insights elsewhere. Poets take words from outside of their heads constantly. To say otherwise would be to deny something as basic to poetry as allusion, to forget poems like Wordsworth’s “We are Seven,” to invalidate Hugh MacDiarmid’s “Perfect.”

Examples go on. The point is that a poet’s accidental discovery of words that originated from an alien head is an elemental part of writing poems. And that creates a problem. If a poet uses words that are not his own, is the poet not responsible for what the words say, for the consequences of the words? If using one’s own words is not required for the writing of a poem, is the arrangement of alien words into line breaks or stanzas or paragraphs what writing a poem actually consists of? The problem was (maybe inadvertently) taken up recently by practitioners of Flarf and Conceptual Poetry, who tend to take readymade text off of the internet, arrange it (or not), and say they’ve made a poem.

To get to the end of this, I think that there has been a trend since Barthes to regard works of art as the expressions of cultures at large and not the makings of individuals. As a consequence, identifiable culpability inevitably gets thrown out the window. Join that with the importance of accidents to the writing of poems and you start to see a case for letting artists off the hook for what they do. But I don’t believe it. It’s all excuses. Artists are responsible for their creations, regardless of what went into making them. It’s said better and shorter by Geoffrey Hill: “Add that we’re unaccountably | held to account;” (though he’s writing there, I think, of other things).

I’m starting to be disingenuous myself, though, in acting like the only reason an artist would want to become disassociated from an artwork is to hide from retribution. There are quite good, other reasons for an artist to want to disappear, to insist on disappearing from a work of art, for readers to insist on seeing a poet as nothing more than sociological vapor, and William H. Gass goes through the varieties of these reasons adroitly in Habitations of the Word. He does go on to say though that anonymity “may mean many things, but one thing which it cannot mean is that no one did it.” To my head, this is the final reality, one that any aesthetic theory that depends on the diffusion of authorship or artistic responsibility will break up against.

The Lewis quotation ends with a colon, which is fortuitous, because what follows is my poems.

There are other things to say about this. I don’t want to be overlong.

---

Suffice it to say, you should all buy Stephen's new book, Trees of the Twentieth Century, and listen to the recording of his U35 reading in January (it's free, you just have to Tweet or Facebook about it):

STEPHEN STURGEON @ U35

U35 TONIGHT

2011-03-15T07:24:00.000-04:00

Adam Fitzgerald and Liza Katz
7:00 pm :: Pierre Menard Gallery, Harvard Square
Free and open to the public.

Adam Fitzgerald is a graduate of Boston College, the Editorial Institute at Boston University, and the Columbia MFA program. He is editor of the Maggy Poetry Magazine, and his writing has appeared in a numerous journals.

Liza Katz is a poet and translator whose work has appeared in The Critical Flame, Clarion, Exit 13, and North Central Review. She is at work on a book-length essay entitled Bridging the Gap between French and Francophone Literature.

U35 Poetry is a reading series founded in 2010 to highlight the work of poets under the age of thirty five and to build a stronger, more coherent poetry community in greater Boston. All are welcome to attend. The series was selected as one of "Boston's Ten Best Distractions of 2010" by the Boston Globe, alongside UFC and indoor trampolines.

2011-03-12T17:54:00.001-05:00

Common Threads: 10,000 Readers, 7 Poems

2011-03-11T10:02:00.001-05:00

National Poetry Month is coming up in April, and Massachusetts Poetry has an ambitious program for the state that perhaps has produced more poets than any other in the nation. During April, in libraries, schools, colleges, book clubs, senior groups, bookstores, and specially organized potlucks, the organization hopes to have 10,000 Massachusetts citizens reading seven poems by seven poets who work currently or have worked in Massachusetts. The program, called Common Threads: Seven Poets and a Wealth of Readers, will be a run-up to the third Massachusetts Poetry Festival in Salem on May 13th and 14th.

In celebration of Massachusetts’ rich literary heritage, Common Threads is an easily digestible way to introduce people of all ages to an important part of our culture and to the beauty of poetry. As S. D. Mullaney says, “Poetry is a living art form that reflects our times, past and present.” Mullaney, author of Follow the Wolf Moon, is pursuing his MFA in Poetry at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. He is one of two people working on the logistics of the project, which includes putting together a kit for any group interested in participating. According to Mullaney the kit includes a copy of each poem, an audio clip of the poet reading the poem (or another poet reading on behalf of the deceased poet), a brief biography, and discussion questions designed to enhance the reading and listening pleasure of the audience. Mullaney will be working with Kevin R. Morrissette to record the poems and create the discussion questions.

The poems include:

• “In the Waiting Room” by Elizabeth Bishop
• “The Lost Pilot” by James Tate
• “Occupation” by Suji Kwock Kim
• “Vita Nova” by Louise Glück
• “New England Ode” by Kevin Young
• “Samurai Song” by Robert Pinsky
• “Love Song: I and Thou” by Alan Dugan

If you’d like to be involved in promoting Common Threads, sign up for the program here.

2011-03-10T04:00:00.000-05:00

Mojie Crigler on the fiction of Lawrence Sutin

Laurence Sutin’s writing caught my eye initially because he’d authored a biography of legendary science fiction writer Philip K. Dick, and I am one of those PKD fans who finds the man’s life and the phenomenon of his work — his books, the screen adaptations, the sometimes cultish following — as interesting as his fiction. I bought Divine Invasions: A Life of Philip K. Dick (Carroll & Graf Publishers, 1989) but doubt that I ever read it cover-to-cover. Instead, it was a book that I habitually plucked from my bookshelf to read in no apparent order, the path to wherever I’d been headed diverted for maybe ten minutes, maybe an hour.

The book could be read that way. The reader could drop into beginning, middle or end and be assured of finding a nugget. Sutin had to overcome suspicion from those who knew PKD before they would sit down for an interview, but having a book contract gave him credibility. Sutin’s sense of being entrusted with memories permeates the book. Each anecdote receives due care and attention. The one that has always stuck in my mind is from PKD’s days as a struggling writer in Berkeley, when he and his wife were so poor they ate horsemeat, and PKD’s deep shame when one day the pet store salesman (who sold horsemeat as dog food), said, “You’re taking this horsemeat and you are eating it yourselves.” The story affects me because a) I am always taken by early stories of artists, especially writers, sacrificing comfort and/or dignity as they make their way to a future which for them is uncertain but which I know will be worth the travails; b) being poor but living in a Berkeley bungalow is like paying $35 per month for a SoHo loft: it’s hard to believe America was ever so cheap; and c) horsemeat? The book is bound by Sutin’s respect for the work of being a writer — not just the pen-to-paper work, but also the work of living.

Sutin as protector of memories comes as no surprise. For his second book, Jack and Rochelle: A Holocaust Story of Love and Resistance (Graywolf Press, 1995), Sutin interviewed his eponymous parents, both survivors of the Holocaust in Poland. He edited the interviews (Sutin is credited as “author-editor”) and the narrative alternates between the voices of his mother and father. This time, the book made me its audience. I didn’t linger leaning against the bookshelf reading in a haphazard order. Rather, from the moment I started to read the book, I could not put it down. I finished it in two long stretches over two days, barely moving from my armchair, ignoring hunger and the ache that developed in my neck. The Sutins’ story of atrocities and survival is, simply, stunning. After reading Jack and Rochelle, I felt that I knew them. I wanted to be an honorary member of their family. Some passages echoed in my mind for days — they are still echoing. . . .

Read this rest of this review at The Critical Flame.

2011-03-09T07:49:00.000-05:00

Abigail Licad on Elizabeth Willis’ Address

In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare has Theseus describe poetic undertaking as that which “gives to airy nothing / A local habitation and a name.” It is therefore fitting that Elizabeth Willis titles her fifth collection, a study of poetry’s role in society, Address. The book’s poems mine the multiplicity of meanings and associations behind its single-word title, and while doing so they contemplate the ineluctable link between poetry and politics, art and civic awareness, and the necessity for collaborative examination of political matters that affect us.

Willis’ associative leaps and juxtapositions astonish and probe, often testing its reader of his or her own demand of history, art, and current events — one may, as this reader did, bow her head in shame after recognizing only a small number of “witches” in the poem “Blacklist,” which refers to literary and political personalities from Ronald Reagan to Sappho and Maria Tallchief. The book will present a challenge for most readers, even perhaps for those well-versed in language poetry (a strong influence on Willis as she discussed in an interview with Mark Tursi), and I wonder how much any general reader can harvest of the poems their various significations without a strong grasp of avant-garde poetic movements and Willis’ own idiosyncratic research interests.

Willis has written extensively on Lorine Niedecker, a “regional domestic” poet who, influenced by Objectivist poet Louis Zukofsky and Imagist poet Ezra Pound, wrote in terse form using quotidian imagery, reaching the height of her popularity in the 1960s. Willis admires Niedecker for her rendering of everyday working-class and folk preoccupations in modernist aesthetic, and for what she perceives as Niedecker’s affinity for socialism. Niedecker’s influence on Willis can perhaps be recognized in Willis’s own view of the power of poetry as an arena for political critique, and in many ways Address is a very political book, particularly in its stand against our post-9/11 political climate, and in the way the collection forces readers to engage charged views to which they may not be sympathetic. . . .

Read the rest of this review at the new issue of The Critical Flame

2011-03-07T07:43:00.005-05:00

THE CRITICAL FLAME :: Issue 12, March-April 2011

Letter from the Editors: Women in Magazines
“Many in the literary community are reluctant to consider any standard besides quality. I'm not of that mind, but it should not be belittled either. Ideas of aesthetic judgment and quality are not meaningless: but they are communal projects. All of us in the literary community make evaluations together, through open debate. One critic or publication does not set the standard for excellence alone. When a group is excluded, as women are today, as many groups are today, by whatever systemic apparatus, the power of our shared values erodes.”

ON VERSE

Abigail Licad on Elizabeth Willis’ Address
“Willis’ associative leaps and juxtapositions astonish and probe, often testing its reader of his or her own demand of history, art, and current events — one may, as this reader did, bow her head in shame after recognizing only a small number of ‘witches’ in the poem ‘Blacklist,’ which refers to literary and political personalities from Ronald Reagan to Sappho and Maria Tallchief. The book will present a challenge for most readers, even perhaps for those well-versed in language poetry (a strong influence on Willis as she discussed in an interview with Mark Tursi), and I wonder how much any general reader can harvest of the poems their various significations without a strong grasp of avant-garde poetic movements and Willis’ own idiosyncratic research interests.”

ON FICTION

Mojie Crigler on the Fiction of Lawrence Sutin
“Tracing the effect of the book on its audience (‘One of the readers of When to Go into the Water was a former UFO abductee named Claude. . .’) shows the ripple effect of the ‘unremembered’ Hector de Saint-Aureole who, like every author, will never know exactly who will read his work or how it will change them. All the characters remain ignorant, equally so, of the continuing lives of their actions.”

ON NONFICTION

Liza Katz on World Literature in French
“Is France still at the center of the French-language literary world? Or, to ask a broader question, is there a center at all? In the fall of 2006, five of the seven major French literary prizes were awarded to foreign-born writers. A manifesto penned by forty-four French-language writers the following year declares: ‘The center, from which supposedly radiated a franco-French literature, is no longer the center [. . .] the center, these fall prizes tell us, is henceforth everywhere, at the four corners of the world.’ The need to assert this claim, combined with the fact that literary works in the francophone world are still ultimately measured by the standards of French prizes, indicates that such a dramatic change has yet to reach completion. But trends show that the center is beginning to dissolve.”

Interview with Timothy Donnelly

2011-03-06T15:06:00.000-05:00

Guernica: Many of the poets you mention as influences, or who are outright mentioned in the book itself, are Romantics: Keats, Shelley, even Stevens. Do you see a Romantic influence playing out in your work at all? Are you a Romantic?

Timothy Donnelly: I think in some pretty fundamental ways my sensibility is romantic, I'll admit it — probably primarily in my understanding of the imagination as the supreme mental faculty. I don’t think that this is necessarily a good thing, either, not always — I think there’s a lot of imagining taking place that pretends to be cold hard reasoning, and the effects can be disastrous. The very beginning of my long poem “Globus Hystericus” means to address this:

A pity the selfsame vehicle that spirits me away from
factories of tedium should likewise serve to drag
me backwards into panic, or that panic should erect

massive factories of its own, their virulent pollutants
havocking loved waterways, frothing all the reed-
fringed margins acid pink and gathering in the shell

and soft tissues of the snails unknowingly in danger
as they inch up stems.

The “vehicle” here is the imagination, and the idea I have in mind is that while it can, on the one hand, relieve us from the deadening force of habituation and maybe even from certain kinds of privation, it can also operate in toxic, dangerous, destructive ways. While I most often experience the imagination in my day-to-day life as a source of pleasure and even liberation, I know that it can also provoke endless misconstruction, folly, paranoia, delusion, mischief, etc. Mostly I feel it’s our responsibility to acknowledge that so much of our lives are, in a manner of speaking, imaginary, and we trick ourselves — as others trick us — into thinking otherwise.

Ba mhaith liom bruíon le d'athair

2011-03-04T10:53:00.000-05:00

ELISA GABBERT: BOSTON'S BEST POET 2011

2011-02-26T14:11:00.002-05:00

Last year, we SHOCKED THE WORLD with a write-in campaign that lifted Janaka Stucky to the heights of fame and fortune as the Boston Phoenix–anointed Boston's Best Poet of 2010. Yeah, he won. Conquered, really. It presaged Egyptian Democracy. And Janaka reigned with all the grace of a Philosopher King. So what do we have to show for it now?

The Phoenix left him off the ballot for 2011. Wtf mate.

But we'll have no monarchy in Boston. It's time to shake the pillars of power once again and upend the patriarchy.

Vote for Elisa Gabbert as Boston's Best Poet of 2011.
1. Click the Write-in field, enter her name.
2. Click “Submit Vote”
3. Click “Skip to Finish” (they don't know what “submit” means)
4. Then click “Vote Now” (no need to enter your info at all)

Elisa is an excellent poet and a great reader. Please vote for her and in so doing urge the Phoenix to get hip to what's happening in poetry in poetry in Boston! Janaka Stucky (Black Ocean) and I are working together to make poetry interesting in Boston — please help us by casting your vote.

Read Elisa's blog, The French Exit

Check out this Bookslut interview with Elisa from June 2010: “Certain things we sense are simple and it's easy to recognize them and conjure them up in your imagination when they're not present, the way you can pretty much play a familiar pop song in your head and it's almost as good as hearing it for real. Or the taste of green apple Jolly Ranchers, which is more consistent than real apples. But with something more complex, you can't simply memorize it. John listens to a lot of experimental chamber music and it often takes me a bit to realize when I've heard it before, and like you said, I recognize it by feel. Or perfume: The best perfumes are complex and abstract and therefore difficult to describe and difficult to remember with anywhere near the sort of rich sensory detail you get when you're actually smelling it. And often, when I've only met someone once or twice, it's hard to picture them clearly, they seem hazy in my mind like a dream face. Which is all to say that poetry is slippery because, like good perfume and good faces, it's complex.”

And a poem, from Typo 12:

“Aubade”

We both dream about wild animals.
There had been a dog fight at the party—

the older, bigger dog somehow threatened
by the puppy, a girl—he was chasing her

in circles around the yard, knocking over drinks
and gnawing on her leg. I tensed

when they bumped against mine,
and you said not to be afraid of them,

they’re only dogs. A rash prickled up there
and I scratched it all night.

The birds screech outside at this bleak hour.
Why do they always sound terrorized?

It’s a wave—their cries, the encroaching light;
the room growing paler in pindots,

coming up to our edges. Us feeling separate.
The nightmare you gave me, or caught.

Money is Power: Fighting Walker

2011-02-25T13:38:00.000-05:00

Votes don't mean nearly as much in America as money, sad to say. (Particularly not after the Citizens United ruling.) So if we want to see policy changes, rallies and protests and GOTV campaigns are all very good, but sometimes you need to aim for the wallet.

Governor Walker of Wisconsin has made his call: he doesn't support the basic rights of working people. He wants to raise monied individuals over the rest of his citizens. It's wrong, morally and in regards to our Democracy. Even as corporations' rights are affirmed, we see the other hand of the GOP specifically removing the rights of working people. If he were taking away the right to free speech, of course, this would be a different issue. Or maybe it wouldn't, since the people harmed aren't wealthy — but I digress.

The thing to do now is hit him in the wallet. Do not spend money, whenever possible, on companies that donated to his campaign. If that fails, boycott all companies based in the state of Wisconsin. It will take mutual support and much dedication. Then we let the Governors rich friends pressure him for us. "Scott my boy," one will say in a 20 minute phone call, "This Union-busting bill has cost my company more than we would have paid into their pensions twice. Sales are down in New York, Boston, the twin cities, Austin, San Fancisco, Chicago. There are picket lines driving people away from stores. We've had phone calls and letters by the hundred. We've been dropped by our distributors. Enough is enough. Sign the repeal."

This is how you change policy. Find the list of donors at the website www.scottwalkerwatch.com.

Stephen Sturgeon's Trees of the Twentieth Century

2011-02-24T10:43:00.004-05:00

To receive a 10% discount, include the coupon code "Trees" when ordering your copy. Copies will begin shipping on March 1st. Composed between 2005 and 2010, the poems in Trees of the Twentieth Century range in style from classically formalized stanzas on memory and vitality to allusive and lyrical free verses, and chronicle — among other subjects — the stories of lost friends, prophesies from a wandering head that speaks from a tree branch, and the experiences of a man as he pursues a curtain rod through the woods of Young Goodman Brown.

“Sturgeon illuminates the otherwise transparent impressions of memory and conscience, those opaque connections between our imaginations and each other, in music that sharpens the verse with thrilling uncertainty. His poems impress themselves upon the mind like an iron. He may be the first major poet of this generation.”
— Daniel E. Pritchard, editor of The Critical Flame

Letter to Peter Stothard, Editor of the TLS

2011-02-21T09:51:00.003-05:00

Peter Stothard, Editor of the Times Literary Supplement, responded at his blog to a comment I made some time ago at BooksInq: http://timescolumns.typepad.com/stothard/2011/02/vida-and-the-pie-charts.html

I was surprised, pleasantly, that he engaged the discussion, even if he was suspicious of the terms and pitfalls. It seemed only fair to then write back to him directly. The question of women in media is complicated — tho the societal failings that the question reflects seem clear — and this is particularly true for editors, whose careers rely on their taste and faculty of judgment. The disparity calls that judgment into question in fundamental ways, probably too harshly, while appearing to undermine some still-valuable ideals.

Since writing more than a week ago, I haven't heard back, either because the email never reached him, or because he has his hands plenty full (and he does, I'm sure), or because it seems silly to continue arguing against (honestly, without any self-depreciation or accusation) a relative nobody; but, I wanted to share my response with you.

Please note that I speak only for myself here — myself alone — and for the one very small project, The Critical Flame, that I control.

-------

Mr. Stothard,

Thank you for taking my comment at Books Inq seriously enough to respond, and let me begin by saying how much I enjoy and admire the TLS. I very much appreciate that you are engaging with this issue, even if you are skeptical of any measure that could detract from quality. I am also, as a reader, an editor, a poet and a critic, first and foremost concerned with quality — I edit a very minor book review journal, The Critical Flame. Perhaps it's simply that I don't have the same self-assurance you and Frank Wilson seem to possess. Of course, I'm lacking the decades of experience. But I believe myself to be full of unsubstantial biases, incorrect notions, and smallness of vision. Not because I feel badly about myself or my abilities, but because I believe every one of us is deeply and seriously flawed, narrowed by the facts of limited time and random chance, no matter how accomplished they are. Even godlike Hector hoped that his child would be a better man by far than he.

When I see this disparity, I am not nearly confident enough to say that my judgment considers only the matter of quality. The Critical Flame is, like the other magazines recently reported, unbalanced in gender. As the editor, I consider this to be my flaw: narrowness of vision, failing of temperament, exclusion of community, or failure to make contact. Something. I'm entirely uncertain that what I judge to be "quality" is not really, more narrowly, a matter of taste, or, worse, of bias. All this leads to introspection and self-criticism, and the occasional glass of bourbon. However, I'm going to be better in this regard — first myself, and then my little journal. I will do whatever I can to attain high quality as well as gender equity over the next year. I wish things would just get better without that, but if wishes were horses then beggars would ride. This is the least I can actually do.

As this is a flaw across so many magazines, as it is a failing of intellectual respect (and self-respect) so evident in so many areas of American society (I cannot speak for the UK), I'm compelled to seek a broader change as well. I do this for my mother who raised me alone, for my fiancee who is a scholar, for a daughter I might someday raise — and who should never be told, dismissively, as Jessa Crispin was by some editor not very long ago, that she "slept her way to the top." Such stripping away of one's humanity and accomplishments, leaving only the objectified sex, is a metonymy that forgives vicious behavior. Imagine if the comment had been about her race. The process is no different. It's no less vile. This gender disparity in magazine culture, whatever it's practical causes, is a failure of Democratic society, which fails only because we are not as righteous as a Democracy requires. If it is hard to remedy, and it is definitely very hard, we only become stronger by the task.

The TLS, as you mentioned, strikes a better balance than others in its category. And there are not many, at least in the United States, in that category any longer. These few remaining book sections probably bear more importance today than any time since mass literacy took hold. (At which time, it's worth noting, no woman was allowed to vote in either of our countries.) As you also wrote, judgment and quality are paramount. Those cannot be thrown aside. Ideas of aesthetic judgment and quality are not meaningless, as some might claim. They are communal projects. At their heart these ideas are humanist; in their ideal forms, they are transcendental; by our poor application they are, at best, only slightly flawed, and, at worst, totally unjust. The way those categories are applied is tremendously important. Did we chose this because it is "the best", or is it "the best" because we chose it?

If you feel, as I do, that TLS is a leader in the field, and leads by example, then I hope you'll reconsider the importance of this imbalance. If one leads, maybe the rest will find their way.

My best regards,

Daniel E. Pritchard
Editor, The Critical Flame

Elizabeth Bishop Centenary Reading @ BU

2011-02-18T14:08:00.001-05:00

video platform video management video solutions video player

Getting Poesy at MIT

2011-02-17T16:36:00.000-05:00

At the MIT Admissions blog, massively sleep-deprived Anna H. (class of 2014) shares a sonnet ode for each of her classes:

Ode to 8.022: Physics II (Electricity & Magnetism)
*Pronunciation guide: 8.022="eight oh two two"

Electric fields and charges: mystery
Unknowable to me in high school years
I struggled through the class and the AP,
But now I shed my bias and my fears.
"You fool!" you shout. "Why would you take that class?
The work is tough, and never will relent.
8.022 makes students cry en masse,
Your confidence, you will come to lament."
It could be that I'm crazy, I admit
But love like mine can deal with cranial pain
To endless waves of p-sets, I submit
Devoted to dear physics, I remain.
Professor Fisher's lectures help me see
That this is not impossible to clasp
There's elegance in here; there's symmetry
And solving problems can be in my grasp.
8.022, my love makes me a fool
Since I, to you, exist only to tool*.

*to tool: verb. When used by MIT students, means "to work" or "to study".

Support American Culture

2011-02-14T08:09:00.000-05:00

There are two things I have to say about this. The first is that you should click on the link below and send an email in support of the NEA to your Congressional Representatives and Senators. It's quick and easy, and the vast majority of our beloved cultural institutions — from museums and education programs, to theaters and publishers, to the artists themselves — rely on such support. Truly.

Second: please, after you do this, and after this part of the bill is acknowledged as bad for America, as a poor idea, and is inevitably off the table; please, make sure this was not just a smoke screen for some other equally terrible act against the average American. Millions of people rely on assistance from the Federal government for affordable housing, for their children's lunches, for addiction treatment. You know what it's like to struggle. Stand with them as well, make them a priority as well, defend them because they have no voice, because the same millionaires who would like to destroy the NEA are out to hurt them as well.

Now, the link to send an email in support of American Culture:

"The National Endowment for the Arts is targeted for a $22.5 million cut in the legislative proposal, and it is quite possible members of the Republican Study Committee will offer amendments to fully eliminate the NEA during floor consideration. We need you to send a message to your Members calling on them to reject these cuts to the NEA."

Get thee to a Woodhull Institute! [Vida and Gender 2]

2011-02-11T12:09:00.000-05:00

At the blog ReelGirl: “When I invited a woman to come on the [radio talk] show as an expert guest, it was not unusual for her to decline. She’d tell me that she wasn’t really qualified, and then she’d recommend someone ‘better,’ often a male colleague. In the seven years that I worked in talk radio, guess how many men who I called up recommended someone else speak instead of them? Not one. Never happened.

“Like a persistent suitor, I refused to take the woman’s first no as an answer, spending a lot of time convincing her to go air. Not only did I repeatedly tell women that their ideas were important, but I coached them on how to deal with the aggressive host who they were afraid to talk to, and I gave them tips on how to respond to other aggressive callers. Talk radio may be democratic in some ways but the verbal sparring can be brutal and you need to know how to play to win. And want to win.

“My experience in talk radio showed me that if women had some basic training, at least part of the gender bias in media could be overcome. But it’s not the producer’s job to coach and train women. So I cofounded an organization, the Woodhull Institute, named for Victoria Woodhull who was the first woman to run for president; she also published her own newspaper. Woodhull trains women in professional skills including negotiation, advocacy, and public speaking; Woodhull also trains women in media skills, including the ones Patricia Cohen wondered about in the New York Times, such as how to pitch stories and how to write and submit book proposals.”

--

So. Right now registration is open for the Woodhull Retreat on writing non-fiction (op-ed, feature stories, and book propsals) in the San Francisco and NYC / Berkshires regions. It's April 8–10th. Then on April 11th:

Good Enough Not Good Enough: VIDA and Gender

2011-02-10T12:43:00.000-05:00

Jessa Crispin at Bookslut:

After talking with editor after editor, a pattern started to emerge. "We don't get enough submissions by women." At each publication I talked to, women were submitting an average of 35% of manuscripts, poems, articles, and pitches. Most of the editors I talked to were not the callous, misogynist, cigar-chomping bastards they've been portrayed as since the Vida stats came out. Then again, this might be influenced by who I talked to: Poetry Magazine, The Chicagoan, Boston Review, Red Lemonade, Melville House, Dalkey Archive Press, The TLS — although his response was quite cranky. (I'll link to these conversations as they go up on the PBS website.) The disparity is greater at some other institutions, who didn't answer my e-mails. As I was writing up my interview with Poetry Magazine editor Christian Wiman, an e-mail came in with the fall list for FSG. There were only three women on that entire list. I asked FSG if they wanted to have a chat, but I never heard back.

The refrain of "we want more submissions from women" started to gnaw at me. Because I never pitch work. That makes me part of this problem. I have a working relationship with certain publications, and I'm content with staying with them. And most of them approached me initially, rather than me showing up on their doorstep with my CV saying, "Hi! Publish me, I'm good." And I wonder why that is. God, could it be because I'm under-confident in my writing? I don't want to talk about it! Okay, yes. Maybe. Fuck off. And it's easier for me to take an idea to the same editors I've been working with for years, rather than try to work for somewhere new, with a higher profile and better pay rate. Even when I'm discussing projects I'm working on with other friends, I disparage the work, saying, "This is probably a stupid idea," or, "Someone has probably already done this somewhere."

There's something about the culture at some of these places listed at Vida that make me think I would never in a million years be accepted there, and after taking a sampling of some female writer friends, I'm not the only one. Take the Atlantic, for example. Their rates of publishing women were not as devastatingly horrible as, say, The New York Review of Books. (What the fuck, NYRB?) But the women they are perhaps best known for publishing are Caitlin Flanagan, who writes about how abortion is bad, sex is bad, staying at home with the kids is awesome, doing her husband's laundry gives her purpose. Also Sandra Tsing Loh, who writes about her infidelity, the breakup of her marriage, being a bad mother. There is absolutely nothing about The Atlantic that screams out to me: We are totally respectful of women and their various viewpoints, and we'd be interested in publishing the work of a single, globetrotting, pro-choice feminist who does not under any circumstance want to write about her relationships, her femininity, or her sex life.

But as I'm writing this, I'm aware that this is partly my issue. That if I were bolder, more confident in my writing, had a genius idea for a story, or maybe were a man, I would look at the Atlantic and see that they had a lack in exactly the space I want to write about. I would see that missing voice as an opportunity, not as a Stay Out: No Girls Allowed sign.

Because I've been knocked on my ass by overt sexism before. The editor of an internationally renowned literary magazine once accused me to my face of sleeping my way to the top. I had been recommended to him for a job, and apparently the fellow writer who recommended me did so vigorously, and defended me against the accusation of hack-work. "And the only reason I could think of that he would do so, was if you were really good in bed. You guys must be fucking like bunnies." I have this burned on my brain, a bad night out in New York City. I had the job at that point. Did I then bust my ass on the job, thinking "I'll show you, motherfucker," and then gleefully take his money? No. I resigned almost immediately.

[bold emphasis in all cases above by the editor of The Wooden Spoon]

--

What is wrong with this culture? Seriously, I thought this shit was dead. My adult education and career has been spent surrounded by capable, intelligent women. Intellectual peers, or betters, mentors, and managers. I am marrying one in July. She writes inspired literary criticism. Half, or probably more than half, of my closest and oldest friends are women (despite having gone to an all-male high school), and those women are doctors, poets, Naval officers, literary critics, social workers. And now this? Nope. Not good enough. As Jessa writes, this is a complicated issue that deals not just with submissions and pages published, but with a whole hegemonic social structure that informs gender and uses anxiety, insecurity, like a natural predator, to limit growth. But, here is what I do have the power to affect:

Too direct?

Big- Government Reagan

2011-02-03T09:45:00.000-05:00

from Slate: “Federal government spending was a quarter higher in real terms when Reagan left office than when he entered. As a share of GDP, the federal government shrank from 22.2 percent to 21.2 percent—a whopping one percentage point. The federal civilian work force increased from 2.8 million to 3 million. (Yes, it increased even if you exclude Defense Department civilians. And, no, assuming a year or two of lag time for a president's policies to take effect doesn't materially change any of these results.)

“Under eight years of Big Government Bill Clinton, to choose another president at random, the federal civilian work force went down from 2.9 million to 2.68 million. Federal spending grew by 11 percent in real terms—less than half as much as under Reagan. As a share of GDP, federal spending shrank from 21.5 percent to 18.3 percent—more than double Reagan's reduction, ending up with a federal government share of the economy about a tenth smaller than Reagan left behind.

“And taxes? Federal tax collections rose about a fifth in real terms under Reagan. As a share of GDP, they declined from 19.6 percent to 18.3 percent. After Clinton, they are up to 20 percent. It's hard to think of variations in this narrow range as revolutionary one way or the other. For most working Americans, the share of income going to taxes (including FICA) went up even under Reagan.

“Reagan enthusiasts say that what matters is marginal rates, which did decline significantly during his tenure. Of course, rates rose significantly under Clinton, which doesn't seem to have done the economy any harm. Critics say that if Reagan's tax cuts fed the 1980s prosperity, it was as an old-fashioned Keynesian stimulus, caused by the huge deficits the cuts produced. It's easy to throw a party if you're willing to triple the national debt.”

“A Sense of Family Comes from the Commitment We Make to Each Other”

2011-02-02T13:34:00.002-05:00

Ben Mazer on Pound's “See, They Return”

2011-02-01T10:07:00.000-05:00

from Dark Sky Magazine: “The poet, in creation, sees (and seizes), and the reader is told to see (ordered to see in order to see): the words return, not only in memory, but in the circularity of unity (the coming into being enacted by the completion of a circle, the words of a poem having life and afterlife in the contextualization enacted by the return of rereading, contemplation of parts of form in relation to the whole of form), ‘one,’ — reader and poet and poem (part and whole) — ‘and by one,’: word by word (with the emphasizing hesitation of a comma after the one word ‘one’), and line by line, in word and line seen (apprehended) by poet, and reader by reader, yes, but also: by one poet (or won by one poet), by one Ezra Pound, by one divinity, one unified and unifying source and author of creation and meaning.”

Egyptian Democracy

2011-01-29T14:00:00.000-05:00

We are all watching the leaderless mass revolt (leaderless, at least, for the moment; all revolts need a crystalized set of goals, embodied in a charismatic person or, if not, in a coalition of practical, at times ruthless, minor leaders) against the long regime of President Murabak in Egypt. No one can support sham elections or rule by coercion, and although Murabak has been, from what I've read, fairly moderate in his dealings with the rest of the region, including Israel, he has remained dictatorial in his control of the nation. Thus, sad to say, he is not the worst head of state, but still not what one would call good.

Free elections are necessary for legitimacy, so the people are justified in their revolt.

Now I'll probably get myself into trouble. Democracy is the great dream of humankind, and one which has not been realized in the world, neither in the United States nor elsewhere, despite what any nationalist politician might claim. It is still only partly achieved, hundreds of years after its modern conception. It is always in danger of destruction by the selfish, tribal, and violent aspects of our selves. Many will be appalled by this assessment of this nation and the state of democracy. My desire, natural and ordinary, not unlike any person really, is to be proud of my country and culture, and to an extent I am proud of our achievements; but this pride is hugely tempered by the difficult, shameful facts of our society — the way people are treated, measured by the dollar, shunned and left helpless, homeless, bankrupt, in chains — and as well by my suspicion of that which is too cheaply sold, as the exceptional greatness of our society is today.

Democracy, to my mind, is not equivalent to free elections. That is lower-case democracy, still unrealized in so much of the world, still a righteous goal. No, true Democracy is the realization of humanist values. It is the placement of personhood unabashedly and unreservedly at the center of our moral apparatus, with social structures that defend and enforce the concomitant values, those which we in America often call freedoms or rights. It is about values foremost, and not government, which is why it is so difficult to achieve, why there can be so much and so great confusion, and why in America we have elections (and we could have better elections) but still work toward Democracy.

The result of the current uprising in Egypt will lead, very likely, to the freest elections in that Republic's history (though it opens other opportunities for dictatorship; time will tell), and its government will then become mostly legitimate in its representation of the people. But it will not bring Democracy to Egypt, as many are claiming. It will not relieve the atrocious injustice women face in that culture, where, the World Health Organization reports, 91% of women face genital mutilation. It will probably not lead to more freedom of religion, or of speech, since so many in this revolt desire a more strictly religious state, and since religion — by placing a distant, arbitrary taskmaster god or prophet at the center of morality — almost necessarily infringes upon human value and dignity. An election does not resolve these.

Egypt is not alone, of course. Democracy does not exist in any nation yet, not completely. It may nowhere be close by, and so remains the project first and foremost at hand for all people: a society that prioritizes and protects the equal inherent value of human persons, regardless of their gender, religion, race, or views. That aims for Justice, not fairness. Elections alone do not bring it about, because that is only the process of selecting a government, although it is essential, although it might be an absolute precondition.

So, I hope that Egypt finds its way to free and open elections, to a government that is more legitimate in its representation of the people — but I also hope that the people of Egypt do not stop the project of Democracy with those elections.