2008 June : Harriet the Blog : The Poetry Foundation

Archive for June, 2008

In a near impossible coincidence of good fortune, two of my very favorite djs/sound artists/musicians—two of my very favorite artists in general—played in New York City this past weekend: DJ /rupture and Moodymann. Their work has significantly influenced both my poetry and my thinking about poetry, specifically, how to create a moving and directly engaging poetry that also contains a built-in meta-/conceptual component allowing for lots of emotional and intellectual wiggle room. Let’s face it, much of the work lumped under the “conceptual poetics” rubric leaves me—and lots of other people—cold. As a grad-school educated person who participated in a world-renowned Poetics Program during the 1990s, I don’t think it’s a matter of me not “getting it” or not being sympathetic. It probably has more to do with not attending the correct dinner parties.

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06.30.08 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (3)

Travis Nichols

Bully for Them

Poet and critic William Logan offered his take on the life and work of Frank O’Hara in Sunday’s New York Times Book Review.
Among other things, Mr. Logan restated his belief that if O’Hara were alive today, “he might have written a blog.”
Bloggers took note, and they quickly offered up their take on the life and work of Mr. Logan.
To wit:

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06.30.08 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (20)

Don Share

The soul grows refined

“Recently I happened to read the letter in which Montaigne relates the death of his friend de la Boétie: afterwards I couldn’t fall asleep for crying, but to my shame this crying returned the following evenings with no apparent cause: you can imagine that I did not give in to it easily, I had books in front of me – but alas, these books: one sends me back to the other, basic knowledge is everywhere lacking, soon I will be sitting back behind the first vestiges, and what will I do there without memory?”

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06.30.08 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (16)

Mark Nowak

The 1970s, (Dub) Identity, and Working-class Poetries

Amidst the engaging recent posts by Peter O’Leary on the “Poetry of the 1970s” conference in Maine and Alan Gilbert on poetry and identity/identifying practices—as well as steering away from the seemingly looming question of whether or not I ever was a member of the Communist party!—I wanted to continue to post &/or discuss poems that I’ve used or plan to use in my factory and workplace workshops, poems that push the political and the innovative in myriad ways yet always include a race/class overlay or overdetermination (rather than fronting one at the expense of the other) as well as poems that scale back and forth between the local and the global. So, having already written about U Sam Oeur’s “Work at the Douglas Corporation, Urethane Department…” and Emelihter Kihleng’s “Micronesian Diaspora(s),” let me add a poem that I think it would be most productive to read alongside any 1970s configuration of poetry that has been inscribed to include Late Capitalism and Language as well as poets such as Tom Raworth and Clark Coolidge and Bernadette Mayer (to cite just a few mentioned by O’Leary), Linton Kwesi Johnson’s “It Dread Inna Inglan”:
dem frame-up George Lindo
up in Bradford Toun
but di Bradford Blacks
dem a rally roun

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06.29.08 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (2)

Alan Gilbert

Poetry and identity

It looks as if Lucia Perillo’s post entitled “Why are poets aligned with the left?” will have generated the most extensive and heated comment stream for the month of June (provided no Harriet blogger attacks Language Poetry in the next 72 hours). Though commentators jumped on her statement that memorable war poetry is in short supply, the main concern of her post was the question, “Why do poets coalesce around leftist ideals”? A number of responders usefully delineated the wide spectrum of positions encompassed by the phrase “leftist,” and especially how liberal, leftist, and Democrat aren’t necessarily synonymous. As one respondent pointed out, Mark Nowak probably wouldn’t describe the political organizing he does as in the “liberal” tradition, even if some of the people he works with might.

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06.27.08 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (17)

Travis Nichols

Publish and Perish

Up on literary agent Nathan Bransford’s blog there’s a discussion raging over what the optimum rate of production is for contemporary writers. One book a year? Two? A book a decade? One good book a generation?
Bransford’s debate centers on fiction, but it’s quite applicable to poetry as well. The terms, though, seem quite different.

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06.26.08 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (12)

D.A. Powell

The Turn of the Thumbscrew

The late William Talcott, editor of Thumbscrew Press, quite infrequently published a magazine called Carbuncle. The magazine was mostly devoted to poetry, along with artwork by poet Mark Neville, and the occasional interview and review.
One of the most provocative pieces of prose I’ve ever read appeared in Carbuncle #3, in 1991. It was a scathing review of a reading by Robert Creeley. Certainly the tone is critical and perhaps even, at times, mean. But the last line of it has stayed with me.
It doesn’t have to be about Creeley. It describes a feeling that so many of us might have had at a poetry reading, at one time or another. Good to remind ourselves that no poet should rest on his or her laurels, and that young poets need for older poets either to inspire them or to encourage them, but they rarely need to be bored (despite recent claims that poetry doesn’t need to make any bid for the attention of the reader).

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06.25.08 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (21)

Alan Gilbert

Coral Bracho

In my initial post for Harriet, I mentioned a roundup I wrote for the Village Voice back in April of recent notable poetry books. Space constraints and the critical-narrative arc I decided upon for the piece didn’t allow for the mention of other interesting collections (such as one I referenced in another post, Matthea Harvey’s Modern Life, or Richard Deming’s Let’s Not Call it Consequence), along with books by Renee Gladman and Wanda Coleman that blur the boundaries between poetry and prose.
There’s one poet I did mention whom I’d like to bring a little more attention to here: Coral Bracho.

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06.25.08 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (2)

Michael Marcinkowski

From Peter O’Leary: Poetry of the 1970s, Days 4 & 5

Saturday June 14 of the 1970s conference began with a field trip. Conference participants were rounded up onto two huge tour busses to drive an hour from Orono to Waterville, home of Colby College, and its very fine Museum of Art. We were drawn there to see two exhibits: a number of Alex Katz portraits – many of poets – selected for the NPF conference (including one of Ann Lauterbach, who gave a gallery talk that morning); and a sneak preview of Joe Brainard’s rather hilarious “If Nancy Was” exhibit, which is comprised of visual speculations about what it would look like if Nancy, from the daily funnies, was something else – like a building in Manhattan. Or a ball. Reader, will you be in Maine this summer? If so, you should visit this museum, which is full of wit and light.

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06.25.08 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (3)

Mark Nowak

Poetry is a verb

I poetry. You poetry. He/she/it poetries. We poetry. You poetry. They poetry.
That’s my conjugation.
Early in the process of developing my transnational social movement “poetry dialogues,” when I was asked by the education directors at NUMSA (National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa) to lead a series of two-day, eight-hour per day poetry workshops at Ford plants in Port Elizabeth and Pretoria, I formulated a schedule that included a “first person singular” poetry day and a “first person plural” day. In the former, autoworkers would read poems like U Sam Oeur’s “Work at the Douglas Corporation, Urethane Department, Minneapolis, Minnesota” and view digital videos of workers from my previous workshops; they would then write individual, often documentary/reportage poems (think Tillie Olsen’s “I want you women up north to know”) about their experiences.
One the second day, the “first person plural” day, I devised a series of exercises for workers to collectively compose collaborative “choral” poems from their experiences, poems that they would then perform as a chorus of workers. If interested, you can find printed examples of both types of poems online in the UAW 879’s October-November 2006 newsletter. [Note: they are not meant to be center-justified, but oh well…]
Yesterday, somewhere between the boyhood home of Sinclair Lewis and the city of Fargo, I facilitated another one of my trade union poetry workshops for Education MN (who represent 70,000 public educators from across the state).

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06.25.08 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (3)

Archive for June, 2008

Alan Gilbert

History can be sexy too

Travis Nichols

Bully for Them

Don Share

The soul grows refined

Mark Nowak

The 1970s, (Dub) Identity, and Working-class Poetries

Alan Gilbert

Poetry and identity

Travis Nichols

Publish and Perish

D.A. Powell

The Turn of the Thumbscrew

Alan Gilbert

Coral Bracho

Michael Marcinkowski

From Peter O’Leary: Poetry of the 1970s, Days 4 & 5

Mark Nowak

Poetry is a verb

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Archive for June, 2008

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