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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)

Michael Marcinkowski

From Peter O’Leary: Poetry of the 1970s, Day 3

Friday the 13th of the Poetry of the 1970s began much the same as the previous day: up early – the birds of Maine with their dawn chorus – searching for breakfast and then striding through the lovely piney woods. Even without the sleep I needed, I was feeling oddly refreshed.
And the morning started strong. I opted for the panel with the provocative title, “The Avant-Garde, Language, and Opposition,” with two papers by two thinkers whose work I admire both from the Pacific Northwest: Jeanne Heaving from Seattle, and Miriam Nichols from Vancouver. Check out these paper titles: “Marking the Avant Garde” and “Writing Opposition: Determinate Negation and the Imago Mundi.” Nice.

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06.24.08 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (3)

Michael Marcinkowski

From Peter O’Leary: Poetry of the 1970s, Day 2

Thursday, June 12 began with me waking up at 6am as the light slanted through the blinds in my gulag-like but nevertheless comfortable dorm room on campus. Despite staying up late, and despite being away from my kids, who wake me up every morning at the same time, I couldn’t sleep any later. Instead, I sought out some breakfast with Ross Hair, who was still addled with jetlag, and then took a walk in the fabled Maine woods that surround the campus at Orono. We saw cedar waxwings, bluebirds, goldfinches, a great blue heron, many crows, and a deer grazing in an opening.
And then hit the ground running in full-on conference mode. One of the challenges of attending a conference such as this one is deciding which of the panels to attend. I’m generally motivated by the desire to hear a talk on a topic or poet I’m interested in, but I’m also drawn to seeing friends present work on the topics they’re thinking about. I’m not particularly a devotee of Ashbery’s work but was lured to an Ashbery panel because, as a result of a couple of cancellations, my friend Tom Fisher, who like Joel Bettridge had come in from Portland, Oregon, was presenting his talk on Bob Kaufman.

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06.20.08 PERMALINK | NO COMMENTS

Michael Marcinkowski

From Peter O’Leary: Poetry of the 1970s, Day 1

Your guest blogger with Tom Raworth and Clark Coolidge, Orono, June 2008”
The day before I left to attend the “Poetry of the 1970s” conference held every four years by the National Poetry Foundation at the University of Maine, I was asked whether I wanted to cover it for Harriet. Mos def, I thought (in the words of D’Angelo Barksdale), settling things on Wednesday morning, June 11, in a phone call to Nick Twemlow while standing against the wall in Helmut Jahn’s cavernous, light-filled United C-Terminal at O’Hare, where Eno’s “Music for Airports” should be on a permanent loop. When I went to my gate, C-20, I saw people lining up to go to Singapore. I’d misread my seat number, 20C, for the gate, and needed to dash back to the B-Terminal, where I found my traveling companion, Chris Glomski, relieved to see me. In a clockwork schedule, we were flying together and renting a car from Boston to Orono, picking up some other mates along the way – Ross Hair in Boston (who was flying in from Southampton, UK), and Joel Bettridge in Portland (who was flying in from the other Portland in Oregon). Chris doesn’t have a cellphone. Running idly through his mind as he waited for me to show was the thought, What if O’Leary misses the flight? But I showed, we bought some sandwiches, and were soon seated in two rows entirely to ourselves, a bonus of traveling mid-morning on a Wednesday.

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06.19.08 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (2)

Michael Marcinkowski

What are some creative ways to promote poetry?

In the Spring issue of American Poet (put out by the Academy of American Poets) Lyn Hejinian gave an interesting answer to what is by now (especially around these offices) a rote question. She was asked, “What are some creative ways to promote poetry?” to which she responded:

Poetry doesn’t need promotion. People need time. A revolutionary way to promote poetry might be to criminalize capitalism’s theft of people’s time.

It’s an answer that brings to bear the issue of poetry’s place in our wider culture and one which raises lots of terrific questions. Should poetry be something that is sold to consumers just as any other product, or is it indeed something special, something that carves out space in our daily lives, apart from all the buying and selling that seems to occupy us today?

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08.22.07 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (11)

Author Archive

Michael Marcinkowski

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

Michael Marcinkowski

From Peter O’Leary: Poetry of the 1970s, Day 3

Michael Marcinkowski

From Peter O’Leary: Poetry of the 1970s, Day 2

Michael Marcinkowski

From Peter O’Leary: Poetry of the 1970s, Day 1

Michael Marcinkowski

What are some creative ways to promote poetry?

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