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Archive for the ‘Awards’ Category

“The” “age” “of” “genius”

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In a recent Slate article, Ron Rosenbaum explores uses and abuses of the word “genius,” suggesting:

Maybe genius has been, if not democratized, more widely and thinly distributed, rather than concentrated in the hands of a precious few…. Maybe we no longer live in the kind of romantic age that created Byron, the template of genius.

Or maybe we do.

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09.25.09 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (9)

Paul Martínez Pompa, ‘My Kill Adore Him’ (University of Notre Dame Press, 2009)

Chicago poet Paul Martínez Pompa kind of frightens me. I just tore through his first collection of poetry, My Kill Adore Him, which was selected by Martín Espada for the 2008 Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize. This prize is administered by Letras Latinas, the literary program of the Institute for Latino Studies at University of Notre Dame. The two previous recipients of the Montoya Prize are Sheryl Luna and Gabriel Gomez.

my-kill-adore-him

I’ve seen Martínez Pompa read before; last year, he was one of a handful of feature poets for The Wind Shifts: New Latino Poetry anthology reading, hosted by the anthology editor Francisco Aragón at Moe’s Books on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley (you can read Aragón’s Poetry Foundation article here). I remember one of the poems Martínez Pompa read at the time, “Amputee Etcetera,” which I found hilarious and troubling.

Nothing cuter
than a war amputee.

At this point I’m cracking up, knowing it’s a terrible thing, my need to laugh this hard.

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08.28.09 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (13)

Eileen Myles

CONTEST

pale-mac I am judging a poetry contest. I’m not going to say which one. And I didn’t know I was judging it until after the deadline so it wasn’t like I could say hey I’m judging so you should send your manuscript in. I was a little glad I was judging it. I mean it was flattering. But then of course then the giant box of manuscripts arrived the drycleaners where I receive packages. Uhnnnh. I don’t have to tell you that I work really hard.

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07.23.09 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (102)

Eileen Myles

Tortillas Yay or Nay

bone-flag4

I love that somebody didn’t like my exchange with Bobby Byrd about whether the tortillas were good. Is it tortillas they didn’t like, our friendly exchange or whaa? I rarely use a question mark. Gertrude Stein said if the sentence doesn’t contain the question you didn’t write it well enough. Though whaa is a cartoon Americanism up

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07.19.09 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (31)

Javier Huerta

2008 American Book Awards

The Before Columbus Foundation announces
Winners of the Twenty-Eighth Annual
AMERICAN BOOK AWARDS
Moustafa Bayoumi, How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? Being Young and Arab in America (The Penguin Press)
Douglas A. Blackmon, Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II (Doubleday)

Nora Marks Dauenhauer, Richard Dauenhauer, and Lydia T. Black, and Anooshi Lingit Aani Ka/Russians in Tlingit America: The Battles of Sitka, 1802 And 1804 (University of Washington Press)

Maria Mazziotti Gillian, All That Lies Between Us (Guernica Editions Inc.)

Nikki Giovanni, The Collected Poetry of Nikki Giovanni: 1968-1998 (HarperCollins)

C.S. Giscombe, Prairie Style (Dalkey Archive Press)
Angela Jackson, Where I Must Go: A Novel (TriQuarterly)

L. Luis Lopez, Each Month I Sing (Farolito Press)

Tom Lutz, Doing Nothing: A History of Loafers, Loungers, Slackers, and Bums in America (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Fae Myenne Ng, Steer Toward Rock (Hyperion)
Yuko Taniguchi, The Ocean in the Closet (Coffee House Press)

Frank B. Wilderson III, Incognegro: A Memoir of Exile and Apartheid (South End Press)

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12.11.08 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (1)

Javier Huerta

2008 Pen Oakland Josephine Miles National Literary Awards

Oakland, the city in which I live, is home to two national book awards—the American Book Award and the Pen Oakland Josephine Miles Award—that challenge the hegemonic judgment of the literary establishment. The force behind these awards is multiculturalism, a belief that “sweetness and light” is multiple and diverse. I tend to trust the Oakland awards more (though I suppose I still hold a mistrust for all awards, for that Lehman Tendency to rank the best of the best of the best) than the Big Three because they seem to be more accurately representative of what’s being published in the United States today.
Here is an announcement of the 2008 Pen Oakland Josephine Miles Awards:
PEN Oakland & The Oakland Public Library Announce the Winners of the PEN Oakland-Josephine Miles 18th Annual National Literary Awards & 12th Annual PEN Oakland Censorship Award Saturday, December 6th, 2:00 PM – 5:00 PM in Oakland Free To The Public
On Saturday, December 6th, come celebrate well-known and emerging Bay Area and international authors who will be honored for excellence in multicultural literature at the 18th Annual PEN Oakland-Josephine Miles National Literary Awards.
PEN Oakland, A Bay Area Chapter of the International Organization of Poets, Essayists, and Novelists, was founded in 1989 to address multicultural issues, and educate the public as to the nature of multicultural work. These award-winning authors address the diversity and uniqueness of American culture, and represent the new voices of American literature. The late Josephine Miles, in whose honor the awards are presented, was a highly regarded poet, critic, and professor of English at the University of California in Berkeley.

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11.23.08 PERMALINK | NO COMMENTS

Travis Nichols

Doty Hits a Dinger!

Poet and memoirist Mark Doty’s new and selected poems Fire to Fire was awarded the National Book Award last night at the NBF’s annual gala event in New York City.
You can listen to Doty read a few poems here, read an excerpt from Fire to Fire here, and listen to Julie Bernstein chat with Doty here.

11.20.08 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (4)

Poetry Foundation

Patricia Smith, Blood Dazzler

The 2008 National Book Award finalists were just announced by Scott Turow via live web video (watch), and Harriet emeritus Patricia Smith was on the list, for Blood Dazzler (Coffee House). A big congratulations from Harriet.
Read
Patricia’s poems
Patricia’s Harriet posts

10.15.08 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (2)

Javier Huerta

Why I did not win the Nobel Prize in Literature

Because self-nominations are not accepted.
Because I’m dirty, mean and mighty unclean. I’m a wanted man, Public enemy number one. Understand. So lock up your daughter n’ lock up your wife. Lock up your back door and run for your life. The man is back in town. So don’t you mess me ’round. ‘Cause I’m T.N.T. I’m dynamite. T.N.T. And I’ll win that fight. T.N.T. I’m a power load. T.N.T. Watch me explode.
Because I used to be the owner and manager of an automobile dealership in West Barnstable, Massachusetts, called “Saab Cape Cod.” It and I went out of business 33 years ago. The Saab then as now was a Swedish car, and I now believe my failure as a dealer so long ago explains what would otherwise remain a deep mystery: Why the Swedes have never given me a Nobel Prize for Literature. Old Norwegian proverb: “Swedes have short dicks but long memories.” I came to speak ill of Swedish engineering, and so diddled myself out of a Nobel Prize.
Because my amazon.com sales rank, #315, 882, is too high.

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10.10.08 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (10)

Travis Nichols

Foetry! Get it? Faux-etry!

The sordid ghost of Foetry.com has stalked the internets this past week, with much being made of Stacey Lynn Brown’s tale of contest troubles with Cider Press Review.
According to Brown’s blog—and Cider Press’s Robert Wynne –Brown won Cider Press’s contest last year, but had her award subsequently “revoked” for reasons no one can agree on.
Brown says it was because the editor didn’t like her design ideas, and the editor says it was because Brown didn’t meet her contractual obligations (see Brown’s comment below for clarification)—but whatever the actual reasons, the whole thing has caused many bloggers to weigh in on the strange mania that overtakes poets when contests are involved.
One of the commenters on Brown’s blog was Alan Cordle, a name inextricably bound to the Foetry saga.

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08.28.08 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (65)

Archive for the ‘Awards’ Category

Abigail Deutsch

“The” “age” “of” “genius”

Barbara Jane Reyes

Paul Martínez Pompa, ‘My Kill Adore Him’ (University of Notre Dame Press, 2009)

Eileen Myles

CONTEST

Eileen Myles

Tortillas Yay or Nay

Javier Huerta

2008 American Book Awards

Javier Huerta

2008 Pen Oakland Josephine Miles National Literary Awards

Travis Nichols

Doty Hits a Dinger!

Poetry Foundation

Patricia Smith, Blood Dazzler

Javier Huerta

Why I did not win the Nobel Prize in Literature

Travis Nichols

Foetry! Get it? Faux-etry!

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