Sibyl Kempson, Kenny Goldsmith, Judith Malina, Ariana Reines & More Featured in CUNY Poetry in Theatre Program May 24, 2013: Poetry and theater are necking in the coat closet again--if you're in New York on June 3, check out the CUNY Graduate Center Segal Theatre's latest extraordinary programming, "Poetry in Theatre: Early Frank O’Hara + Plays by Contemporary Poets, with Judith Malina," which features Ariana Reines & Jim Fletcher, Kenneth Goldsmith, Bob [...] by Harriet Staff

Our Slaves: Caring for Masters, Deforming Mastery (Part 2 of 2) May 2, 2013: [caption id="attachment_66854" align="alignright" width="500"] Cape Coast Slave Castle[/caption] “Cape Coast Castle,” a poem in Yusef Komunyakaa’s Chameleon Couch (his most recent book), begins with a haunting. The speaker of poem declares in the first line: “I made love to you, & it loomed there.” The “it” returns again and [...] by Roger Reeves

Our Slaves: Caring for Masters, Deforming Mastery (Part 1 of 2) May 1, 2013: This post is a continuation of the conversation I started last week with the same title. There’s so much that can be written on both Natasha Trethewey’s “Native Guard” and Yusef Komunyakaa’s “Cape Coast Castle.” I am just venturing in a toe in a mighty deep pool. Please, after reading this blog, won’t you come wade with [...] by Roger Reeves

Our Slaves: Meditations on the Traffic of Black Bodies in Print (Part 1 of 2) April 24, 2013: April 18, 2013 The Chicago River is swollen; and for the first time in over a century, they are allowing it to flow into Lake Michigan, the lake that provides the city’s drinking water. A fertilizer plant in Waco, Texas smolders after a violent explosion. In Copley Square, the FBI and all manner of secret and not-so-secret police tweeze [...] by Roger Reeves

“…like a bird of prey, the profile of night…” April 30, 2010:            --from “Facing It,” Yusef Komunyakaa’s great poem            about war and race and America and the Vietnam Memorial. The university where I currently teach has more political diversity among its student body than most of the liberal-to-left institutions where I’ve previously taught. It’s never [...] by Daisy Fried