Against my better judgment, last night I drove from Burlington, Vermont, to Cambridge, Massachusetts. Intermittent rain and a broken headlight made for a harrowing trip. However, probably unlike other regional transplants, I am both thrilled and terrified by the danger of driving in Vermont, referred to fondly by southern New Englanders as “The Sticks.” Frost nailed it: the woods are “dark, and deep.” Since moving here in 2002, I have had two near-death experiences in inclement weather: Once, I spun out into a ditch just over the Vermont/New Hampshire border in a light snow-storm that barely coated the blacktop; then, driving north on VT-22, a road east of Lake Champlain, I lost visibility due to an endless stream of thick snowflakes obscuring the road with drift and filling the windshield so fast my wipers could barely keep up—a phenomenon I’ve come to learn as “whiteout,” which for a black man in these northern regions tends to take on more metaphorical weight than I care to admit. In both instances, I came close to tragically colliding with two 18-wheelers, their swerving headlights suddenly appearing then disappearing behind me. Early last month, my wife Kristen and two sons Romie and Langston, returning on an evening full of harvest moonlight, ran over a bear on I-89 that had seconds before been rammed by a freight truck. The car went up into the air (as did the car ahead of them) and they nearly tipped over, but landed, somehow for the grace, upright in a field. In the Northeast Kingdom, signs abound that say, “Brake for Moose: It Could Save Your Life!” When the folks at Poetryfoundation.org indicated that they’d like for me to contribute this week to their series of journals, I thought about how driving in the evenings, on occasion, I like to turn off my headlights so that I can immerse myself into pitch darkness, the road barely illumined by the vellum of moonlight and constellations of stars above. Then, I’d turn them back on, having abruptly given in to a fit of fear of running over skunk, deer, bear, or worse, moose. Then, the game would begin, whereby I’d test myself as to how long I could brave the dark woods without headlights. (Don’t ask; I won’t tell how long such idiocy overcame me.) This shouldn’t surprise anyone who knows me: I speed, only pay tickets after the authorities have hunted me down through a series of letters from your local DMV, and generally, when alone in the car, drive dangerously in spontaneous fits of thrill-seeking, vehicular adventure. (Is this a confession?) I’m not sure how or where it begins, but I’ve come to realize I am excited by the combination of Marinetti’s exaltation of speed and Frost’s mysterious “the deep,” of shuttling mindlessly through the unknown at strange velocities. At times, the windows go down and the rooftop slides back, and I sanctify the night with a soulful song from my speakers. Sometimes, if it is terribly late and a stillness permeates one of Vermont’s proverbial, quaint town centers, I’ll slow down in front of a statue of a local, war hero, or in front of the town hall, turn off my lights, crank the volume of a hip-hop song, then take off, satisfied that Luchini or Malik B has just blessed these people with his beats, rhymes, and life. I’ll likely not use the word “blog,” too much, for its mundane “blather” and “blah blah blah” quality irks me; so, on that note, I’ll be Blog-Lite, hoping to avoid the risks of topicality and verbosity. Unlike a poem, which presents “a stylized self,” a blog hopes to capture a voluminous speaker, who reveals all of his/her loose, baggy, catch-all (and some more) aspirations. I hope to keep my weblog tight and neat, driven by some overriding metaphorical proposition. Hopefully, I’ll arrive on time, but, if you know me, a third of the time, that’s wishful thinking. I’m old enough now to share some stories from the road, having traveled and lived in various parts of the country from Eugene, Oregon, to New Orleans to the tip of Cape Cod. As a result, I am terribly nostalgic; so I might reveal some juicy tidbits about friends. But, know also, I am an equal-opportunity blogger, so if you have a request or a query, by all means, fire away. Beginning tomorrow, I’ll include a few embedded columns: a “Tip of the Day” for aspiring readers of poetry and a “Dopest Rhyme of the Day,” harkening back to old-school issues of The Source magazine. I’ve been immensely shaped by bearing witness to certain kinds of violence. I’ll rap ad nauseum on that topic and the desire for tenderness in poetry. That’ll be my Rated “R” weblog, maybe NC-17. Who knows? Keep me locked in gear. I’ll be back, faster than you can say “Wendell O. Scott.” So, let the poppers pop, and the breakers break. It was no less a revolution blistering with historic urgency, 10 years ago in June, when poets and teachers Toi Derricotte and Cornelius Eady auspiciously convened the first weeklong gathering of black poets on the Hudson River in Esopus, New York, one week prior to Father’s Day. Poets of varying ages of African descent came from Colorado, Washington D.C., South Carolina, Pittsburgh, Chicago, California, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York City, and Austin, Texas. They came with no poems in hand, because one of the demands of the gathering was to write a poem each day. After having printed and disbursed copies of poems in the morning, those poems were rigorously critiqued and workshopped by Cornelius and Toi. Simple enough. Poets Elizabeth Alexander and Afaa Michael Weaver served as guest faculty that summer, testifying and sharing their own journeys as black writers of poetry, their roads from pain and joy to art and language to grace and affirmation. Since that important first summer, a literal Who’s Who of African American poetry have joined this important American literary enterprise: Cyrus Cassells, Rita Dove, Kwame Dawes, Nikky Finney, Michael Harper, Erica Hunt, Yusef Komunyakaa, Harryette Mullen, Marilyn Nelson, Sonia Sanchez, Tim Seibles, Patricia Smith, and Al Young. Since 1996, in addition to its annual summer workshop, the vision of the organization has grown to include regional workshops, a poetry book prize, a legacy conversations, and annual anthologies of past participants work. And they named all of this institutional building and literary work: Cave Canem (pronounced kah-Vay-ka-Nem), Latin for Beware the Dog. (www.cavecanempoets.org) Last month, over the course of three days, in NYC, 10 year’s worth of Cave Canem workshop participants, faculty, and extended family of friends, board members, and well-wishers congregated in celebration by attending a series of festivities, public readings, panel discussions, and communal talks. For anyone who cares about poetry, who has a modicum of historical awareness of the social and political struggles of black folk in America and the acute significance of Cave Canem’s work of affirming and crafting intelligent black poets with a passion for language and a vision of the spirit, it was difficult not to be moved by the high jubilant feelings permeating and arresting each event. I’ll not add to the storehouse of testimonials that have since emerged in Blogville, but point you to poets Tara Betts and Cherryl Floyd-Miller’s sharp and comprehensive summaries, pictures, and play-by-play of that festive occasion. Last night, an assembly of poets living and working in New England (Venise Battle, Colin Enriquez, Kate Rushin, Nehessaiu De Gannes, and Afaa Michael Weaver) extended the celebration of Cave Canem, Inc. and its accomplishments with a reading at the Blacksmith Poetry Reading Series in Cambridge. The poetry reading exhibited the high level of regard and engagement with language, history, and cultural meaning one comes to expect at a Cave Canem event: Venise read a sharp poem, envisioning Jesus and Mary Magdalene as two young black lovers in modern day Minneapolis; Colin adroitly swirled a song of black male bravado, diminished opportunities, and urban pathos in a praise poem to malt liquor; Nehessaiu made art-song of a congregation of familial voices in her Trinidadian cadenced lilts and lifts; Kate Rushin, in a swelling anaphoristic poem of great music, urged the audience to imagine the beleaguered and tragic life of poet Phillis Wheatley; and finally Afaa summoned the energies of Ifa deities Shango, Oya, and Oshun in poems piercingly informed and surging.
Although other forces were at play 10 years ago, Cornelius and Toi have helped to radically change the landscape of American poetry. Anyone in the know will tell you as much. How tempting it is to roll call the number of important black poets writing today! And to urge you to imagine your artist colonies, literary journals, anthologies, and creative writing programs without their presence. But, so much more can be done; you know it and I do. The country club mentality still holds sway. Just think of all the books of poetry by black folk and other non-white Americans that do not get reviewed in the Sunday New York Times. Yes, a few high profile poets make the A-list, but the vast majority are still ignored. Moreover, the attitude of indifference to and lack of serious attention in the mainstream to poetry written by Arab-, Asian-, African-, Latina-, and Native American writers is one that causes serious alarm. Ghettoizing lesson plans or syllabi is not the answer either, but envisioning the extraordinary attributes of people who give our communities, playgrounds, and Wal-Mart aisles, as well as the founding principles of this country, its largeness of meaning and import demands that we create opportunities to exalt and begin to create a wider literature and bookshelf that values and is reflective of such glorious plurality. Such institutional building and communal support that is Cave Canem, Inc. is what a poet like Phillis Wheatley deserved when she stood before the country’s founding fathers to testify to the authenticity of her poetry, across the river from where I write in Boston, or to steel her against the criticism she received from Thomas Jefferson, who wrote “Religion, indeed, has produced a Phillis Wheatley, but it could not produce a poet.” But, as June Jordan tells us, she was the first. The tenor and continuum of denial of Wheatley’s genius and humanity, and poet’s who share her ancestral gifts and responsibilities is what spawned Toi and Cornelius to found Cave Canem, Inc. 225 years later. I congratulate them, then, and I do so now, with a nod to all of the people who have supported Cave Canem, Inc. over the past 10 years. Dopest Rhyme of the Day Artist: De La Soul [Dave] I cry a lot but admit to it; Sometimes I wish that I can go back. I want a wife; I love women. A li'l man that I can teach. I figure excess'll only bring an excessive amount of fussing. I'm like your modern day Jesus. And float soft kisses to my baby. (Yo, aint that Dave's little girl?) Yeah, respect her for that. She gon be somebody, Instead of somebody-baby-mama. I'm tryin to pop a hole in your Yankee cap. The skies over your head aint safe no more, And Hip Hop aint your own. http://ohhla.com/anonymous/delasoul/bionix/trying.dls.txt 4:12 a.m. [Listening to The Roots Game Theory and staring at this upright Steinway piano in my studio with the tall, glass vase of (tiger?) lilies I inherited from my friend and studio neighbor Anna Shuleit as she was booking it out of town. The air is resonant with their dying. I’ve not bothered to sweep away the fallen leaves off the black and ivory keys.] Well, reader, I think I’ve clocked my 14th sleepless night this year. Hold the applause. Normally, I average about two per month. Ever since senior year in high school, I have developed this unremitting anxiety and angst-filled relationship with Time (yes, a few significant events happened that year, which will remain between me and my future therapist), which expresses itself in a kind of hopeless restlessness as the late hours approach, a rising kind of agitation. To be frank, I think I am addicted to wakefulness, the great portal to my imagination and storehouse of odd images bursting at the threshold of consciousness seeking release in the wee hours. I care to know nothing about the I word, so have not scheduled a visit to my primary care physician. To say I have been ambivalent about being cured or drugged nightly is to miss how crucial and important I believe it is to my poetry. I can nearly feel my spirit untangling all those accumulated and layered sense impressions and felt experiences. I am not alone when I say that I like the access it gives me to my unconscious, not to mention the spirit world, passing over what some cultures refer to as the Kalunga line. Sometimes, I hallucinate, like tonight, you should have seen these large clef notes, the size of bats, flittering above my head. Earlier, the scent of butterscotch flooded my mouth. It’s not that I cannot fall asleep if I lay down; I just care not to. ****************** 4:34 a.m. [Pacing my office, listening to Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” that driving rhythm. I set off the alarm in the Radcliffe offices 10 minutes ago in the quest for water; fortunately, I know the code, but the Harvard police have arrived and I hear their voices and the crackling of their shoulder radio’s going off downstairs. I’ll turn down my music and be as still as possible. I bet you wonder why?] I’ll get on a plane at Logan Airport in four hours for a flight to Indianapolis; have lunch with Abby Smith, mom of one of my favorite UVM students Lily Smith, whose honor thesis on ekphrastic poetry I am directing from afar. Afterwards, I’ll catch a ride to Bloomington, Indiana with great thanks to poet Catherine Bowman for inviting me to speak to her students and read my work. Indianapolis was the final home of Mpozi Tolbert, an extraordinary photographer for the Indianapolis Star, and one of my dear friends growing up in Philadelphia. This summer, Mpozi collapsed and died at work. It shocked the nation. Mpozi was so vibrant and elegant in his art and his humanity. He was a tall, dreadlocked brother who wore his cameras on his body like jewelry. He was also the first official photographer for The Roots. Check out their slide show honoring his life: Here is an excerpt of what I wrote about him: I first met Mpozi when novelist Alice Walker came to Temple University in 1991(?). With cameras hanging from him, he hovered around the sides of the stage trying to get shots. (I think he was still in high school!) . . . . His work had great dimensions and vision, deeply original and of the times; one sensed his love of the art of photography, of hip-hop, but also a sense of justice and social commentary. Everyone knew he was destined. The Source ran photo-coverage of an old school hip-hop concert at Troc of which I wrote the text. Mpozi’s pictures honors those early pioneers (Seriously, please get a copy of it, if you don’t own it.) so beautifully and with equal amounts of gusto. [Just passed through checkpoint security, and was very happy to have on a fresh pair of socks, as I keep forgetting, one walks shoeless beneath the metal sensor. Listening to Talib Kweli on my Samsung mp3 player. Whew!] Today’s Rhyme of the Day Artist: Talib Kweli We keep it gangster, say “fo shizzle,” “fo sheezy,” and “stayin crunk.” Yo, I activism, attacking the system; the Blacks and Latins’s in prison. S***, and all they got is rappin’ to listen to; Now, why would I lie? Just to get by? The TV got us reaching for stars, Some people get breast enhancements and penis enlargers, They need something to rely on; we get high on all types of drugs, To get by, just to get by Our parents sing like John Lennon, “Imagine all the people.” Watch; Speaking of incarceration: Every year, I try to keep an ear to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Uniform Crime Reporting. Last year, there were 14 million arrests in the United States. Approximately 3.6 million black people were arrested. I am interested if we’ll ever turn the trend around in my life time of the number of black men incarcerated versus those entering post-high school institutions. Also, there were 7,160 reported hate crimes: 54.7 percent were racially motivated (2,630 Anti-Black leading the number of bias incidents); 17.1 percent were motivated by religious bias (848 Anti-Jewish leading the number of bias incidents); 14.2 percent resulted from sexual-orientation bias (621 Anti-Male Homosexual leading the number of bias incidents.) Okay, so who is writing the Hate Crime’s poem? ********************** 8:00 a.m. [Terminal B, Gate 9] Yesterday, I felt grateful for the presence of Christine Stansell in this world, a fellow at Radcliffe this year and professor of History at Princeton University, who writes “about the social, sexual, and cultural history of American women and gender relations.” Professor Stansell is a poetry enthusiast. Yesterday began our Tuesday lunch ritual of sharing poems that have entered our blood stream or poems that we wish to learn and discover a little more about through discussion. Here is a poem by James Wright that I had not known prior to yesterday, but moved me thoroughly. It is vintage Wright, with its pathos of place, Rilkean song, and surreal imagery. Listening to the Mourners Crouched down by a roadside windbreak from Shall We Gather at the River (Univ Press Of New England: September 1968) ********************** I just returned from chatting with Cathy Bowman’s bright students: Ali (rhymes with Cali), Sara, Allie, Joyce, Zach, and Emily. They read Hoops and had some insightful observations and posed some intelligent questions that had me, while formulating answers, revisit and explore some of the reasons as to why I write and what I hope to achieve on the page (which, of course, changes from poem to poem.) It’s funny; I wish I were more gifted to have that kind of macro-view of my work, but writing, as we say, is more exploratory and less strategic, less planned. (I guess this is another area in which poetry and wars are different; however, Army General John Abizaid’s address to Congress yesterday might make such dissimilarity, to my dismay, more imaginary and fallacious upon second reflection. Dig that: war as a form of research.) The discoveries of meaning, shape, intention, and even, aesthetic worth or impact, come after I’ve been immersed in the messy process of writing the poem. Those are moments to live for; the epic weight and lineage of words asserting their importance, the hidden or buried memories and feelings resurfacing after much psychic excavation, and the echoes of sounds underscoring aural pleasures and inviting cognitive associations and patterns are just some of the happenings of composing a poem that feel like breakthroughs or a kind of blessed surplus from creating and consciously rendering tranquil the inchoate unruliness of life. The walk over to Kirkwood Hall was stunning and beautiful, despite the stands of denuded trees (dogwoods and oaks) and wet leaves plastered on top of wet leaves everywhere. The air seemed heavily charged like the mental and skin-tingling sensation I’d experience right prior to and after rain-storms in New Orleans. My mother-in-law informed me yesterday that she graduated from Indiana University. Funny, I thought she was an alumnus of Stephens College in Columbia, Missouri and then Pratt Institute. Nonetheless, the campus is beautiful with all of its limestone designed and built by the Works Progress Administration; the art museum, which has no right angles, was designed by I.M. Pei. Oh yea! Alfred Kinsey did research here! Guess where I’m going after I finish this? The Kinsey Institute Gallery currently has an exhibition of three-dimensional objects from the institute’s collection of artworks and 48,000 images of erotica, simpley titled “Sex Objects.” Should be an enlightening afternoon. Last night, I had dinner at Truffles with Cathy, her boyfriend and supreme fellow Mark, and a fine and wonderfully garrulous Prof. Margo Crawford, who is a scholar of 20th century African American literature with a particular interest in the Black Arts Movement. So, the conversation touched upon and debunked so many historicized assumptions about that period and the people involved, Gwendolyn Brooks, especially. ********************** Okay, today’s Rhyme of the Day was inspired by Koren’s post in the Comments section. She was a high school student 13 years ago when my friend from Temple University and fellow poet Wadud Ahmad and I used to go around Philadelphia high schools and area colleges sharing our poetry and talking with the young about positive self-image and hip-hop, literacy and education, the necessity for political action, and a purposeful life. Wadud is a now a lawyer and works for the District Attorney’s office in Philadelphia. He has continued to perform his poetry around the world, both solo producing three independent CDs and with some esteemed musicians such as The Roots, Jill Scott, James Poyser,Victer Duplaix, Jamaaladeen Tacuma, and Jean-Paul Bourelly. Wadud and I self published a chapbook of our poetry titled Back to Africa with a White Woman. If you have a copy, consider yourself very very lucky. It’s a true artifact. Wadud is the voice on the last two Roots albums; you can hear him on “Star/Pointro” from The Tipping Point; and on “False Media” and “Take It There” from the Game Theory. The Roots have been especially smart in hiring poets to appear on their albums: my ace from back in the day Ursula Rucker, Amiri Baraka, and Wadud. Here’s Tariq and Wadud. Artist: The Roots [Wadud] [Black Thought] http://www.wadudmusic.com/ **************** Yesterday’s featured poem, “Listening to the Mourners” by James Wright, is a good poem to offer up for today’s Tip of the Day (for aspiring readers of poetry). I am amazed still that some people feel intimidated by poetry when presented with the opportunity. To read a poem is like performing heart surgery. Even people in my own department shy away from the pleasures poetry has to offer them, if they, of course, were to put in the work. But, maybe, this is the issue; we do not live in a time that fosters reflection and empathy through engagement in something so trivial as a poem. TIP: Every poem has its own relationship to time that is different than your own; it’s like its own time signature. Part of the work of reading a poem is to calibrate one’s rhythm to that of the poem, much in the same way a Shakespearean actor has to adjust from 21st century colloquial language and speech to medieval diction, if the dialogue on stage is to be convincing. Read the poem out loud over three or four successive periods. Put the poem down. Come back to it before you go to sleep. Then, read it again in the morning. The first line will give you some clue, as to what’s ahead, rhythmically, but note the shifts and changes. They carry great meaning. Paying attention to a poem’s rhythm requires sensitive listening and staying attuned to the moments of pause and silence in the poem. Pacing in a poem can be gendered or dictated by the poet or speaker’s identity, say race or age or abiding emotion, but mainly it is historical and of the Age. Maybe much of the work of literature classes is sensitizing students to enter the collective conscious and rhythms of epochs of past periods; and by embodying such measures they learn to forge forward knowledgably much in the way they would with other discrete forms of knowledge, say the medical procedures and steps to perform heart surgery. It is an amazing notion to consider: all of the artwork we consume gives us access to a humanity, an emotional life that is not our own, which is why I so loudly impress that we learn to value all of the poetry of the peoples of this country. It could save us. James Wright’s rhythm in this poem is on one occasion, ironically jaunty and metrical (The grief that I hear is my life somewhere.) Why? For the most part, it creeps and plods along quietly, underscoring the obligation of stillness and calm required for deep listening, which is the work of all poets. Crouched down by a roadside windbreak James Wright’s project, his life’s work, and what he sought to achieve in his poetry was to capture the great beauty “of his native land” Ohio (he was from Martin’s Ferry) but also to give an aesthetic stress to the poverty, bleakness, and spirit of the people killed by the work of mills and mining companies. The poem is about this work of naming their grief, the mourning of the lost; their lives are dignified by the music and pacing he brings to bear on his subject, particularly in that lovely and singular line of iambs and anapests: The grief that I hear is my life somewhere. How neat! There wasn’t much national fanfare to mark the end of the Poetry Bus Tour. I want to publicly thank Matthew Zapruder, Travis, Joshua, and Bill for the memories and the fun. Here’s a poster of tonight’s reading: [Indianapolis International Airport–Gate D1] US Airways Express 25 Thoughts for Friday 1. So many successful people in the public sphere suffer from mild forms of narcissism and pretense, especially politicians, art administrators, and poets. 2. Beware megalomaniacal executives tampering in the valley. 3. I am drawn to poets whose work presents touches of madness. 4. I am repelled by excessive earnestness of politicians, thus a superficiality of spirit, but adore politicians and poets who possess heartfelt intelligence. 5. What makes my life a gem of a life are my friends, and the poets for whom I feel the greatest affinity, both the living and the dead. Those circles widen and widen. 6. I hope to be read some day in Uzbekistan. 7. Yesterday, I picked up a used copy of John Ashbery’s Reported Sightings–Art Chronicles 1957–1987. It’s his collection of critical essays and reviews of painters, poets, art exhibits, and movements. I turned to the chapter on Toulouse-Lautrec and came across this sentence: “[Toulouse-Lautrec’s] work[s] depend far too much on their subject matter for their effect, and that one’s response to them is sharply conditioned by how worked up one can get about Montmartre night life at the turn of the century.” I begin to think about a host of poets for whom their names are allied with their subject matter. I’ll refrain from listing, but fill in the blank with your own awareness. Is this a bad thing for a poet? What happens if one does not have a subject matter, but is all technique? 8. Sabine Scho, a very fine German poet living in Sao Paolo, Brazil, is translating some of my poems for the foreign publisher Jung und Jung. I am very grateful. http://www.goethe.de/ins/au/lp/prj/bpo/poe/sch/enindex.htm or http://www.jungundjung.at/ 9. Driving through Indiana, I am reminded of Auden’s line: Raw towns that we believe and die in. 10. The blog is a narcissist’s wet dream. 11. Lately, when reading poems, I can detect a palimpsest of abandoned choices beneath the poet’s final draft. It is almost as if I can detect what words and decisions of syntax had been scratched or erased out, which sparks a desire to see the original drafts. 12. At Bread Loaf, a Chicano writer, who I had spent nearly two weeks with on the basketball court, when not drinking Cape Codders, came up to congratulate me after my reading, then confessed that upon first meeting me, and up until an hour before I had read, he had wondered where was “my anger.” 13. Affordable parking in Cambridge, Massachusetts is a joke. 14. For those of us who believe crafting artful language is a social practice of high literacy and participation in a democratic society, we should begin now on working to advise Senator Obama from having his name associated with Osama, a tactic I fear his adversaries and political strategists will deploy to divert his presidential bid, should the time come. 15. The Boys Are At It Again: the death of poetry and the counterargument of poetry’s well-being. I just read D.W. Fenza’s eloquent “Who Keeps Killing Poetry,” in the Writer’s Chronicle, his open-mouthed response to John Barr’s “American Poetry in the New Century.” 16. When I was a kid, about eight or nine years old, we used to have rock fights across vacant lots, where the kids on the other side in our own neighborhood we had constructed in our minds as a rival gang. I suspect Fenza and Barr will be shaking hands sometime in the near future. 17. My current playlist includes: Pink Martini, some audio lectures from the MLA Web site, Mark Doty’s poetry reading at the University of Chicago, jazz pianists and avant-gardists Andrew Hill and Ahmad Jamal, instrumental Beastie Boys, soundtrack from Waking Life, which features Tosca Tango Orchestra, Glenn Gould, Treme Brass Band, James Booker and the New Orleans Klezmer All-Stars. 18. The disbelief and shock the world experienced watching victims of Katrina last summer on televisions across the globe as well as an indifferent federal government’s lack of response to those victims was what the world experienced over 30 years ago watching civil rights marchers and upright, decent black people being attacked by dogs and violent racists. After the Vietnam War, Pentagon learned to control images of war. 19. What makes my life a gem of a life is my family. 20. Congratulations to Nathaniel Mackey on winning the National Book Award for his collection of poetry Splay Anthem. 21. Maurice Manning is a fine poet; last night, I found out that he’s also a fine man. 22. If ever in Bloomington, Indiana, please visit the John Waldron Art Center and make a donation. They hold public readings in a former firebay that now serves as a blackbox theater. They also have lots of gallery spaces and classrooms. 23. Indiana University has some astute MFA students in poetry including Neil Perry, Sarah Wyatt, Elizabeth Hoover, and Tracy Truels. We dined at the Uptown Café, and their interests range from Ralph Ellison to Lincoln’s speeches. We all agreed IU does not have a dominant or abiding aesthetic from which the students write. 24. I had fun this week and thanks to all who sent warm e-mails. Well, I wasn’t so Lite, and someday, I’ll finish my essay on Violence and Poetry, and let’s continue to keep in touch. You know where to find me. 25. Not four feet away from me, a woman is talking to the large plate glass separating us from the airplanes. She has a cup of coffee in one hand and is wildly gesticulating with the other. I haven’t gotten used to seeing people with their “Bluetooths” in their ear. She looks like a cyborg . |
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