Mark Nowak on KKFI in KCMO

Just wanted to call your attention to the interview with poet-organizer Mark Nowak on this week's Heartland Labor Forum, Thursday, August 13, on KKFI-FM, 90.1. His segment runs at 6:30 pm apparently (the show is 6-7) - it's a show on new labor lit (esp. related to coal mining, such as Mark's new book of poetry/mixed-genre writing and photos, Coal Mountain Elementary, Coffee House Press - which you should check out, if you haven't already). You can also listen on your computer - and apparently, they rebroadcast the show on Friday.

Poets on Modernist Women Poets?

Here's what I want to know, poetry fans: What is your favorite essay, by a poet, written in the last 15 years, on any of the following poets: Stein; Millay; Loy; Moore; HD; (Riding) Jackson; Boyle; Rukeyser; Bennett; or H. Johnson?

Winners will be featured on the front page of this site.

The buzz now is all about whether or not Barrry O. wants to raise taxes on persons earning under $250K/yr. (thereby breaking a campaign promise).

What I want to know is whether or not Barry O. wants to raise taxes on persons (artificial and natural) earning more than $250K/yr. - esp. those earning more than $250 million/yr. - you know, the kind of persons who bundle $100K's in campaign contributions to politicians.

Actually, scratch that. I don't want to know.

Jen Humphrey's _Up From the Ground_

I would like to call your attention to Jen Humphrey’s blog, Up From the Ground (which is now a fixture under “Blogs ‘We’ Like,” right). Jen is the Director of Communications for the Natural History Museum at the University of Kansas (which also houses the Center for Biodiversity). She is also a (new) farmer and an MFA student.

Over the next year (at least), Jen will be writing her MFA thesis on-line – qua blog. Naturally, it will involve communications, nature, and farming. But I think it will be different from other blogs on those various topics, in that she is becoming ever more aware of the possibilities and limitations of the Blog Form – and how it might intersect with farming. For one thing, I and her other committee members are going to comment on the blog on the blog – thereby becoming part of the blog/thesis. Hell, you can comment on the blog and become part of her thesis! To add to the recursive fun, I fully expect that she will read this blog post, which is a reflection on her reflections on her blog. And she may even comment.

I pointed out to Jen (f2f, can you believe it??) that writing is a technology – and one that was first used to record agricultural produce. All that's left of that Sumerian millet are those clay tablets. (One thing I forgot to suggest is that she speak to a 21 c. Large Producer or two – about how they use communications technology; Jen and Jess are just a few acres and goats).

I also mentioned the potential open ended-ness of the blogosphere (which is really more pear-shaped, in my imagination). Unlike the Traditional Essay, blog posts do not have to achieve Closure. They can be part of a series; they can include links that take you away from them; they can invite comments that become part of them; and there is always the possibility of more to come – even if there is a long hiatus between posts. Blogs never end – either spatially or temporally. Until the coal runs out, anyway.

(Here in Lawrence, we have one of the top-ten greenhouse-gas emitters in the country, in the form of the power plant that is producing electricity for the very words I am typing now. Unlike the blogosphere, the ecosphere really is a closed system.)

All of this self-reflection is crucial, of course, because what is a bigger corn-pone stereotype than being a farmer in Kansas? People in Kansas, like people everywhere, begin to take on the characteristics, interests, and language of what they are supposed to be like. You should hear me talk in reverent tones about my connection to the local landscape. I can even do it in a Bob Dole/Pat Roberts twang.

Anyway, be part of the project. Visit the blog.

Thankfully, there is now a consulting firm to assist aspiring AWP panel proposers.

I should say, by way of clarification, that I don't think what Susan Schultz has in mind is civil disobedience, per se. I get the impression that she's thinking more Dick Tuck than Bruce Franklin (or Donald Segretti).

Barbaric AWP (?)

Susan M. Schultz recently posted on her blog (Tinfish Editor's Blog) a postmortem of some recent panel proposals for the AWP (Association of Writers and Writing Programs) convention next year. She laments the conservative nature of the AWP, when it comes to innovative writing, and she's issuing a call for "guerilla poetry action," a la the kind of thing described in Jules Boykoff's and Kaia Sand's Landscapes of Dissent: Guerrilla Poetry and the Public Sphere.

I'm reminded of the account, in Paul Lauter's and Louis Kampf's The Politics of Literature: Dissenting Essays on the Teaching of English (Pantheon, 1972), of the left radical takeover of the MLA in 1968. I wonder how many young scholars realize the role that civil disobedience (and just plain "talking back") played in opening up that organization to feminist, historicist, political literary criticism, not to mention study of "ethnic" literatures. And before that, the New Critics took it over from the philologists. Perhaps the AWP is ripe for this kind of thing, just at the moment when a new avant-garde is ascendent in the literary world - and when it is provoking a reaction by the conservators of the style of 50 years ago.

Poetry and Cultural Studies

That sounds like "oil and water" to a lot of people. And my contribution in the new Poetry and Cultural Studies: A Reader (U. of Illinois) explains why. But, really, this project, from Maria Damon and Ira Livingston, has been long anticipated b/c it will fill an enormous gap in the literature - esp. for the classroom. As the table of contents shows, they include everyone from Wordsworth to Frankfurt to Today, giving "cultural studies" a broad purview - and including lots of definitions of poetry in the process. Hopefully this book will make more younger scholars realize that, yes, poetry is a part of the same cultural-historical narrative that fiction critics have been talking about lo these many years.

Le _P-QUEUE_ v. 6 est ariveé!

Well, P-Queue #6 is in the world now, apparently. It "premiered" at Boog City in NYC this past week. It contains work by David Brazil • Stephen Collis • Rob Halpern • JOSEPH HARRINGTON* • Geof Huth • Sueyeun Juliette Lee • Emily McVarish • Lauren Shufran • Stephanie Strickland • Roberto Tejada • Divya Victor • & Tyrone Williams. I haven't received my copy yet, so the anticipation is killing me.

But seriously, if you haven't encountered this journal, I highly recommend that you do. It's one of the few that presents truly trans- or non-genre work - and even graphically challenging non-vizpo work. And a lot of that work is, by the same token, really and truly innovative. I'm tickled and honored to have my work included.

*please see blog title, above.

Pick a Title

Which of the following titles would you notice or remember? (if any):

- The Dead Mom Scrolls

- Say a Poem

- Goodnight, Whoever’s Listening

- A Little Book That Looks Like a Heart

- I’m Showing You Everything

- The Longest Kind of Time

Please “vote” – or leave snide comments – in the comments section. Thanks!

_OTOLITHS_ 14 Is "Live"

Direct from the Southern Hemisphere, here is issue 14 of Otoliths, featuring work by Eileen R. Tabios, Tan Lin, Charles Freeland, JOSEPH HARRINGTON, and many other fine writers.