May 15: Bloggers Unite for Human Rights!

And that includes here in the United States, as well.

Si Se Puede

Rebecca Walker on the Stanton feminists and Obama

This gem of an entry begins with musings on where to move, then shifts to an analysis of “the” feminist line on Obama vs. Hillary. I agree with Walker; I would like to remind those of us who distinguish between women and doormats that choosing to vote for a male candidate over a female candidate is not in and of itself sexist. Someone or another’s old line about judgment, color of skin, and content of character comes to mind. I would also like to point out that there is no such thing as a single feminist line, as we learned in the Stone Age of women’s studies. I am so tired of hearing otherwise intelligent women make wildly specious claims that any woman who does not vote for Hillary is a traitor, a la some misguided African-Americans who saw the O.J. Simpson acquittal as “one for our side.” Obama’s distaste for this simpleminded (and ultimately self-loathing) approach to race and gender is a big reason why he gets my vote.

Against Departmental Paranoia

This cracks me up. Good advice (except when they’re out to get you)!

http://rateyourstudents.blogspot.com/2008/04/quit-being-victim-stan-silverback-from.html

 

A notch in the CV

I find myself appointed vice-president of the campus-wide grad student group.

The group began year before last with great gusto, and is hanging on this year. It began in response to payroll problems and professionalization issues that several grad students had experienced. Last week, I gave a talk that had been scheduled for months–right in the middle of deadline crunch–and we had a light turnout. We decided that, from now on, we won’t sked anything for the last two weeks of class. (D’oh!)

Meanwhile, our department’s annual graduate conference went interdisciplinary this winter (a good thing). I think the more that grad students network, the better it is for all concerned.

This summer, I’ll be working on a survey of the graduate teaching assistants in my department. I’m hoping that we can get some fresh ideas from folks who aren’t necessarily gung-ho “joiners,” but who have trenchant observations and useful critiques. 

I’m also supposed to put on a graduate study-abroad conference this fall. There are plenty of opportunities for undergrads, who generally have a lot more time (and money) to take great trips abroad; however, these trips rarely, if ever, accommodate the needs of grad students, whose life stage, research needs, teaching obligations, and financial pressures pose completely different problems. Naturally there’s the Peace Corps and Fulbrights, which are not options for everyone. While grad students should be able to piece together their own individual studies abroad, the complexities of managing this task can be daunting. The idea I have is to collect information that is cross-disciplinary and timesaving (e.g., basic grantwriting information and resources, making contacts abroad, etc.), as well as inviting representatives of specifically graduate-level study-abroad programs, and setting up an information fair on perhaps a Friday-Saturday schedule. This should accommodate most people’s schedules.

The other thing our group is really hot to do is to establish mentoring for undergrads. We did have a huge turnout for the grad school information fair (a couple of hundred, I’m told). I’d really like to see some sort of publication that institutes a serious dialogue about teaching and learning, career building, and academic success between undergraduate and graduate students. Right now there is almost no such communication (unless you count teaching “evaluation” bubble-sheets). We could institute such a publication online at no cost, either on a GSU server or offsite. Another publication (definitely offsite) could serve as a means of communication between grad students and faculty/administration. Here, we could discuss policy issues (please don’t lump us in with undergrads when you institute certain procedures; we need health care options that address our lifestage; why are we paying for football and pizza parties?; etc.).

Anyway, I’m not sure I need one more iron in the fire, but the situation of grad students in the context of the larger university is something I care about deeply. Someday, when I’m a professor, I will gladly mentor the grad students. This is one way to begin.

Finals, finishing, football, financial aid

Well, two classes down, one to go. I’m working on my take-home final for Form and Theory of Fiction, which involves, among other things, “the incremental perturbation of an unstable homeostatic system and its catastrophic restoration to a complexified equilibrium” (John Barth playing with jargon).

The fiction class was a great experience. I’d never studied fiction theory as such, just taken a few fiction workshops as a poet dabbling around. I’d read John Gardner’s The Art of Fiction and various other such books as a younger writer trying to teach myself in a vacuum. Now I feel as if I have some command of the basics beyond Freytag’s Pyramid and limited-omniscient POV. (Thanks, Dr. Joseph!)

This newfound, or freshly-recovered, part of my writing life has led me to indulge my get-around-to list in more concrete ways. I’m taking short-form screenwriting this Maymester, which probably isn’t too much a stretch for someone with seven years of writing for TV and several reads of Aristotle’s Poetics behind her. And this fall, I’ll be attempting Dr. Joseph’s novel-writing class, which is open to poets and is not a workshop per se, but will put us and our work through the hopper. This necessitates my writing a draft novel front-to-back by August. I had planned to “treat myself” to both of these projects after graduation. Now I’m making them part of the program, which is clearly more efficient.

My poetry is turned loose, meanwhile, meaning I’m writing whatever the hell I feel like, which are the poems I hope will comprise my dissertation. The truth is, I’m at the point where I’m so sick of workshop that I hate going. As I have one more required workshop to cross off the list, that’s not a fun place to be. I quiz myself as to why I have such a strong negative reaction to workshopping my stuff these days.

Is it the people? Well, not particularly. Sometimes the behavior of certain younger poets is irritating, but that has more to do with my own age and concept of time. I always learn from everyone’s work, whether or not the piece itself impresses; it’d be completely wrong to say “I don’t like the people I’m in workshop with.”

It is the bankrupt nature, the complete predictability, of Iowa-style workshop? That’s a big part of it. I’m always on the look out for ways to spice up workshop–when I teach it, anyway–and to break out of the routine while still pushing students to improve their work and to critique others’. Someone put it well last week–I forget who at the moment–either Michael Martone or Sheri Joseph or someone in the fiction class, a group I adore–that workshop becomes more about editing than it does about writing, and we lose sight of the fun part. I’m for more fun. Fun is more fun than being a drag. Workshop, meaning university workshop, is a drag. Fortunately, other bright minds feel the same way, and I’m seeing more in the literature about jazzing it up, throwing out the old routine, making it freaking new.

Is it my own stress? This is likely the driving factor. I can’t work in my own home without interruption or distraction. There’s no place suitable to decamp nearby now that my coffee shop is closed. (Boooo!) The price of gas now prohibits casual asynchronous jaunts to the library. And the library itself is a carnival of loud and self-important late-adolescent cellphone chatter and “study group” parties. I’m ready to wrap the daily grind and get on to studying for comps. Unfortunately, I’ve got another year of this, assuming my overloaded express train doesn’t derail. I have taken on extra classes outside my major to supplement things I’m not getting there (ed psych, more advanced Spanish, screenwriting), and I haven’t been able to load up in-major as yet. Even if I do, I’ll still be taking classes until spring, so it makes sense to spread out some of this. Yet a lot of excellent courses with fantastic professors are being offered this fall. I can’t take them all, but I’m going to snatch up as many as possible: Dr. Snow’s 18th-century novel class and Dr. Gylys’ second half of 20th-century English and American poetry. The novel class, which is a fantastic opportunity, comes in lieu of a conflict with Old English, which was cancelled because only I and one other person had signed up for it. I really don’t understand why it’s not a required class for graduate students in English. But I will have my OE one way or another, even if I have to transfer it in from elsewhere. Hwaet! No self-respecting poet should be without it.

I’m exhausted all the time. I’m being jerked around about financial aid, just as my classmates are. I didn’t get any this semester. The “federal government” has “determined,” in all its passive-voice-lack-of-agency- glory, that I have a spare $5300 lying around which I can use to pay for school. News to me! If I had a spare $5300, I’d be buying a crappy little tear-down shack as close to the beach as I could get, as far from downtown Atlanta as possible, teaching, writing, and getting on the water every day. I ran across a friend, a brilliant poet with chronic health issues who desperately needs all the financial aid she can get, sitting in the Plaza on her cellphone and begging for some assistance from the bureaucracy. And I understand that the incoming grad students aren’t getting full funding. Now THAT really indicates a need for a start-up football team, don’t you think? For another $85 per semester, starting now, I can help pay for a football team that will be a long-term fiscal drain on the university. Or I can park my car and/or ride the bus to school for a month. And, if said team were to make money, in spite of all evidence to the contrary, do you think any of it would be going to the new grad students in English? Or to reduce classroom size by hiring twice as many full-time instructors? Or to improve cardkey access on campus and increase the number of police officers on patrol? Aw hell no. But the new coach gets $3 million a year salary, according to the rumor mill.

Yeah, I want out. But at this stage of the game, I’m not leaving without my piece of paper.

Buy Letters via Paypal at Red Hen Press

You can now place your one-click order for Letters to the World via Red Hen Press

http://redhen.org/bookDetail.asp?bookID=237

Amazon.com also has it, but I am boycotting amazon.com for now. Order direct from the press.

Atlanta Queer Literary Festival

Last year, Franklin Aboott and I were kicking around the idea of offering free writing workshops as part of an LGBTQ literary festival here in Atlanta. His periodic reading series, Atlanta Rainbow Muse, and the continued presence of Outwrite and Charis have created a sustainable local audience. Now, after today’s productive board meeting, I’m beating the bushes for donors, big-name gay poets, and every queer student in every graduate creative writing program in metro Atlanta. 

The event will take place at various mobility-friendly venues, on or close to public transportation, between Outwrite and Charis. We have almost no money to speak of, and the 501(c)3 process takes a few years, so we aren’t able to apply for many grants. The best we can do at this point is to secure as many corporate sponsors and private donors as possible, as well as urge authors to apply for the Poets and Writers $50 honorarium.

I’m fully aware of how slim the chances are of having major writers show up pro bono–and I am passionately opposed to asking writers to work for free, even if it is for the community. However, I have a sense that we can pull off this event, possibly even with an angel or two to get the featured guests paid. I’m asking various poets I know exactly what it would take to get them here. More as it develops.

* * * 

Meantime, you can drop by Outwrite on Tax Night (Tuesday, April 15, 8 pm) and decompress at the next Franklin Abbott and Friends production, “Celebrating Spring.” I’ll be reading along with Reginald Jackson and Collin Kelley. Just don’t call me Karen.

I’ll also be reading at the Gulf Coast Association of Creative Writing Teachers on April 12 in Fairhope, Alabama. It’ll be nice because that was where Robert Phillips solicited my poem “New Breast” for Texas Review; now, it’s in Letters to the World. That GCACWT reading back around 2000 was an important boost. It’ll also be good to touch base with some of the writers I studied with at UNO.

 

RIP Ashley Morris, The Best Mayor New Orleans Never Had

If you know what SFMF and FYYFF mean, you may know that Ashley Morris passed away the other day.

He made a lot of grieving, rage-filled New Orleanians laugh. That in itself makes him a hero. A sample:

 

 

Ronnie Virgets had a great chapter in his book Say Cap entitled Sinn Fein, which means ourselves alone. That’s probably how we’re gonna get outta this mess, by ourselves. I’m not banking on anyone to do anything, because that’s part of the White House stragetizeing: wait us out until we’re bankrupt from mortgages and rent and no jobs, and then buy us out and create vinyl-sided McMansions. I think that they’re forgetting how hard-headed we are, and how we won’t bow down. They ain’t gettin’ nuttin’ from us. Especially Mardi Gras.

Da Paper has an outstanding piece by Brian Thevenot on how They view carnival. For example:

a writer for The Daily Telegraph in London described people watching last week’s Krewe du Vieux parade as being mostly “New Orleans residents, fueled by Hurricane cocktails and marijuana smoked openly in the presence of tolerant New Orleans policemen.”

Yeah, right. We all drink hurricanes and even my mother-in-law flashes her tits for beads, which she wears year round, when we aren’t busy being alcoholics and collecting welfare, and generally slacking.

Fuck you, Daily Telegraph. Go drink your gin and tonic with your stiff upper lip, and have a soccer riot killing hundreds and eat your organ meat and avoid the dentist and act hostile toward Pakistanis and Indians.

Oooohhhhh….shoe on dat udder foot, ain’t it?

Look, bitches. We know how to do Carnival. Us and Rio. We see what happens when You try to do it. You fail, miserably, because YOU DON’T GET IT.

The bastion of journalistic integrity, the Chicago Tribune stated that the city is starkly segregated.

Pot, kettle; kettle, pot.

Chicago is a fucking demonic cesspool of racism. Da whites live in da north; da blacks live in da south; da Mexicans live in da west.

So let it be written; so let it be done.

Fuck you Chicago Tribune. We are NEW ORLEANS. SINN FEIN. So just shut the fuck up and put more salt on the roads. And don’t you dare write one fucking word about how ourpoliticians are corrupt.

I can tell you this: I don’t know a single person in New Orleans, regardless of race, age, or sex, who don’t all want the same thing for Mardi Gras: A Zulu Coconut.

Sinn Fein, baby.

My biggest problem with Carnival, now that the excrable Krewe of America is gone, is probably Orpheus, with the Hollywood factor, and all the non-locals riding. And Steven Seagal? WTF are you thinking, Harry?

Sinn Fein, baby.

Without a doubt, the best marching band today was the MAX band, consisting of kids from St. Augustine’s, St. Mary’s, and Xavier Prep. These kids had 5 weeks to learn their book of 26 songs, and they rocked the llama’s ass.

Sinn Fein.

The third battle’s got a great dish on the New Orleans Flag, and why you’re seeing so many of them lately. I’ll tell you why, because we are no longer Americans.

We are New Orleanians.

I’ve always said that from about Panama City to Lafayette, and about 50 miles inland (not including Tallahassee or Baton Rouge) should be one state. I mean, do the people of New Orleans have diddley in common with the people of Bossier City? Do the people of Mobile have anything in common with the people of Montgomery? Do the people of Port St. Joe have anything in common with the snobs of Boca Raton? Hell no. But the coast, the coast has always been special. We all pretty much get it, although now Pensacola is more a military retiree home, and they’re trying to impose their Ohio values on people that just want to drink beer and fish.

Sinn Fein.

Gulf Sails calls for armoring the levees systems of this region with the skulls of these… twits.

Poppy has more rantings against Them, and she nails Them good.

Markus has compiled a list of K blogs, and there are a few that I don’t have in the linkeroos off to the left. I have since added the Building Big Easy, as there’s a wealth of info there, not just architectural.

As far as architecture goes, well, I’m with the Dutch helping us on that levee thing, but not really on architecture. I don’t want zigzag houses. I want them to look like New Orleans. Sinn Fein, bitch.

And I want to see Hastert when he comes to NOLA. He’s the fucking fuck that said the US shouldn’t rebuild NOLA. I want a shitstorm to attack his district. I want floods, tornadoes, fire and brimstone, locusts, earthquakes, dogs and cats living together, drout, famine, and mormons to attack this mutherfucker’s district. Cocksucker. I want to see him looking at people going through their belongings in the 9th ward, and him tell me to my face that the levees should not be rebuilt. I want his family to endure living in shit for 6 months. Better yet, I want him to look Leah Chase or Fats Domino in the face and tell them to move to a place with higher ground.

Finally, let’s look at the root of blame. We all know Brownie was a fucking clueless deer in the headlights, in way over his head. Well, here’s the etymology, courtesy of Cade Roux.

Joe Allbaugh was named director of FEMA. Allbaugh named Brownie. Who named Allbaugh? Well, evidently, ambassadorships are not the sole prize of political operative scoundrels any more.

The buck stops where, W?

Let’s close with a marvelous quote from the aforementioned Brian Thevenot article:

Nineteenth century writer Lafcadio Hearn wrote a letter to a friend in Cincinnati about two years after he arrived in New Orleans in 1877, during a grim period in which thousands died from yellow fever. He summed up his situation this way:

“Times are not good here. The city is crumbling into ashes. It has been buried under a lava flood of taxes and frauds and maladministrations so that it has become only a study for archaeologists. Its condition is so bad that when I write about it, as I intend to do soon, nobody will believe I am telling the truth. But it is better to live here in sackcloth and ashes than to own the whole state of Ohio.”

Sinn Fein.

 

Condolences to his wife Hana and family, and to good mutual friend Ray Shea, whose flag is flying here in Ashley’s honor.

Sinn Fein. Indeed. May Ashley Morris second-line over FEMA, the White House, the Corps, and every crooked contractor and insurance adjuster and real estate-development whore, unleashing a hellacious hailstorm of Zulu coconuts down on the heads of all such evildoers.

 

 

Day 2: Warren, Watkins, McHenry, Harrison, McClatchy, Salter, Snodgrass, Strand

There was plenty of meaty reading today at Emory. What a pleasure to hear Deborah Warren’s astounding, elegant lines and New England e’s as o’s first thing in the morning, followed by Clive Watkins, whose poem about language and autism (”black hooks”) stuck its barbs under my fingernails. Eric McHenry, wonderful fellow, compelling poet of conscience, was there with a large chunk of his family. Jeffrey Harrison wrote his delighttfully anti-rock-star-poet-prof “Fork,” as well as “Medusa,” a poem I adore (and came to know thanks to Beth Gylys). I’d never heard McClatchy read before, and his reading was quite short (three poems, if I recall correctly?), but he took me back to the early days o the AIDS crisis. Mary Jo Salter, who along with Jon Stallworthy and Margaret Ferguson, revamped the venerable Norton Anthology of Poetry a few years ago, read a stunning poem, in which a pilot muses to his passengers about their plane’s pending crash–it reminded me of James Dickey’s poem “Falling.”

Today’s interviewees were Mark Strand, who has a hilarious, smart, dry wit, and W. D. Snodgrass, who throws his head back periodically and gives a great belly laugh when something amuses him. Snodgrass spoke at some length about interviewing Nazi architect Albert Speer as part of his research for The Fuehrer Bunker–specifically making the point that the evil and hatred that the Nazis carried within themselves also lives in the rest of us, which is why we try to vilify them. Unfortunately, the Nazis were all too human.

Strand capped the day by reading from his work, which clearly contains echoes of Latin American surrealismo, modulated by gringo sensibility.

Nearly all of the GSU graduate poetry workshop was there at one point or another throughout the day (so I wasn’t the only one “representing” The People’s University): Leon Stokesbury, Beth Gylys, Kathy Kincer, Cheryl Stiles, Austin Segrest, and Corey Green. Who else was there? John Stone, Turner Cassity, Georgia S., Janice Moore, Kevin Young (of course), Chelsea Rathburn and Jim May… a bunch of other folks (feel free to name them/yourself).

A few pix to come, along with the rest of the notes from Gioia’s interview, after which I’d like to pick up on a couple of the salient points he made. Try to restrain yourselves from this season’s terribly fashionable ad hominem attacks until you hear what he had to say.