Is anyone interested in a new time for our poetry lab? We have another person who’d like to attend but can’t because of scheduling. Meg and Derek often can’t make our current time. Can we follow up on this in our comments section below?
I promised Matt some people to read in and around the Mackey area of the poetic terrain. I’d say Charles Olson is a good place to look. Olson’s work is huge and troubling to me sometimes. But I’d say that the selected poems is good, as is the selected prose. I’d especially recommend reading “Call Me Ishmael,” Olson’s attempt to make a historical-poetical theory of America. Robert Duncan is very definitely someone to look at in the Mackey area. Duncan’s later poems are probably where to go for Mackey impacts, especially Bending the Bow onward. Duncan’s The H.D. Book (pdf of The H.D. Book) is another good place to look. It’s a long and rambling book about H.D., ostensibly, that is really a reconsideration of what Modernism was for Anglophone poetry.
And you definitely have to check out Kamau Brathwaite and William Carlos Williams. For Brathwaite, I think that X/Self is a very good book to look at. It’s a conversation between him and Mackey, and you can really get a good sense of Brathwaite’s poetry in it. That's a really nice thing, the prose in that book. I’d also say to look at Ancestors and The Arrivants.
For WCW, you probably learn more about Mackey around Asphodel, that Greeny Flower, but I think it’d be really good to check out Spring and All. And Kora in Hell and In the American Grain, odd-interesting essays on American figures.
I’d also like to draw your attention to the Poetry Symposium this week on campus. Here’s the schedule. There are some good people speaking at this, really interesting scholars of some of the sorts of poetry we look at from time to time. If you have an interest in situating yourself within the broader realm of poetic practice, it might be good to check out one or two of these panels.
The keynotes is 7:30pm in Gerber Lounge on the 3rd floor of EPB. His title is “When Context Is All: The Specificity of Popular Poetry.” The agenda of Nelson might be familiar. His Repression and Recovery was a project aimed at recovering poets who were ignored by earlier critics who thought those poets were bad or mediocre. That’s the most brazen shorthand for his project. I don’t always agree with what he’s up to, because I’m leary of some of the rocks he slings at aesthetics while he goes about praising his lesser-known or unknown poets. He’s worth attending to.
I promised Kassia some poetry that her dream project reminds me of. There’s something dreamlike in Hannah Weiner’s attempt to record the strange experiences she had. That’s in her book Country Girl. I have just started, but still recommend, Patrick Durgin’s introduction to Weiner’s early work. Patrick went to school here for a while, and I got to know him (briefly) and his work, and I have learned it’s a Good Thing to follow up wherever I encounter his name.
And finally, finally, the STAR POWER: here’s a link to an article on Barack Obama’s early poetry. And yes indeedy-do, it includes a couple of them poem things. w00t!
I promised Matt some people to read in and around the Mackey area of the poetic terrain. I’d say Charles Olson is a good place to look. Olson’s work is huge and troubling to me sometimes. But I’d say that the selected poems is good, as is the selected prose. I’d especially recommend reading “Call Me Ishmael,” Olson’s attempt to make a historical-poetical theory of America. Robert Duncan is very definitely someone to look at in the Mackey area. Duncan’s later poems are probably where to go for Mackey impacts, especially Bending the Bow onward. Duncan’s The H.D. Book (pdf of The H.D. Book) is another good place to look. It’s a long and rambling book about H.D., ostensibly, that is really a reconsideration of what Modernism was for Anglophone poetry.
And you definitely have to check out Kamau Brathwaite and William Carlos Williams. For Brathwaite, I think that X/Self is a very good book to look at. It’s a conversation between him and Mackey, and you can really get a good sense of Brathwaite’s poetry in it. That's a really nice thing, the prose in that book. I’d also say to look at Ancestors and The Arrivants.
For WCW, you probably learn more about Mackey around Asphodel, that Greeny Flower, but I think it’d be really good to check out Spring and All. And Kora in Hell and In the American Grain, odd-interesting essays on American figures.
I’d also like to draw your attention to the Poetry Symposium this week on campus. Here’s the schedule. There are some good people speaking at this, really interesting scholars of some of the sorts of poetry we look at from time to time. If you have an interest in situating yourself within the broader realm of poetic practice, it might be good to check out one or two of these panels.
The keynotes is 7:30pm in Gerber Lounge on the 3rd floor of EPB. His title is “When Context Is All: The Specificity of Popular Poetry.” The agenda of Nelson might be familiar. His Repression and Recovery was a project aimed at recovering poets who were ignored by earlier critics who thought those poets were bad or mediocre. That’s the most brazen shorthand for his project. I don’t always agree with what he’s up to, because I’m leary of some of the rocks he slings at aesthetics while he goes about praising his lesser-known or unknown poets. He’s worth attending to.
I promised Kassia some poetry that her dream project reminds me of. There’s something dreamlike in Hannah Weiner’s attempt to record the strange experiences she had. That’s in her book Country Girl. I have just started, but still recommend, Patrick Durgin’s introduction to Weiner’s early work. Patrick went to school here for a while, and I got to know him (briefly) and his work, and I have learned it’s a Good Thing to follow up wherever I encounter his name.
And finally, finally, the STAR POWER: here’s a link to an article on Barack Obama’s early poetry. And yes indeedy-do, it includes a couple of them poem things. w00t!
3 comments:
I don't have another free day unless people would want to able to do it at 6pm on Wednesdays or start later on Friday.
There is always the weekend but I have no idea what you guys can do with that.
That time is actually great for me, it's just I've been busy as of late. I won't have to miss another one the rest of the year. If we do move the day, the only other time that works for me is Monday after 5.
uhhh, due to my new and improved schedule, pretty much any time any day is fine. except not mornings yuck.
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