One of these days, I swear, C and I are going to experience Carnaval (or Carnival) in Dominican Republic, Brazil, Trinidad, Panama, France, somewhere! Or even Mardi Gras (well, I've been to my native city's version of Mardi Gras, which is tiny but a lot of fun). Here are some videos from the Dominican Republic's Carnavals, which are underway. Talk about a cure for the winter doldrums (though the thaw has begun and the mountains of snow are slowly receding, but still...).Via Monaga blogCarnival in La Vega, Dominican RepublicCarnaval in Santiago...
Wednesday, 16 February 2011
Saturday, 12 February 2011
One event that continues to reverberate now that the 2011 AWP Conference has ended is author and critic Claudia Rankine's "performance of sorts," as she called it, or intervention, as I and others have chosen to call it, concerning Tony Hoagland's racist poem "Change," at the Academy of American Poets' reading (with Charles Wright) on Thursday, January 5, 2011. I was unable to attend, but almost immediately afterward I read Tisa Bryant's short but...
Friday, 11 February 2011
He's gone! As per the wishes of a majority of the Egyptian people, President Mohamed Hosni Mubarak today officially and fully vacated his office. An Egyptian military council is now (temporarily?) running the government, and though it unclear what will happen next, including with Omar Suleiman, the current vice president and former head of the Egyptian General Intelligence Directorate (EGID), that country's CIA. But what is clear is that two and...
Wednesday, 9 February 2011
A poet (I have known for half my adult life, and not least for his prestidigitory skills) decided to engage in his own form of protest during the Associated Writing Programs conference.At Busboys and Poets, a popular DC-area bookstore, there once stood a cardboard cutout of Langston Hughes as a busboy, his occupation when he was a young poet and working at the Wardman Park Hotel, the main venue of the AWP conference.And then, one night, while the...
Sunday, 6 February 2011
On Friday afternoon, after spending a little time at the university's info table, talking up the MA/MFA program and Triquarterly Online, I headed to the corner of Connecticut Ave. and Woodley Road, just up the block from the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel and a stone's throw from the National Zoo to join the participants in SAYING IT: A Walking Poem Against Censorship. Co-organized by Cara Benson, Caroline Crumpacker, Tina Darragh, Jennifer Karmin,...
(Nesta Robert) Bob Marley was born today in 1945, in Nine Mile, Saint Ann, Jamaica, and died on May 11, 1981, in Miami, Florida. It goes without saying that he was and remains one of the most influential musicians, artists, political figures, in 20th century black diasporic and global history. It's almost hard to believe that nearly 30 years have passed since he did. In tribute, here are a few videos of his work, which, like his words...
Friday, 4 February 2011
It's February, it's winter quarter, it's the time of the year when I don't have time to breathe. But I did manage to get to the Associated Writing Programs annual conference in Washington, DC, this past week, for two days, in part to participate in Encyclopedia's Vol. 2 F-K Launch Party, with War Diaries, the last in a series of arts-collaborative publications from AIDS Project Los Angeles.The reading, organized by the remarkable Tisa Bryant, co-editor...
Six Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1987) chalkboard-style paintings, under the title Tuxedo, from the Paris Review's Spring 1983, No. 87 issue. When I recently came across these images, I wondered if I, during my final year of high school and first year in college, might have seen them when they first appeared, and realized that although I would scour magazines and journals like The Paris Review in search of--I don't know what? Something I hadn't seen...
Thursday, 3 February 2011
Édouard Glissant (1928-2011),among the greatest intellectuals,artists, critics, creators, thinkersto emerge from the 20th centuryCaribbean, passed away todayin Paris at age of 82.A poet, fiction writer, essayiste,philosopher, he brought thesedifferent genres togetherin conversation, around and toa meal at which they spokeat length and freely with each other.When I was in graduate school I debated trying to finesse my schedule in order to take a class...
Tuesday, 1 February 2011
Today begins Black History Month, which is celebrated throughout the month of February in both the United States and Canada (in UK it occurs in October). It became an official US celebration in 1976, though its origins date back to scholar-activist Carter G. Woodson's establishment of Negro History Week in 1926. It is also, happily, Langston Hughes's birthday (1902-1967). I have posted more than a few Langston Hughes poems on this blog, and relish...
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