Poem: Ishmael Reed

Ishmael Reed (National Black Writers Conference)We come to the end of Poetry Month. Since I began the month with a poem by a poet I know and have had the great luck to study with, I shall choose a final poem about poetry by another poet, of an earlier generation, whom I also had the good fortune to study with. This writer's poem "i am a cowboy in the boat of ra" was my favorite in childhood and for many years after, even though it took me years to...

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Poem: W. H. Auden

W. H. Auden(Photo © Jill Krementz)I mentioned him in yesterday's (or a recent) post, so here a poem by the one and only W. H. Auden (1907-1973), one of the lodestones of 20th century Anglo-American poetry, whose life and work really need no introduction.  The fifth line in this poem's second stanza is one of the most quoted by poets, though the fuller thought often is not. Ireland remains (even today) torn, and the Irish Republic finds itself...

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Poems: Nikki Giovanni

Nikki Giovanni(www.afropoets.net)Ah, Nikki Giovanni (1943-). When I was in junior high and starting high school she was my favorite poet. There was something about the directness of her address, the humorous way she dealt with frustration and rage (though she wasn't always so funny), her articulation of power in the face of marginalization, her truthfulness about what it meant and means to be young and black and living in the US (and she was at least...

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Poem: Qiu Xiaolong

Qiu Xiaolong(Confucius Institute, UNSW)This morning in the New York Times I came across an Op-Ed essay entitled "Intrigue in Chongqing," on the rise and precipitous fall of former "princeling" Bo Xilai, whose alleged corruption and spying activities doomed him, as did his wife's alleged involvement in the murder of a British citizen. I had read several stories on this case, which calls for novelistic, dramaturgical and operatic treatment, but I'd...

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Kgositsile in Evanston + My Bookshelf

On Monday Keorapetse Kgositsile (1938-), the Poet Laureate of South Africa and a beacon in African and African Diasporic arts and letters, came to Northwestern to read his work. In lieu of a recap of his excellent reading, introduced by Reg Gibbons, and  graced by Douglas Ewart's pipe accompaniment on three poems, here are a few photos. I previously posted the itinerary for Kgositsile's travels throughout the rest of the spring here. His tour...

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Poems + Translations: Ana Cristina César

Ana Cristina César (from http://tomzine24.wordpress.com)Several years ago I came across the poetry of Ana Cristina César (1952-1983), and was immediately struck by how different they looked and sounded in Portuguese, to much of the Brazilian poetry I had been reading. Or they looked different primarily because I did not yet have a context for them. As I read more and studied up on César, I learned that there were, in fact, a number of poets (Cacaso,...

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Poem: Kamran Mir Hazar

The US has occupied Afghanistan for a decade. The war, or something approximating one, grinds on; drones ply the skies over Khost; Afghan people, like the coalition soldiers, are still dying and suffering serious psychological and physical injuries; the government there teeters on...the brink? I would venture that most Americans know as little about Afghanistan today, save for the names of a few cities--Kabul, Kandahar, Mazari Sharif--and politicians--Hamid...

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Poem: Denise Levertov

Denise LevertovDo students read Denise Levertov (1923-1997) in high school or college these days? Do high school teachers or college professors teach her work?  I never hear anyone mention her name, and it's a shame. It was in junior high that I first read a poem of hers, though I don't remember which; I made a faint impression, but an impression it did make. I decided to learn more about her when I started coming across books of hers from the...

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Auf Wiedersehen, signandsight.com

It know that it occurred 7 years ago, around the time I began this blog, but I cannot recall the route by which I first happened upon signandsight.com, the website whose motto is--or was--"Let's Talk European." I say was, because almost a month ago, on March 28, the editors, Thierry Chervel and Anja Seeliger, posted a valedictory letter, letting readers know that this little internet torch of knowledge would be doused; there would be no more new...

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Poem: Kamau Brathwaite

Edward Kamau Brathwaite (from repeatingislands.com)I was trying to remember if I had featured Kamau Brathwaite (1930-) on J's Theater before, and I was pretty sure I had, but it turns out that while I have mentioned him many times, including in my very first post, the only work of his that I've ever featured is his highly anguished call for help to save CowPastor/Cow Pasture, the large open areas near where he lives in Christ Church, Barbados, that...

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5th Annual Writing Festival @ Northwestern

A couple weeks ago (April 12-14) the undergraduate Creative Writing Program at Northwestern University held its 5th Annual Writing Festival, a three-day event bringing together students, faculty and three writers representing each of the three major genres--poetry, fiction and creative nonfiction--in which the program offers major and minor curricular tracks.This year's visiting writers were poet Kate Daniels (who teaches at Vanderbilt University),...

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Poem: Martha Collins

Today's poem is by a poet I've never featured before, but this poem, and this poet's work, have intrigued me, not least because of one rhetorical device (of the many) she uses so well: repetition. In several of the poems by Martha Collins (1940-) that I've read, repetition serves as the means for what might in music be called motivic variation, at least if I'm grasping the concept right.She will introduce a word, a phrase, an idea, and then repeat...

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Poem: Carl Phillips

Today's poem is one of congratulations! to a poet I've read for nearly 20 years. I met and befriended him right before he was to publish his first book, the award-winning In the Blood (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1992, selected by Rachel Hadas), when he connected with the Dark Room Writers Collective, which I've mentioned a bit here over the last few weeks. I am talking about the one and only Carl Phillips (1959-), who is, as I write this,...

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Poem: Gary Snyder

Gary Snyder (l), Allen Ginsberg (r), 1965Glacier Peak, Washington State (Photo © Allen Ginsberg)When this Poetry Month posting business began, I said I was going to refrain from intros, précis(es), and the like. Or keep them brief.  But then I think every day as I'm selecting these poems, it isn't fair just to post them without saying something. Sometimes that something can fit into a tiny box of concision. Other times it just pours forth from...

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Marc Bamuthi Joseph's & Theaster Gates's rbGB @ Chicago MoCA

I am not a dance critic nor a dance scholar, let me make that clear. I point this lest I incur the sort of situation that allegedly occurred a few years ago when some kind person cited this blog in a dissertation on dance. It startled my (very generous) colleague who's a leader in that field and happened to be participating in the dissertation defense. So please, dear reader, read these remarks as those of a fan and nothing more.  I do love...

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Poem: Lorna Dee Cervantes

I was trying to figure out how to introduce the following poem, by Lorna Dee Cervantes (1954-), which I thought of when I read the hedging admission by the House Majority Whip, Eric Cantor (R-VA) that anti-Semitism and racism were (still) a problem in his (the Republican House) caucus.  Well, duh. (Yet does he realize how he's been part of the problem?) I read this poem many years ago and recall it every so often because of how it captures so...

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