tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12551465Mon, 28 Nov 2011 00:41:23 +0000literatureimagespoetry prizesRankine and Hoaglandinterrogations and innovationsacademiadigital poetryactivismliterature organizationswritngpoetrypop culturedigitalracewriters of colormixed mediadigital artfictionpersonal narrativeteachingwriting / READINGhttp://aboutaword.blogspot.com/noreply@blogger.com (poet-scholar-professor-type)Blogger51125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12551465.post-1535153657889249290Tue, 22 Feb 2011 14:27:00 +00002011-02-22T07:27:13.459-07:00 Please find us here. We've moved ABOUTAWORD to a new home! Don't forget to re-subscribe at the new site. See you there!http://aboutaword.blogspot.com/2011/02/aboutaword-has-moved.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (poet-scholar-professor-type)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12551465.post-7614422631836963228Mon, 14 Feb 2011 20:27:00 +00002011-02-14T14:59:54.278-07:00writngwriters of colorinterrogations and innovationsimagesRankine and Hoaglandactivismpop cultureracepersonal narrativepoetry The photograph** sat on my desk for ten years. (I am a slow writer, but this is the longest it has ever taken me to finish a poem.) Someone sent me the article thinking I’d be interested in the show. I was. I went to the show, but I can’t remember any image except this one. I am writing this the week after Claudia Rankine’s reading at AWP. In that reading she presented Tony Hoagland’s http://aboutaword.blogspot.com/2011/02/joy-katz-why-does-white-girl-get-to.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (poet-scholar-professor-type)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12551465.post-4673591285196412790Wed, 09 Feb 2011 01:12:00 +00002011-02-08T21:19:36.660-07:00mixed mediadigital poetryinterrogations and innovationsdigital artWhen poet/artist Erin Costello and I set out to make Poemedia, we had a simple question in mind: What is the role of the printed poem in our contemporary, media-saturated environment? The piece did indeed address this question, but it also addressed a number of other aspects of contemporary poetry and digital art/literature. I’ll touch on a few of them here. First of all, for those of you who http://aboutaword.blogspot.com/2011/02/aaron-angelo-poetics-of-poemedia.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (poet-scholar-professor-type)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12551465.post-5688559353316135311Mon, 31 Jan 2011 19:39:00 +00002011-01-31T12:39:50.508-07:00interrogations and innovationspop culturedigitalhttp://aboutaword.blogspot.com/2011/01/guernica-3d.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (poet-scholar-professor-type)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12551465.post-5250254864820190611Wed, 12 Jan 2011 00:01:00 +00002011-01-12T09:12:57.537-07:00For much of Saturday I was away from my usual tethers to the world: email, Google, even Twitter, with its endlessly trending stream of the Moment. Not that I was particularly vexed - I was carrying an iPad around in my backpack, for God's nauseous sake. Later, I even found I could steal a hotel's free Wi-Fi, from down the street. I was checking illicit email within a few minutes. And that's when http://aboutaword.blogspot.com/2011/01/paul-guest-words-have-meaning-they-have.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (poet-scholar-professor-type)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12551465.post-1516054944966994889Mon, 13 Dec 2010 01:07:00 +00002010-12-12T18:07:37.943-07:00http://aboutaword.blogspot.com/2010/12/typography-unblinking-grief-charles.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (poet-scholar-professor-type)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12551465.post-3595601052185445397Mon, 29 Nov 2010 22:33:00 +00002010-11-29T15:33:47.765-07:00 No apologies—I am a thief.  I wrote about a poem a day this November.  Since it’s nearing the end of the month I just went back to read over what I’ve been writing.  What I see is that I imitated, I stole, I borrowed, also I experimented, I expressed, improvised, imagined, I formed, I failed.  But mostly I stole.  Some of the poems are quite acceptable.  Some make no sense.  Some are almost http://aboutaword.blogspot.com/2010/11/soham-patel-poems-as-rendition-or-some.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (poet-scholar-professor-type)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12551465.post-2008787708543176459Mon, 29 Nov 2010 16:19:00 +00002010-11-29T09:19:27.897-07:00http://aboutaword.blogspot.com/2010/11/michael-koly-clockworks-digital-poem.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (poet-scholar-professor-type)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12551465.post-2161537104393758154Tue, 16 Nov 2010 21:12:00 +00002010-11-18T07:28:26.739-07:00I was in Little League one season. Everybody got a trophy just for being on a team! From this, I learned that almost doing something (in that case, almost being competent at tee-ball) is just as good as doing something. This dovetails nicely with my Lutheran upbringing: a sin in mind is just as much a sin as one in deed. Thus: here are a few poems I would like to write. This is just as http://aboutaword.blogspot.com/2010/11/douglas-kearney-body-is-plantation-of.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (poet-scholar-professor-type)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12551465.post-6973625739902172715Mon, 15 Nov 2010 16:09:00 +00002010-11-15T09:09:10.526-07:00 (www.theantking.com / fox-gieg.com)http://aboutaword.blogspot.com/2010/11/orange-hd-story-by-benjamin-rosenbaum.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (poet-scholar-professor-type)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12551465.post-375153182915678612Mon, 08 Nov 2010 18:16:00 +00002010-11-08T11:20:42.083-07:00writngwriters of colorpersonal narrativepoetry         The light is catching Nolan's face in such a way that his expression folds inward; his eyes scrunch tight, lips press firmly together. But he's giggling despite his sour countenance. My mother bounces him on her knees, every once and awhile raising him up by his armpits into the shooting rays of light in her living room. It is November in the Pacific Northwest, and these quick sunbursts http://aboutaword.blogspot.com/2010/11/oliver-de-la-paz-sunbursts.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (poet-scholar-professor-type)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12551465.post-2093531380605811451Tue, 02 Nov 2010 16:00:00 +00002010-11-08T11:22:42.478-07:00writngwriters of colorinterrogations and innovationsimagespersonal narrative When the dive-master yelled, “Flaaat!” my legs seized with terror and my body unfolded into the shape any body would take when a confronted with a giant whale shark gliding directly towards your head: a pancake. Actually, since I was floating on the surface of the water of the 6-million gallon “Ocean Voyager” tank at the Georgia Aquarium, and most of my ears were submerged as I was face down, http://aboutaword.blogspot.com/2010/11/aimee-nezhukumatathil-origin-of-whale.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (poet-scholar-professor-type)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12551465.post-5640547893022528164Mon, 01 Nov 2010 00:37:00 +00002010-10-31T18:37:59.959-06:00http://aboutaword.blogspot.com/2010/10/oni-buchanan-and-brian-kim-stefans-at.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (poet-scholar-professor-type)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12551465.post-8952978680516014768Mon, 25 Oct 2010 01:02:00 +00002010-11-08T11:23:07.902-07:00writnginterrogations and innovationspersonal narrativepoetry I’d like to go for a walk, but right now I’m too busy with work and project obligations. I can’t catch up during the day and evening, so I’ve let that seep into my morning, my before-light writing time. Half a decade ago, I worked on a year-long project with the poets Ryan Walsh and Sebastian Matthews: the project, Walking the Morning Line, required that each of us write several lines every http://aboutaword.blogspot.com/2010/10/curtis-bauer-i-wish-i-were-out-walking.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (poet-scholar-professor-type)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12551465.post-7326731068742133966Sun, 24 Oct 2010 18:42:00 +00002010-10-25T00:16:19.889-06:00writnginterrogations and innovationspoetrydigitalhttp://aboutaword.blogspot.com/2010/10/poemedia-erin-costello-and-aaron.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (poet-scholar-professor-type)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12551465.post-542691168790272826Mon, 18 Oct 2010 04:35:00 +00002010-11-08T11:23:42.647-07:00writnginterrogations and innovationspersonal narrativepoetry Dear Reader, My wife and I stand in the backyard, waiting for dinner to be done. We won’t, we know, have many more weekends—maybe any—when we can use the grill. It’s remarkable, she says, thinking of how few bean pods have come off the locust that’s going yellow overhead. Normally, the yard is covered, like the pool of balls at a child’s play-place, with these beans, and it can take all http://aboutaword.blogspot.com/2010/10/jake-adam-york.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (poet-scholar-professor-type)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12551465.post-3703155582474827857Sun, 10 Oct 2010 18:09:00 +00002010-11-08T11:23:56.346-07:00writnginterrogations and innovationspersonal narrativepoetry After my reading in Detroit a woman approached me to say that she enjoyed my poems but that she felt one poem I read was insensitive to people working in the sex industry. “As a former exotic dancer myself,” she said, “I was hurt by the suggestion that there was something wrong or shameful about such work.” The poem she is referring to deals with, among other things, a man’s changing attitudes http://aboutaword.blogspot.com/2010/10/greg-pardlo-somebodys-daughter-too.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (poet-scholar-professor-type)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12551465.post-7372415497400205394Mon, 04 Oct 2010 16:07:00 +00002010-11-08T11:24:15.108-07:00writngpersonal narrative When Hurricane Katrina strikes, one young girl in New Orleans will need all her strength to survive in Ninth Ward, a stirring children’s book debut by award-winning author Jewell Parker Rhodes. In 2005, when Hurricane Katrina hit, I was transfixed by new stories and images of the survivors. I always kept asking myself, “What about the children?” I caught glimpses of them, but seldom did Ihttp://aboutaword.blogspot.com/2010/10/jewell-parker-rhodes-ninth-ward.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (poet-scholar-professor-type)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12551465.post-818141516921018440Mon, 27 Sep 2010 17:47:00 +00002010-11-08T11:24:28.477-07:00writngpersonal narrativepoetry“How’s your crack?” he asked. “You’ve heard this question before, yes? How’s your crack?” And indeed I had heard the question before, decades before, from my grandparents, both of them immigrants to New York and native Irish speakers. They refused to teach us Irish—called Gaelic in those days—nor did they return, or ever wish to return, to “the old country.” But occasionally, under pressure http://aboutaword.blogspot.com/2010/09/kathy-fagan-ox.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (poet-scholar-professor-type)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12551465.post-1927638261632413372Mon, 20 Sep 2010 14:23:00 +00002010-11-08T11:24:43.082-07:00writngpersonal narrativepoetryHaving just published When the Water Came: Evacuees of Hurricane Katrina, a book of interview-poems that I made from interviews with evacuees and photographs by my co-author, Rebecca Ross, I was alert to the implications articulated in “The Voices of Hurricane Katrina, Parts I and II,” now archived on the Poetry Foundation’s website. Ross’ and my book is published by Bill Lavender of UNO Press, http://aboutaword.blogspot.com/2010/09/cynthia-hogue-on-writing-of-disaster.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (poet-scholar-professor-type)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12551465.post-2489533906370968448Mon, 13 Sep 2010 16:26:00 +00002010-11-08T11:24:57.598-07:00writngpersonal narrativepoetryThe epigraph to my most recent book comes from Philip Guston. Philip Guston was a member of a school of American painting labeled Abstract Impressionism by the painter, Elaine de Kooning. By way of simple explanation, Abstract Impressionism differed from Abstract Expressionism by exchanging the latter's gut-level gestalt of attacking the canvas with paint and brush (or in the case of Jackson http://aboutaword.blogspot.com/2010/09/jorn-ake-i-wanted-world-in-my-next-book.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (poet-scholar-professor-type)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12551465.post-332410137337424369Tue, 31 Aug 2010 14:38:00 +00002010-11-19T11:07:48.280-07:00writngpoetryI’m thinking about cars. And when I say cars, you should know I mean poems and books of poems. Sometimes when I think about houses I am also thinking of poems. That’s one thing I love about poems—they can be almost anything. That’s what I love about metaphor. But today is a nice day and I have been out cruising and I have been talking with another poet (who is trying to get someone to drive her http://aboutaword.blogspot.com/2010/08/terrance-hayes-ride-finding-love-thats.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (poet-scholar-professor-type)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12551465.post-3659085009493223527Mon, 30 Aug 2010 15:45:00 +00002010-10-25T00:16:19.894-06:00writngThe summer hiatus of ABOUTAWORD comes to an end this week. Look for guest posts this fall by Terrence Hayes, Kathy Fagan, Jewell Parker Rhodes, Cynthia Hogue, and more.http://aboutaword.blogspot.com/2010/08/summer-where-have-you-gone.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (poet-scholar-professor-type)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12551465.post-3980235721536370071Wed, 05 May 2010 18:13:00 +00002010-10-25T00:16:19.894-06:00writnginterrogations and innovationspersonal narrativepoetryI dug through crates this past Sunday at a friend’s garage. Real crates, maybe a dozen filled with vinyl from the seventies, eighties and early nineties. We gasped and even threw our hands in the air a couple times when we pulled out some DeBarge 45, Freestyle’s “Don’t Stop the Rock” or New Order’s “Blue Monday”. There were the obscure but unforgettable Euro joints too, like Secession’s “Touch”, http://aboutaword.blogspot.com/2010/05/patrick-rosal-digging-poetics-mastermix.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (poet-scholar-professor-type)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12551465.post-8965495543552793010Thu, 29 Apr 2010 14:45:00 +00002010-10-25T00:16:19.895-06:00writnginterrogations and innovationspoetryThe failure of language to genuinely (re)capture an experience has always been a fascination for me. Always: a disconnect between what actually happens in the world and what, consequently, we create. After all, they’re just words. The sculptor is standing with his hands in wet clay and the cellist wraps her arms around all that string and wood. After all. Do we genuinely attempt to write poems http://aboutaword.blogspot.com/2010/04/eve-jones-all-poems-lied.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (poet-scholar-professor-type)