Buggin' you - where buggin' is lovin'

What am I doing this summer? Not much! Neener! :-P

But, I am making headway on an Independent Study for school, and I'm trying to wrap my head around poetry revisions and submissions and manuscript making. I have no answers on that last part yet.

The books for my Independent Study on Modern Poetry are:

Already read:

--Spring and All, W.C. Williams

--White Buildings, Hart Crane

--Red Roses for Bronze, H.D.

--Homage to Sextus Propertius, Ezra Pound

Up Next:

--Tender Buttons, Gertrude Stein

--Four Quartets, T.S. Eliot

--Selected Poems, 1935, Marianne Moore

--The Auroras of Autumn, Wallace Stevens

Have you read them? Tell me what you think!

What else? Hmm...

--Went to NYC to see Tiffany dance. It was AMAZING!
--Saw a nutty concert at the Brick House.
--Threw a Pixie Dishes Dinner Party -- all appetizers! Good food fun.
--J will be visiting and we're going to compare and contrast Dungeness Spit and Cape Cod.
--There will be a Pacific Northwest tour - Grandma! Zora's luau! High school reunion?!? Eek! Port Townsend! Portland! Seattle! Hood River! WEEEE!
--There's a good chance Tiffany and Drew will visit!
--There's half a chance Richie will visit!
--Will go to readings at the Juniper Institute.
--And coming soon now, but not soon enough, the Rendezvous will open!
--Learn about nature at the Great Falls Discovery Center

Good times!

Posted by Juana at 2:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

What's up, doc?

Posted by Juana at 7:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

See http://www.poetrybus.com/ for the latest updates on the poetry bus tour.

Posted by Juana at 2:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Another Wave Books update (my internship) for those in the Seattle area interested in literary and visual arts.

Five Contemporary Visual Poets, an exhibition of poetry as visual art, organized by Wave Books, will be at The Wright Exhibition Space (407 Dexter Avenue North, Seattle, Washington) until November 15, 2006. The space is open on Thursday and Friday from 10am to 2pm.

More of the scoop:

Five Contemporary Visual Poets presents the work of Nico Vassilakis, Robert Seydel, Jen Bervin, Joshua Beckman and Mary Ruefle. An engagement with visual poetry has been part of the literary world since antiquity, but has rarely received the attention of more traditionally constructed poetry. In the 20th century we have become accustomed to the combination of words and images beyond their illustrative possibilities. From Kurt Schwitters to Guillaume Apollinaire in the early part of the century, to Ray Johnson and Jenny Holzer in the latter, the blurring of lines between visual and textual art has become a larger part of the cultural landscape. But, despite the ascension of mixed media work and the proliferation of print, television and computer advertising that employs the lessons of this work, we are still accustomed to reading poetry—in a sense treating words on a page as transparent or invisible, merely a means toward comprehension of sound, rhythm and meaning. The works of these five poets remind us that poetry is visible. Presented here are works that not only treat letters, numbers, punctuation marks, etc. as aesthetic visuals, but which do so in a gritty and accessible style, allowing the viewer a palpable experience of the artists' process. From Jen Bervin's six foot by eight foot quilts to Mary Ruefle's one-of-a-kind hand-altered books, Five Contemporary Visual Poets attempts to give an insight into the dynamic work that is presently being produced around the country.

I've heard Joshua Beckman read, met Jen Bervin once, and have Mary Ruefle's erasure book A Little White Shadow. If I was still in Seattle, I would so go to this! What's an erasure? Make one!

Check it out! More details here.

Posted by Juana at 1:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Do you live in or near the following cities?

SEATTLE, WA
SANTA CRUZ, CA
SPOKANE, WA
AMHERST, MA
NORTHAMPTON, MA
ASHLAND, OR
PORTLAND, OR
NEW YORK, NY
NEW ORLEANS, LA

Then you must visit the POETRY BUS!! The bus will visit many, many more cities throughout the US and Canada too so check out the full schedule.

What is the poetry bus?

Stopping at 50 cities in 50 days, the Wave Books Poetry Bus Tour is the biggest literary event of 2006. Beginning September 4 and ending October 27, over one hundred poets, along with musicians, filmmakers and journalists, will participate as the bus traverses North America, bringing innovative poetry to big cities and small towns across the U.S. and Canada. Sponsored by Wave Books, the poetry bus will go more places with more poets reading more poems than was ever previously believed possible.

Participating poets include: Eileen Myles, James Tate, Cole Swensen, Dean Young, Joshua Beckman, Noelle Kocot, Matthew Zapruder, Tyehimba Jess, Hoa Nguyen, Richard Siken, Katy Lederer, Dara Wier, Arthur Sze, Catherine Wagner, Srikanth Reddy, Matthew Rohrer, Thomas Sayers Ellis, Bhanu Kapil and over 100 more.

It's insane, but amazing, and it's sponsored by Wave Books where I have my internship.

I'll be helping out with the Amherst and Northampton stops - shuttling poets around, bringing them food, posting flyers around the valley, and letting creative writing teachers know so they can tell their students.

The Bumbershoot events in Seattle should be awesome, so if you're going to the shoot, definitely check out the Poetry Bus! Here's the Poets & Writers article with more of the scoop. As more juicy details develop, I'll post updates.

Posted by Juana at 3:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

If you can’t have a horse, have a pony.
If you can’t have a Hank, have a Heinie.

--JFN

*

Bonus points to anyone who can guess what I did tonight.

Posted by Juana at 11:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

I've been having crazy poetry fun the last few days. First there was the road trip to NYC on Thursday to see all of the Wave Books authors (with books published this spring) give a reading at the New School. Lori, managing editor, and I drove down, and I drove my car in NEW YORK CITY! I did ok, except one crazy lane change after a toll bridge which I couldn't make in time, so we added an hour to our road trip home. Oh well. Other than that I drove ok! We had to take a car because of all the books needing to be in a trunk, to be sold at the reading. Joshua Beckman, Anthony McCann, and Noelle Kocot read, and they were all great, especially Noelle's relentless yet amazing Poem for the End of Time. In less than 24 hours in the city we crammed in eating yummy noodles by Union Square, a stop at The Strand Bookstore, setting up the table of books for the reading and selling a tonne of books, yummy dinner and drinks out on the town at Cafe Loup then the Cedar Tavern, crashing for the night on an aero bed in a poet's kitchen, a stroll in Brooklyn including stops at an Italian bakery and "The Pork Shop", and a yummy french toast breakfast at the Union Smith Cafe in Brooklyn. Whew! After my second trip to NYC, I now "get it" -- that is why everyone in Massachusetts in the poetry program seems to gush enthusiasm about New York.

And then, last night I participated in "A Little Madness in the Spring," a marathon reading of all 1789 poems written by Emily Dickinson, at the Emily Dickinson museum in Amherst, MA. It started at 9 a.m. and lasted 19 hours. I came in to help with the crucial last leg, showing up at 1:30 a.m. to read 70 plus poems in classic me style to perk up the bleary eyed folk who were sticking with it until the end (many had been there since 9 a.m.!). Several of my UMASS MFA buddies were there too. After I read, the group of about 10 of us finished up until 4 a.m. rotating who read her poems, and occasionally getting up to read in different rooms of the old Dickinson homestead. Reading her work in the bedroom in which she wrote the poems was especially cool.

Here's a lovely samurai in Brooklyn. More photos at flickr!

Posted by Juana at 3:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Howdy!

The latest updates on Massachusetts Life:

--Last Friday, J and I went to Emily Dickinson's grave in Amherst, which is very near her old house which is now a museum (I hope to go there soon), and we read her poetry there and generally thought about death and eternity and stuff in the snow. Then we went to Lady Killigrew and had hot tea and a good pee and I bought a used reference book on poetry. Gotta stop reading poetry that rhymes. Here's pictures! (I'm still getting used to FlickR .. hopefully you'll find all the EM photos.)

--J and I went to Boston last Saturday. We drove to a suburban subway stop and headed into town, had a traditional Irish breakfast for lunch at an official Irish pub, roamed the streets, checked out famouse people dead in historic graveyards, saw massive amounts of cool paintings at the Boston Museum of Fine Art, and then had yummy Chinese food in Boston's Chinatown. There's tons left to see and do in Boston and we only had 1 day, but it was a fine introduction. Here's pictures!

--On Sunday, J and I went to Shelburne Falls and saw a super cute little town with an amazing falls on the Deerfield River. We shopped a bit, checked out the falls and the many potholes in the river, then had a yummy breakfast for brunch at the Bridge Street Cafe that everyone should go to. Then we went to North Adams to the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, also known as Mass MOCA. A very cool setting, and cool art too! J and I both liked the paintings on display from an art studio in Berlin ("Live After Death: New Leizpig Paintings from the Rubell Family Collection), and the Becoming Animal exhibit was a trip. Here's pictures! (I'm still getting used to FlickR .. hopefully you'll find all the Shelburne Falls photos.)

--This weekend there's another installment of Live Lit on Friday at Amherst Books, a Turners Falls Art and Icicles gallery/art weekend thingy, and a poetry reading (and other arty stuff) in a laundromat. It's the laundromat below me, and I get to read for 5 minutes along as will bunches of other folks, including my landlord and a fellow MFA-er at UMASS. I will report back on what it's like, should be fun.

--Oh, and it will probably snow at some point in the next 3-4 days. Wee!

Coming soon:

Cat Meditation (looking for recommendations on how to get videos from my camera small enough to post on the internets.)

Posted by Juana at 11:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

First - a bonus in this weeks Montague Reporter includes both Gill's and Montague's police logs. I think I like this one from Gill the best:

11/12 - 11:02 p.m. Loose cow on West Gill Road. Contacted owners to remove same.

Just because a cow wants to get out and have a little fun on a Saturday night, does that mean she's "loose"?

Second, to bug ya'll back about buggin me about my light school load .... darlings, this is art we're talking about here. You can't rush it! You must free your schedule to free your mind! And, well, neener, neener, neener.

I forgot to mention that I will likely also audit this class, and maybe get some independent study credits for it at some point, if I do something creative with it.

491A-L1 Neruda in Translation 55756
Instructor: M. Espada M 4:00 – 6:30 pm
Same as Latin-Am 491A. This is an introduction, in English translation, to the man considered by many to be the greatest Latin American poet of the 20th century. The poetry of Neruda is marked by a series of aesthetic and political metamorphoses, and the course is organized around the enormous diversity of the work: the early love poems, surrealism, the political poems, brought on by Neruda’s experience with the Spanish Civil War, the sweeping historical works best represented by his masterpiece, The Heights of Macchu Picchu, the humorous odes, the nature poems, and so on. The life of Neruda was also characterized by dramatic change, likewise charted throughout the course: from his career as a diplomat to his bitter years as a hunted political exile, from his acknowledgment as Nobel Laureate to his isolated death in the wake of the 1973 coup in Chile. Neruda was a witness to history, and special attention will be devoted to that history, particularly in terms of the Spanish Civil War and the Chilean coup. The course will also focus on the process of translation, and students will be encouraged to compare translations with one another, as well as against the original text. Students in this Honors course are required to write several papers, with an optional class presentation.

Posted by Juana at 6:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

780/2-Imaginative Writing: Poetry James Tate
Tuesdays, 1-3:30
Workshop in the writing of poetry. Each week, a close reading analysis of poems submitted by the class and occasional poems brought in from outside. Attention to the way in which a poem works and how it comes together through its choice of images, rhythms and subject matter. Assignments in an anthology of contemporary poetry and supplementary reading. Enrollment limited to 10. Permission of instructor required of students not enrolled through the MFA Program in English.

James Tate is the author of Return to the City of White Donkeys, Memoir of he Hawk: Shroud of the Gnome; Worshipful Company of Fletchers, which won the National Book Award; Selected Poems, which won the Pulitzer Prize and the Willliam Carlos Williams Award; Distance from Loved Ones; Reckoner; Constant Defender; Riven Doggeries; Viper Jazz; Absences; Hints to Pilgrims; The Oblivion Ha-Ha; and The Lost Pilot, selected for the Yale Series of Younger Poets. He has published two books of prose, Dreams of a Robot Dancing Bee and The Route as Briefed. His awards include a National Institute of Arts and Letters Award, the Wallace Stevens Award, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. He is currently a Chancellor of The Academy of American Poets and has been recently elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

777-Modern Poetry Ruth Jennison
Thursdays, 1-3:30
This course will survey American poetry from the late nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century. Students will become familiar with the canonical generational account of modernism (Dickinson; Whitman; Pound; Eliot; Stevens; Stein; Moore; Williams). However, discussions will also take up modernism's "others" (including Crane; Hughes; H.D; McKay; Zukofsky). Against modernism's own "cult of genius," we will read our poets as exemplary participants in interconnected and sometimes antagonistic literary movements, coteries, political fronts and avant-gardes. These groupings will include, but are not limited to: Imagism, Constructivism, Colloquial Nativism, Epic Classicism, Symbolism, the Harlem Renaissance, the poetics of the Popular Front and Objectivism. As we take up these canonical and alternative literary genealogies, we will also attend to the historical and political coordinates which subtend and substructure the various ideological orientations and formal strategies of early twentieth century American poetics. To what aspects of capitalist modernity are modern poets responding? How do uneven developments in racial formation, politics, economics and culture provide the conditions of possibility for modernist poetry's contradictory commitments to precapitalist organicism and futural experimentation? What is the relationship between the production of new social subjects (the "new Woman;" the "new Jew;" the "New Negro") and the innovative languages of a modern poetry seeking transformation in art and life? Finally, we will survey to the critical construction of modernism itself -- from its initial solidification as "movement" by the "New Criticism" to its current restructuring by Cultural Materialists working in the "New Modernist Studies." In this overview of modern poetry's critical history, we will seek the answer to the following question: Why is literary modernism often the privileged site of new critical-aesthetic narratives of modernity's historical traumas and/or potentials?

Ruth Jennison is presently writing a book entitled "The Zukofsky Era" which elaborates an alternative genealogy of modernist poetics. In it, she constructs the historical, literary and theoretical coordinates of the materialist Avant-Garde constellating around Louis Zukofsky's "Objectivist" poetics of the 1920s and 30s. Her interests include American modernist and postmodernist poetics, the theory of the Avant-Garde, Marxist literary theory, and psychoanalytic approaches to subject formation and aesthetic form.

And, I will continue to get credit for my internship work.

Posted by Juana at 6:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Ok, round two of today's activities -- going to the Belly Bowl to eat and listen to poetry started well (turkey and mashed potatoes and gravy- super yummy!!!), but ended .... well, it ended with me chugging a 1 pint, 6 oz Berkshire Brewing Company Steel Rail Ale, before the second half of the poetry reading started (can't waste good beer!), so that I wouldn't have to listen to it. I won't name names, and I don't want to dampen ANYONE's enthusiasm for writing or reading poetry.. but if you're going to read your poetry publically, take Tree Swenson's advice, and READ and STUDY poetry in addition to writing it. Poetry must pass the "so what?" test more often than not. I'm not saying it's easy or that I succeed (certainly not after so much beer!), but hey, it's a good goal.

Posted by Juana at 8:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I walked to the library for their book sale and got there by 12:20 -- which is pretty good for me! I got a moose bag ($12), and grabbed a bunch of books. Some are more random than others, but hey, it was a good deal. If I hadn't got the moose bag I would have got 12 books for only $2! So what loot, you ask?

--2 Irving Stone biographical novels. I haven't read any Irving Stone since I read his biographical novel on Michelangelo in high school. But I loved it then, so what the heck? I have his novels on Charles Darwin and Sigmund Freud now.
--The Oxford Book of Light Verse, published in 1938. It's poetry, it's old, who can resist?
--The 1898 publication of The Complete Poetical Works of Alfred Lord Tennyson. I don't even know if I like good old Tenny, but 1898!?! Phrases like "Whilome though camest with the morning mist,/ And with the evening could,/ Showering thy gleened wealth into my open breast;/..." Heck, that's just crazy fun!
--The Story and Its Writer, an anthology of short stories, and some critical essays on short stories. To get my MFA degree I have to take one writing workshop in a genre other than my main focus... which means I have to write fiction. Eek! This book might help. Who can say?
--Black Like Me, by John Howard Griffin, 1960 -- A white man goes to the South as a black man, and publishes his journal...
--A Dick Francis mystery, Break In, I've probably already read it, but I don't remember, which means that I won't remember who done it either. :-)
--Bunnicula -- A Rabit Tale of Mystery, 1979. Should be fun. Becky, have you read it?
--A Book of New England, 1947-- here I am getting all historical again, but with chapters like "Maple Sugar", "Taverns", "Puritan Children", "Heretics and Witches", and my favorite "Peddlers and Artists" -- what's not to like?
--John Cheever's the Wapshot Scandal, 1959, although, now I'm realizing there's a novel before it which I should probably read first... The Wapshot Chronicle, but oh well.
--Anne Lommot's Blue Shoe, novel.
--Marge Piercy's novel, The Longings of Women -- It's a hokey title, but who knows? She's an acclaimed poet/novelist person.

oh, and how am I doing on my 700 pager that's due on Thursday? ... I'm on p. 109. Must focus. FOCUS.

I missed the Monster tag sale because I didn't realize it ended at 2 p.m. Oops. I'll get a monster another day.

Posted by Juana at 1:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Well, some have asked that very question. James already knows.

Posted by Juana at 12:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

A brief update ... this graph from NOAA shows that the Connecticut River at the point closest to me that is measured, does not appear to be projected to go above flood stage, unlike last weekend.

Lucy says hello! Tio Poopy keeps beating her up, poor girl.

This evening I will be going to Live Lit, at Amherst Books, to see my poetry compadres read their wares. According to the MFA programming page, "Since 1985, students have sponsored Live Lit, a reading series in which poets and fiction writers in the program have an opportunity to hear each other's work. Housed at Amherst Books in downtown Amherst, Live Lit offers camaraderie, literature, and beers for a buck."

There appears to be great emphasis in all of the announcements on the beers for a buck idea. Hmmm, wonder why... Hopefully, Jenny and Richie are ok with the pricing.

Posted by Juana at 2:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Everybody wants to know! So, here's the scoop:

780/2-Imaginative Writing: Poetry Dara Wier
We will discuss the various considerations a poet imagines while composing or revising a poem, the role reading plays in these activities and the various ways people incorporate poetry in their lives. Our main events will be your work-in-progress. We'll occasionally read and talk about essays and poems from supplementary texts TBA available from Wootton's Books. Enrollment limited to 10. Permission of instructor required of anyone not enrolled through MFA Program in English.

Dara Wier's books include Our Master Plan (Carnegie-Mellon), Blue for the Plough (Carnegie-Mellon), The Book of Knowledge (Carnegie-Mellon), All You Have in Common (Carnegie-Mellon), The 8-Step Grapevine (Carnegie-Mellon), Blood, Hook & Eye (University of Texas). She was the 1993 Richard Hugo Memorial Chairholder at the University of Montana. Before coming to Amherst she's taught at University of Texas, University of Utah, University of Alabama and Hollins College. Her work has been awarded fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation.

ENGL 891JJ History and Memory in Contemporary American Fiction, Joseph Skerrett

In the face of the uncertainties and mendacities of post-modern life, the struggle for integrity often draws writers to cultural traditions that can be constructed or reconstructed on human rather than institutional terms. In the resulting works of art, mergers of identity and history are often achieved through the use of myth, storytelling rituals, and varieties of memory (personal, mythic, cultural, "racial") that refute, resist or complement the official or institutional "master narratives." After considering some ideas about memory, we will examine works that reflect itls use in literature, from Proustian subjective memory to collective memory and cultural politics. Reading: Carolyn Forche, The Angel of History (poems) Ernest Gaines, The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, Alan Gurganus, Oldest Confederate Widow Tells All, Joy Kogawa, Obasan, Li-Young Lee, Rose (poems) and The Winged Seed: A Remembrance, Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon, Lee Smith, Oral History, Edmund White, Nocturnes for the King of Naples, Cynthia Ozick, The Shawl, James Welch, Fools Crow, Tina de Rosa, Paper Fish, SinghSkerrett & Hogan, eds., Memory and Cultural Politics, essays and exceprts from other critical writings.

And the verdict? I'm having a great time in both of the classes, writing poems every week, and reading and discussing some very good books. I have to give a presentation on Thursday on Li-Young Lee's Rose, so I better hop to!

Next week: I'll learn more about a potential internship with the Juniper Initiative.

Posted by Juana at 11:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)