I've been reading in Tony Hoagland's new book of essays, Real Sofistikashun: Essays on Poery and Craft. I'd seen many of these over the years in APR and Poetry and elsewhere, and it's nice to have them all collected in one place (some, perhaps, revised?). He's a very accessible, straightforward essay writer, with a light touch and a good sense of humor and the absurd (just like his poems!). Here's a quote from his essay about the "Dialectical Use of Tone:"

"Tone is such an ambient, fluid, and internal quality, one constructed from so many shifting elements (diction, music, pacing, image, syntax), that to define it is an elusive, probably impossible task. The baseline definition that one encounters most often is that tone is 1) the attitude of a writer toward her subject or 2) of a speaker toward her audience. But even in such a general definition one sees omissions: What about the speaker's attitude toward the speaker? What about the speaker's attitude about her way of speaking?"

He then goes on to do a close reading of the layers of tone in Louise Gluck's poem "Purple Bathing Suit," demonstrating how "tone conducts plot." It's all really very well done.

Other essays explore topics such as image, compositional strategies, materialism, and "meanness." Highly recommended. 

Get Your Vote On

Democratic and Liberal and other forward-thinking people everywhere who are sick of the current Presidential administration: Remember to vote this November. If Democrats can win back both houses, then we can impeach Bush's sorry ass. The shock will make Dick Cheney keel over with a heart attack. And then Nancy Pelosi (who would be Speaker of the House in a Democrat-controlled congress) would become our first woman President!

Don't laugh. It could happen.

Go, Ben!

The National Book Award Finalists for 2006 have been announced. In poetry:

Angle of Yaw by Ben Lerner
Averno by Louise Gluck
Capacity by James McMichael
Chromatic by H.L. Hix
Splay Anthem by Nathaniel Mackey

I have only read one of these, Averno, and thought it was one of Gluck's better books of late. I heard Ben Lerner read from Angle of Yaw before it was published and thought the poems were terrific. Here's a sample:

"If it hangs from the wall"

If it hangs from the wall, it's a painting.
If it rests on the floor, it's a sculpture.
If it's very big or very small, it's
conceptual. If it forms part of the wall,
if it forms part of the floor, it's
architecture. If you have to buy a
ticket, it's modern. If you are already
inside it and you have to pay to get out
of it, it's more modern. If you can be
inside it without paying, it's a trap. If it
moves, it's outmoded. If you have to
look up, it's religious. If you have to
look down, it's realistic. If it's been
sold, it's site-specific. If, in order to see
it, you have to pass through a metal
detector, it's public.




It'd be fantastic if he won.

Re: McMichael, Hix, and Mackey; it looks like I have some reading to do.

*

In other news: I know the Yankees did poorly in the playoffs this year, despite all the multi-billion dollar stars on their roster. But did one of their players have to vent by flying into a building? I'm just saying . . .

*

  

Received my copy of Navigate, Amelia Earhart's Letters Home from No Tell Books, via Lulu, in the mail today. It's a lovely chapbook, 34 pages, saddle-stiched, with a gorgeous cover painting by Stacy Elaine Dacheux. In this sequence of short lyrical poems Loudon (who is no stranger to all things aeronautical, having worked for many years on Boeing jetliners) virtually inhabits the mind and soul of Amelia Earhart, in the days after her plane crashes at sea, or perhaps washes ashore on a deserted tropical island. These letters home appear in the form of lists, rants, love letters, memories, and diary entries. Pieced together they give us a stunning portrait of Amelia surviving by her wits on the island, perhaps sleeping under the wing of her plane.


"Dear Seamstress Pidge,

I have mended my trousers 117 times
using the needle in my emergency kit
and black thread until black thread
emptied into spool . . ."

pg. 18



"From the missing diary:

Open-cockpit biplane
Canuck
Kinner "The Canary"
Tri-Motor Fokker "Friendship"
Lockheed Vega
Lockheed Electra 10E . . ."

pg 20



"To Miss Visser my one and only piano teacher,

Hell mouth
Pisser
Cunny lip
Waddle hip
Purse face
Cow ass
Pinch eye
Shit shoe
I wished you dead then
I still do.

Sincerely,
Amelia mary Earhart"

pg 25



"Where are you Fred?
. . .
I want to tell you how it felt
falling and knowing
what a bad idea it was
to have decided against parachutes

ha ha"

pg 34.


It's a good read (and I'm not just saying this because RL is my friend!).
Highly recommended.

Susan Rich, reading at Open Books

  

Our hosts, Kevin and Bob, in the kitchen.

  

Dean and his sister, visiting from Utah

  

USC 26 UW 20
We were robbed! Isaiah was on a roll. We were gonna score for sure. But the timekeeper was a little too quick on the trigger, and we never got a chance to run that last play. It was excruciating. Dean and I and his sister Myrleen were driving on Vashon Island listening to the game on the radio, and I almost hit a tree I was so pissed at the refs.

Meeting Taha

Went with SR to a wonderful reception last night, for Taha Muhammad Ali, at a home in Laurelhurst. About 40-50 people gathered, a light buffet, wine. An amazing full moon rising over Lake Washington. I was able to chat a little bit with Taha, and his translator, Peter Cole, and Taha's biographer, Adina Hoffman (?). And then they gave a short bilingual reading. It was pretty amazing how they work together this way, an Israeli Jew and a Palestinian Arab. Their reading voices are very different, but complementary (you have to hear it). And it's really stunning work. They finished with a new poem (not in the new book) called "Revenge" that had us all almost in tears. I gives me hope to know a man who has suffered so much, seen so much oppression and war and death, can still write so optimistically about the world. It gives me hope (I know this sounds really pollyanna) for peace someday in the Middle East.

Picked up the beautiful broadside below at the reading. It's by Stern and Faye. (The format was too large for my scanner, so I scanned it in two pieces, ugh.) I think they'll have them at the reading tonight. Only 300 copies!

  

  

  

Looking Forward to This

  

Palestinian Poet
Taha Muhammad Ali
Reading:

October 7, 7:30 pm
St. Mark’s Cathedral
Seattle, WA

"Taha Muhammad Ali is a self-taught wonder, a man who sold souvenirs during the day and who, at night, studied classical Arabic texts, American fiction, English Romantic poets, Chekov, and Maupassant. Born in Saffuryia, the Galilean village at the heart of his poems, Taha and his family escaped to Lebanon during the Arab-Israeli War. He returned a year later to live in Nazareth, one painful mile away from the ruins of his former village.
A relative latecomer to poetry, Muhammad Ali has published short stories since the 1950s in Arabic and Hebrew publications. Now, having presented his poetry at the Jerusalem International Poetry Festival, the Geraldine R. Dodge Festival, and at colleges and universities across the United States, Taha Muhammad Ali is a beloved Palestinian poet. Audiences around the world have been powerfully moved by Muhammad Ali’s poems of political complexity, bittersweet humor, and—above all—humanity. Muhammad Ali has turned over the management of his souvenir shop, near the Church of the Annunciation, to his sons and spends his days writing, traveling, and conversing with friends over Turkish coffee." (from the Copper Canyon Press website)

See you there?

$15 Million

Bequest to creative writing program is largest ever for UW College of Arts & Sciences

"This planned gift from the S. Wilson and Grace M. Pollock Foundation will mean appointment of more award-winning writers as faculty, and additional recruitment of the very best students," said Ron Irving, interim dean of the College of Arts & Sciences.

The creative writing program, already among the top 10 in the country, will eventually be named for Grace Milliman Pollock."

Wow. That's a lot of green. Perhaps they will create a new "physician-poet" faculty position? I'm just saying . . .

Watching This Makes Me Happy

(make sure to have volume ON)