LOUISVILLE 2014

I couldn't leave for Louisville till Thursday morning this year, and thus had to miss opening sessions, including the reading by Laura Mullen. But I did get there in time for an entire panel on Jay Wright featuring my good friends from the Duke poetry working group. That evening I heard a great keynote from Lauren Berlant. That first day set the tone for the rest of the weekend. I've been coming to Louisville every February for years, in part because the conference on literature and culture after 1900 consistently offers a wide array of panels on poetry. This year's fiction reader was Colson Whitehead, who shared a hilarious parody with the audience. I didn't have my camera with me at the party over at Alan Golding's house, but it was the usual hoot and a half.  Thanks to Alan and Lisa for their annual show of extraordinary hospitality. The closer was a talk on mud and modernity by Peter Nicholls. Headed off with Michael New and Emily Sharpe for dinner at the Abyssinia restaurant -- Not that's my kind of Louisville -- 

AMIRI BARAKA - AFRICAN AMERICAN REVIEW VOLUME

Some years ago, unhappy with the sparse, recent critical work on Baraka, I joined together with Kalamu ya Salaam and William J. Harris to co-edit a special double issue of African American Review dedicated to Baraka's works. It remains sadly the case that we haven't had all that many substantive critical books on Baraka during the past fifteen years, though there are exceptions like Komozi Woodard's book and there have been some really sharp essays and book chapters. While we wait for the next round of readings to emerge, you might well want to fetch this volume and spend some time with it.  Here you'll find a moving note from Lorenzo Thomas, Ben Lee on Baraka and open form, Meta Jones on Baraka and jazz, Paul Youngquist's essential work on Baraka and Sci Fi, Farah Jasmine Griffin's prize-winning essay on Baraka's Billie holiday, and much else, including interviews.  AND, always the poetry:




(AFTER THE RAIN)
I used to be simple
When the world 
Was

"When was that?"
An LP after the '45
After the '78
When the sky was far away
When humans had faces
When the world minded
Its own business
& poetry was a dream
that left no footprints . . . .