AMERICAN LITERATURE ASSOCIATION 2009

well . . . literal minded in Boston, I'd thought I'd stumbled into a place that worshiped jazz; turns out they just used jazz in their worship . . . but still . . . 

That made a fine backdrop to the meeting of the ALA.

Each year at the conference, the African American Literature and Culture Society presents the Stephen Henderson Award for contributions to the literary arts.  This year's award went to Elizabeth Alexander, who had read at an ALA panel in San Diego many years ago alongside Sherley Anne Williams, with a critical response from Marcellus Blount.  Elizabeth read at the Obama Inauguration back in January and we had the bilingual edition of her poem on hand for the eager readers of the ALA.  Back in 1986, Elizabeth was a winner of the Larry Neal Award.  The first Larry Neal winner for poetry, in 1983, was one A.L. Nielsen.  It was a distinct pleasure to share a podium with her on this occasion.

Among the new features at this year's conference, new author societies devoted to the works of Paul Laurence Dunbar and Pauline Hopkins.




An exciting development this year for those of us in poetry studies in addition to a Dunbar Society, the appearance of a new society that takes as its object of study the work of the New York School of poets.

DIG

More than two decades after The Music, the last major collection of Amiri Baraka's writings on jazz, comes Digging: The Afro-American Soul of American Classical Music, from the University of California Press.  Taking its place on the shelf alongside Blues People and Black Music, this volume brings us Baraka's reflections, reviews and concert experiences from the late eighties to the late now.  In any such collection there is bound to be some repetition, and that is true here, but the book will introduce you to musicians you probably haven't heard before  (I had somehow missed Rodney Kendrick till reading of him in these pages), give you a new perspective on artists who have come to prominence more recently (Vijay Iyer) and offer surprising takes on music you thought you knew (check out Baraka's musings on the late music of Miles Davis).  And it is always rewarding to witness the evolution of Baraka's thoughts on these subjects.

The book also features a treasury of photographs, such as this cover illustration that shows Baraka at the front steps of the Black Arts Repertory Theater School in 1965. If you look closely, you'll see that the fellow at the top of the stairs wearing a white cap is Sun Ra.  

For all you bibliographers, here's an interesting twist.  Unlike so many of his books from the late 60s to just a few years ago, neither the cover nor the copyright page of this book makes any reference to Baraka's earlier name.  Where The Autobiography of LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka splits his life around that act of renaming, this book is simply presented to us as written by Amiri Baraka.  (Though I note that he remains "Imamu" in the LOC catalogue data on the copyright page.)

Order the book here or pick up a copy at your local independent book store.  I got mine at Bridge Street Books in D.C. -- 

SIR PAUL

Another good colleague is on his way out of State College.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     One of the people I've been happiest to know since coming to Penn State is Paul Youngquist.  Long-time followers of this blog will remember seeing him playing with his jazz band in earlier scenes from around town.  Paul is a tremendous scholar and critic.  His essay on Amiri Baraka and Science Fiction in the special issue of African American Review dedicated to Baraka's work is a model of insight and instigation.  His two powerful books on Blake and on monstrosities (do I repeat myself?) are significant contributions to studies in Romanticism.  A few years ago Paul co-taught a graduate seminar on Free Jazz with Billy Joe Harris, which culminated in a performance of the reunited New York Art Quartet.  And his guitar playing was something I will miss almost as much as I'll miss talking to him every day around here.

Paul is off to another of my old stomping grounds, Boulder, Colorado, where he will join the English Department at U of Colorado, being a Romanticist under the Flat Irons, dropping by Naropa, enjoying the expanded opportunities for jazz that he will find in the Boulder/Denver region.

SEVERAL GRAVITIES

Clearly one of the most beautiful books of the year, Keith Waldrop's Several Gravities combines Waldrop's distinctive writings with a collection of the collage work he has been producing for years, mostly visible till now on the covers of a series of poetry volumes from Burning Deck Press.

            Perfection

demands images at

strategic intervals, something

steady on which to

map the random. My world

is in disorder. Like-

wise my schedule. I

live within 

acceptable 

tolerances. At the

intersection of innumerable

fantasies. Irreconcilables

point me to

my orient. Ambiguous

suns. A shower of

elementaries. Venus rising

from the nutrient broth.

Accidents of sensual

logic. Fringes of

interference. That

doorbell.

Browse your way over to Siglio Press for more information on this book.

FRANCISCO ARAGON

Last night Francisco Aragon brought his poetry to town, with a reading at Foster Auditorium.  Francisco is the author of  PUERTA DEL SOL, from Bilingual Review Press.  

He is also the editor of THE WIND SHIFTS: NEW LATINO POETRY, perhaps the most far-reaching such anthology since Ray Gonzalez's AFTER AZTLAN.

One of the poems Francisco read was dedicated to Jack Spicer, one of the many subjects swirling around the table when we had lunch earlier in the day.

Love Poem

by Francisco Aragón

Just let the San Andreas stay put, keeping this tunnel intact, enough to amble out of it, past Louie’s Dim Sum a Saturday afternoon, breeze detectable off the bay—visible in the distance, carrying with it the smells of open air markets: crab freshly caught and seahorses piled in bins along Stockton... or Jack, strolling out of the tube connecting Polk Gulch and North Beach—on his way to Aquatic Park to spread the Sporting Green on his favorite patch of grass... He is ferrying the portable radio to his ear listening for the count in the bottom of the ninth at Candlestick, begins to smooth the pages with his palms before he sits to keep it dry: the split seat of his pants for Jack Spicer (1925–1965)

Francisco is on the staff of Notre Dame's Institute for Latino Studies, working out of their office in D.C.  Check out Francisco's work with the Institute at the Letras Latinas blog site.

CLICKAPHONICS: RAINA LEON READING

RAINA LEON'S RETURN

One of the first people I met when I came to Penn State University was poet and educator (but then she was a poet and student) Raina Leon.

We've remained in touch since she moved on to North Carolina and Nevada and Germany and I was pleased to get word that she was going to be in town this past weekend reading from her first book of poetry, Canticle of Idols, which has been published by Word Tech.  

I hadn't been to Websters Book Store for quite a while and was surprised to find a used vinyl store added to the books (a bit disconcerting, looking across the room during the poetry reading and seeing a record of my musical history spread out for sale), but all else, including a certain amount of disorganization and incomprehension (vital elements of any successful book emporium -- far more important than cats) was as I recalled from earlier readings.  In the past this venue has hosted Erica Hunt, Ed Roberson, Evie Shockley, Duriel Harris, Susan Wheeler and Jeffrey Renard Allen, so Raina (who had come years ago to the reading Alfred Arteaga did at Websters) was following an estimable tradition.

Raina brought with her poet/friend DeLana Dameron, whose own book, How God Ends Us, you can read about here.  A forward by Elizabeth Alexander . . . not shabby . . . 

Raina will be reading elsewhere as follows:

April 8
7:30pm 
Quail Ridge Bookstore
quailridgebooks.booksense.com
3522 Wade Ave
Raleigh, NC 27607
(919) 828-1588
reading and book signing with DeLana Dameron and Lenard D. Moore

April 9
9pm
Busboys and Poets
http://www.busboysandpoets.com/
Busboys @ 14th & V.
2021 14th St, DC
reading and book signing with DeLana Dameron

April 10
4pm
Green Line Cafe
4239 Baltimore Avenue
Philadelphia PA 19104
Informal poetry discussion and coffee 

Be sure to check her out -- you can order her book here.

Raina's work also appeared in the Ocho 15 edition of the MiPOesias project, edited by Francisco Aragon.  You can read about that here.  And you can hear Francisco read from his own poetry at Penn State on Wed., April 8.  Watch for a blog entry on that one soon.

COLLAPSIBLE POETICS THEATER

Don't tread on you? Entity. Of the expansive accumulative. Society. Inalienable? Dysynchronous. Siempre. Torn up and tearing. Sacred and profane. Silly and sublime. Ascendant. Techne. Of what's oppositional, of what's not. Of what's recuperative, of what's not. Walking tall. Life and death. Power and grace. Alienable Dividuals. Entities. Seek a freedom in, not from. Alienable Dividual. Sees the diff, bears the brunt, speaks the sum. A sliver of your own self, striving. Siempre.

Always something new out of Rodrigo Toscano -- this is one of the opening passages of "Truax Inimical," described here as "A trans-modern masque for four voices," which leads off his new book Collapsible Poetics.  The book was selected by Marjorie Welish for the National Poetry Series and was pubished by Fence Books.  Use Amazon to look inside the book, and order a copy while you're there.

NEW from MICHAEL GIZZI

I've been reading Michael Gizzi's poetry for three decades now, ever since I got a copy of his early Burning Deck book Bird As, which was the subject of one of my first book reviews.

Now, some sixteen books later and again from Burning Deck Press, comes Gizzi's latest, New Depths of Deadpan.

Here's one poem from the new collection:

AN OLD-FASHIONED

A good teacher instructs by swatting flies.

An elephant never forgets an excuse.

What made the tick choose anthropology?

Try this: repair a hubbub.

Studies suggest people who speak in tongues never eat with you again.

And that pieman once thought to be a berry (now a wooden boat) died of seahorse strokes.

He used to baby-sit Leadbelly.

Music--the conduit through which you blindly come into view.

Listen: your initials on the moon.

You can find Burning Deck's web site and catalogue here.

Burning deck editions are also available from Small Press Distribution.

CELEBRATING CHESTER HIMES

Just before Spring Break, Penn State hosted a centennial symposium on the life and works of novelist Chester Himes. Like all too many of my generation, I hadn't known of Himes until movie adaptations of his works began to appear, movies like Cotton Comes to Harlem. Those movies, along with Himes's autobiographical works, brought about a late life resurgence of interest in his novels. I still remember the irremediably cool Himes being interviewed on educational television (that's what we called it back in the day) wearing a turtleneck sweater and an attitude.

The Penn State symposium was organized by Jonathan Eburne and brought to campus a group of scholars and writers that included Steve Cannon, Norlisha Crawford, Tyrone Simpson, Christopher Breau, Will Turner, Justus Nieland, Pim Higginson, Kevin Bell, Wendy Walters and Lisa Fluet.

Watch for a publication to emerge from this gathering in the future.

New from Abigail Child

Laura Hinton's Mermaid Tenement Press has just released this new chapbook from Abigail Child.  (I love the name "Mermaid Tenement" for the vision it summons of a mermaid flopping around in one of those kitchen bathtubs with feet I used to see in older New York buildings.)

The chapbook, Counterclock, is described as the first part of "An Experiment in Autobiography" which Child read at the St. Marks Poetry Project and the Bowery Poetry Club in 2007 and 2008.  The cover image you see here is from Child's film The Future is Behind You.

The work starts:

Start here. Uncompensated tongue. Pressure point mortality periodicals linking the present to earlier structural loves.  Read forward, sharp reds. The words take off. Think. It starts. Evaporation of certain volatiles stitched unto space hurtling forward. Hunker present to left stickling pins in a back hammer pile. Enrich the feeling. Elixir. Lucked Structure with which to

You can find more information about Tenement Press publications here.