National Poetry Foundation at U of Maine - Poetry of the 1980s

This year's gathering in Orono began with a reception and the screening of selections from a film in progress by Konrad Steiner that has as its soundtrack the voice of Leslie Scalapino reading from Way.  It was deeply moving to hear Leslie's voice again, so very much alive.

The first morning began for me with a panel on the works of Clark Coolidge. Tom Orange, and thus his saxophone as well, was unable to make the trip in the end, but Brooks Lampe and Kristen Tapson Widenhofer delivered careful considerations of The Crystal Text and Solution Passage, both of which I had, as it happens, reviewed in the 80s.

 One of the best attended sessions was a panel on "Post-Generic Writing in the 1980s."  The term "post-generic" strikes me as an empty signifier, but the papers themselves, by Stephen Fredman, Kaplan Harris and Peter Middleton gave me a lot to wrestle with in my post-conference thinking.  I don't believe I'd seen Peter Middleton, a wonderful poet and critic, since the last Orono conference, so he and his work were a more than usually welcome sight.

The first plenary session, on the Poetry Project at Saint Marks, was surprisingly sparsely attended.  Maybe people thought they already knew this story?  To this day, I've never been to the Poetry Project, so it has remained something of a legend to me.  It was good to hear about it from participant observers.

The first evening's keynotes were poetry readings by Susan Howe and Charles Bernstein, who established a pattern among the conference readers of dipping back into their 80s work before moving with us to new poems.  I followed their example in our Poetry Performance event and read only from poems I'd published in the 80s.

 Poet friend Laura Hinton contacted me in advance of the National Poetry Foundation conference at the University of Maine to invite me to join the company she was assembling for a late night poetry performance. I was glad to be part of this dear company, which in the end included Linda Russo, Evie shockley and Catherine Wagner.  If you click on the program below you should be able to read it full size.


We only had time to talk our way through the performance in advance back at the hotel, but things went well that night and we had an appreciative audience, who also appreciated the free drinks we provided.  I may do that at all my readings in the future.  I certainly wish I could have these poets with me at every reading in the future.  Watch this space for news of a posting from the evening's recordings.

GREG PIERROT, PhD

That would be Dr. Pierrot on the right.  The younger person is Chloe Pierrot, who seems quite pleased with her father's response to her penetrating question about Aphra Behn. Greg's dissertation takes up the emergence and evolution of the trope of the Black Avenger in Atlantic cultures.

We ran into our colleague Kevin Bell over at the Nittany Lion and he joined in our celebration.  As did an enthusiastic Chloe, and a woman whose name is, according to Chloe, "Chloe's Mommie."  Hi Katie!

Paul Youngquist's laptop offering its congratulations to the new PhD.

ALA Days 3 & 4

Saturday got off to a fresh start with papers on Frederick Douglass, Thomas Dixon and Oscar Micheaux. I left that one and walked into a panel on the New York School poets.  Then it was time for my own panel, the third in the Gil Scott-Heron series, this time with Tyrone Williams and Tony Bolden, chaired by my colleague Shirley Moody-Turner. Afraid I forgot to take any photos or record that one.  Ah well,,,,,  The evening was capped with a reading by Lorna Dee Cervantes, who has just published Ciento, a volume of 100 100 word love poems.  (When my ear  hears that title, my skeptic's brain hears "lo siento.") -- Dinner that night with Tyrone Williams and Evie Shockley.


 

 

Despite which I managed to attend all three sessions on the final morning.  Good to see Joe Weixlmann, newly escaped from administrative duties.  I ended my conference by attending a quite good panel titled "Reading Race in Contemporary Culture." Interesting title; hmmmmmm . . .

That last session title seems to have emerged from the San Francisco recomposition room . . .